The Translation of Suspense in Subtitling : A Case Study of the Horror Franchise "Scream"

Auteur(s)

Chammard Robin

Année de soutenance

2024

Directeur(s)

Lefebvre-Scodeller Cindy

Diplôme

Master - 1ère année

Mention

Langues et Sociétés

Parcours-type

Identité et Transferts culturels – Anglais

Composante

Université de Limoges. Faculté des lettres et sciences humaines

Thème(s)

Histoire et critique littéraires, rhétorique

Mots-clés

Films d'horreur -- États-Unis -- Sous-titrage,

Médias audiovisuels -- Traduction,

Sous-titrage -- Traduction

What is a great horror movie without the watchers biting their nails or covering their eyes? Horror movies have always been overlooked for their explicit representations of primal emotions whereas they often hide much more complex meanings. All these vividly portrayed emotions, conveyed through the speech, the sounds or even the body reactions, must be considered by the watchers in order to feel the intended suspense. However, a broader audience located overseas also relies on the translations of such movies to feel the excitement originally planned. This thesis delves into the analysis of the conservation of suspense through the French subtitles of horror movies, taking as its case study the emblematic horrific Scream movies that span over more than 25 years, exploring the depths of the slasher subgenre. This work gathers various pieces of research that discuss the effect of audiovisual translation and of the different translating methods on maintaining given emotions to their original degrees. This corpus-based study comes as one of the few works that were published on the topic of horror translation, exploring the diverse emotions experienced when reading translated subtitles and the challenges it brings for the translators hopelessly in search for the most faithful translation possible. In all, techniques such as compensation, non-subtitling or adaptation try to replicate the original suspense, whether it be successfully or not.