Translating English slang into Ukrainian: A study of Pulp Fiction and Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood

. This research focuses on translation strategies and techniques for rendering slang in Quentin Tarantino’s films “Pulp Fiction” and “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”. The material of the research was the original scripts for the films and their translations into Ukrainian. Defining translation strategies when transferring English slang into Ukrainian involved: frequency analysis of the slang words; semantic decomposition of the slang words to establish their meanings; and comparison of the words to reveal consistent patterns of translating English slang into Ukrainian. Slang words fucking, fuck, shit, goddamn, motherfucker make up 3.6% of the total wordcount in “Pulp Fiction” and 1.33% in “Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood”. They mainly function as exclamations, nominations for something inferior, as euphony, or to denote a despicable adversary. Literal translation has been registered in 31.73% in “Pulp Fiction” and 30.98% in “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”, explicitation (6.07% and 26.03%,) substitution (39.75% and 48.8%). Slang words were neutralised in 15.45% and 16.8%, omitted in 21.34% and 21.72%. The study hypothesises that the techniques involved show a correlation between the semantic transparency of the slang word and the strategy chosen.


Introduction
Rendering slang words is one of the problems audiovisual translators are often confronted. In this paper we focus on "Pulp Fiction" and "Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood" by Quentin Tarantino with a special attention paid to slang words and their translation into Ukrainian.
Quentin Tarantino's films are noted for their ambiguity, but the notorious violence often gives his characters depth which make such aggressive content more morally justifiable. The films usually trigger overreaction both from audiences and critics (1)(2)(3)(4), with "Pulp Fiction" (1994) and "Once Upon A Time in… Hollywood" (2019) being no exception due to their utter polysemiotic character "comprising several signifying codes that operate simultaneously in the production of meaning" (5: 16).
The object of this study is centred on the textual (verbal) component of the films, and more particularly on the offensive or rude language (6), mainly represented by slang words, frequently used in the source text and rendered into Ukrainian in translation. Slang is a sublanguage used to make the level of discourse more informal, refuse conventions or ease social exchanges. (General) slang is not group-restricted as argots or jargons that (re)create social identity. Slang is extremely innovative and expressive. The contextual analysis proves that slang may serve heterogeneous purposes and trigger different, even divergent effects: from sympathy to jocularity and offensiveness. Some expressions may be quite neutral when used in jest to mock people, but become quite offensive when used with sarcastic intonation or in a conflict situation (even more in audiovisual products that literally reconstruct those factors). It should be noted, that slang is a kind of a grey area that shares boundaries with colloquialisms or taboo words. Most scholars indicate that obscene words should be considered a subcategory of slang as its most elemental phenomena. Some slang words can be described as verbal weapons because they are meant to insult or demean people (7). Besides, all the obscene words detected in the films are registered in numerous slang dictionaries (7,8,9,10). "Slang is the language that says no. Born in the street it resists the niceties of the respectable. It is impertinent, mocking, unconvinced by rules, regulations and ideologies. It is a subset of language that since its earliest appearance has been linked to the lower depths, the criminal, the marginal, the unwanted or even persecuted members of society. It has been censored, ignored, shoved to one side and into the gutter from where it is widely believed to take its inspiration and in which it and its users have a home. It remains something apart, and for many that is where it should stay" (11: 6). The "lower" register of slang makes it suitable for characterising the characters: gangsters in "Pulp Fiction", and the criminal group Manson's family in "Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood". Slang is understood as socially unmeasured, substandard language, highly expressive and evaluative, characterised by limited functionality and overlexicalization of certain domains. The deeper psychological understanding of slang makes us think of defence of the ego against the superego and our simultaneous eagerness and reluctance to be human. Slang resembles (and often embraces) profanity, since it substitutes destructive physical action. It is used mainly not to communicate ideas, but rather an attitude, a feeling, or a verbal action (9).
"Pulp Fiction" articulates the semiotics of gangster genre, identifies the gangsters with the corruption of the society (a symbol of popular and mass culture) (12). The main characters in this movie are "a bunch of gangsters doing a bunch of gangsters' shit, who speak and swear as real gangsters are supposed to speak and swear" (13: 16). The plot of "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" is set in 1969 and involves the killing of a young pregnant actress Sharon Tate by the gang called "Manson Family". The main charactersactor Rick Dalton and his backup Cliff Booth -are going through a crisis in their film careers during Hollywood's golden age (1).
Ukrainian translation of "Pulp Fiction" was performed by ICTV studio in 1995, while "Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood" was translated by Oleh Kolesnikov and LeDoyen Studio in 2019. The translations were highly appreciated by both the audience and the professional translation community.
The study aims at determining translation strategies and techniques for rendering English slang in "Pulp Fiction" and "Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood". Audiovisual translation is understood here as translation of verbal elements of an audiovisual text (14). Employing frequency analysis, semantic decomposition and contextual analysis of the slang words in "Pulp Fiction" and "Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood", the paper explains translation strategies and techniques.

Methods
Swearing (using obscene slang words) is so frequent in both films that it should be accepted as the basis of protagonists' idiolects. One of the tasks of the research was to determine the slang words' frequency by statistical analysis.
The overall wordcount in the English scripts for "Pulp Fiction" is 168,755, of which there are 316 slang words instances analysed. For "Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood" the wordcount for the English scripts is 89,952, of which there are 167 instances. The scripts taken as corpora were analysed with the program WordSmith Tools to acquire a list of words that appear statistically more often in the texts. The analysis focused primarily on the frequency rather than the semantic, grammatical, or pragmatic levels. Still examination of dispersion patterns and concordances are also useful supplementary forms of analysis. It should be noted, however, that despite the obvious scientific appeal of statistical analysis results, the results should be verified and supplemented by analysis at other language levels and other methods (15).
When discussing translation strategies, 'foreignization' and 'domestication' are used respectively for a translation strategy which is source-text oriented, word for word, structure for structure and literal; and for that which is target text-oriented, free, natural, transparent and message for message (16). It is widely known that slang words are not used in a literal but in an emotive sense (13). Moreover, their literal meanings are sometimes faded or completely lost. As such, the translation of slang is not merely translating lexical items from a source language into a target language. It is a process of rendering the style (register) of language and, therefore, the culture of a source language into a target language. The concept of translation strategy varies at the macro-and micro-levels and some scholars claim that neutralization, toning up or down are "translation strategies" for rendering multidimensional linguistic phenomena, such as idioms or slang (17).
A translation technique is a micro method for operationalizing a general or globalizing translation strategy. Each strategy involves certain techniques contributing to the objectives: literal translation, borrowing, calque, explicitation, substitution, transposition, compensation, omission, reformulation, etc. (18).
Semantic decomposition of words has been used in the study to define the whole scope of meanings they may acquire. Further on the content analysis of the words encountered has been performed to detect the words' exact meanings in the films. Maintaining semantic structure and transferring the functions the words entail in the original is one of the most successful solutions. Still, there is always some kind of difference, semantic or pragmatic, which prevents the translation from functioning in exactly the same manner as the original text. The tone appropriateness presumably becomes as important as the semantic equivalence. Comparative analysis of the source scripts and their translations has been carried out to detect the techniques adopted by the translators.
The data have been classified according to the translation techniques and strategies with a special emphasis on meaning in context. The hypothesis was that the semiotic principle of transparency, mainly semantic transparency, leads to semantic predictability (19) and potential translatability of the slang words.

Research results
The present paper attempts to explore problems the translators encounter when dealing with obscene slang words and to define predominant strategies and the most productive techniques applied. The Ukrainian translations of "Pulp Fiction" and "Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood" serve as the sources for data and are used for illustrative purposes. Some regular English-Ukrainian correspondences of obscene slang words in Tarantino's films will also be provided.
Our data from films scripts' analysis performed by WordSmith 6.0 have shown that slang words are among the most frequent meaningful words both in "Pulp Fiction" and "Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood". The following fragment contains more or less half of the slang words omitted in the translation presumably due to the high tempo and emotional load of the scene: ST: 01:17:50,506 --> 01: 17 Slang words are mainly polysemous and the question of whether polysemy is a stable semantic structure or whether a word embodies its meaning only in context is still unresolved. We first resorted to four slang dictionaries to observe the full scope of meanings the words under analysis may hypothetically acquire. The words under analysis were fuck, fucking, shit, motherfucker and goddamn. The lexicographic sources were "Dictionary of contemporary slang" by T. Thorne, "Dictionary of American slang" by B. A. Kipfer and R. L. Chapman, "Oxford dictionary of modern slang" by Ayto, J., Simpson, J. and "American Slang Dictionary: The Ultimate Reference to Nonstandard Usage, Colloquialisms, Popular Jargon and Vulgarisms" by R. A. Spears (7,8,9,10). The entries' analysis resulted in the following data systematically collected by consulting slang dictionaries.
Fuck and fucking mean much more than just 'related to sex' (20). Fuck may function as a noun to nominate something or somebody obnoxious, disgusting or contemptible; as a verb to denote destruction (of sb's trust (to cheat, to swindle, take advantage of) or sb's possessions (to botch and confuse, ruin). Fucking may serve as an intensifier used with other adjectives for emphasis or an adjective with overall negative meaning of 'displeasing', 'despicable', 'damnable', 'lousy', 'cursed', 'wretched', 'rotten', 'accursed'.
Aside from the literal meaning 'to defecate', shit implies destructive actions 'to browbeat, to annoy (someone), to deceive, bamboozle, confuse someone'. Derived from the literal meaning of 'excrement', shit as a noun serves to nominate something or somebody obnoxious, disgusting, despicable, contemptible.
Enantiosemy holds a particular interest for slang studies since "Semantic opposition within one lexeme is a rare phenomenon in contemporary languages and is justly regarded as undesirable" (21:132). Two of the studied words show the coexistence of one meaning and its opposite within one polysemantic lexeme. Motherfucker may nominate both a 'problem or difficulty' and a 'fine, interesting, or remarkable event', while shit may characterize something or someone 'awful and inferior' as well as 'excellent and admirable'.
Another important objective of the paper was to analyse contexts in which slang words were used, focusing on pragmatic purposes and effects. The corpus-based evidence proves that the same word may function differently throughout the texts. For instance, the "Concordance" module shows quite a number of different collocational sets of the slang words in "Pulp Fiction" and "Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood".    It is arguably legitimate to provide qualitative analysis of the slang words' semantic ambiguity in the studied films with regard to the meanings they convey in the analysed audiovisual products. While studying collocation sets provided by WordSmith Tools, it soon appeared that it was possible to divide the examples into relatively distinct groups and establish an approximate typology of cases with regard to their meanings. The slang words' frequency in the films was the following: fucking (fuckin) (122 cases in "Pulp Fiction", 72 in "Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood"), fuck (66 cases in "Pulp Fiction", 33 in "Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood"), shit (75 cases in "Pulp Fiction", 38 in "Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood"), goddamn (27 cases in "Pulp Fiction", 21 in "Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood"), motherfucker (26 cases in "Pulp Fiction", 3 in "Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood"). The percentage below was calculated from this data.  Only rare Ukrainian words can convey this variety of meanings and match the same frequency of use. Consequently, the translator applied different lexical means to render semantics and maintain the corresponding tone in the target texts. Comparative analysis of the source and target scripts has been carried out to detect the techniques adopted by the translators. The translation solutions were analysed according to the following classification of translation techniques: (1) literal translation, (2) calque, (3) explicitation, (4) substitution, (5) transposition, (6) compensation, (7) omission, and (8) reformulation with a special emphasis on meaning in context (14). Among the mentioned techniques, calque and transpositions were not relevant for our data, so the classification reduced to literal translation, explicitation, compensation, omission and reformulations. Literal translation entails the direct transfer of a word from a source language (SL) into a target language (TL) maintaining the semantics and the tone: Reformulation is used to express idea in a different way, by rephrasing the source texts still retaining their meaning and social stylistic register (21). To verify the overall tendency of dealing with the transfer of slang words, the number of instances where the register has been toned up, maintained, toned down, neutralised or omitted (21), the techniques were rearranged according to this criterion. Thus, literal translation, explicitation and substitution are the instances of maintaining the register of the source words, while compensation tones up the target word, and omission neutralises it. Following Baker's ideas, we may define style maintenance, toning up or neutralization as translation strategies for rendering slang.

DISCUSSION
This case study has been based on the scripts of two films by Quentin Tarantino. Taking into account the statistics provided by WordSmith 6.0, slang words are among the most important linguistic tools, and their omission or neutralisation may entail significant losses. The analysed slang words, of course, belong to the obscene vocabulary -"a type of language use in which the expression refers to something that is taboo and/or stigmatized in the culture; should not be interpreted literally; can be used to express strong emotions and attitudes" (22: 53). The words shit and fuck (fucking) from the analysed films can be used as representative examples; they literally refer to tabooed items: excrement and an act of copulation. However, the cases when they were used in their literal meaning are quite insignificant: fuck ("Pulp Fiction" 2.8%, "Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood" 9.3%).
Despite the fact that slang words may nominate things, people or concepts, in the analysed films, their functions are often reduced to emotional: fuck (85.9% cases in "Pulp Fiction" and 68.75% in "Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood"), shit (39.4% cases in "Pulp Fiction" and 42.9% in "Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood") goddamn (66,6% in "Pulp Fiction" and 52.4% in "Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood"). Quite often, they function as semantically devastated interjections or intensifiers as fucking (61% in "Pulp Fiction" and 68% in "Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood").
Translating Quentin Tarantino's dialogue presents a considerable challenge to any translator because of the difficulties encountered while dealing with offensive and taboo elements, while at the same time having to abide by the technical requirements of this particular mode of audiovisual translation (22). Besides, according to J. Diaz-Cintas, the quality of audiovisual translation depends not only on the asymmetry between languages and cultures, but also on the conceptual perception of translation, based on the official position of the authorities and the dominant ideology (23). Ukrainian translators claim that no censorship but some inner restrictions influenced the process: "We were provided the detailed script to do our job professionally. Unfortunately, not all layers of meaning laid down by Tarantino worked well for our audience, as well as cross-allusions and self-quotations… We often quote the phrase of American colleagues: "Respect the domestic" (24). "If there is abusive or slang vocabulary in the source, avoiding it signifies hypocrisy and frightening self-censorship" (25).
In this context, translation is always a compromise between the ethics of performers and the restrictions imposed by society and (or) producers or distributors of audiovisual products (26). Even in countries with strict regulation of the language of audiovisual products, substandard vocabulary finds its way into alternative non-professional translations, the so-called "fansubs" (14).
Commenting on the translation strategies, Oleg Kolesnikov, the translator of "Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood", emphasises that "a character may pronounce motherfucker with hatred, fear or some other emotion. The most important thing is rendering emotion. I usually offer several options: some harder, some softer. During the recording, the director chooses what is best" (24).
As mentioned, obscene words used by Quentin Taranitino's characters are slang words. Slang is a universal phenomenon that exists in the majority of cultures. Of course, the volume of slang, as well as its accessibility in the society or mass media, differ in different countries. Still, we can claim that despite the polysemy of most of the English words, the Ukrainian language can provide a number of social-semantic equivalents registered in the specialised dictionaries (27,28), fully maintaining both the meaning and the tone of the source. Sometimes the colloquialisms have been suggested as equivalents instead of slang words, but the slight toning up was insignificant.
The translation techniques chosen for this study follow the classification by J. Díaz-Cintas, P. Orero and A. Remael (18) but for calque and transpositions that were not peculiar for the data. Literal translation was registered in 31.73% ("Pulp Fiction") and 30.98% "Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood"), translators used explicitation strategy in 6.07% and 26.03% cases correspondingly, substitution was presumably the most productive (39.75% and 48.8%), compensation equalled 15.45% and 16.8%. The overall quantity of omission was unexpectedly low (21.34% and 21.72%). An insignificant number of slang words were reformulated at 6.34% and 1.35%.
The overall hypothesis of the study was that translation solutions are primarily determined by the function performed by the slang word, and "harder" or "softer" options provided by the translators are those maintaining the obscene tone, neutralizing or toning up of the target word.
The following are some of the most illustrative examples of both films. As mentioned above, the word fucking was mostly used as an intensifier adjective. In most cases, it has been translated literally by using the corresponding Ukrainian slang word бляха: The slang word fuck actually embraces two concepts: 'to copulate with' and, figuratively, 'to deceive', and has no intrinsic meaning, but has an offensive force (29). Some scholars claim that fuck derivatives invoke the physiological and emotional intensity of sexual experience; transferring it into other domains, where it is used to characterize situations, activities and experiences as intensely good or intensely bad (30). This is best exemplified by the use of fucking to express both negative (Fuckin' Marsellus knew it!) and positive (You're Rick fucking Dalton. Don't you forget it!) meanings.
The counterparts for fucking meaning 'displeasing', 'despicable' are usually colloquial adjectives довбаний, чортовий, свинячий, кінчений: ST: So pretty please, with sugar on top, clean the fuckin' car. TT: Не відмовте в любязності, вимийте чортову тачку! ("Pulp Fiction") ST: Oh, that fucking bitch! TT: Чортове стерво! ("Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood") Explicitation implies introducing something in the translation which was only implicated in the original, but can be derived from the context (31). Explicitation aiming at specifying the level of emotion helps to maintain the overall tone: ST: Don't fuckin' talk to me that way, man. TT: Не жени біса, приятелю! ("Pulp Fiction") ST: That's the fucking problem! -Come on.

TT: Щоб їм повилазило! ("Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood")
The translators didn't opt for omission very often. The dubbing director of "Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood" confirmed that "sometimes you notice mounting flaws and inconsistencies. Sometimes you have to smooth them. For example, when in the original the phrase does not quite work with the video, or when the editing joint shows the jaw of the character, who is standing half-turned to the camera, is still moving, and the sound is gone" (24). Presumably, the cases where the slang words were eliminated might at least partially have been technically justifiable.
Rendering fuck required similar techniques: literal translation, compensation or omission. As mentioned above, fuck was mostly used as an exclamation to express negative emotions. Most often it was literally translated as бляха: Explicitation aims at expressing situation elements, which remained unexpressed (at least verbally) in the source text. The mentioned scenes containing slang words described respectively: property (car) damage, sham acting and sexual promiscuity. The translators resorted to подряпати 'to dent, scratch, scrape or rip', пересрати 'to spoil something, especially to spoil a person's chances', and ходити наліво 'to behave in a sexually promiscuous fashion' to make information clearer.
If fuck meant 'misfortune, unpleasantness, hostile behavior or ill-treatment' it was usually omitted or neutralized (compensated) by що: One of the possible reasons for the slang word neutralisation is technical restriction: the need for synchronising the translation with the audio and visual cues of the original (18). The phonetic synchrony implies concentration on syllables, open vowels, bilabial or labiodental consonants, adjusting of the rhythm etc. Ukrainian що in the mentioned examples seems to adhere to synchronisation.
When characterizing something as 'excellent, admirable', fuck was rendered through colloquialism: ST: that-that's one shit-fuck crazy weapon TT: Так! І це, срака-мотика, сатана, а не зброя! ("Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood") As mentioned above, shit was often used as an exclamation of disbelief, disgust, disappointment, emphasis, and the most common Ukrainian counterpart was чорт. Ukrainian чорт doesn't make references to human faeces but still used to disqualify people, objects and situations: Words for faeces are typical taboo swear words in many European languages and shit is, literally, the "dirtiest' of all 'dirty words' in English" (32: 58), like гівно, лайно in Ukrainian. It seems Ukrainians prefer to use гівно, лайно when describing a misfortune, a trouble or difficulty, anything of poor quality, etc., pointing to exactly the same referent as the original shit.
Sometimes the translators explicitated the concept, using a word with more precise meaning, often a colloquialism: манатки, задуп'я etc: ST: Get the wardrobe off, get your shit, and get fucked!

TT: Іди знімай костюм збирай манатки і котися в сраку! ("Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood") ST: Puerto Canyon or some shit. I don't know. TT: Каньйон Пуерто чи ще якесь задуп'я. ("Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood")
In the examples, shit mainly refers to some real objects (face piercing, clothes, remote place or an old car), and these instances were addressed in translation by the words containing corresponding semes: манатки 'shabby clothing', задуп'я 'a highly undesirable town or place'.
Explicitation was often applied to render the meanings 'to tease or attempt to deceive', 'to lie to someone', ' Recurrent connection between the certain meanings and their translation counterparts provides some correspondences that may be treated in future as regular or systematic (See Table 13).

Conclusion
After the cases of slang usage and its translation in Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction" and "Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood" were collected and analysed semantically and pragmatically, they were allocated according to the translation strategies used for slang rendering, and quantified so certain conclusions can be drawn. Slang is one of the most powerful linguistic tools to depict characters, their feelings and emotions. Its neutralising or omission may influence the intended function implied by the author. The present study shows that in spite of notorious national uniqueness, linguistic ambiguity and complex functionality of the slang words, in most cases, they are translatable successfully without significant losses.
English slang words mostly have counterparts (often more than one) in Ukrainian slang or, at least, in colloquial speech. In both analysed films the translators maintained the tone and the meaning in more than 2/3 cases (76.6% in "Pulp Fiction" and 76.4% in "Once Upon a Time in …Hollywood"). The translator succeeded in transferring SL slang into TL slang primarily if the meaning was transparent (denoted despicable humans, anything of shoddy and inferior quality etc).
The translators toned up the utterances suggesting Ukrainian standard words as counterparts to English slang in 8.1% cases in "Pulp Fiction" and 7.37% in "Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood". Transferring SL slang into TL colloquialisms could be considered less successful and usually embraced words with a vaguer meaning (exclamations of disbelief, disgust, disappointment, emphasis).
The words were omitted in 25.25% cases in "Pulp Fiction" and 23.84% in "Once Upon a Time in …Hollywood". More research is needed to provide more insights into extralinguistic constraints the translators confront when omitting slang words.
The study suggests that the techniques involved show a certain correlation between the semantic transparency of the slang word and the strategy chosen. The list of English-Ukrainian slang word regular equivalents can be applied in further translations.