Translation in the Era of Digitalization: Slang Rendering in TV Series

Abstract

This article covers issues of Spanish slang units being rendered in Russian in translating and dubbing TV series. The authors of the article believe that modern approach to audiovisual translation involves translators’ language proficiency and highlights the importance of the links between verbal and nonverbal communication. Slang units rendering fully reveals professionals’ skills of a translator implementing audiovisual translation. The article describes slang linguistic features and provides definitions of slang. The study results prove co-existence of various methods for translating slang. A translator applies different transformations depending on many factors: context; type, mood and features of a character uttering a remark; stylistic coloring and semantic load of a slang expression, etc. Thus, the authors of this article come to the conclusion that training for slang units’ translation in an audiovisual text should follow an interdisciplinary approach that contributes for linguistic, cultural, communication components of the original units to be kept and rendered correctly.