GRAMMATICAL COMPRESSION IN FILM TRANSLATION

Nowadays translators employ various translation strategies in order to produce an adequate translation and further establish international communication. This paper deals with one translation strategy called compression which involves leaving out the target text elements present in the source text to retain the content of the words rather than preserve the structural adequacy of the text format. The degree of compression is constantly increasing in contemporary translations, due to an intensive lifestyle, the necessity to convey informational content as quickly as possible arises. Compression is widely employed in subtitling because of both the requirement to provide a very short target text by employing a restricted number of symbols allowed per one subtitle, and the necessity to express only the main idea of the utterances. Taking linguistic aspects into account, the translation strategy comprises of either grammatical or lexical ways to shorten the text without destroying its meaning. This paper presents the grammatical means of compression observed in film subtitling by shifting the primary focus on grammatical alternations found in different film genres.

from two films of different genres; namely from the documentary film Zeitgeist and the science fiction film Avatar.This film genre disparity puts forward the idea that the science fiction film ought to contain more cases of compression because the language style is informal and, therefore, it should include more irrelevant linguistic elements such as interjections, cases of reduplication, derivational affixes of word classes, and so on, than the documentary genre.In the first part of the article the main theoretical assumptions concerning the notion of compression, subtitling, key aspects and their contribution to the sufficient translation of the subtitles are presented.The second part of the paper deals with the practical findings of the case study of compression in film subtitles by presenting the methodological issues of the case study, as well as introducing the linguistic insights of the practical study and illustrating them by means of characteristic examples taken from the analysed films.

THe NoTIoN oF CoMPreSSIoN
According to Nigel Armstrong, compression involves leaving out the target text (TT) elements present in the source text (ST).It generally occurs when the segment contains an unnecessary detail that might weary the reader, or information that is difficult to translate concisely because of culture-specific obstacles, or both (Armstrong 2005, 159).Compression is also common in subtitle translation 1 , because of the strict requirements of using a limited amount of symbols in one subtitle position (including the gaps).The following specification is employed since the main quality of subtitles to strive for is considered to be briefness in order for the viewer of the film (or a programme) to be able to read the text in the subtitles quickly and naturally.As Paul Cogen, a professional subtitler, remarks, it is essential that the subtitles respect a number of parameters, the key ones being time and space, since 'it takes the eye a certain amount of time for a viewer to realise that a new text has appeared on the screen and to start reading... Consequently, the viewer would not be distracted from watching the events on the screen' (Cogen 2009).In order to produce a sufficient translation then, a translator faces the necessity of making certain alternations to the text by means of various techniques: to condense the content into shorter phrases (almost re-translation) with as few words as possible; to convey the idea of what is being said while allowing the audience as much time as possible to watch the action onscreen; not to translate literally, capture the essence and filter out what is non-essential; to maintain the right register; to adapt, replace and recreate TT; to divide lines with speed of reading and comprehension in mind; to keep idea units and semantic units together, etc. (ibid.) 1 Fotios Karamitroglou states that subtitling requires the 'translation of the spoken (or written) ST of an audiovisual product into a written TT which is added onto the images of the original product, usually at the bottom of the screen' (Karamitroglou 2000, 5) to achieve a brief and accurate content of the ST.

GrAMMATICAL CASeS oF CoMPreSSIoN
The variety of techniques employed to create compression in subtitling comprises of both lexical and grammatical means.The paper examines practical cases of grammatical (both morphological and syntactical) means which were found in the subtitles of the selected films, namely, omission, substitution, syntactical transformation, reduction, etc.
In order to examine which genre contains a higher degree of grammatical compression, four pages of subtitles have been selected for the practical analysis.A total of 102 subtitles containing compression have been identified, 68 of them being from the science fiction film Avatar and 34 from the documentary film Zeitgeist.Instances of translation are considered to contain compression when the TT is shortened intentionally, even though a word-for-word or a very close-to-original translation is possible and no significant alternations are obligatory.
As some subtitles contained more than one case of compression, the numbers provided in the analysis reflect the amount of instances of compression, not the amount of subtitles.

GRAMMATICAL CASES OF COMPRESSION
The variety of techniques employed to create compression in subtitling comprises and grammatical means.The paper examines practical cases of grammatical (both mor syntactical) means which were found in the subtitles of the selected films, namely, omissio syntactical transformation, reduction, etc.
In order to examine which genre contains a higher degree of grammatical compress of subtitles have been selected for the practical analysis.A total of 102 subtitles containin have been identified, 68 of them being from the science fiction film Avatar and 34 from th film Zeitgeist.Instances of translation are considered to contain compression when the T intentionally, even though a word-for-word or a very close-to-original translation is p significant alternations are obligatory.
As some subtitles contained more than one case of compression, the numbers p analysis reflect the amount of instances of compression, not the amount of subtitles.Statistically, the science fiction film Avatar appeared to contain a considerably larger number of compression on grammatical levels comparing with the documentary film Zeitgeist: 78 cases appeared in Avatar and only 38 syntactical cases were detected in Zeitgeist.

Amount of Compression in Films
The most frequent grammatical means of compression employed in subtitling was the omission of one or more word classes in the sentence to achieve the effect of briefness 2 .The disparities of the film genres govern the different omitted segments, as well as other distinct syntactic means used in order to compress the target language.Typically, conjunctions, pronouns, adverbs, numerals, some prepositions and prepositional phrases and even particular nouns and noun phrases were omitted.
The most common occurrence of compression related to the omission of conjunctions (8 incidences in the documentary film Zeitgeist and 6 times in the science fiction film Avatar).In some cases, such as (2), the omitted conjunction comprises of more symbols in the Lithuanian language, and subsequently by following the quantitative requirements of subtitling, it has been eliminated.The examples below illustrate the fact: (1) (...) ...and unless and until you are prepared to look at the whole truth... (...) Ir kol nebūsite pasiruošę pažvelgti į visą tiesą, (...) (Zeitgeist) (2) There's no such thing as an ex-Marine.
Nėra tokios sąvokos -"buvęs" jūrų pėstininkas. (Avatar) Because of the different typological characteristics of the two languages, pronoun omission has also been rather frequent (11 times in Avatar and 5 in Zeitgeist).Prototypically, both lexical and grammatical elements that are used commonly tend to be reduced representing the so-called pro-drop phenomenon.In many languages that have grammatical agreement between the subject and the verb, a pronominal subject can be left unexpressed because the information about the subject may be found on the verb (Haiman, Munro 1983, whaley 1997).This universal tendency can be accounted for by appealing to language economy.Since in Lithuanian the inflection of the predicate indicates the marked person and number, and sentential word order allows the absence of subject without destroying the grammatical structure of the sentence, the omission of personal pronouns has been found to be common in the film subtitles.

Privalote laikytis taisyklių. (Avatar)
Similarly, the grammatical characteristics of the Lithuanian syntactical constructions 2 omission means the dropping of a word or words from the ST while translating.In subtitling translations the translator omits words that do not have equivalents in the TT, or those which may raise the hostility of the receptor (Zakhir 2008).
allows omitting the copular verb as a non-relevant link between the subject and predicative element, for instance: (5) This is the sun.Tai -saulė.
(Zeitgeist) (6) And the concept is that every driver is matched to his own avatar, (...) Idėja tokia: kiekvienas valdytojas turi būti panašus į savo avatarą, (...) (Avatar) A large part of omission is closely related with the grammatical modification.Accordingly, some types of syntactic constructions, in which the syntactic head of the construction is accompanied by an element not grammatically required by it, are compressed.Traditionally, modifiers of the syntactic constructions are demonstrative pronouns, attributive adjectives, nouns, numerals, etc. omission typically occurs with non-restrictive modifiers because they are not required for the notional identification.Among the words signifying additional properties of the nominal referent, and therefore being omitted from the film subtitles, demonstrative pronouns, numerals and attributive nominals have been identified.There demonstrative pronouns like that, these are eliminated since they have not made any meaningful changes in the target expressions: (7) remember, people, you lose that mask, (...) Atminkite, žmonės, pamesite kaukę, (...) (Avatar) other word classes functioning as modifiers have also been omitted.For instance, noun and noun phrase omission has been recognised 7 times in Avatar and 5 times in Zeitgeist; numerals have been omitted twice in Zeitgeist (as in (8) and (9)) and once in Avatar.In addition to omission, other syntactical means of compression such as grammatical categories, reduction of (truncated) sentences, as well as syntactical transf been recognised in the film subtitles.
Substitution may be regarded as a particular linguistic shift of one grammatical u of them by another unit within the same grammatical category.The undertaken analy compression in the film subtitles have often been associated with the substitution of th categories of voice and tense.Firstly, the syntactical constructions with the passive voice to be transformed into the corresponding construction with the active voice in Lithuanian This categorical shift is most probably determined by the limited number of used symbo the one hand.However, on the other hand, the situation described by the passive constru radically differ from the situation reflected by the active construction-the nature of preserved intact, the participants in the situation remain in their unchanged quality.As a with the transition from the active voice to the passive voice, the subjective appraisal of depicted by the speaker and the plane of his presentation of it.Consequently, co transformation of the voice constructions is rather noteworthy.Some examples below illu of substitution: (23) His birth was accompanied by a star in the east… (…).
Jo gimimą palydėjo rytinė žvaigždė, (...). (Zeitgeist) Figure 2. Amount of omitted segments in different film-genres In addition to omission, other syntactical means of compression such as substitution of grammatical categories, reduction of (truncated) sentences, as well as syntactical transformation have been recognised in the film subtitles.
Substitution may be regarded as a particular linguistic shift of one grammatical unit or sequence of them by another unit within the same grammatical category.The undertaken analysis shows that compression in the film subtitles have often been associated with the substitution of the grammatical categories of voice and tense.Firstly, the syntactical constructions with the passive voice in english tend to be transformed into the corresponding construction with the active voice in Lithuanian and vice versa.This categorical shift is most probably determined by the limited number of used symbols per slide, on the one hand.However, on the other hand, the situation described by the passive construction does not radically differ from the situation reflected by the active construction-the nature of the process is preserved intact, the participants in the situation remain in their unchanged quality.As a matter of fact, with the transition from the active voice to the passive voice, the subjective appraisal of the situation is depicted by the speaker and the plane of his presentation of it.Consequently, compression via transformation of the voice constructions is rather noteworthy.Some examples below illustrate the kind of substitution: (23) His birth was accompanied by a star in the east… (…).
Jo gimimą palydėjo rytinė žvaigždė, (...). (Zeitgeist) (24) (...) A guy with the knife took all Tommy would ever be.by the importance of every informational unit provided in the utterances of this film, thereby leading to the inapplicability of substitution or elimination.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Amount of compression in different film-genres Figure 1.Amount of compression in different film-genres