Italian Dubbing Research Articles

“To boldly go where no series has gone before”. Star Trek - The Original Series in Italia: il linguaggio della tecno-scienza, il doppiaggio, il fandom

This essay consists of a critical analysis of the Italian dubbing of Star Trek. The Original Series (1966-1969), which was partially translated and shown on Italian television between 1979 and 1981.The study of the dubbing is approached considering translation as a complex cultural phenomenon (drawing on studies such as Even-Zohar and Venuti's), and using the case of Star Trek also as an example of broader phenomena and dynamics, namely the presence of American science fiction series on Italian television, and the difficult relationship in Italy between humanistic and scientific cultures (here, Pierpaolo Antonello's contributions are the milestones), to which the essay attributes the noticeable simplification and flattening the techno-scientific language undergoes during translation in the Star Trek episodes considered.This general tendency to simplify (and even remove) technical and scientific terminology in the Italian version can be explained by two main factors: the idea that Italian viewers are less well educated scientifically than Americans, and limited investment (in terms of both financial and professional resources), on the part of the TV channel and dubbing company (TMC and ADC).Both these aspects reveal a perception of a television series as merely a commodity product, typical of the years preceding the current new golden age of American series, but still not unknown in contemporary Italy (as has been shown in other cases, by studies such those by Buonomo, Izzo and Scarpino, and Ranzato).The analysis of the Italian dubbing of Star Trek in the present essay is accompanied by a preliminary overview of the translation and airing of American science fiction series in Italy between the 1950s and the 1970s, and by a survey of the fortunes of these series across different media over the same period.Star Trek, at the center of one the biggest and most profitable contemporary cultural franchises, and one of the most well organized fandoms (studied also by Henry Jenkins on more than one occasion), arrived in Italy too with its novelizations and derivative products. The Italian fandom proved to be both remarkably devoted and uncommonly well-informed from the cultural and scientific point of view: after protesting loudly about the poor quality of The Original Series dubbing, the Italian Star Trek Club obtained the right to oversee the translations of many of the subsequent series and publications.

This and That in the Language of Film Dubbing: A Corpus-Based Analysis

Recent research in audiovisual translation has focussed on the language of both original and translated dialogue, revealing different degrees of alignment between fictional dialogue and spontaneous conversation. In this context, demonstratives deserve special attention as they are major means to highlight segments of the current discourse and extra-linguistic reality in speech and may play a significant role in cinematic language as well. Furthermore, demonstratives are an area of dissimilarity between languages, with their translation being potentially subject to interference from the source to the target text. Through a quantitative corpus-based approach, this study explores to what extent demonstratives occur in the language of Italian dubbing, how similar in this respect dubbed dialogue is to Italian spoken language and what translation operations may account for the observed translation outcomes. Drawing on a small English-Italian parallel corpus of film dialogue, all English demonstrative pronouns have been coded for syntactic role, pragmatic function and translation operation. Results show that demonstratives occur to a lesser extent in dubbed film language vis-à-vis both Italian conversation and the source English dialogues. These findings are discussed in terms of the cross-linguistic contrast between Italian and English as well as the convergence of dubbed dialogue towards the model of original Italian film language.

Alfred Hitchcock presents: Multilingualism as a vehicle for… suspense. The Italian dubbing of Hitchcock’s multilingual films.

This study aims to shed light on the role multilingualism plays in Alfred Hitchcock’s films, by examining the different solutions adopted by Italian audiovisual translators to cope with the multilingual situations represented. The comparative analysis carried out between the original versions of the thirteen multilingual films directed by Hitchcock and their Italian dubbed versions has identified three different macro-strategies: first of all, the neutralisation of the different languages present in the original version via dubbing the entire film into Italian. Secondly, the preservation of the different lingua-cultural identities through a combination of dubbing with other screen translation modalities such as contextual translation, and interpretation performed by one the film’s characters. Finally, a third strategy is the quantitative reduction of the multilingual situations present in the original version of the film, with all the inevitable consequences that this may have on viewers’ suspension of linguistic disbelief.

Alfred Hitchcock presents: Multilingualism as a vehicle for… suspense. The Italian dubbing of Hitchcock’s multilingual films.

This study aims to shed light on the role multilingualism plays in Alfred Hitchcock’s films, by examining the different solutions adopted by Italian audiovisual translators to cope with the multilingual situations represented. The comparative analysis carried out between the original versions of the thirteen multilingual films directed by Hitchcock and their Italian dubbed versions has identified three different macro-strategies: first of all, the neutralisation of the different languages present in the original version via dubbing the entire film into Italian. Secondly, the preservation of the different lingua-cultural identities through a combination of dubbing with other screen translation modalities such as contextual translation, and interpretation performed by one the film’s characters. Finally, a third strategy is the quantitative reduction of the multilingual situations present in the original version of the film, with all the inevitable consequences that this may have on viewers’ suspension of linguistic disbelief.

Gayspeak and Gay Subjects in Audiovisual Translation: Strategies in Italian Dubbing

The purpose of this article is to analyse the fictional language of homosexuals as portrayed on the screen, as well as the way in which Italian translators and dubbing adapters have dealt with gayspeak. It means to explore whether the words of the gay lexicon in the English and the Italian languages cover similar semantic areas and whether any lack of balance between the two languages in this particular field may create problems for the translator. On the other hand, various examples from dubbed films and TV programmes will help to investigate whether some of the features of gayspeak are substantially altered in the Italian adaptations and whether these modifications are due to constraints determined by the vocabulary used to define the idiolect of this speech community or, rather, to overt and covert constraints imposed by a culture, the Italian, which has opened up to homosexual themes much more slowly than the Anglosaxon world.

Adaptation processes of taboo-words in the Italian dubbing of Family Guy

Adaptation processes of taboo-words in the Italian dubbing of Family Guy

End-user perception of screen translation: the case of Italian dubbing

Apesar da falta de atenção dada pelo mundo acadêmico à percepção e satisfação do público em relação à Tradução Audiovisual, é claro que vários elementos lingüístico-culturais de textos dublados podem ser problemáticos para os espectadores estrangeiros e, desta forma, merecem ser considerados. Por exemplo, como os espectadores lidam com as numerosas referências culturais em textos dublados? Eles estranham as expressões em italiano que soam pouco naturais e que obviamente são calques de outras línguas? E senão estranham, por que os toleram? Este artigo pretende preencher uma lacuna no campo da pesquisa em Tradução Audiovisual ao fornecer dados sobre a percepção do usuário final de programas dublados na televisão italiana. Com o intuito de esclarecer algumas destas questões, um estudo experimental foi conduzido. Um <em>corpus</em> de <em>clips</em> de uma série norte-americana de televisão dublada em italiano foi coletado e mostrado para grupos de espectadores formados por especialistas em cinema e tv, lingüistas, tradutores, dubladores bem como membros do público em geral. Cada um dos clips continha um exemplo dos elementos problemáticos descritos acima, com ênfase particular nas referências tipicamente culturais e exemplos de “<em>dublês”</em>. Após assistirem aos <em>clips</em>, os participantes responderam a um questionário que mediu a compreensão e a satisfação de cada seqüência. Os resultados apontaram para uma baixa compreensão de referências culturais e um grau variado de tolerância ao “<em>dubbese”</em>.