The dubbing process of swearwords and insults into Italian: Translator versus dialogue writer (original) (raw)
Related papers
The pragmatic dimensions of swearing in films: Searching for coherence in dubbing strategies
Journal of Pragmatics, 2023
Swearing is exploited to release strong emotions, attack the interlocutor's face and build interpersonal solidarity, both in spontaneous interactions and in film. In audiovisual translation, it tends to be toned down or omitted, with research mostly explaining neutralisation as censorship-driven and treating the translation of taboo language as an internally-undifferentiated, arbitrary procedure. In the present corpus-based study we move away from the external, socio-cultural motivations for loss to assess whether specific pragmatic, structural-functional and textual dimensions of swearing account for preferred translational strategies and impact the translational outcomes. All occurrences of F-words in a parallel corpus of Anglophone films and their Italian translations are examined in their bilingual concordances at the utterance level and in the wider multimodal context. The quantitative and qualitative analyses outline the interaction between structural-functional patterns and pragmatic functions with reference to the translation strategies of full translation, mitigation, de-swearing and omission. The findings unveil coherence in Italian translators' preferences for pragmatically-motivated cross-linguistically viable language patterns which foreground the heightened emotional charge and the abusive dimensions of taboo words, thus pointing to a principled approach to translational solutions which boost the conflictuality intrinsic to film.
Cadernos de Tradução, 2024
This paper explores the representation and translation of swearwords in a corpus of English Netflix series dubbed into Italian. The TV series selected for this study encompass the most popular genres on the platform, including teen, dramedy, action, and mystery, making them representative of widely consumed content. The analysis begins with a comprehensive examination of the occurrence, extent, and function of swearwords in the original soundtracks, by considering variations across genres and semantic domains. The second part of the analysis offers a detailed exploration of the translation strategies employed to convey swearwords in the Italian dubbing of Netflix series, emphasizing genre-specific differences and the influence of language pair and cultural context on strategy selection. The results distinctly reveal that Italian dubbed dialogues often mitigate the offensiveness of swearwords, in contrast to the vulgarization tendency detected in previous studies for dialogues dubbed in Spanish. This divergence may be attributed to cultural factors and lower tolerance among Italian audiences.
Swearing and the vulgarization hypothesis in Spanish audiovisual translation
Journal of Pragmatics, 2020
This article has been accepted for publication in Journal of Pragmatics. Drawing on the insights of pragmatics and translation studies, this article discusses the so-called vulgarization hypothesis in audiovisual translation (AVT) of Anglophone products into Spanish and aims to test it for the period 2006-2016. The hypothesis posits that contemporary American and British programs dubbed into European Spanish tend to increase the use of swearwords. To test this hypothesis I selected four different series, a sitcom (The IT Crowd), a police drama (Chicago PD), a family drama (Brothers & Sisters) and a thriller (Eyewitness). After identifying a total of 412 coupled pairs in which swearwords were used in English, Spanish or both, I analysed the translation strategies used. The analysis shows that the number of swearwords is increased by means of three main strategies (addition, replacement of neutral words/expressions by swearword, intensification) in 53.14% of the cases. In contrast, toning down and omission strategies occur in 13.88% of the coupled pairs, thus supporting the hypothesis that AVT in Spain tends to vulgarize the original in the dubbed version.
Swearword strength in subtitled and dubbed films: A reception study
In this paper we present the results of the first empirical reception study on the comparative strength of swearwords in two audiovisual translation (AVT) modes. We test the assumption/hypothesis that swearwords are perceived as stronger in writing (i.e. subtitles) than in spoken language (i.e. dubbing), which has led to the long-held translation practice of toning down or deleting swearwords more in subtitles than in dubbing. By means of an online survey, participants were asked to a) rate the psychological distance between the connotative meanings of swearwords embedded in ten film clips on a four-point strength scale, and b) comment on their ratings in open-ended text boxes. The results of various types of quantitative analysis show that our participants do not rate swearwords in subtitles higher than in dubbed clips. The qualitative analysis identified contextual factors (genre/director of film, participating characters and their relationship, setting and linguistic context) as well as viewer characteristics (gender, swearing habits and reactions to swearing) as main determinants of swearword strength. The convention of toning down or deleting swearwords more in subtitles than in dubbed audiovisual products thus seems to be based on an invalid assumption and ought to be abandoned altogether.
Lost in subtitling: how religious profanity is translated in Italian subtitles.
In a country like Italy, that still suffers the influences of a heavy historic past, the use of subtitles for audiovisual purposes is widespread, but still doesn’t meet certain translating standards. The majority of the audiovisual products is normally dubbed because of the impact of the fascism era, that used dubbing for hiding foreign languages from the italian people and also to control them on a linguistic level (Ledvinka, 2011: 29). The aim of this essay is to focus the attention on how in italian subtitles this outcome affects the translation of inappropriate content such as profanity and swearwords, beginning with the premise that profanity on screen has a different effect than when it is heard. In fact, the moment a four-letter-word is written, it acquires more strength (Petillo, 2008: 125). Also taking into account the context in which the reading takes place, because reading is considered to be an individual act, very different from watching (or reading in our case) a movie as a part of a group (Díaz-Cintas, 2001b: 51). I have found particularly interesting how the profanity concerning the religion has been manipulated in order to satisfy the expectations of a TC with a strong Christian sentiment like the Italian culture, as shown in the work of Fay R. Ledvinka (2011) in her What the fuck are you talking about?, largely consulted for this contribution.
Textus, 2021
Film dialogue is characterised by strong emotionality expressed through many linguistic traits, not least swearing and taboo language. Using the Pavia Corpus of Film Dialogue (PCFD), this short-term diachronic study explores how a set of English intensifying expletives, namely bloody, fucking, (god)damn, the fuck and the hell, are deployed in Anglophone films and how they are dubbed into Italian in a timespan of more than two decades (1995-2017). Results show a significant growth in the frequency of intensifying expletives in English film dialogue over time confirming the increase in swearing in Anglophone telecinematic products (Azzaro 2018). The opposite direction is taken by dubbing, where omission and mitigation of expletives have increased considerably in the last decade, leading to a reduction of the pragmatic force of the original texts. The wide repertoire of translational routines employed in dubbing indicates an orientation to both source language expressions (calques) and target language patterns. These findings lead us to reflect on censorship, source text interference, target text adaptation, hybridisation and the increase of phraseological variability over time, which testifies to the dynamicity of translational routines in dubbing and to the distinctiveness of audiovisual discourse in itself.
Audiovisual translation often calls for reduction of words, which are not crucial to the overall message. In translations for Polish television, among words that are usually omitted, are swearwords – even in programmes broadcast late and rated for persons over 18 years of age. The omission of taboo words, when they are excessive and do not affect the meaning, seems perfectly appropriate. There are cases, however, in which the deletion of swearwords may influence the way the audience perception of the programme, e.g. swearing may be a feature of a character’s idiolect. This paper will be focused on the official television and DVD translation of the TV series Dexter (as the translation produced for TVN was later released as the DVD version). The television translation of the programme was heavily toned down, as compared to the strength of the language of the original.
Iranian Journal of Research in English Language Teaching, 2015
This study takes a norm-based approach to analyzing the dubbing and non-professional subtitling of English swearing into Persian in an American movie. The article revolves around three main theoretical frameworks, i.e., Wajnryb (2005), Toury (1995, 2012a, 2012b), and Chesterman (1997). After analyzing the strategies in rendering the original swearing into Persian, the researchers achieved a model of four basic strategies: (a) direct translation with strong force, (b) direct translation with weak force, (c) deletion, and (d) foreignization. On the whole, the results of this research showed that both dubbed and non-professional subtitled versions were target language-oriented with deleting the original swearing as the most frequent strategy. But, the vulgarity and the degree of offensiveness of swearing in the original version were to some extent euphemized in the dubbed version. On the other hand, the non-professional subtitled version, in comparison with the dubbed version, employed...
Vulgarity and Allocution in the Italian Dubbed Version of Taxi Driver
The AALITRA Review A JOURNAL OF LITERARY TRANSLATION , 2011
This article outlines problems that pertain to the dubbing of the film Taxi Driver (Scorsese, 1976) into Italian. Aside from the various constraints of audiovisual translation, such as lip synchronization, it focuses on the extensive omission of vulgarity and on the problem of allocution. Despite the importance of the link between vulgarity and violence in Taxi Driver, much of the vulgarity of the original has been completely suppressed in the Italian. At the same time, in the Italian dubbed version there is frequent inappropriate use of the Italian formal mode of address “lei”, but no lexical items that would justify this use are present in the original. Consequently, the Italian audience’s perception of the main character and ultimately of the entire film is completely different from that of the Anglophone audience.