Error Analysis of Yorùbá-English Subtitles in Nollywood Movies: The Case of Two Grammar Components

Abstract

This paper explores some selected Yorùbá movies with the aim of identifying and classifying errors committed in their subtitles. The focus is largely on morphosyntactic component of the target language (English). The study randomly selected four Yorùbá Nollywood movies. A total of sixty-six (66) structures were randomly transcribed from the screen. The study is carried out against the background of Government and Binding Theory. It is found that errors in translation/subtitling of Yorùbá Nollywood movies are becoming worse. M55ost of the sentences lack grammaticality. More specifically, Spec-Head Agreement, Extended Projection Principle and case filter, are the most flouted conditions. Also, most of the structures lack accurate morphological marking; the errors identified are duplication of (inflectional) morphological features, outright loss of inflection, and lack of agreement feature between items that require inflectional markings. This study predicts two implications of these errors. First, that there is a subtle threat to the industry; it may result to decline in home consumption of the production from the industry. Second, that the industry constitutes a threat to the learning of English among young viewers; some, especially children are likely to learn errors in the course of watching such movies. Lastly, non-Yorùbá viewers may erroneously consider Yorùbá to be a pro-drop language due to frequent omission of the nominative singular pronominal, I. Thus there is the need to respond quickly to this in order to salvage the situation. It is thus recommended that professional editors should be recruited into the production team for better performance.