Multilingualism and Multiculturalism in Family Guy: Challenges in Dubbing and Subtitling L3 Varieties of Spanish

Abstract

Multilingualism and multiculturalism are verbally and visually recurrent in the sitcom Family Guy (1999-in production) through a combination of a main language of communication (L1) and other languages (L3) in the source language (SL) or source text (ST). The use of L3 is tantamount to tokenism and stereotyping characters, especially those whose recurrence is incidental and part of jokes. This paper compares two versions of the episode “Road to Rhode Island” (American and Spanish DVDs) and addresses a scene to analyze the linguistic challenges and lexical choices in dubbing and subtitling L1 and L3 in two geographical varieties of Spanish: Latin American Spanish and Peninsular Spanish. In this regard, this study focuses on the role and function of L3 in translation, the techniques to represent L3 in translation, L1 and L3 translation techniques, and which techniques are used in translation. Overall, this paper explores how the Spanish DVD adds a new L3 in the target text (TT) to maintain its original function in subtitling and dubbing, and the differences in the American DVD: L3TT omission in subtitling and L3TT change of function and meaning in dubbing, which ultimately accentuates linguistic and cultural misrepresentation and stereotypes.