Similarities in adaptations of scripted television formats: The global and the local in transnational television culture (original) (raw)
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2021
Television content has traditionally been associated with the cultural identity of a given territory, although in an increasingly global world, this relationship is under debate. From a comparative qualitative analysis of the Spanish scripted television format (STF) series Los Misterios de Laura and its adaptations for the United States and Italy, this research identifies differences between these versions in terms of narrative approach, television conventions, production context, and the use of the cultural imaginary. The findings imply the existence of aesthetic and narrative mechanisms associated with the production of cultural identity in STF fiction. They also reveal the existence of a belief within television culture that some audiences have tastes and expectations that depend on their cultural proximity to the content. This research highlights the relevance of the cultural and televisual productive contexts of each country to understand their adaptation processes.
Transnationalization of Television Fiction in Ibero-American Countries
The present OBITEL Yearbook is the sixth of a series started in the year 2007, and it reflects the maturity of a methodological model that combines quantitative study with the contextual analysis of television fiction, its transmediation into other screens and the sociocultural dynamics that are circumscribed to each of the different member countries. OBITEL is made up of eleven national research groups that throughout a year systematically monitor fiction shows that are broadcast through open television channels in their respective countries. The results of this monitoring are presented through the singularities and tendencies of fiction in each country. In addition, every OBITEL yearbook has a comparative chapter that provides a general panorama of the member countries. Fiction, as industry and format, is one of the most representative cultural and media products of television in Ibero-America. Its cultural, symbolic tradition is a place of agreement and disagreement that is now the setting not only of the main characters' loves and intimate secrets in the telenovelas and series, but also that of public life, politics, the citizenship, since ever more fiction anchors its narrative on the multiple problems that affect us as a region and at the same time separate us as countries. The Obitel countries decided to make the theme of " transnationalization in the fiction television " the topic of the year for this 2012 Yearbook, with the objective of mapping the characteristics of the transnational flows among and outside the countries participating in this project. OBITEL 2012 reflected on the three spheres where the transnational element makes an impact or is reflected: the industry, the contents and the flows and audiences.
2016
The second chapter outlines all the pragmatic and cultural aspects I took into account for my analysis. In the first part of the chapter, I make a theoretical comparison between, on the one hand, the characteristics of everyday conversational routines and, on the other, of those of telecinematic discourse, which is the basis of my dissertation. Specifically, as concerns conversational routines, I introduce the concept of vagueness and its main features, namely hedging, discourse markers, and modality, which I use as variables for my study. For each of these three topics, I provide definitions, characteristics and functions in texts. I then provide a definition of predictability and taboo language, which are the features of telecinematic discourse. The second part of the chapter is devoted to pragmatics and to cultural aspects of language. First of all, as regards pragmatics, I define the term "speech act" and describe its function, the development of its concept throughout the decades, and the distinction between perlocutionary, locutionary and illocutionary acts. I also draw a comparison between Austin's and Searle's views on this matter. Secondly, I introduce Brown and Levinson's Politeness Theory, and the concepts of positive and negative face and positive and negative politeness. As for the cultural aspects of language, I base my research on the distinction between Low Context Communication and High Context Communication orientations, focusing in particular on the languages I analysed. The third chapter is in a way a link between the theoretical and the practical part. It presents the TV series I considered for my analysis: Skins, Shameless, Broadchurch (Gracepoint in the American version) and The Thick of It (Veep in the American version). Each of them is described in terms of plot, setting, duration, and characters. I also introduce the figure of characters in TV series, describing their influence on the text and context. The fourth chapter is the first one related to the analysis of my data. After a brief introduction to corpus-based studies, I subdivide it into four parts, each of which focuses on the analysis of respectively cultural references, colloquial expressions, taboo language and discourse markers. For each section I present the results in the form of tables and graphs, and discuss the reasons for possible differences and similarities among the three versions of the same transcript and give relevant examples. The final chapter is related to the cross-sectional analysis of the speech acts I chose to consider in my research, namely offers, requests, orders, apologies, thanks, and suggestions. The data are broken down according to several variables, including clause types, such as declaratives, yes/no questions, WH-questions, exclamations, modal verbs others are errors, that is the frequency and the weight of mistakes and the reaction of the user to them, and satisfaction, i.e. whether the product satisfies the user. Related to accessibility, another term that should be mentioned is legibility, that is the complete availability of the product for any kind of audience. On the other hand, one can reach the top by improving the quality of the product by making its employment as easy as possible (readability). This last point is something that can be easily handled nowadays, but legibility is far more difficult to manage; indeed, the subtitler must pay attention both to the translation and the layout (character, size, number of lines etc.), in that subtitles are not only functional for the audiovisual product itself, but also represent a way to teach foreign languages and to decrease illiteracy. 1.2 Types of Audiovisual Translation The most popular types of Audiovisual Translation are "dubbing" and "subtitling". As Pedersen (2011:4) states, dubbing replaces the source language soundtrack with a target language soundtrack, while subtitling keeps the original soundtrack, and superimposes a translation on the visual image of the film or TV programme. Apart from them, other AVT strategies are available: Voice-over, which is performed by a speaker that reads a script during a show on television, cinema, or a theatre; it is, usually, pre-recorded and placed at the top of the original soundtrack. It was used in the past for radio commercials that were broadcasted live, with actors, crew and an orchestra. Nowadays, it is common for TV programmes to use voice-over instead of the whole process of dubbing, because it is more demanding in terms of money and time. In these cases the audience hears the original voice at a lower volume, and the translator's voice at a higher volume. Simultaneous subtitling, which is performed by means of speech-recognition technology. During a live show, a re-speaker listens to the live speech and repeats it (also summarise and simplify it if necessary) to a speech-recognizer that automatically creates captions. The re-speaker does not have to worry about repetitions or hesitations because the software erases them, and also about noisy is going on onto the screen, on stage or in the painting by describing them in detail in terms of colours, facial expressions, gestures etc. Unfortunately, this kind of facility is not available everywhere, that is why there are no specific criteria and rules. The important thing is to find suitable words and expressions to describe what is going on in order to make the hearer understand it completely. Multilingual Diffusion: the option of choosing the language on a TV menu among a range of languages. Captions: unlike subtitles, they provide further explanations that aim to let the viewer fully understand what s/he is watching. Usually written by the director, they consist of stage directions like places, dates, names, years and help clarify the context of the representation. Displays: they consist of, for instance, letters, newspapers titles, road signs, posters that belong to the image. Usually, they are subtitled or, in the case of dubbing, an audio description is used to describe the image. Pop-up glosses: used for Japanese anime, they are hints that pop up on the top of the screen with explanations, usually coming from the manga, that help the audience to fully understand it. (Kay, De Linde, 2009:02) 1.3 Audiovisual Translation in Europe In the AVT environment, European countries are usually divided taking into account the three main types of AVT: dubbing, voice-over and subtitling. A clear distinction between them in these terms is quite impossible to make not to mention that things work differently for cinema and television. Following the survey made by EACEA, Education,
Television Fiction Genres: Creating & Thinking Global (English Version)
Television Fiction Genres: Creating & Thinking Global (English Version), 2019
Academic assignment which consists in the development of a viable proposal for the adaptation of Atypical international television series in a new one for its consumption in Spanish television fiction attending to various aspects such as the narrative concept, the description of new characters or the link of the project with other national formats, among others.
Transmedia Production Strategies in Television Fiction
The present Obitel Yearbook is the eighth of a series started in 2007 and it reflects the maturity of a methodology that combines quantitative study with the contextual analysis of television fiction, its transmediation into other screens and the sociocultural dynamics that are circumscribed to each of the different member countries. Obitel is made up of 12 national research groups that systematically monitor, throughout a year, fiction shows that are produced and broadcast through open television channels in their respective countries. The results of this monitoring are presented through the singularities and tendencies of fiction in each country and in a comparative chapter that provides a general overview of television fiction in the member countries. Fiction, as industry, genre, and format, is one of the most representative cultural and media products of television in Ibero-America. Its cultural and symbolic tradition is a place of agreement and disagreement that is now the setting not only of the main characters' loves and intimate secrets in the telenovelas and series but also that of public life, politics, and citizenship, since even more fiction has been anchoring its narrative on the multiple problems that affect us as a region and, at the same time, identify us as countries. The Obitel member countries chose as topic of the year for this 2014 Yearbook the study of the " transmedia production strategies in television fiction " , aiming to analyze how television networks have been incorporating transmedia strategies into their fiction productions, either through scripts that build stories, characters, products, and practices, which are characterized by the constant interaction with social networks, or through actions of transit and expansion of the original fictional universe to other screens and platforms. In other words, the analyses carried out in the Obitel Yearbook 2014 aim not only to map the transmedia productions strategies present in the 12 countries that make up the research team but also to address this current topic based on different theoretical and methodological approaches.
Narratological Approaches to Multimodal Cross-Cultural Comparisons of Global TV Formats
VIEW Journal of European Television History and Culture
This article cross-culturally compares different versions of the Quebec sitcom/sketch comedy television series Un Gars, Une Fille (1997-2002) by examining the various gender roles and family conflict management strategies in a scene in which the heterosexual couple visits the male character’s mother-in-law. The article summarizes similarities and differences in the narrative structure, sequencing and content of several format adaptations by compiling computer-generated quantitative and qualitative data on the length of segments. To accomplish this, I have used the annotation function of Adobe Premiere, and visualized the findings using Microsoft Excel bar graphs and tables. This study applies a multimodal methodology to reveal the textual organization of scenes, shots and sequences which guide viewers toward culturally proxemic interpretations. This article discusses the benefits of applying the notion of discursive proximity suggested by Uribe-Jongbloed and Espinosa-Medina (2014) t...
This article analyses the transmedia contents created around 33 Spanish television series broadcast in 2013 by national and regional TV networks. The article reviews the TV series’ official websites, in which the transmedia contents are made available, and organises the wide variety of transmedia formats created around the sample of TV series, based on the different touchpoint categories, which refer to any content or strategy that allow viewers to engage with a television brand through other media and platforms. The results indicate that there is an overwhelming presence of TV contents that are repackaged or adapted to the new medium or platform and that there is still a lack of transmedia expansion through contents that are actually new, differentiated across media, and narratively relevant.
Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2013
Our paper focuses on the cultural representations of the American continent conveyed through the soap operas broadcasted in Romania. The methodology of research is based on a sociolinguistic study. The sociolinguistic study includes a questionnaire, prepared in the Romanian language and semi-direct interviews with Romanian respondents. The questionnaire is applied to 100 Romanian viewers across generations in order to find out their cultural representations of the American material and symbolic practices of everyday life across soap operas. The data are processed and the contents of representations is analysed based on quantitative and qualitative techniques.