Translation of general extenders in Persian dubbing and non-professional subtitling

1. Introduction

An essential element of any language is vagueness, which has a significant role in facilitating effective communications (Raffman, 2013). Vague language is characterized by ‘context-dependability’ and ‘unresolvability’, meaning that the meaning of vague expressions is determined by the interactants but their vague status is preserved (Parvaresh, 2018, p. 169). In fact, vague language comprises suffixes, words and phrases that have little semantic content and rely heavily on the context for their interpretation and meaning (Cutting, 2019). It is more commonly used and found in spoken language than written because the former is accompanied with more clues, including facial expressions or intonation (Sabet & Zhang, 2015). It has been argued that vagueness is inherent in natural language, which contributes to a better understanding of the language itself (Jucker et al., 2003, p. 1739).

Zhang (2011, p. 574) recognizes six major categories of vague language among which she mentions general extenders that is the focus of this study. Linguistic vagueness and elusiveness are crucial aspects of interpersonal communication, as they reflect the speaker’s level of uncertainty. These characteristics can be effectively conveyed through pragmatic devices, such as the use of general extenders (Terraschke, 2010). It is known that general extenders are “vague category markers” (Cutting, 2019) and “a set of clause-final expressions of the form conjunction + noun phrase that extend otherwise grammatically complete utterances (hence, extenders) and that are nonspecific in their reference (hence, general)”, for instance, and stuff and and everything (Overstreet & Yule, 1997, p. 87). They can be divided into “adjunctive general extenders” like and stuff and and everything, and “disjunctive general extenders” such as or something and or anything (Overstreet, 1999). They enhance language efficiency by circumventing the need for long and often unnecessary lists (Zhang & Tseng, 2022) as individuals can fill in the gaps and comprehend the message based on their underlying understanding of the context or subject matter (Overstreet, 1999).

Although general extenders are commonly found in spontaneous language, their presence in films and TV series also makes sense because telecinematic dialogue strives to appear natural and authentic, reflecting how speakers employ language, communicate and establish meaning interpersonally (Ghia, 2019). The challenges involved in the translation of pragmatic markers are mainly and likely resulted by “different socio-pragmatic norms and conventions” across the languages (Terraschke & Holmes, 2007, p. 198) which could be a reason for their removal in translations. Guillot (2020) maintains that while pragmatic markers (e.g., general extenders) create a sense of naturalness or orality in dialogues, loss is a recurring strategy when adapting them to a different language and cultural context. A few studies have so far examined the translation of general extenders in telecinematic dialogue (Chiaro, 2000; Zanotti, 2014a, 2014b); however, little is known about their translation into non-European languages.

The purpose of this study is to examine and analyze the translation strategies used for general extenders in Persian dubbing and non-professional subtitling. This research holds relevance and significance for both translation trainers and trainees, as well as researchers interested in the field of pragmatics in dubbing and fansubbing. It also addresses the growing need for more studies on fictional language and pragmatics in audiovisual translation (AVT), as highlighted by Guillot (2016) and Pavesi et al. (2014). Therefore, this paper aims to investigate the specific strategies adopted by the dubbing team (i.e., translator and dubbing director) and non-professional translators when translating English general extenders into Persian.

2. Theoretical framework

2.1 General extenders

Translation studies primarily focuses on comparing different languages and typically adopts a cross-linguistic paradigm (Dayter et al., 2023, p. 23). Cross-cultural pragmatics, as a branch of pragmatics, “considers language use across languages and cultures from a comparative or contrastive point of view” (Guillot, 2016, p. 288), which has not received adequate attention in AVT. Texts for translation must be re-contextualized because “texts travel across time, space and different orders of indexicality” (House, 2021, p. 552). An important issue of cross-cultural pragmatics is vague language, which is a linguistic phenomenon where uncertainty is conveyed by using multiple expressions to express the same proposition (Zhang & Tseng, 2022). Cutting (2019, p. 129) claims that the English language commonly employs vague lexical items and vague modifiers as key features of imprecise language. Specifically, general extenders fall under the category of vague lexical items. General extenders are linguistic elements that lack specificity and have limited variability in their distribution within a sentence but hold significant importance in effective communication (Parvaresh, 2018; Zhang & Tseng, 2022). Indeed, they are “a set of clause-final expressions of the form conjunction + noun phrase” (Overstreet & Yule, 1997, p. 87), where  “a connector is required, a quantifier and/or a generic is necessary, and the comparative is optional” (Tagliamonte & Denis, 2010, p. 336). A general extender construction starts with a conjunction, like and or or, and then has a quantifier after it, such as some, every, and/or all, followed by a generic noun like thing or stuff (Tagliamonte & Denis, 2010). They can be divided into “adjunctive general extenders” like and stuff and and everything, and “disjunctive general extenders” such as or something and or anything (Overstreet, 1999).

Research and studies on general extenders in English are numerous. To give an example, Overstreet (1999, p. 4) offers an exhaustive list of general extenders which can be seen in Table 1.

Table 1. General extenders in English from Overstreet (1999, p. 4)

Note: The asterisk above phrases indicates that they are disjunctive general extenders.

The existing literature on Persian general extenders is very limited and the only study that could be mentioned here is Parvaresh et al. (2012) who explored the frequency and grammatical distribution of Persian general extenders. The authors found that adjunctive extenders are used more frequently than disjunctive ones. And the most important of such pragmatic devices are “و اینا” [and stuff], “و از این حرفا” [and of such talks] and “و این چیزا” [and such things], “یا چیزی” [or something]. They empirically proposed a list of Persian general extenders, shown in Table 2.

Table 2. General extenders in Persian from Parvaresh et al. (2012)

2.2 General extenders in audiovisual translation

General extenders are assumed to be found in fictional content, including films and TV series since they can add a sense of naturalness and spontaneity to the dialogue (Quaglio, 2008, 2009). Film dialogues, however, undergo a rigorous process of scripting, rewriting, censoring, polishing, etc. (Gregory, 1967; Kozloff, 2000) because film discourse is “speaking non-spontaneously”, meaning that it is “written to be spoken as if not written” (Gregory, 1967, p. 191). As a result, translators frequently grapple with a special type of oral discourse which sounds and looks spontaneous and natural but is actually scripted (Baños & Chaume, 2009). This requires them to train themselves in emulating the nuances of “spontaneous-sounding conversation” (Chaume, 2012, p. 82). Vague markers and general extenders, for example, are employed strategically in order to mimic the semblance of spontaneous speech (Pavesi et al., 2014; Sidiropoulou, 2021).

According to Ruzaitė (2010), the main reason for omitting vague language items, including general extenders in translations, is not the linguistic variation between languages, but the translator’s assumption that they are redundant and dispensable elements that can be removed from a statement without much consequence. Thus said, the translation of general extenders is challenging because the meaning of these devices is highly reliant on linguistic and situational contexts and their functions vary in languages, thus, finding an appropriate equivalent seems to be a hurdle (Zanotti, 2014a).

The translator’s “cross-cultural pragmatic competence” can play a pivotal role in yielding a high-quality translation (Zanotti, 2014a, p. 118). In addition to the aforementioned challenges, the other constraint is contrived by AVT constraints (Zanotti, 2014a, b). In fact, AVT is a distinct type of translation because audiovisual materials combine visual and auditory elements to create meaning in screen products. Therefore, multimedia programs use two codes: image and sound, and maintaining synchrony between these two codes makes AVT modalities such as dubbing and subtitling constrained forms of translation (Pérez-González, 2009, p. 13). Dubbing is a process of translating, adapting and lip-syncing an audiovisual text with a new soundtrack, involving a team of professionals and technical tools (Chaume, 2012). Synchronization is an essential element of dubbing which is the alignment of the translation with the original actors’ movements and speech, which affects the translation (Chaume, 2004). For Chaume (2012), there are three forms of synchronization: 

• Lip-synchrony: The translation should be adapted to the actor’s lip movements in close-up shots;
• Kinetic synchrony: The translation should follow the body movements of the actor on screen;
• Isochrony: The translation should respect the timing or length of the actor’s utterances.

The translator’s solutions, as Chaume (2004) puts it, can be directly restricted by synchronization; therefore, omission may be taken as a viable strategy in certain cases. In this article, the translation strategies dealing with general extenders in dubbing are also discussed with respect to synchronization.

Amateur subtitling is executed by enthusiasts and individuals lacking professional training in translation, offering their services on a voluntary basis (Dwyer, 2017). Non-professional subtitling has a tendency to overlook target norms while preserving the original idiosyncrasy (Pedersen, 2019). The literature provides substantial evidence of the lack of adherence by amateur subtitling to professional norms, leading to a high frequency of mistranslations and technical deficiencies (Ameri & Khoshsaligheh, 2019; Díaz-Cintas & Muñoz Sánchez, 2006). Fansubbers’ inclination for a source-oriented approach is related to the expectations of the audience who want more genuine products and call for “a revolution in the niche area of the subtitling of TV shows” (Massidda, 2015, p. 62).

The AVT literature has paid little attention to the study of vague language and general extenders. Past research indicates that a frequent translation strategy for these items in dubbing is to reduce or omit them, which leads to translations that are less vague and more assertive than the source texts (Chiaro, 2000; Zanotti, 2014a, 2014b). It should be noted that dubbing translators face many challenges, such as synchronization, influencing their translation choices and decisions (Chaume, 2012). In general, a similar result has been observed regarding orality markers in dubbing that dubbing translation yields “a more refined and less spontaneous rendition of dialogues” (Baños, 2016, p. 137). Notwithstanding this, viewers tend to tacitly judge fictional telecinematic products based on the credibility and verisimilitude of dialogues (Baños, 2021).

As far as non-professional subtitling is concerned, no study, to the best of our knowledge, has been conducted on general extenders. However, for most researchers (Dwyer, 2012; Jiménez-Crespo, 2017; Massidda, 2015; Nornes, 1999), translations produced by fansubbers or non-professional subtitlers tend to be foreignized, and the otherness of the original remains untouched in the translations. Bruti and Zanotti (2015), for instance, reported that interjections and discourse markers tend to be literally translated in Italian fansubbing, and fansubbers opted for less reductive translation strategies. When it comes to the translation of forms and vocatives, Bruti and Zanotti (2012) showed that the fansubbed versions were more literal and source-oriented and there was a tendency to avoid omission strategies. This survey of the past research indicates that the translation of general extenders has not been sufficiently examined in AVT. To fill this knowledge gap, this paper addresses this question:

• How are English general extenders rendered in Persian dubbing and non-professional subtitling?

3. Methodology

3.1. Research hypotheses and design

The goal of this paper is to analyze the translation of general extenders in English-speaking feature films that have been dubbed and fansubtitled into Persian. Based on the existing literature (e.g., Chiaro, 2000; Zanotti, 2014a, 2014b), our initial hypothesis is that general extenders tend to be omitted in professional dubbing. This hypothesis applies well to professional AVT, which is dubbing in this case, but our hypothesis for fansubbing is that fansubbers tend to highlight the foreignness of the original text by adopting a more source-oriented approach (e.g., Dwyer, 2012; Jiménez-Crespo, 2017; Massidda, 2015; Nornes, 1999). In addressing these, the article adopted a descriptive approach to investigate the translation strategies employed by the translators through a contrastive analysis of the original text and its translations. The study has a primary qualitative focus, but also has quantitative analysis. It first presents the qualitative findings, where corpus examples are used to clearly demonstrate the translation strategies. It then reports the quantitative findings, which reveal the strategies’ frequency and distribution across dubbing and non-professional subtitling.

3.2. Corpus data collection

The corpus of this study consists of original films, along with their dubbing and fansubbing into Persian. To build the corpus, 12 English films were selected. As Table 3 presents, the films were chosen from a wide range of genres and different years. The reason for this was to extend the generalizability of the findings and avoid any selection biases, which may lead to inaccurate findings. It should be noted that the use of various genres is common in AVT studies (e.g., Pavesi, 2014; Ranzato, 2015), even though focusing on a specific genre can offer detailed insights. All the films were American with the exception of Four Weddings and a Funeral, which is a British romantic comedy film. Although it would have been preferable to maintain the same source culture for all the films, this British film only had two general extenders (and everything and or anything), which were already listed by Overstreet (1999, p. 4). Therefore, the film did not offer any distinctive general extenders that are specific to the British culture.

The films were available in both dubbing and fansubbing versions in Persian. The dubbing versions were produced by IRIB dubbing studios and broadcast on national TV channels in Iran. The IRIB dubbing process involves the expertise of professional translators, dubbing directors, and voice actors. However, the final product for this study did not credit the individual agents involved. The dubbing versions were downloaded from https://Telewebion.com, an Iranian website that archives programs aired on Iranian TV channels. The fansubbing versions were taken from https://subscene.com, a popular platform for Iranian fansubbers to share their subtitles in srt format. Since fansubbing is an underground and unauthorized activity in Iran, the information about the fansubbers is usually not available and only some pseudonyms, if any, can be found in the srt files. Overall, the corpus under investigation included 12 English films and it contained 118739 words, indicating the small size of the corpus (see Table 3).

Table 3. The corpus of the study

3.3. Data analysis

To spot general extenders in the English films, Overstreet’s (1999) category was regarded as the touchstone and their Persian translations were analyzed in the light of the list of Persian general extenders proposed by Parvaresh et al. (2012). Drawing on a corpus of American TV series and their professional Italian dubbing, Zanotti (2014a, pp. 121-122) proposed the following strategies for translation of general extenders—which lay the foundation for our study:

• direct translation: the source general extender is replaced by a target equivalent;
• omission: the general extender is simply deleted and no attempt is made to compensate it;
• substitution: the general extender is replaced by unrelated equivalents;
• explicitation: the implicit meaning of the original is clarified and this includes specification and addition strategies;
• generalization: both exemplar and the general extender are substituted by a target equivalent that denotes a more general meaning;
• total replacement: the original is fully rewritten to the extent that no parallel comparison between the original and translation can be made and the general extender is always removed.

The reason for choosing this framework is that it is the only model that specifically addresses the translation of general extenders and helps us identify and analyze the translators’ strategies more accurately. All the instances of the corpus were analyzed in light of these translation strategies.

4. Findings

In this section, we elaborate on the findings of the analysis to address the research question. The first primary finding clearly shows that the corpus does not span a wide spectrum of general extenders; a sharp difference between naturally-occurring utterances and film scripts in terms of the number and variety of general extenders is noticeable. To have an overall perspective of how general extenders have been tackled by the translators, the solutions or translation equivalents for each general extender are presented in Table 4.

Table 4. General extenders in the corpus

Table 4 shows that 58 adjunctive and disjunctive general extenders were found in the corpus. The dubbing translators have suggested some Persian equivalents which mainly contain the Persian word “چیز” [thing]. Nevertheless, these are not very creative suggestions, as other forms are more commonly used in Persian spontaneous speech (see Table 2). Put it differently, the dubbing translators have chosen the Persian equivalent “چیزی” [something] for several different original extenders such as “anything like that”, “or something”, “or some shit”, “or anything” which is a reflection of the same situation in Italian dubbing where one target equivalent was used for several different original general extenders (Zanotti, 2014a). This issue underlines the presence of translational routines or stock translations, defined as “recurrent solutions to translation problems which tend to become overextended” (Pavesi, 2008, p. 93). In return, viewers’ cognitive effort for understanding is reduced because this strategy presents “highly repetitive and predictable language” (Pavesi, 2008, p. 93). On the contrary, the fansubbers have proposed equivalents for almost all general extenders excepting three cases which were left untranslated. To exemplify the points further, seven films from the corpus were randomly chosen to present their general extenders. In the following tables, the back translation of the Persian dubbing and fansubbing translations are immediately offered in English in the brackets and the general extenders in both original and translated versions are bolded for clarity.

Table 5. Four Weddings and a Funeral (Newell, 1994)

In Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), we found three general extenders. In the first instance, Carrie is talking to Charles about their engagement yet the whole sentence has been omitted in the dubbing translation due to ideological considerations and the taboo expression sleeping together in the sentence. As to the second example, there is a disjunctive extender which is translated as “چیزی” [something] in Persian which is one of the most frequent Persian disjunctive extenders. However, the conjunction “or” has been omitted in Persian dubbing probably due to isochrony to retain the dialogue duration. What can be seen in the third example is a disjunctive extender which has been translated into a non-extender expression. That is to say, the strategy adopted here is a generalization in which the vague part is omitted, and the exemplar, which is killing yourself, is translated as doing something bad to yourself in the dubbed version which carries a more general meaning. The fansubbed version directly rendered the second extender, while the general extender was deleted in the first example and the third example used a specification strategy, where the meaning of the extender was specified in the translation, and exemplar was retained (Table 5).

Table 6. We Bought a Zoo (Crowe, 2011)

Five instances were found in the film We Bought a Zoo (2011). The first one shows an adjunctive extender and its translation failed to have the same effect and the vague tag was dropped in the dubbing. Importantly, the omission of the vague tag was not due to synchronization since there was not any close-up shot in the scene and this may question the translator’s competence in conveying the effect. In the fifth example, there is an instance of a disjunctive extender and its dubbing translation is very interesting as it does not correspond to its original counterpart. Put simply, this is a case of total replacement; as no parallel comparison can be made between the two. Example 8 and Example 6 were fully omitted in the dubbed version. It is only the seventh example which preserved the original effect and offered a Persian general extender for an all. As far as the non-professional subtitling is concerned, only the general extender in the sixth instance was kept and the others were not translated (Table 6).

Table 7. Out of Sight (Soderbergh, 1998)

We came across some general extenders in Out of Sight (1998) in which the dubbing translation favored the tendency to find equivalents for the original extenders as shown in Examples 9, 10, 11 and 13. This indicates that the dubbing team was careful not to delete such items. We argue that, in addition to synchronization, which can affect some examples, the dubbing team’s competence and familiarity with such items in both languages is another reason for translating or omitting them. An interesting finding in the translations of general extenders is that some dubbing translators eliminated conjunctions (and & or): sometimes due to isochrony, with the aim of reaching the same number of syllables; and on other occasions with no apparent reason. Nevertheless, in the examples provided by Parvaresh et al. (2012), conjunctions were part of the general extenders, though with only a few exceptions. Nevertheless, as native speakers of Persian, we at times use general extenders with no conjunctions. As to the fansubbed version, some general extenders disappeared in the translation (Examples 12 & 13), and one case (Example 11) was directly translated. The other general extenders in the ninth and tenth examples were transferred using explicitation with addition (adding “very” to “cool”) and generalization, respectively (Table 7).

Table 8. Gun (Terrero, 2010)

Several general extenders were found in the film Gun (2010). A careful analysis of the examples shows that using the strategy of direct transfer is not the main norm in translating them. While the general extender in Example 14 was substituted with a Persian equivalent, the extender in Example 15 was rendered using the addition strategy. In fact, the general extender was removed and other words “هرچی” were added to convey part of its meaning—by adding uncertainty to the sentence. General extenders can be replaced with a tag question as seen here in Examples 16 and 17. The translator opted for a tag question which can be taken as an addition strategy since the tag questions convey some of its meaning, by adding uncertainty to the sentence. Although the use of a tag question is due to the language differences between English and Persian, a good equivalent for the English extender of or what can be ‘یا چیزی’ [or something] in Persian, as exemplified in Parvaresh et al. (2012). Explicitation by addition creates “semantic and pragmatic equivalence to be achieved between source and target text” (Zanotti, 2014a, pp. 121-122). Concerning fansubbing, the general extenders were directly translated in Examples 14 and 17, but the extenders were simply omitted in Examples 15 and 16 (Table 8).

Table 9. The Grapes of Wrath (Ford, 1940)

A set of general extenders can be seen in the next film The Grapes of Wrath (1940). What is the main translation strategy in the dubbing is omission which can be seen in Examples 18 and 19. Concerning Example 20, a proper equivalent was proposed for the disjunctive general extender. Regarding the omitted general extenders, this could be said that synchronization does not seem to be a good reason as Example 18 has been placed in a long shot. Although the lips of the actor can be seen in a close-up shot in Example 19, an extra phrase “I think” was added, while the general extender was dropped. With regard to the fansubbed translation, the analysis suggests that two general extenders have been directly translated into Persian in Examples 18 and 20, except Example 19, which appears to be translated by a specification strategy (Table 9).

Table 10. About Schmidt (Payne, 2002)

Whereas two general extenders in About Schimdt (2002) were directly transferred into Persian (Examples 22 & 23), the other examples (21 & 24) were left untranslated in the dubbing. In the examples in which the general extenders were deleted, synchronization does not play a role as the actor is off-screen and his mouth and lips are not noticeable. All these can signal the dubbing team’s lack of attention to these vague structures during the translation process. When it comes to the fansubbed version of the same film, two translation strategies were utilized by the fansubbers. The extenders in Example 21 and Example 22 were simply omitted from the translation, and the extenders in Example 23 and Example 24 were directly translated (Table 10). 

Table 11. Forrest Gump (Zemeckis, 1994)

The film Forrest Gump (1994) contained more general extenders than other films discussed previously. Or something was the most commonly used extender in the film. Direct translation is the strategy used in translating the extenders in Examples 25 and 26 in the dubbing translation. The omission of general extenders can be observed in Examples 27, 29, 31, 32, and 33. The specification strategy was employed to render the general extenders in Example 30 as the general extender was translated by a co-hyponym (or stupid). It should be mentioned that several instances of extender in Example 29 were deleted because the whole scene was removed in the dubbing due to ideological censorship. Other omissions may be attributed to the synchronization constraint. However, in several instances, the actor is off-screen and their face is not visible. Nevertheless, the general extender in Example 33 took place in a close-up shot and keeping isochrony in the dubbed version might have resulted in removing it. Example 34 was translated using a substitution strategy probably because of synchronization. In non-professional subtitling, direct translation was more frequent, with only two cases (Examples 33 and 34) and one general extender in Example 29 not being translated.

Suffice it to say that, as can be seen in Figure 1 and Figure 2, a large number of general extenders were omitted in the dubbed versions, while a large proportion of them were directly translated in the fansubbed versions. This is partly because the fansubbers mainly followed a literal approach and were source-oriented in their translations, which resulted in keeping more general extenders. Moreover, other strategies were infrequently employed in the corpus by both groups.

Figure 1. Strategies for translating general extenders in the dubbing

A: direct translation; B: omission; C: substitution; D: explicitation; E: generalization; F: total replacement

The other difference between the two version lies in the use of the strategy of substitution, which was not employed in the fansubbed version.

Figure 2. Strategies for translating general extenders in the non-professional subtitling

A: direct translation; B: omission; C: substitution; D: explicitation; E: generalization; F: total replacement

5. Discussion and conclusion

This paper examined the translation of general extenders in English films that have been dubbed and fansubbed into Persian. The results of this research indicate that or something was the most common general extender in the films, while some other general extenders were missing (e.g. or somewhere & and that), which is consistent with Zanotti (2014a), who also reported or something as the most frequent general extender in her corpus. Moreover, general extenders were occasionally used in the films, which could explain why they are often overlooked in translations (Zanotti, 2014a). Previous studies also showed that vague language was less frequent in film and TV series dialogues in comparison with spontaneous dialogues (e.g. Bednarek, 2011; Quaglio, 2008, 2009).

One of the important findings of this research is that general extenders were often deleted in the dubbing translation due to various factors, such as synchronization, censorship, language differences and translator’s attitude. Although there is not much research on the translation of general extenders in dubbing, the available literature reports a significant reduction of this kind of vague language in translation into Italian (Chiaro, 2000; Zanotti, 2014a, 2014b). The main reasons for using reduction strategies in translating these lexical elements is that translators often perceive vague language as having low informative value. As a result, these elements are frequently omitted or ignored in the target text (Ruzaitė, 2010; Tagliamonte & Denis, 2010). This should be noted that dubbing is a complex process with numerous agents who contribute to the final output; thus, each agent, especially the dubbing director and dialogue writer, can modify or even rewrite the translation done by the translator (Miggiani, 2019). Therefore, the translator may not have the final say on the translation.

The general pattern for the fansubbing translation was that fansubbers tended to adopt a literal approach to the translation of the general extenders, which means that they were faithful to the original text, and therefore, more general extenders were preserved in their translations. This is not surprising, as fansubbers are known to adopt a foreignizing approach to translation, which maintains the foreignness and difference of the source text (Dwyer, 2012; Jiménez-Crespo, 2017; Nornes, 2007). This observation is also compatible with the findings of earlier studies on the translation of pragmatic issues in fansubbing (Bruti, 2015; Bruti & Zanotti, 2012, 2015). Based on the above, it should be evident that the dubbing translators and fansubbers have approached the issue differently and their treatment of the original general extenders has gone in opposite directions.

This study has shed some light on the translation of general extender in dubbing and non-professional subtitling into Persian which should be taken as preliminary with no generalization. Future studies could help extend the findings by incorporating larger samples into the analysis. Translation of general extenders could be also explored in other language corpora as well as other forms of AVT. Another valuable area for further research includes interviewing the translators, dubbing directors and fansubbers for further understanding of their translation strategies.