al soundtrack may be rather limited. Very few Scandinavian viewers benefit much from dialogue in Russian or Greek being retained in order to further understanding of lexical meaning. They may benefit greatly, however, if the dialogue is in a language similar to their own, and therefore, comprehension is markedly facilitated for Norwegian television audiences when Swedish interviewees appear in, for instance, news bulletins as, in addition to being subtitled into Norwegian , they continue to speak in Swedish.my research indicates that it is possible to reduce exposure time by a second, it is difficult to generalise in terms of reading speed and rates of presentation of information. As mentioned, the complexity of the linguistic and factual information has to be taken into account., A distinction has been made between television and video on the one hand and cinema on the other. It has been assumed that identical subtitles are easier to read on the cinema than on the television screen. The reason for this has never been satisfactorily investigated, but it is assumed to be related to the size of the screen, the font used for the letters, and the better image resolution of the cinema.versus written languageconstraining factor of subtitling results from the spoken word containing dialectal and sociolectal features which are extremely difficult to account for in writing. Whereas spoken language tends to contain unfinished sentences along with redundant speech and interruptions, writing has a higher lexical density and a greater economy of expression. In addition, written translations of spoken language often display a tendency toward nominalisation, whereby verbal elements are turned into nouns. Hence it is difficult to retain the flavour of the spoken mode in subtitles. When it comes to keeping the register and appropriateness of the SL-version dubbing can undoubtedly be at an advantage.it was rather common for informal stylistic features of speech to be replaced by more formal and inappropriate language in subtitles, but in this respect a marked improvement can be observed in recent years. It could well be that the orientation away from a traditional bookish approach is related to the increasing number of American productions that are shown on television in Norway. This reflects a trend away from a formal register of language in American culture. Sitcoms like Friends, Frasier, Seinfeld and Ally McBeal are far from easy to handle for screen translators and seem to have contributed to making subtitlers more aware of the need to handle register at both the lexical and syntactic level. The translation of such programmes into other languages ??requires a high degree of communicative competence., Norwegian television has handled four-letter words with conspicuous caution. Since the advent of television, taboo words have been used increasingly in foreign language programmes that the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation has bought from abroad, but they have not always been translated into equally strong language. This has to do with the assumption that the effect of swear words is reinforced when they are printed. Not uniformly accepted in a country like Norway with its deep-rooted puritan traditions, it now seems strange that it took such a long time for Norwegian translators to challenge the assumption that the printed swear word is stronger than the spoken one. If anything, it ought to be the other way around; a printed representation is probably only a weaker version of a word pronounced with stress and intensity. Literature is full of four-letter words and it seems hardly likely that their force or effect would be reduced in films based on the books.for the handling of four-letter words in translation, the most difficult task I have encountered was the translation of a Channel Four production portraying Graham Taylor who had been sacked as England manager following the failure to qualify for the тисячу дев'ятсот дев'яносто чотири World Cup in soccer. The programme provided me with a number of challenges, not least because of its continuous context-dependent changes of style and register. It ranged from the elevated and analytical language of Channel Four reporters to Graham Taylor giving his players a dressing down for being unable to produce their best results. The most difficult part to transfer to Norwegian was Taylor s verbal behaviour during matches. As the ball did not roll England s way that season, four-letter words were fired in rapid succession. Pretty much in line with Norwegian subtitling tradition and what I had been trained to do, I tried my best to tone down the expressive force of the four-letter words, in addition to leaving many of them out. But on the day that the programme was to be broadcast, Norwegian morning newspapers focused on the reception the programme had got in the UK, where Graham Taylor s strong language had created a stir. As a result, I felt I had to ch...
