1980-2015 영미권 영화 DVD에서 나타난 욕설의 변천사와 한영자막 번역교육:

English Swearing in DVDs Released in the 1980s and the 2010s and the Implications on Subtitling Education

This study investigates the tendency in the usage of swearing terms in English DVDs during the two periods of 1980s and 2010s. It analyzes the changes in the strength and the frequency of swearing expressions and in their forms and functions, and then discusses the implications on Korean-English screen translations. The followings are revealed and argued in this paper. First, the ‘weaker’ word forms in terms of a scale of offence such as ‘shit’ and ‘damn’ are lower in frequency in the 2010s than in the 1980s, while the frequencies of ‘stronger’ ones such as ‘fuck’ increase remarkably in the 2010s. Second, the Gen (General expletive) function performed mainly by ‘shit’ in the 1980s is largely replaced by ‘fuck’ in the 2010s. Third, it can be construed that as time goes by, the degree of acceptability for swearing becomes higher considering the increasing frequencies in films as in this study, the tendency of which has also been identified in Hughes (1991/1999) and McEnery (2006). Fourth, importantly, translations should reflect the changes in frequency and function appropriately in order to successfully maintain the originals’ perlocutionary effects.