Reglindis De Ridder and Eithne O’Connell
Introduction
This chapter, based on research conducted at Dublin City University (De Ridder, 2014), gives an account of interdisciplinary work that links audiovisual translation (AVT), corpus linguistics and lexicography with sociolinguistics and, in doing so, presents a useful example of how contemporary AVT studies can be harnessed to make a contribution to research in the field of sociolinguistics. Given the ever-increasing role of the audiovisual media, especially in the lives of younger generations, it is important for sociolinguists to monitor changing audiovisual language trends. In the digital age, the impact of the published written word is on the wane, not least because subtitles have in recent years become the most dominant written text type to be read in many smaller European language areas (Gottlieb, 2004; Koster, 1997). There is also evidence from Germany (Herbst, 1994), traditionally a dubbing country, that the English used in the original scripts of US television programmes has exerted such an influence on the formulation of dubbed German dialogue that contemporary spoken German is replete with Anglicisms, both lexical and grammatical, picked up by viewers from the dubbed soundtracks. This gives some indication of how audiovisual texts can play an increasingly significant, if sometimes underestimated, role in language planning in those languages, whether major or small, which are to a greater or lesser extent ‘minoritised’ (Cronin, 1998: 159) in relation to English.
Using corpus linguistics techniques, this research has been able to chart in a systematic manner certain trends in relation to the usage of the Belgian variety of Dutch1 by the Flemish public service broadcaster, known as Vlaamse Radio- en Televisieomroeporganisatie (VRT) since 1998. While the Dutch written standard, which is shared by the Netherlands and Belgium, is still predominantly Netherlandic, the Flemish public service broadcaster’s general language policy has, since 1998, become more open to the use of the Belgian national variety in its broadcasts. The research in this chapter focuses primarily on interlingual subtitles in fiction and sets out to investigate the extent to which the most prominent feature of Belgian Dutch in writing, namely marked Belgian Dutch lexis, occurs in VRT’s subtitles from 1995 to 2012. This period has been selected because it covers three distinct, consecutive phases: (1) before the broadcaster started to implement language policy changes, (2) shortly after the policy changes and (3) the recent past. The public service broadcaster’s aural linguistic output in Dutch language fiction has recently been diachronically analysed with regard to the use of substandard Belgian Dutch (Van Hoof, 2010), which is often derogatorily called tussentaal [interlanguage] or Verkavelingsvlaams (Absillis et al., 2012). Similarly, noteworthy research has been conducted into the controversial phenomenon of open intralingual subtitling practices ‘translating’ Netherlandic and Belgian Dutch varieties into unmarked, neutral Dutch in both fiction and non-fiction in Belgium (Remael et al., 2008). The present study seeks to supplement this research, by analysing trends in interlingual fiction subtitles, i.e. the subtitles that Dutch speakers in Belgium are exposed to most, with regard to the use of marked Belgian Dutch. It tests the hypothesis that Belgian Dutch lexis has become gradually more visible in the Flemish public service broadcaster’s subtitles.
The study takes the form of a diachronic analysis of a corpus of interlingual VRT television subtitles used in popular English language crime fiction in order to track the presence of Belgian Dutch in VRT’s subtitles. The results of this analysis are then compared to another diachronic corpus of approximately the same size comprising intralingual VRT subtitles used in Belgian, Dutch language crime fiction. This research asks two questions: To what extent do subtitled (written) texts reflect VRT’s general Dutch language policy of openness to marked Belgian variants? Is VRT, in its subtitles, reinforcing its general language policy of increasing the exposure of its Belgian audience to Belgian Dutch and, thus, enhancing the prestige of this variety? This is of interest because if VRT is increasingly including Belgian Dutch lexical items in its subtitles, its policy could represent an important counterbalance to the traditionally conservative approach of the transnational Dutch publishing industry which avoids Belgian Dutch in written texts. Evidence of a change in VRT’s strategy would demonstrate how new linguistic practices in the Belgian media are possibly contributing to the development of a richer, more inclusive Dutch written standard, more fully reflecting the diversity of Dutch with all its national varieties (Netherlandic, Belgian, Surinam and Caribbean Dutch). Research of this kind, as well as yielding specific data in relation to a particular language, also demonstrates how productive new links can be forged between AVT (subtitling), on the one hand, and sociolinguistics (language planning) and minority media studies (O’Connell, 2007), on the other.
Dutch: A Pluricentric Language
With its 23 million speakers (Willemyns, 2013: xi), Dutch may be considered a small language located in third position on the linguistic continuum that runs from world, major, small to minority languages. In the face of globalisation and Anglophone hegemony, even major languages now routinely experience many of the linguistic challenges and problems traditionally only associated with small and minority languages (O’Connell, 2003) and small languages, like Dutch, face a considerable threat to their viability from English and are becoming minoritised. Dutch is a pluricentric language and has official status in the Netherlands, Belgium, Surinam and in parts of the Caribbean. There is only one written standard which has been codified in literary publications and dictionaries over generations and largely upheld throughout the whole Dutch language area. It is often the case with pluricentric languages that one national variety is perceived as more prestigious than another (Clyne, 1992) and, in the case of Dutch, Netherlandic Dutch has been viewed as the standard. In the 19th century, Belgian’s emerging cultural and economic Dutch-speaking elite struggled for equal linguistic rights and decided to introduce in Belgium the readily available Dutch standard as it was used in the Netherlands. Ever since, De Caluwe (2012: 143) maintains, Netherlandic Dutch has been seen as the ‘dominant’ variety and Belgian Dutch as the ‘non-dominant’, which has also long been reflected in lexicographical practice as explained below.
Although speakers of Netherlandic and Belgian Dutch share most of the Dutch lexicon, Dutch speakers on either side of the national borders also have some of their own specific words and phrases. Geeraerts (2000: 22) claims that the lexical differences between Belgian Dutch and Netherlandic Dutch are small, since usage labels showing geographical restriction are applied in less than 2% of the entries in the main Dutch dictionary, Van Dale Groot woordenboek van de Nederlandse taal, to label Belgian Dutch. Interestingly, this argument is often repeated to downplay the issue of lexical variation in the Dutch language (van der Sijs & Willemyns, 2009; Willemyns, 2003, 2013). However, as the lexicologist Colman (2009) points out, claims about the amount of national variation in the Dutch lexicon should not be based solely on the percentage of marked Belgian Dutch, but must also include the percentage of marked Netherlandic Dutch. Consequently, an estimated 10% of Dutch lexis (Colman, 2009; De Caluwe, 2012) is thought to comprise both marked Belgian Dutch and marked Netherlandic Dutch lexical items. These respective variants tend to be less common, and sometimes even completely unknown, in the other national territory.
Dutch language publishing and lexicography
Belgian Dutch lexical items are the focus of attention in the present study. As a result of the long-standing preference for the Netherlandic standard in official circles in both the Netherlands and Belgium, publishers aiming to reach all Dutch speakers (the majority of whom are Dutch nationals) have traditionally required authors to adhere to the Netherlandic Dutch standard, so as to maximise the already small potential market. They have also preferred to collaborate with Netherlandic Dutch literary translators (Hofstede, 2007b; Nederlandse Taalunie, 2008) who, of course, are not likely to use Belgian Dutch variants. The publishers’ underlying reasoning is based on the (self-fulfilling) assumption that most of the Dutch target audience is unfamiliar with the non-dominant Belgian Dutch variety. This works against Belgian Dutch in three ways: Belgian writers have their work revised by Netherlandic Dutch editors who remove distinctive Belgian features prior to publication; Belgian translators are ‘discriminated against’ (Naaijkens, 2009) since Netherlandic Dutch translations are still preferred; and the general Belgian Dutch-speaking population rarely encounters their language variety in literary texts.
What is more, these practices can be seen as detrimental to Dutch speakers at large throughout the greater language area, as they are not routinely exposed to the lexical richness of all Dutch national variants. However, the established publishing practice of avoiding or excising Belgian linguistic features has recently met with increasing criticism from Belgian authors (Hemmerechts, 2010) and translators (Masschelein, 2004). Similarly, a few translation scholars in the Netherlands have started to speak up for a richer, more inclusive Dutch written norm (Hofstede, 2007a, 2007b, 2007c; Schyns, 2002; Schyns & Noble, 2008). Besides having the negative effect of lowering the status of Belgian Dutch and Belgian Dutch translators, these publishing practices continue to obscure non-Netherlandic Dutch varieties from the view of readers of Dutch throughout the language area. Familiarising Netherlandic Dutch speakers with Belgian Dutch, through more inclusive practices, would not merely foster mutual intelligibility, but also contribute to the creation of a broader norm which would have an enriching effect on this (small) language. The same case could be made for strengthening this language by embracing the other varieties and increasing the visibility of variants used by Surinam and Caribbean Dutch-speakers.
Improvements in the status of Belgian Dutch and its recognition as a national variety may, ironically, have its early origins in the establishment of the Dutch Language Union, a body co-founded in 1980 by the Netherlands and Dutch-speaking Belgium, to agree language policy as equal partners. Originally, this union was based on the idea of linguistic unity but, under pressure by the linguistic reality, the official approaches to Dutch gradually changed. It is worth noting that it was not until the late 1990s that both the Dutch Language Union and VRT officially recognised the Dutch language area as pluricentric with two equal national varieties, or ‘natiolects’ (Laureys, 1997), in Europe. Other, non-European natiolects were added with the inclusion of Surinam as an associate member, in 2004, and the recognition of Caribbean standard varieties in Aruba, Curacao and Sint-Maarten, in 2012. In the field of lexicography, changes started to occur as well. The authoritative Dutch dictionary, Van Dale, sometimes applied the usage label gewestelijk [dialectal, regional] for common Belgian Dutch words and phrases used throughout the Belgian part of the Dutch language area (Geerts & Heestermans, 1992). This implied that usage was restricted to a certain region only and it was stigmatised as not being proper Dutch. From its 13th edition (den Boon & Geerts, 1999) onwards, it started to acknowledge the Belgian Dutch standard variety by introducing the neutral label Belgisch-Nederlands [Belgian Dutch]. In the 14th edition (den Boon et al., 2005), it also included more Surinam Dutch lexical items now labelled Surinaams-Nederlands.
Since the 11th edition of 1984, the Van Dale dictionary has had two editors-in-chief, one from the Netherlands and one from Belgium. The current Belgian editor-in-chief, Ruud Hendrickx, who is also VRT’s language adviser, called, in 2009, for more Belgian Dutch words and phrases to be included in the dictionary (Hendrickx, 2009) and, in 2010, for ‘one Van Dale dictionary for the Dutch, the Belgians and the Surinamese’ (Hendrickx, 2010: 35, our translation). Most importantly, he promised the dictionary would in the next edition describe the Dutch natiolects equally, which is not the case today and, to date, the label Nederlands-Nederlands [Netherlandic Dutch] has not been used in the Van Dale dictionary. Up until the 14th edition, Netherlandic Dutch lexis has, in fact, not been labelled at all and, therefore, by default, is still seen as Standard Dutch. Thus, the equality of both European natiolects is, in reality, not acknowledged in the main Dutch dictionary. The online version of the dictionary does, however, reveal that, in 2013, a label was introduced for some of the Netherlandic Dutch variants. Somewhat revealingly, the name used to identify these was simply Nederlands [Dutch], as opposed to Nederlands-Nederlands [Netherlandic Dutch], without any reference to the Netherlands, which is like designating lexis as ‘English’ rather than ‘British English’. Labelling Netherlandic Dutch as ‘Dutch’ seems to imply that, for Van Dale, other national varieties are currently still considered a deviation from Netherlandic Dutch.
It was not until 2009, or 10 years after the recognition of Dutch as a pluricentric language, with the publication of a smaller dictionary, Prisma Handwoordenboek Nederlands met Onderscheid tussen Nederlands-Nederlands en Belgisch-Nederlands [Prisma’s Concise Dictionary of Dutch with Distinction between Netherlandic and Belgian Dutch] (Martin & Smedts, 2009), that the label ‘Netherlandic Dutch’ was introduced for the first time into Dutch lexicography. Another dictionary that also uses the same bicentric approach (De Caluwe, 2012) is the free online dictionary Algemeen Nederlands Woordenboek. Given that Dutch is currently in a state of flux, the research described here represents an attempt to harness corpus linguistics techniques to analyse subtitles with a view to tracking changes in lexis reflected in audiovisual media at a key moment in the evolution of the Dutch language.
The language planning role of the Flemish public service broadcaster (VRT)
The conservative attitude of Dutch publishing to the Belgian variety, particularly through most of the second half of the 20th century was mirrored in its early days by VRT, which from the outset had a strong language planning role. According to Bal (in Van den Bulck & Van Poecke, 1996), first head of television:
the propagation of standard Netherlandic was seen in large measure in the light of public education […] Some call this pedantic, but we thought that a PSB [public service broadcaster] had the duty to educate its people, certainly as regards the language, in view of the large disadvantages of the Flemings in this area. (Bal, in Van den Bulck & Van Poecke, 1996: 225–226)
The Flemish public service broadcaster has, since its foundation in 1930, been a designated language planning agent for the Dutch language in Belgium (Dhoest et al., 2010; Jaspers & Van Hoof, 2013; Vandenbussche, 2010). Dutch, although the mother tongue of the majority of Belgians, has long been in a weak position in Belgium. Therefore, from the outset, the Flemish public service broadcaster had a particular role to play in boosting the prestige of Dutch in Belgium, and putting it on equal footing with French. In order to do this, the language of Dutch speakers in Belgium, who largely spoke dialects (i.e. ‘the large disadvantages’ that Bal refers to above) first had to be standardised. For this reason, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s, several programmes offering linguistic advice concerning ‘correct’ Dutch language usage were broadcast on radio and television, propagating the Dutch standard as it was used in the Netherlands, albeit with a little room for specific Belgian pronunciation features. Furthermore, its language advisers specifically monitored the linguistic output of newsreaders, commentators and presenters to ensure they exposed their audience to Standard Dutch and by doing so, set an example of ‘correct’ Dutch usage. To this day, this VRT Dutch is still widely accepted as the norm for the Belgian standard variety of Dutch.
In the period under scrutiny here, VRT had two different language advisers, each of whom left a personal mark on VRT’s policy with respect to the linguistic standard broadcast. It is interesting to note that Eugène Berode (1971–1996) slightly modified VRT’s initial policy by permitting the use of official Belgian Dutch terminology (e.g. schepen [alderman]), while Ruud Hendrickx (1996–to present) drafted and adopted the 1998 Taalcharter [language charter] promoting what has become the Belgian standard.
The corpus that has been selected for analysis comprises three subcorpora relating to periods overseen by these two language advisers. Specific changes to VRT’s linguistic policy from 1998 opened the broadcaster to the acceptance and use of Belgian variants on the airwaves in general. VRT has now developed what is regarded as the standard Belgian variety of Dutch, VRT Dutch, which allows the use of a number of general Belgian Dutch words and phrases. Thus, newsreaders and presenters at VRT, unlike their early predecessors from the 1930s to the 1990s, may use marked standard Belgian Dutch variants. Moreover, in entertainment programmes, colloquial and substandard spoken varieties of Belgian Dutch can also be heard. In short, VRT appears to have gradually taken on board a more open attitude to Dutch as a pluricentric language and to have adapted its general language policy accordingly. The research described here investigates the impact of official policy changes on actual language output in one specific text type, namely, VRT’s translated subtitles used in crime fiction.
Subtitling and Smaller Languages
Minority and smaller languages, such as Dutch, tend to rely considerably more than major languages on translation activity as they look to translation as an important, practical way to supplement their limited linguistic resources (O’Connell & Walsh, 2006). In 2005, for instance, 71.38% of fiction published in the Dutch language area were translations (de Haan & Hofstede, 2008: 46). Thus, it is clear that in such cases, the written standard is disseminated to a significant extent through translated rather than original texts. In recent times, the popularity of imported audiovisual media has resulted in interlingual subtitles becoming even more significant disseminators of the written standard in small and minority language areas and they therefore constitute an underestimated, though potentially powerful, language planning tool. As Gottlieb (2004) points out, subtitling has established itself as one of the dominant written text types in public life in the Scandinavian and Dutch language areas. The Dutch translation scholar, Koster (1997: 30, our translation), even asserts that given that ‘subtitles are for many people often the only written text type they are exposed to’, subtitling editors-in-chief are ‘responsible for the development of Dutch’. Therefore, what happens in subtitling may be more significant from a language planning perspective than what happens in publishing. The importance of the Flemish public service broadcaster as the guardian and disseminator of the Belgian standard variety provides the rationale for this specific analysis of VRT open, interlingual subtitles, not least because, as Koster (1997) claims, subtitlers could be important language planning agents, particularly for minority and smaller languages.
VRT’s subtitling policy
Accounts of interlingual subtitling into Dutch at the Flemish public service broadcaster prior to the 1998 policy change confirm that Belgian features could not be used in subtitles. For instance, two subtitlers argued that ‘subtitles convey spoken language, hence they have to be written in spoken language’, but they were quick to add ‘[a]nd obviously in correct, general Dutch’ (Michielsen & Van de Velde, 1998: 32, our translation). In a footnote, they then explained that, unfortunately, many common colloquial expressions are labelled ‘in Belgium’ in Van Dale and, therefore, are not ‘general Dutch’ and should not be used in subtitles (Michielsen & Van de Velde, 1998: 35). Similarly, they regretted that dialects and accents are hard to convey in subtitles, as ‘strange words or constructions would draw too much attention to the subtitle’ (Michielsen & Van de Velde, 1998) and, hence, distract the viewer. Ockers (1998) also deals with the difficulty of conveying speech in writing and, although he stresses the importance of conveying different registers, he explains that formal registers and jargon tend to be simplified for the target audience. While he believes that regional dialects and sociolects should, ideally, be rendered in subtitles, he concedes the difficulty of identifying a suitable dialect that all Belgian Dutch speakers can understand.
Ruud Hendrickx, then editor-in-chief at VRT’s translation department, and subtitler Helene Reid, stated that only Standard Dutch could be used for subtitling (Hendrickx & Reid, 1998: 175). They claimed that when faced with the particular challenge of rendering informal colloquial English registers in written form in Dutch, Belgian Dutch, in particular, would be ‘unable to convey the full range of English registers adequately’ (Hendrickx & Reid, 1998: 172, our translation) and suggested that Netherlandic variants be used for very informal registers. This is remarkable, as VRT, in the same period, used open intralingual subtitles with the Netherlandic Dutch variety in an imported Dutch-language television series set in the Netherlands, with which the Belgian target audience was not expected to be familiar. Research also confirmed that the overall intelligibility scores of Netherlandic Dutch varieties in fiction were rather low in the Belgian target audience (Remael, 2008).
The current stylistic guidelines for interlingual subtitling (VRT Vertaling en ondertiteling, 2010) do not address the specific question of rendering informal or non-standard varieties, nor the use of Belgian Dutch, unlike the guidelines for intralingual teletext subtitlers (VRT Vertaling en ondertiteling, 2009). In relation to interlingual subtitles, VRT’s practice is that when words and phrases are not felt to be standard, they are checked both in the Van Dale dictionary and the VRT language advice database and the entries labelled ‘general Belgian Dutch’ are permitted for use in subtitles. Since 2000, as a result of a reception study revealing that deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers disapproved of VRT’s standardising of non-standard Belgian Dutch in its intralingual subtitles (Slembrouck & Van Herreweghe 2004), teletext subtitlers have been allowed to use substandard and colloquial Belgian Dutch lexical items.
Case Study
The VRT subtitle analysis described below aims to establish if there has been an increase in the use of Belgian Dutch words and phrases in interlingual subtitles, since VRT’s policy changes were implemented in 1998. To that end, a specialised corpus of subtitled crime fiction was compiled comprising almost 10,000 VRT subtitles originally created for 12 popular English language crime fiction episodes broadcast from 1995 to 2012. The subtitle corpus contains three subcorpora corresponding to three different periods. The first subcorpus comprises subtitles broadcast between 1995 and 1996, i.e. before the policy changes were introduced; the second subcorpus comprises subtitles from between 2004 and 2006; and the third subcorpus contains the more recent subtitles dating from 2011 to 2012. Each subcorpus contains approximately the same number of words, thus facilitating a quick calculation and comparison of the absolute frequency of occurrence of Belgian Dutch lexical items in each of the three subcorpora. AntConc (2012, www.antlab.sci.waseda.ac.jp) monolingual concordancer has been used for the analysis as this corpus linguistics software allows users to rapidly process and analyse vast amounts of text. Its word listing tool generates a list of all the unique words (word types) in the corpus and each instance of the words on this list can be displayed with a mouse-click and analysed in their specific contexts in concordance lines.
The first step was to generate a word list comprising all the word types occurring in the subtitle files in order to calculate the number of words and to balance out the subcorpora with regard to size. Subsequently, the entire corpus had to be searched for Belgian Dutch lexical items. To that end, a lexicological reference file containing circa 4000 standard and non-standard Belgian Dutch words and phrases, Referentiebestand Belgisch Nederlands (Nederlandse Taalunie, 2005), henceforth RBBN list, was used. Firstly, the RBBN list was significantly shortened by removing all the lemmas that did not occur in the subtitle corpus under investigation. The remaining lemmas had to be looked up manually in the subtitle corpus using the concordancer. In a raw, plain text corpus, corpus tools interpret words as strings of letters, therefore, the context in which these words appear had to be examined in the concordance lines to ensure that the retrieved search items actually corresponded to the Belgian Dutch word or phrase on the RBBN list and were not just homographs (e.g. schuif can be ‘drawer’ in Belgian Dutch, or a verbal form of the general Dutch schuiven [to slide]). All 12 VRT television episodes were carefully watched at the outset. However, in order to ensure that the correct meaning of each of the search items found in the subtitle corpus corresponded fully to the definitions of the Belgian Dutch items found in the RBBN file, it was sometimes necessary to watch an entire episode again, taking care to match the audiovisual information about the utterance in question with the interlingual translation that occurred in the Dutch subtitle.
In the entire interlingual subtitle corpus, only 45 items were found from the RBBN list (e.g. piste [line of inquiry]). Interestingly, the first subcorpus, comprising subtitles that were created before the policy changes, contained 16 Belgian Dutch words and phrases from the RBBN list that might have slipped through the net. In the two other subcorpora, 20 and 15 items were found, respectively. After this analysis of interlingual subtitles from English language crime series translated into Dutch, a second analysis was conducted in the same way. However, this time a closed intralingual subtitle corpus of approximately the same size was used. This corpus consisted of Dutch language subtitles used in Dutch language crime series produced, subtitled and broadcast by VRT in the following three periods: 2004, 2006 and 2013, i.e. after the intralingual subtitle guidelines changed. As explained above, these intralingual subtitles were primarily aimed at a deaf and hard-of-hearing target audience and, since 2000, these have endeavoured to render the spoken word almost verbatim. It is not surprising, therefore, that the intralingual subtitle corpus contained almost five times more Belgian Dutch RBBN items, in total 220 (90, 100 and 104, respectively). As these Dutch language crime series were set in Belgium, they also included 16 specific Belgian cultural references (e.g. federale politie [federal police]). It is also worth mentioning that 81 RBBN items in the intralingual subcorpora, compared to merely 6 RBBN items in the interlingual subcorpora, were non-standard Belgian Dutch words labelled ‘substandard’ and ‘colloquial’ in the RBBN file (e.g. crapuul [riff raff], plezant [pleasant, cheerful]).
The purpose of this second analysis was to provide a point of comparison with the first results. This comparison is important as the results of the first analysis indicated that relatively few Belgian Dutch lexical items have been used in VRT interlingual subtitles in all three subcorpora. However, the results of the second analysis clearly show that over four times more Belgian Dutch lexical items (excluding the cultural references) have appeared in VRT intralingual subtitles after the year 2000. The first analysis of VRT interlingual subtitles reveals a continued reluctance to use Belgian Dutch variants, particularly substandard and colloquial varieties commonly used in fiction. The intralingual subtitles, on the other hand, have become virtually verbatim transcriptions and increasingly make use of Belgian Dutch words and phrases actually spoken in VRT’s home-produced fiction series. Thus, examples from intralingual practices may pave the way to developing solutions to the challenge of subtitling spoken registers raised by Ockers (1998). One explanation for VRT’s conservative interlingual subtitling approach could be that old habits die hard for subtitlers who previously had to avoid Belgian Dutch, while another possible explanation, informed by translation studies, for the disparity between the two practices is that interlingual subtitles, unlike intralingual subtitles, are generally condensed summaries of the original dialogue and commonly manifest so-called universal features of translated texts such as a tendency towards normalisation, levelling out and simplification (O’Connell, 2003: 20–31). VRT’s subtitlers may need to become aware of the presence of such trends in their own work if they are to move towards fuller implementation of its language policy.
Conclusion
Describing recent interdisciplinary research, this chapter has linked AVT, lexicography and corpus linguistics with sociolinguistics and, in doing so, has demonstrated how aspects of AVT studies can make a contribution to the field of sociolinguistics. Although the research presented here relates only to subtitles in a single European language and focuses on a relatively small sample of linguistic data, it is important not just for the results that it yields, but also because it highlights the scope for certain areas of sociolinguistics to benefit from translation studies scholarship and paves the way for much needed collaboration between experts in these fields. Using corpus linguistics techniques, it has been possible to track trends relating to the usage of the Belgian Dutch variety in subtitles aired by the Flemish public service broadcaster. In doing so, it has been possible to show how subtitlers may function as language planning agents, whether deliberately or inadvertently. In relation to the current situation at VRT, intralingual subtitlers there may already be making a contribution to the development of a richer, more inclusive Dutch written standard; one that more fully reflects the diversity of the Dutch language and which may, in time, come to be adopted by the more conservative Dutch publishing industry.
Note
(1)Belgium’s official languages are Dutch, French and German. The term ‘Belgian Dutch’ is used here instead of the popular English term ‘Flemish’ to denote the variety of Dutch used in Belgium.
References
Absillis, K., Jaspers, J. and Van Hoof, S. (2012) De manke Usurpator: over Verkavelingsvlaams. Ghent: Academia Press.
Clyne, M. (1992) Pluricentric Languages: Differing Norms in Different Nations. Berlin: Mouton.
Colman, L. (2009) De Verscheidenheid in de Eenheid: Het Belgische en Nederlandse Nederlands in het Algemeen Nederlands Woordenboek (ANW). In E. Beijk, L. Colman, M. Göbel, F. Heyvaert, T. Schoonheim, R. Tempelaars and V. Waszink (eds) Fons Verborum. Feestbundel voor Prof. Dr. A.F.M.J. Fons Moerdijk, aangeboden door Vrienden en Collega’s bij zijn Afscheid van het Instituut voor Nederlandse Lexicologie (pp. 131–142). Leiden: Instituut voor Nederlandse Lexicologie.
Cronin, M. (1998) The cracked looking glass of servants: Translation and minority languages in a global age. The Translator 4 (2), 145–162.
de Caluwe, J. (2012) Dutch as a bicentric language: A lexicographic (r)evolution. In R. Muhr (ed.) Non-Dominant Varieties of Pluricentric Languages. Getting the Picture (pp. 143–154). Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
de Haan, M. and Hofstede, R. (2008) ‘Overigens schitterend vertaald’: Voor het Behoud van een bloeiende Vertaalcultuur. Amsterdam: Mart Spruyt.
De Ridder, R. (2014) ‘Arme, rijke Taal’ [Poor, Rich Language]. Audiovisual Translation and Minority Language Planning in a Pluricentric Language Area. A Case Study of Flemish Public Broadcasting. PhD thesis, Dublin City University.
den Boon, T. and Geerts, G. (1999) Groot Woordenboek van de Nederlandse taal (13th edn). Utrecht: Van Dale Lexicografie.
den Boon, T., Geeraerts, D. and van der Sijs, N. (2005) Groot Woordenboek van de Nederlandse taal (14th edn). Utrecht: Van Dale Lexicografie.
Dhoest, A., Van den Bulck, H., Vandebosch, H. and Dierckx, M. (2010) De publieke Omroepopdracht gewikt en gewogen: Publieksbevraging over de toekomstige Taak van de VRT. Antwerp: University of Antwerp.
Geeraerts, D. (2000) Honderd jaar Belgisch in Van Dale. Nederlands Van Nu 48, 19–23.
Geerts, G. and Heestermans, H. (1992) Van Dale Groot Woordenboek van de Nederlandse taal (12th edn). Utrecht: Van Dale Lexicografie.
Gottlieb, H. (2004) Language-political implications of subtitling. In P. Orero (ed.) Topics in Audiovisual Translation (pp. 83–100). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Hemmerechts, K. (2010) Spek aan je Been: Vlaams-Nederlands en Noord-Nederlands. Onze Taal 2 (3), 46–49.
Hendrickx, R. (2009) Een Vlaamsere Van Dale. Over Taal 48 (4), 101–103.
Hendrickx, R. (2010) Een Van Dale voor Nederlanders, Belgen en Surinamers. Nederlands van Nu 114 (3), 35–37.
Hendrickx, R. and Reid, H. (1998) Ondertitelen in Vlaanderen en Nederland: Wederzijdse Beïnvloeding en Botsing van Culturen. In H. Bloemen, J. Hulst and N. De Jong-van den Berg (eds) De Kracht van Vertaling: Verrijking van Taal en Cultuur (pp. 170–175). Utrecht: Platform Vertalen en Vertaalwetenschap.
Herbst, T. (1994) Linguistische Aspekte der Synchronisation von Fernsehserien: Phonetik, Textlinguistik, Ubersetzungstheorie. Tubingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag.
Hofstede, R. (2007a) De Heilige Koe van de Standaardtaal. See www.hofhaan.nl/2007/rokus-hofstede/de-heilige-koe-van-de-standaardtaal (accessed 27 January 2017).
Hofstede, R. (2007b) De Paradox van Denissen. Filter: Tijdschrift over Vertalen 14 (1), 5–7.
Hofstede, R. (2007c) Het Gebod van Bernlef. Filter: Tijdschrift over Vertalen 14 (2), 13–15.
Jaspers, J. and Van Hoof, S. (2013) Hyperstandardisation in Flanders. Extreme enregisterment and its aftermath. Pragmatics 23 (2), 331–359.
Koster, C. (1997) Eindredacteuren als Kwaliteitsbewakers. Filter: Tijdschrift over Vertalen 4 (2), 27–30.
Laureys, G. (1997) Den Svensk-nederländska/nederländsk-svenska Ordboken. En bibirektionell Ordbok i ett dubbelt binationellt Perspektiv. Nordiska Studier i Lexikografi 4, 249–255.
Martin, W. and Smedts, W. (2009) Prisma Handwoordenboek Nederlands met Onderscheid tussen Nederlands-Nederlands en Belgisch-Nederlands (1st edn). Houten: Prisma.
Masschelein, D. (2004) Blikvanger: Neruda in het Nederlands. Hermes: Mededelingenblad Van De Onderzoeksgroepen Van Het Depar-tement Toegepaste Taalkunde 1 (2), 28–30.
Michielsen, G. and Van de Velde, G. (1998) Ondertiteling bij de VRT. Deus Ex Machina 22 (84), 32–35.
Naaijkens, A. (2009) Het Vertaalpleidooi – een Jaar later. Filter: Tijdschrift over Vertalen 16 (2), 20–26.
Nederlandse Taalunie (2005) Referentiebestand Belgisch-Nederlands 1.0. Leiden: Instituut voor Nederlandse Lexicologie.
Nederlandse Taalunie (2008) Literair Vertalen van twee Kanten bekeken: Vertalers en Uitgevers aan het Woord. See http://media.taalunieversum.org/taalunie/publicaties/Literair_vertalen.pdf (accessed 27 January 2017).
O’Connell, E. (2003) Minority Language Dubbing for Children: Screen Translation from German to Irish. Oxford: Peter Lang.
O’Connell, E. (2007) Translation and minority language media: Potential and problems. An Irish perspective. In M. Cormack and N. Hourigan (eds) Minority Language Media: Concepts, Critiques and Case Studies (pp. 212–228). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
O’Connell, E. and Walsh, J. (2006) The translation boom: Irish and language planning in the 21st century. Administration: The Journal of the IPA 54 (3), 22–43.
Ockers, L. (1998) Fernsehuntertitelung in Flandern. Translation Journal 2 (4). See http://translationjournal.net/journal/06subt1.htm (accessed 27 January 2017).
Remael, A., De Houwer, A. and Vandekerckhove, R. (2008) Intralingual open subtitling in Flanders: Audiovisual translation, linguistic variation and audience needs. The Journal of Specialised Translation 8 (4), 76–105.
Schyns, D. (2002) Wie heeft er schrik van Zuid-Nederlands? Pleidooi voor een tolerantere Houding ten Aanzien van Zuid-Nederlandse Taalvarianten. Filter: Tijdschrift over Vertalen 9 (4), 37–45.
Schyns, D. and Noble, P. (2008) Neerlandofonie: Pleidooi voor een transnationale en transcontinentale Taal. Ons Erfdeel 2, 98–107.
Slembrouck, S. and Van Herreweghe, M. (2004) Teletekstondertiteling en Tussentaal: De Pragmatiek van het Alledaagse. In J. De Caluwe, M. Devos, J. van Keymeulen and G. De Schutter (eds) Taeldeman, Man van de Taal, Schatbewaarder van de Taal: Liber Amicorum (pp. 853–875). Ghent: Academia Press.
Van den Bulck, H. and Van Poecke, L. (1996) National language, identity formation and broadcasting: Flanders, the Netherlands and German-speaking Switzerland. European Journal of Communication 11 (2), 217–233.
van der Sijs, N. and Willemyns, R. (2009) Het Verhaal van het Nederlands: Een Geschiedenis van twaalf Eeuwen. Amsterdam: Bert Bakker.
Van Hoof, S. (2010) Taalvariatie op de Vlaamse openbare Omroep: Substandaardisering in Fictieprogrammas vroeger en nu. Handelingen 64, 167–185.
Vandenbussche, W. (2010) Standardisation through the media: The case of Dutch in Flanders. In P. Gilles, J. Scharloth and E. Ziegler (eds) Variatio delectat: Empirische Evendenzen und theoretische Passungen sprachlicher Variation (pp. 309–322). Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
VRT Vertaling en ondertiteling (2009) Stijlboek 888: Teletekst Ondertiteling. Brussels: VRT.
VRT Vertaling en ondertiteling (2010) Normen en Instructies voor Open Ondertiteling. Brussels: VRT.
Willemyns, R. (2003) Het Verhaal van het Vlaams: De Geschiedenis van het Nederlands in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden. Antwerp: Standaard Uitgeverij.
Willemyns, R. (2013) Dutch: Biography of a Language. Oxford: University Press.