AN EVALUATION OF THE TRANSLATION OF THE FILM “RIO” BASED ON NEWMARK’S MODEL

Abstract

The study evaluated the translation quality of the Vietnamese version of the film “Rio”, which was translated and dubbed in the project of MegaStar Media Ltd. Company, Vietnam in April 2011. To reach its aim, the study used four methods including analysis and comparison, which were based on Newmark’s model. In addition, statistical and observational methods were also applied to examine the synchronisation of each utterance and its translated version. The research instrument was “Aegisub”, a free open-source cross-platform subtitle editing program designed for timing and styling of subtitles. The researcher’s purpose was to see how well utterances in both versions of the flm are synchronised with each other. The research findings showed that in general, the film was well-translated in terms of structures, proper nouns, hierarchical pronouns, borrowed words and puns. Weaknesses of the translation were found in the title and several mistranslations. The study also revealed that the translated utterances were synchronised with the original ones quite well, especially in terms of duration.