TRANSLATION TECHNIQUES IN WALT DISNEY ANIMATION STUDIOS FEATURE FILM TITLES - A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF BULGARIAN AND RUSSIAN TRANSLATIONS

Abstract

The present article focuses on a descriptive analysis of the translation techniques employed in the rendering of the titles of Walt Disney Animation Studios feature films from English into Bulgarian and Russian, respectively. Titles have been selected as an appropriate subject for research due to the integral role they play in the initial presentation of film products and the first impression audiences receive. The fact that feature films are marketing products intended to sell internationally and bring in profit based on the interest of the public is also relevant here - it underscores the importance of making adequate choices in selecting a title and, subsequently, in rendering that very title into a number of foreign languages in order to reach the widest possible audience, while still remaining on-brand and recognizable. It is considered as potentially beneficial to study the practices of the most popular and successful production studios and their approach to dealing with the translation of titles into various languages as it may point out particular meaningful tendencies and elucidate the process of translation through an analysis and observation of the product it has rendered.
The present article acknowledges the existing incongruence in matters of terminology and approach between the different schools of translation as outlined by Sirakova and Michev (2015), Harmon (2019) and Gambier (2018), to name but a few. This ambiguity does not only exist between the Western-centered (European and American, represented by scholars such as Vinay and Darbelnet, Urtado Albir and Molina Martinez, Nida, Newmark, Chesterman, etc.) tradition and the Russian-centered one (represented by theoreticians such as Retsker, Barhudarov, Komissarov, Latishev, Alekseeva etc.), but is also visible in the terminological differences existing among the works of authors seemingly belonging to the same school or tradition.
In light of this multitude of theoretical framework and apparatus options and the existing limitations in terms of time and volume, the present paper offers an observation and analysis based on the propositions of Albir and Molina who distinguish clearly between translation strategies and translation techniques. According to this framework, translation strategies are employed in the translation process and are therefore not directly observable in research based on corpus data, whereas translation techniques are the visible result of the translation process and can be identified in the product of translation, i.e., in the titles comprising the corpus.
The study itself is based on a specially-created corpus encompassing the 45 titles (original and translated) of all 15 full-length animated feature films produced by the Walt Disney Animation Studios which have been presented in cinemas in Bulgaria and Russia since 2008.