Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: Analysis of dubbed and subtitled insults into European Spanish

Abstract

The treatment of insults –understood as words within offensive language whose function is hurting the addressee's feelings (Ávila-Cabrera, 2016)– in audiovisual translation (AVT) always poses a challenge to audiovisual translators: because of the semantic/pragmatic load these terms have in the source text (ST), the effect caused in the target text (TT) and culture, and because of the difficulty in transferring them in an idiomatic way. Certain formulas do not always maintain the effect that some words have in the ST. In addition, the translation techniques used may not even be faithful to the original dialogue exchanges. This paper aims to analyse all the insults uttered in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (Tarantino, 2019), and in its dubbed and subtitled versions into European Spanish. In order to do so, I will pay particular attention to the speaker's intention (Grice, 1969), whether the insults found in the ST can be viewed as examples of friendly banter or whether, by contrast, the speaker's intention was offending. Ávila-Cabrera's (2023) taxonomy of translation techniques will be used to delve into the manner in which insults were translated to the TT to determine whether or not the semantic/pragmatic load of these terms is transferred (being toned up, maintained or toned down) or not (being neutralised or omitted).The point of departure of this case study resorts to the initial hypothesis that dubbing transfers more insults into European Spanish than subtitling due to the technical features of the former. The aims of the study are: to determine (1) how faithful the dubbed and subtitled version insults were towards the ST, that is, whether or not the load of the insults is transferred to the TT and to what degree; (2) which AVT mode transfers the greatest number of insults to the TT; (3) if the insults transferred had the intention of offending or not; and (4) if the insults tend to foreignisation or domestication. In order to do so, a multidisciplinary methodology will be used based on a descriptive translation studies (DTS) and pragmatics approach.