Punctuation Relevance in Subtitle: The Foreign Audience Example

Abstract

This study looked at punctuation mark and their relevance in written information although; the objective of the study is to discover the relevance of punctuation mark in subtitle: The Foreign audience example and to re-echo the need to have a well punctuated write-up in literary genres. The study sees language as a system of human communication. The problem of the study sets in from lots of poor and wrongly applied punctuations, as various forms of signs are seen to be used in some of the movies of the entertainment industry – Nollywood, which in turn, gives rise to wrong interpretation to the foreign audience of that language, and as such, the foreign learner of a particular language, the Igbo example will not enjoy the supposed information. The study adopted the framework of Vinay and Darbelnet principles and strategies as a guide to solving the problem as one of its principles – equivalence was used to relate the movie wrong punctuated subtitles to their supposed target language. The methodology of explication is equally adopted while the study concludes that punctuation errors are involved with wrong application of punctuation mark to written discourses on where it is not supposed to be since punctuation occurs only in written discourses and not spoken.