Abstract
The present article sets out to explore the under-researched relationship between linguistic (im)politeness and audiovisual translation, by taking the speech act of requests as object of analysis in English films and in their dubbed Italian versions. As dubbing constraints often lead translators to depart substantially from the original utterance, the study shows how linguistic changes can result in alterations of the (im)polite load inherent in the requests from original film versions. The study focuses on pragmatic strategies for realizing requests in English film dialogues and shows that dubbing constraints may underlie the adoption of different pragmatic strategies for the requests of target-language dialogues. The (im)politeness shifts that this linguistic modification process entails may make the same character come across as more or less (im)polite in the target-language version and are, for this reason, worth investigating.
Highlights
This article aims to bridge the gap, existing in audiovisual translation research, regarding the relationship between linguisticpoliteness and dubbing constraints
The rationale behind this study is that exploring whether and to what extentpoliteness-related pragmatic features are subject to modifications in AVT is of crucial importance, becausepolite speech very much contributes to characterization
Research has often addressed the issue of how audiovisual constraints in dubbing and subtitling limit translators’ freedom in their linguistic choices, which earned audiovisual translation the label “constrained translation” (Titford, 1982)
Summary
This article aims to bridge the gap, existing in audiovisual translation research, regarding the relationship between linguistic (im)politeness and dubbing constraints. The present contribution aims to shed light on the impact that linguistic changes of the original utterance, brought about by the need to respect dubbing constraints, have on the pragmatic and (im)polite import of the translated speech act. Linguistic (im)politeness has a critical role in shaping people’s relationships: whether we perceive our interlocutor to be polite or impolite very much determines whether we come to like or dislike him/her (Spencer-Oatey, 2005). It is hardly surprising that, when consuming a product of fiction (be it a narrative text or a film), how characters’ personalities are construed, as well as feelings of sympathy or dislike for them, are largely dependent upon (im)polite speech strategies On the other end of the vertical plane of film communication, which involves the collective sender and audience (Guillot, 2017), viewers, tapping into their repertoire of (im)polite norms in everyday speech, draw on characters’ (im)polite language to arrive at the characterization intended by the collective sender
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