Replotting and recharacterisation in dubbing: Renarration of audiovisual fiction

Abstract

ABSTRACT This research takes advantage of Constructive Narrative theory to investigate the strategies of ‘replotting’ and ‘recharacterisation’, as manifestations of renarration in Persian dubbed foreign fictions. To this end, five Persian dubbed foreign fictions were purposefully selected for a contrastive analysis of source text content and their target language renderings. Taking the four core inter-related features of narrativity including temporality, relationality, selective appropriation, and causal emplotment, the study argues how audiovisual (AV) translator(s) participate in the re-construction or reframing of the events and characters in the target audiovisual text, which in turn would both influence the audience’s interpretation and understanding of the narrative and help circulate the desired version of the original. The findings of this research are assumed to contribute to the clarification of the politics of official dubbing and translation in broadcasting in Iran.