Portraying Singapore's sociolinguistic complexities through subtitling translation: a case study of Singapore Chinese-language film Long Long Time Ago 3: The Diam Diam Era

Abstract

Singapore is a multilingual and multicultural society, often reflecting its rich linguistic ecosystem. Under this backdrop, Singapore cinema presents a unique setting to explore the representation of its culture, language and identity. While local films strive to illustrate the environment to a wider audience especially on the global scene, the portrayal of Singapore’s sociolinguistic complexities is often lost in the subtitling translation. This paper aims to examine the portrayal of Singapore’s sociolinguistic dynamics and its complexities in 1980s through close analysis of local film Long Long Time Ago 3: The Diam Diam Era and the effectiveness of the subtitling translation in presenting the nuances. Through extensive and detailed study of the film, this research has found various portrayals of the sociolinguistic situation in 1980s Singapore which the complexities represented are not brought across to viewers unfamiliar with the landscape due to ineffective subtitling strategies. This study has found that portrayals of complexities such as hierarchical spoken English, characterisation of dialects including Hokkien as an “uncultured” dialect and Cantonese influenced by Hong Kong Popular Culture, and the significance of Mandarin in Xinyao are lost with the current use of direct translation and omission as its subtitling translation strategies. To better represent Singapore’s sociolinguistic environment in the 1980s to global viewers, recommendations to improve on the subtitling translation are provided, whereby the use of translation strategies transfer or loan and explicitation in addition to the current strategies will enhance the effectiveness in bringing across nuances presented within the film with consideration on viewers’ receptiveness and understanding.