Subtitle Translation of Gender Queer in English Films

Gender identity and expressions have shifted from invariable to variable at birth. This means that it can shift and change at any given time. The concept of gender queer has been broadly accepted in many Western countries, such as the United States, but it has not been widely introduced in China. As the media is a means of exchanging cultures and knowledge, an English film about queer gender is a critical aspect for Chinese people who are only beginning to gain access to related knowledge. Linguistic techniques, cultural elements, and ideological differences determine subtitle translation. These cultural and ideological connotations often reflect assumptions that may vary from one culture to another, revealing different ways of understanding and expression. A small bilingual parallel corpus with subtitles of 10 queer films is investigated here, aiming to see the cultural difference and to analyse translation strategies for translating the culture-loaded words and expressions. Words and expressions related to gender queer are selected for analysis, including “lesbian”, “dyke”, “butch”, “gay”, “faggot”, “poofter”, “camp”, “bisexuality”, “transgender”, and “transvestite”. It is critical for subtitlers to translate gender queer films from a queer perspective, follow Vinay and Darblenet’s translation model and try to soften, desexualize, and sanitize the culture-loaded words and expressions, and make sure translators do not add extra negative attitudes and ideology into the translation. Only by maintaining a “neutral attitude” throughout the translation process can these subtitles positively enhance audiences' understanding and acceptance of gender queer people.

To cite this article: Su, T. T. & Moindjie, M. A. (2023).Subtitle Translation of Gender Queer in English Films.International Journal of Language,Literacy and Translation 6(2) Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Intersexual (LGBTI) people in 175 Countries and Locations" and discovered that 56 of 175 countries and locations experienced increases in acceptance since 1980, 57 countries and locations experienced a decline, and the range of levels of acceptance has increased in the last decade.The levels of acceptance have become less polarized (Flores, 2021).The 'Q' in the extended versions of the LGBT acronym, such as LGBTQIA+, is the short form of queer.Nowadays, the term "queer" is expanded to include any non-normative sexuality, including cisgender queer heterosexuality (Gabrielle, 2020).Social attitudes about queer people can heavily influence whether queer people are accepted or rejected by employers, family members, teachers, clergy, and society in general.
Films provide us with vital information and meaning about the lives of others.Queer films have disseminated queer concept knowledge globally with the contribution of subtitling.Queer culture is an imported concept for Chinese people, and many queer films cannot be publicly screened due to the strict review and verification mechanism.As the "main force", Fansub has contributed more than 90% of the subtitling of queer films.However, Fansub's subtitles are not rigorously reviewed, and many subtitlers are not professional translators, which does not always result in excellent quality.Besides, Fansub subtitlers have a more active way of thinking and always use updated expressions, which can also provide some reference for other translators.This research is product-oriented, which describes the characteristics of subtitling of queer gender in English films, using critical discourse analysis on the translation strategies.This research aims to reveal an authentic queer world via translation studies, raise the public's concern and awareness of minorities, and increase the understanding and acceptance of the "difference".

LITERATURE REVIEW
"Queer", as an umbrella term for those who are not heterosexual or cisgender, means "strange" or "peculiar" in the original meaning.It was used to go against those with same-sex desires or relationships in the past but later changed to a deliberately provocative and politically radical alternative to the more assimilationist branches of the LGBT community (Malla, 2010).These days, it also refers to a broad range of postmodernist-influenced non-normative sexualities and genders and a multifaceted set of theoretical and political interventions (Epstein & Gillett, 2017).QUEER, QUEER GENDER, AND QUEER THEORY In China, the development of queer theory originated from two lines: the mainland and Taiwan.In Taiwan, the tenth issue of the magazine Island Edge, published in 1994, organized a group of queer issues discussions, with contributions from emerging queer writers such as Lucifer Hung and Ta-Wei Chi.The translation of "queer" is gender-friendly, sagacious, and inclusive.When translating the word "queer", Ta-Wei Chi suggested removing the offensive and insulting elements from the English language and emphasizing the positive "cool" nature and literally translated queer into 酷儿(kù'ěr) (Chen, 2018).Besides, Chinese-language film scholar Song Hwee Lim mentioned the phenomenon of the creative transliteration of 'queer' as 酷儿(kù'ěr), meaning "cool kids", in his monograph Celluloid Comrades (Lim, 2006).Therefore, the Chinese character "酷(kù)", meaning cool in English, is used for the localization of "queer".On the other hand, Li Yinhe, a sociologist and a later self-claimed heterosexual who loves a transgender person (from woman to man), published the book "Queer Theory", which was the first time the term "queer" appeared as a noun referring to sexual minorities in mainland China (Bao, 2021).Meanwhile, as a result of the 1995 World Conference on Women's influence, mainland LGBT organisations began to communicate more often with Hong Kong and Taiwan in the mid-2000s.Since then, queer and LGBT identities have been employed as identities in a variety of activities (Elisabeth, 2008).

QUEER THEORY AND TRANSLATION
Since (De Lauretis, 1991) first introduced queer theory as "another vision and another way of thinking", it has grown in importance in art, literature, film and television, cultural studies, and other fields.The absorption and study of queer theory by scholars in the field of translation and interpretation is relatively delayed and rare, and it has only been paid attention to by scholars in recent years.The "meeting" of queer theory and translation did not occur overnight.From B.J. Epstein's in Other Words, which is dedicated to the study of translation and sexuality, to Larkosh's Re-engendering translation: Transcultural practice, gender/sexuality, and the Politics of Alterity (Larkosh, 2014), all three chapters discuss transsexual translation across languages and cultures.Heike Bauer's Sexology and Translation: Cultural and Scientific Encounters across the Modern World (Bauer, 2015) and Translating Transgender by Gramling and Dutta (Gramling & Dutta, 2016) all consist of research on "queer".Furthermore, in 2017, B.J. Epstein and Robert Gillette published the Queer in Translation essays collections, which are a groundbreaking systematic review and summary of internal relations between Queer theory and Translation.Baer and Klaus Kaindl's (Baer & Kaindl, 2018) Queer Translation, Translating the Queer is a collection of research papers as opposed to B.J. Epstein and Robert Gillette's Queer in Translation pieces, which are authored primarily by authors who are not scholars in the field of Translation studies.

METHODS
This product-oriented qualitative study describes the sensitive issues in translation caused by cultural differences and analyses translation strategies for translating culture-loaded words and expressions.According to Tognini-Bonelli (2001), a corpus-based approach usually starts with a pre-existing theory and uses corpus data to validate.Wodak and Meyer (2015) suggested using "closed" theoretical frameworks and illustrating them with cases that match the claims.This inductive approach explored the problems through in-depth case studies and ample data collection.Therefore, the typical and ample cases are intended to be collected as analysis sources.The source collection process contains the following steps: searching for queer films, choosing the most appropriate 10 films, downloading the subtitles, and analysing the subtitle texts.This kind of analysis will combine the word and phrase discussion with discourse analysis (DA) (Brown, Brown, Yule, Brown, & Gillian, 1983) to comprehensively see the queer gender translation in English films.Purposive sampling was used for data collection because of the nature of the investigation.This sampling category is useful because the researcher describes phenomena (Kumar, 2018) that can occur in gender-cultural words.
IMDb is the world's most popular and authoritative source for movie, TV, and celebrity content.The website is a fan-operated platform with various ratings and reviews for the newest movies and TV shows.The numbers of each type of queer gender film are as follows.From the statistical data provided above, it is obvious to see: 1.The lack of other homosexual representation besides gay. 2. A male-dominated society, even in minorities.3. The western-leaded queer turn.
When selecting a film, the author mainly carried out the selection in accordance with the ranking order of the list.However, the selection of the films and the collection of the subtitles are influenced by the problems, such as lacking film subtitles resources; the film itself is the queer theme but obscure and does not contain a queer gender vocabulary; the film's main language is not English.After excluding the above situations, the following 10 films were finally determined as the materials for analysis.

Film List
Subtitle downloading is a time and labour-consuming move because it takes loads of time to watch the films and check both English and Chinese subtitles.When deciding the case of studies, (Susam-Sarajeva, 2016) suggests ensuring the suitability of materials to test the given hypothesis.When choosing the typical cases, the focus was on LGBT+-related words and expressions and their translation.And those typical cases were picked up with both STs (Source Texts) and TTs (Target Texts) for analysis with the CDA (Critical Discourse Analysis).

ANALYSIS
As STs are translated into TTs, it is not only a linguistic act but also a cultural one.As texts continued to be translated and rewritten (Lefevere, 1987), the fusion of cultures unceasingly produced hybrid cultural artefacts.The linguistic translation is now relevant to interlinguistic and extralinguistic cultural elements from one language or culture to another, which adds to the challenges of rendering hybrid forms or multilingualism (Delabastita & Grutman, 2005).
The case study mainly focuses on translating queer gender-related words and expressions.The detailed analysis is as follows.

THE TRANSLATION OF LGBTQ
The cultural gap is the main issue in subtitle translation."Since signs occur in every instance of human action and interaction, it is clear that semiotics, like film studies, is deeply embedded in the dynamics of culture and societies" (Di Giovanni, 2003).The typical words and expressions of gender queer are listed below for detailed analysis.
Instance 1 ST: -Maybe I should become a lesbian.TT: -也许我应该当一个女同。 ST:-I love lesbians.TT:-我爱拉拉。 "Lesbian" describes homosexual women from an ancient Greek island called Lesbos.Due to the development of the Internet, the concept of "lesbian" came into public in China in the 20 th century.The translation of "lesbian" was firstly transliterated into "蕾丝边(léisībiān)", and the short form "les" into "拉子(lāzǐ)".Later, as the awareness of more lesbians and more activities in society, people started to use "拉拉(lālā)", a cute and lovely word to describe lesbian groups.
"Lesbian" is translated into "拉拉(lālā)", which reflects the translator's identification and affirmation of homosexual identity.The translation of this kind of special theme can sometimes lead to negative or positive emotions and attitudes.As part of the audience, lesbian groups can also be inspired and accept the translation.Moreover, "lesbian family" is a brand new concept for Chinese viewers because homosexual marriage and artificial insemination by sperm donation without marriage are illegal in China and rarely heard of or seen by Chinese people.The literal translation of "lesbian family " into "女同家庭(nǚtóng jiātíng)" is a proper choice in this regard.
Instance 2 ST: -I'm a lesbian!Yeah, I'm a dyke!TT:-我是个同性恋! 是 我是同性恋!"Dyke" refers to "a noun meaning lesbian and as an adjective describing things associated with lesbians".It is an offensive word from the homophobic slur.After searching online, no similar offensive Chinese Character is found for translation due to China's social inclusion public policies.Both "lesbian" and "dyke" are translated as "homosexual," which softens the offensive meaning to some extent to make it LGBT-friendly.
Instance 3 ST: -Where are my AGs at?Where are my butches at?TT:-我的假小子们在哪?我的 T 在哪?(指充当男性角色的女同性恋者) ST: -Tell him about your butch-ass girlfriend!TT:-告诉他你找的女朋友。 "Butch" refers to "a lesbian whose appearance and behaviour are seen as traditionally masculine", while "femme" refers to "a lesbian whose appearance and behaviour are seen as traditionally feminine"."Butch" and "Femme" are terms of lesbian sub-culture.Chinese lesbian group has different words or letters to describe these situations.In Taiwan, "汤包 (tāngbāo)" is the transliteration of "Tomboy" and the capitalized letter "T".Therefore, it implicitly stands for the "Butch" role in a lesbian relationship and has been spread widely in pan-Chinese language culture, including Malaysia and Singapore.Meanwhile, "婆(pó)" from "老婆(lǎopó)", which means wife in Chinese, or "P" is adopted to stand for "Femme" in a lesbian relationship.As a result, it is evident that while the translation of lesbian relationships incorporated concepts and terminology from English, it was not an entirely literal translation."Butch" is also translated into "T" here, which is consistent with conceptual metaphor theory (Gibbs Jr, 2011), as it not only accurately defines the speaker's role but also makes it more acceptable in a subtle way."Butch-ass girlfriend" is translated into "女朋友(nǚpéngyǒu)", which is a "sanitized" way to alleviate controversy and discrimination just like what Jose Santaemilia (Santaemilia, 2018) proposed: There is a phenomenon that translation has the trend of turning vulgar texts into relatively "desexualized" texts.
The term "同志(tóngzhì, comrade)" is commonly used in modern Chinese to refer to homosexuals.The term appeared in Hong Kong's gay culture in the 1970s.In 1989, Hong Kong director Albert Lam organised the first Hong Kong Gay Film Festival, encouraging gay people to participate in the festival with the slogan, "The revolution has not yet succeeded, but comrades still have to work hard" to connect gay culture with popular culture.In 1991, it was adopted by the Jinma International Film Festival, and then it became popular in Taiwan and spread to other Chinese regions.Since then, being gay has had more meanings; it's been an identity, a collective call to action for gay lovers.
Instance 5 Faggot ST: -Call me a "faggot loser"?TT: -叫我"基佬倒霉蛋"?ST: -He called me a faggot, called me a queer.TT:-他说我是屁精,玻璃。 ST: -I thought if he wants to see me as some horny little faggoish angry child.TT:-假如他想把我看成一个发情、变态、愤怒的小鬼. ST: -If you suddenly started getting all political about being a fag.TT:-假如你突然有了作为玻璃的政治使命感。 The word "fag" is an acronym for "faggot", a derogatory term for "gay" that is frequently used as a swear word in English culture.Some cognates, such as "fagbag", refer to a woman who marries a gay man."Faggotry", a noun, also refers to homosexual men.Here, the translator uses different translations in different contexts.For example, "Call me a "faggot loser?", "faggot" was translated into "基佬(jīlǎo)", in which "Ji" originated from the pronunciation of "gay" with the combination of the Chinese character "Lao", meaning men.It is also a negative expression of "gay" in Chinese culture.Words from the two cultures or languages cannot be matched.In this way, as the translation aims to make the viewers understand the content, finding a relatively similar word in the target language (TL) to translate these exotic words is better.Besides, the subtitlers also use "屁精(pìjīng)", meaning "fart goblin", and "玻璃(bōlí)", meaning "glass", which was recreated from "boy love" here to translate "faggot".In one case, the "faggoish" is even translated into "变态(bìantài)", meaning "abnormal".When lamenting the subtitlers' strong translation skills and knowledge reserve, we can clearly feel the social pressure of these words on gays.There is a lot of disparaging language and even mockery in the gay community.It essentially reflects the target language culture's rejection of such phenomena.
Instance 6 Poofter ST：-He's a poofter.He confessed.TT：-他是个同性恋。他招了。 ST: -and if you weren't such a goddamn poof.TT:-如果你不是该死的基佬。 "Poof" or "poofter" is a negative word that means "an effeminate or gay man" in English culture.In China, "娘(niáng)", meaning "sissy", is used to describe this kind of people.However, the subtitlers chose to use the "neutral" word "homosexual" to translate "poof" and "poofter" to reduce the audience's discrimination against the gay community.Though seen from other facets, there is a relative lack of vocabulary regarding men acting like women in the Chinese cultural background.
Instance 7 Camp ST: -"He was not camp."TT: -"他不怎么娘气.""Camp" also means "a man or his manner ostentatiously and extravagantly effeminate".Here it is also translated into "娘(niáng)", meaning "sissy" in English.The "sissy" phenomenon reflects how gender role stereotypes still affect us.Gender-role stereotype refers to the stereotype of binary, being a man or a woman.Bravery, decisiveness, and responsibility are generally attributed to male characteristics, while tenderness, carefulness, and dependence are easily attributed to female characteristics.In most cultures, this is the norm against which society and individuals measure themselves.When a culture has more diversity in gender roles or social identities, the culture with fewer situations will have an information blank in this regard.It increases the risks for translators to introduce a new concept with these culture-loaded words.Today, "camp" is more than just a noun used to characterise a man or his behaviour.It has evolved into a culture representing a fastidious and fashionable person pursuing a material and spiritual life.But not everyone is aware of it yet.The transliteration into "坎普(kǎnpǔ)" may help to enhance the acceptance of new things.TT: -我也签上, 我宣布你能合法的进行变性手术了。 ST: -We're not gender-challenged.We're gender-gifted.
TT: -不管是变性还是天生的性别。 "Transgender" refers to "people who have a gender identity or gender expression that differs from the sex that they were assigned at birth"."Transgender" celebrities and influencers have brought transgender groups to the public and gained ever-growing attention in China, such as Jin Xing, a famous dancer.However, in the English culture, there are diversified words to describe gender transformation, while there is an apparent lack of vocabulary related to transgender that the majority in China has accepted.Only via accurate translation and careful consideration of word usage in TT can receivers have a better understanding of the cultureloaded information hidden behind the language.
In this instance, there is an obvious translation mistake.The subtitlers simply translated "gender dysphoria" into "变性(biànxìng)", meaning "transgender", which should be translated into "性 别 焦 虑 xìngbié jiāolǜ)" in Chinese.Even though "transgender" is convenient to understand, faithfulness is the top priority for all translators.As for "sexual reassignment", it is just translated into "transgender" again, which should be corrected as "性 别重置(xìngbié chóngzhì)" in Chinese.As for "gender-challenged" and "gender-gifted", they are generally special phrase structures in English that do not conform to Chinese language norms.In this regard, the subtitler rearranged the words and translated them into "transgender" and "born gender" to help the audience understand.
Instance 9 Transvestite ST: -We don't have many transvestites in Northampton.TT:-在南安普敦没有很多穿异性服装的人。 ST: -You're never more than ten feet away from a transvestite.TT:-你离一个异性装怪癖者也只有一步之遥.
"Transvestite" is a person who dresses in clothes primarily associated with the opposite sex (typically used by a man).Men are the most common transvestites, while women are rare but also exist.However, women wearing men's clothes are readily accepted by the world, while men wearing women's clothes are usually not accepted because of the vast contrast in the image, which is related to the social role of men in human development.Men are usually born with great responsibilities and obligations in the family.Women wearing men's clothes are often seen as "personal and manly", making them easier to accept.In the context of Chinese culture and social environment, "transvestite" is regarded as a destruction of social morals and illness.Therefore, the TT of "transvestite" is "异装癖(yìzhuāngpì)", and "癖(pi)" itself carries the meaning of "wired hobby".Some other words that contain other queer genders in films are also listed above.The subtitles above can also provide some reference for the later subtitlers.

STRATEGIES FOR SUBTITLING OF QUEER GENDER TRANSLATION FROM UEER PERSPECTIVE
Gender can be flexible.The queer theory holds that people have multiple possibilities for their sexual behaviours and tendencies.It challenges the dichotomous structure of heterosexuality and homosexuality and challenges the "normal" of society.It also challenges the male-female dichotomous structure.Besides, it also aims to overturn the homosexual orthodoxy and advocate expressing the desire that completely shatters both gender and sexual identities, both heterosexual and homosexual.In this aspect, queer theory allows all marginalised groups, including bisexuals, heterosexuals, lesbians, and gays, as well as anybody who rejects the dominant biological, social, and sexual systems, to join together and form a political coalition.The queer theory emphasizes the deconstruction of binary, which helps translators escape the dilemma of either/or and devote themselves to more diverse translation practices.Both subtitle translation and mainstream literary translation should receive the same concern and respect.Translation studies is already a thriving discipline.Both queer theory and translation have multiple similarities; for example, they study the "norms" and explore their identities from linguistics, literature, sociology, philosophy, and anthropology perspectives.

THE TRANSLATION OF CULTURE-LOADED WORDS AND EXPRESSIONS
It is challenging for the translator if there are no similar terms in the target culture and most of the target audience does not know the concept well."Referential vacuums" occur in this regard, which requires translators to find alternatives that help the audience to fill in the cultural difference gap (Sasso, 2021).Some of the translation strategies can be used in subtitling, including both direct translation and oblique translation, according to Vinay and Darblenet's Model (Vinay & Darbelnet, 1995).Translation techniques, including borrowing, calque, literal translation, transposition, and adaptation, are used widely in film subtitle translation.For example, the translation of "lesbian" into "蕾丝边(léisībiān)" and the short form "les" into "拉子 (lāzǐ)" are typical translation cases of borrowing directly from the SL.The translation of "omnisexual, polyamorous, bisexual, asexual, and pansexual" into "全性恋 (quánxìngliàn)、 多性恋 (duōxìngliàn)、双性恋 (shuāngxìnglian)、无性恋 (wúxìngliàn)、泛性恋 (fànxìngliàn)" are the examples of translation technique: calque because it adopts the structure of "prefix + sexual" from the SL.As for words and expressions such as "homosexual, homophobia, transgender, single-sexed people", the "word-for-word" translation technique is adopted to make sure "the meaning is fully preserved" (Vinay & Darbelnet, 1995).Adaptation is closely associated with audio-visual translation.It helps preserve the original text's character, function, form, and semantic meaning.The adaptation is commonly used in these film subtitle translations, for example, "faggot" into "屁精(pìjīng), 玻璃(bōlí)", and so on.

DESEXUALIZATION
The dichotomous structure of heterosexuality and homosexuality and the male-female dichotomous structure have been challenged, and society is expected to accept the existence of other queer genders.Nowadays, translating the language of sex or pleasure has important rhetorical and ideological implications, representing the translator's attitude toward existing conceptualizations of gender/sexual identities, human sexual behaviours, and social-moral norms (Santaemilia, 2018).English queer films are inundated with swear, offensive words, and expressions.When translating some offensive words, subtitlers should take a firm stand of "neutrality " and try to soften, desexualize, and sanitize the words and expressions and make sure not to add extra negative attitudes and ideology into the translation.The choice of Chinese characters should be seriously and carefully considered.

CONCLUSION
Queer theory guides people to explore the new world in a more inclusive and tolerant direction.Translation strategies adopted in these 10 films include borrowing, calque, literal translation, transposition, and adaptation, which provides a reference for gender translation study with a comprehensive consideration of the critical discourse analysis, the clashes of ideology, and power differentials.Currently, most queer film subtitle translation is not guided by queer theory or lacks queer knowledge.Although the films attribute to telling LGTBQ people's stories, the overall selection of Chinese characters in the translation process is still not queer-friendly enough and lacks queer thoughts, namely, the challenge to social norms, and the translation in this manner could have corresponding adverse effects on society and hinder people's acceptance of queer groups.In the translation process, the translation task should be viewed from the perspective of queer, and desexualisation, annotation, and localization should be appropriately adopted so that people can better pay attention to, understand, and accept the "difference".And just like the dialogue in The Imitation Game and A single man says: "Just because someone thinks differently from you, does that mean it's not thinking?...... What is the point of different tastes, preferences, if not to say that our brains work differently, that we think differently?" and "Minorities are just people, people like us." American Psychiatric Association categorizes gender dysphoria...... -as a very serious mental disorder.TT: -美国精神病协会将变性划分为一种非常严重的精神错乱症 ST: -Two signatures.I hereby pronounce you officially legal......to undergo sexual reassignment surgery.

Table 1
Type of LGBTQ Films