Creativity in pivot audiovisual translation. Parasite subtitled and dubbed in Italian

Abstract

ABSTRACT Creativity in pivot AVT is a burning issue, since the pivot text can be seen as imposing pre-existing patterns, which may limit the translator’s decision-making process and influence their creative output. To verify this, we examined the Italian subtitled and dubbed versions of the film Parasite (Bong Joon-ho, 2019), a well-known example of Korean audiovisual content transferred interlinguistically using English as a pivot language. The preliminary textual analysis of the data showed that both the Italian versions were also created using the pivot translation by Darcy Paquet. Being unable to retrieve the name of the Italian subtitler, we examined the Italian subtitles and found they are very close to the English pivot, often replicating some creative and controversial choices. For the Italian dubbing, we managed to interview the Italian dialogue writer (and dubbing director) and the translator. Their feedback on the translation process and the comparative analysis of the Korean source text, English subtitles and Italian dubbing demonstrated that the Italian dubbing team relied not only on the English subtitles but also on subtitles in other languages and the Korean script to create a text that often departs from the English pivot, and it is closer to the original.