Phrasal verbs in Italian dubbed dialogues: a multimedia corpus-based study

Abstract

The presence of colloquialisms, set phrases and idioms has often been investigated in AVT studies as a gauge for determining the levels of naturalness and verisimilitude of original film and dubbed dialogues compared to naturally-occurring speech. Up until recently, however, the results of these studies have almost exclusively been based on the analysis of transcribed film data. It will be the aim of this study to explore the frequency of use of a specific linguistic trait of colloquial Italian, i.e. phrasal verbs, in a corpus of original Italian films and original French films and their dubbed Italian versions by considering the totality of the meaning-making resources deployed in the filmic text. To this extent, the corpora used will be a subset of the multimedia annotated database Forlixt 1, developed at SITLEC (University of Bologna at Forlì). Here, the combination of features, such as access to integral filmic data, availability of transcriptions, and annotation of relevant linguistic, cultural, pragmatic and semiotic traits will be explored to study phrasal verbs. Specific constraints of dubbing will furthermore be taken into account, i.e. representation of authentic conversation, influence of the source language, and preservation of the wholeness of the original audiovisual text.