Abstract
Despite the fact that both state owned (RAI) and privately owned (Mediaset) Ital-ian television channels habitually adopt scantily dressed women in provocative poses to fulfill a purely decorative function on daytime television, a closer look at Italian TV reveals that it is far less liberated than it seems. In fact, in stark contradiction to the apparent unrestraint of autochthonous studio productions, references to sex and sexuality in imported fictional products tend to be severely mitigated in their translated forms. Furthermore, it also appears that sexual behaviour beyond traditional male/female ‘mainstream’ sexual practices becomes in-creasingly taboo in translation, as they too are either toned down or totally eliminated. Relegated to cable and satellite channels or late-night/early morning viewing on one of the privately owned Mediaset channels, programs containing very explicit sexual content such as US produced ‘Sex and the City’ are moderated quite significantly for Italian audiences, not only in terms of the pervasive use of strong, taboo language, but also for explicit references to a variety of sexual practices.This paper will discuss the norms which govern the translation of ‘adult’ materials for Italian TV both from an examination of the linguistic content of the programs themselves and from the point of view of operators involved in the dubbing process.
Highlights
Despite the fact that both state owned (RAI) and privately owned (Mediaset) Italian television channels habitually adopt scantily dressed women in provocative poses to fulfill a purely decorative function on daytime television, a closer look at Italian TV reveals that it is far less liberated than it seems
MacBeal, Nip/Tuck, Desperate Housewives, Big Love and The L Word are just a few examples of series that contain explicit sexual subject matter, namely in terms of unequivocal references to a wide spectrum of sexual activities which often go beyond heterosexual sexual intercourse and the patent naming of genitalia
Over and above the verbal code, visually too, such series include scenes containing nudity as well as explicit sexual behaviour. Given that both visual and verbal sexuality has been traditionally mitigated for Italian audiences, this essay sets out to explore how such alleviation is achieved
Summary
Issues regarding censorship and screen translation have been discussed by several authors. Studies by Chiaro (1996 and 2000a); Pavesi and Malinverno (2000) and Hargan (2006) reveal that taboo terms and coarse language are either suppressed or reduced in Italian dubbed versions of films; findings by Vandaele (2002) display the mitigation of allusions to promiscuity, adultery and suicide in subtitled versions of the films of Billy Wilder in Francoist Spain; while Bianchi’s study of the Italian translation of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (forthcoming) and Bucaria’s work on US television series (this issue) demonstrate that present day democratic Italy tends to liberally tone down sexual references, but even terms of insult which have become de-semantised (cf Bucaria’s discussion of the abusive item ‘moron’). It could be argued that translational choices may depend upon the technical constraints of dubbing, the principal limitation being the issue of lip-synchronization, the fact that mitigation occurs consistently in the presence of references to taboo subject matter, overrules this possibility
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