Translation of multilingual films in Iran in Persian dubbing

Abstract

ABSTRACT Filmmakers increasingly resort to using multiple languages in their work to realistically reflect today's globalised world. However, this multiplicity poses specific challenges in the process of translation for dubbing. This study explores the rendition of Western multilingual films into Persian dubbed versions for the Iranian audience. Films as audiovisual texts have multimodal content, so both verbal and non-verbal elements were analysed. We compared the original versions of a selection of ten multilingual films with the Persian dubbed versions based on two models of analyses [i.e. Sanz Ortega, E. (2011). Subtitling and the relevance of Non-verbal information in polyglot films. New Voices in Translation Studies, 7, 19–34; Zabalbeascoa, P., & Voellmer, E. (2014). Accounting for multilingual films in translation studies. Intratextual translation in dubbing. In D. Abend-David (Ed.), Media and translation. An interdisciplinary approach (pp. 25–51). Bloomsbury Academic]. The results reveal that the most frequently used solution for translating multilingual films at the verbal level is neutralisation, which eliminates linguistic variation, and consequently, the multiplicity of languages in multilingual films is not maintained. Incidentally, a vast range of non-verbal signs is altered to conform to the socio-cultural norms of the target culture.