Conveying Frenchness in the Dubbing of Animated Film Ratatouille

Abstract

Summary Due to globalization, migration, tourism and other reasons multiculturalism and multilingualism have become the rule rather than the exception. In this context films, on the one hand, serve as a reflection of multilingual and multicultural reality, on the other hand, multilingualism inevitably occurs by translating films for different audiences since (interlingual) translation involves at least two languages. Films, in which characters belong to different cultures and languages, pose a considerable challenge to translators. Such a case is the American animated film “Ratatouille” (2007), which action takes place in France and most of its characters are French. However, by adapting the film for the main target audience – the children – the character identity is revealed not using complete foreign language dialogues but creatively combining various modes: verbal acoustic (dialogues and lyrics), verbal visual (written texts), nonverbal visual (images) and nonverbal acoustic (nondiegetic music). The same modes are applied to render culture-specific items, especially food and drink names. Since verbal mode varies depending on the target audience, American English source language as well as Lithuanian, Russian and French dubbed versions of the film “Ratatouille” will be compared in order to determine semiotic modes, which convey Frenchness. Additionally, by comparing selected dubbed versions of the film, amusing translations, resulting exactly from the encounter of cultures and languages, will be presented as well. For the research methodological approaches of audiovisual translation, multimodality and comparative method will be applied.