In intralingual subtitling, it is a well-known fact that technical constraints, that is, lack of time and space, restrict translators in their preferred translation alternatives and force them to compress the contents. Subtitlers are also often instructed to increase the readability of subtitles, for example, by simplifying sentence structures and avoiding less frequent vocabulary such as dialectal words. Therefore, the translation process inevitably leads to reduction of linguistic variation. Nevertheless, one crucial aim for translators is to create an illusion of linguistic varieties that have been used in film dialogue in the source language in order to characterise personalities, make a difference in the atmosphere between scenes, etc.
In modern Swedish crime films, an important role in film narration is played by the emotionality of characters. Not even heroic police officers and other crime investigators are solely shown as hard-boiled professionals but in some scenes also as human beings with emotional reactions. In this paper, I intend to focus on the subtitling of emotionality in a Swedish crime film, Münster’s case (Münsters fall, Sweden 2005). The method is drawn from appraisal theory, which is an approach to exploring the evaluative use of language (White 2006). When exploring attitude in texts, the appraisal framework distinguishes between affect, judgement and appreciation. Affect concerns positive or negative emotional dispositions that are typically indicated in texts by means of adjectives and adverbs. The focus of this paper lies on affect and as such the paper aims to investigate adjectives and adverbs in the Swedish dialogue and Finnish subtitles in Münster’s case. Subtitles will be analysed by contrasting them with the Swedish source text dialogue. In addition, light will be shed on how subtitles reflect affect and therefore contribute to creating the illusion of linguistic variety with emotional features. Furthermore, the material will be viewed from the angle of multimodality in order to capture the interplay of affect between word, picture and sound in subtitling.

References
White, P. R. R. 2006: Evaluative semantics and ideological positioning in journalistic discourse - a new framework for analysis. In Mediating Ideology in Text and Image: ten critical studies. Lassen, I. (ed.), Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 37–69.

Karita KERKKÄ is a PhD student at the Department of Translation Studies, University of Helsinki (Finland). Her research focuses on subtitling Swedish crime films with special attention being paid to linguistic variation in Finnish subtitles. She has also taught translation and interpreting courses, for example, translation from Swedish into Finnish and subtitling.