This contribution aims to explore the occurrences of compliments and their translations
in professional subtitles and fansubs, i.e. subtitles produced by non-professional
translators. As an amateur phenomenon, fansubbing does not have to
comply with the norms that govern professional subtitling and generally exhibits
greater accuracy in rendering idiolectal traits, character identity and intertexual
references. For this reason, a comparison between the translation of compliments
in professional and non-professional subtitles seemed quite promising, as evidence
from previous studies suggests that socio-pragmatic meaning often tends
to be jeopardized in interlinguistic subtitles. Their different aims and requisites
make it possible for fansubs to grant much more attention to these aspects of language,
compliments included, as useful indicators of the social forces at play.
This paper offers the results of a linguistic comparison between these two types
of subtitles for the American TV series Lost (2004-2010), a popular TV series around
the world. The subject matter and the rapid rhythm of the series make the presence
of ritual talk quite reduced and abrupt, but the analysis of the rendering of compliments
in the DVD subtitles and in the fansubs produced by the two largest Italian
fansubber communities, i.e. Itasa (http://www.italiansubs.net) and Subsfactory
(http://www.subsfactory.it/) surprisingly shows no major discrepancies.
