Translation of temporal dialects in the dubbed versions of Shakespeare films (original) (raw)
Related papers
Sederi, 2017
This paper intends to provide a thorough analysis of some linguistic features of Early Modern English present in three Shakespeare movies and how they have been transferred in the Spanish translation for dubbing. To achieve it, a close observation of forms of address, greetings and other archaic formulae regulated by the norms of decorum of the age has been carried out. The corpus used for the analysis: Hamlet (Olivier 1948) and Much Ado about Nothing (Branagh 1993), highly acclaimed and rated by the audience as two of the greatest Shakespeare movies. A more recent version of Hamlet (Branagh 1996)—the first unabridged theatrical film version of the play— will be analyzed too in the light of the translation choices, and the results will be compared with those of the other two films.
Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance, 2017
This article shows how the language of Shakespeare's plays has been rendered into Catalan in three especially significant periods: the late 19th century, the early 20th century, and the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The first section centres on the contrast between natural and unnatural language in Hamlet, and considers how this differentiation is carried out (by linguistic techniques that differ substantially from Shakespeare's) in a late 19th-century Catalan adaptation by Gaietà Soler. The second part of the article investigates the reasons why in an early 20th-century translation of King Lear the translator, Anfòs Par, resorts to medieval instead of present-time language. The last section of the article illustrates how and explores the motivations why Salvador Oliva's first (1985) version of The Tempest is retranslated in 2006 using a different language model. The ultimate aim of the paper is to put forward the hypothesis that, in the case of Catalan, Shakespearean translations are both a reflection of the current state of the language and a major linguistic experimentation that shapes and creates (sometimes through a via negativa) the Catalan literary language.
It is widely agreed that in Italy the art of dubbing foreign films is mainly seen as an attempt to bring the dialogue closer to the audience to whom it is addressed, a fact that has been defined by Sergio Raffaelli as “the need to make it comprehensible to as wide an audience as possible" – (1994: 290, my translation) and explained by Maria Pavesi as “the relative freedom of the dubbing scriptwriter to seek the best rendering in the target language, keeping in mind, primarily, the difficulties that the original would create for the foreign audience" (2005: 22-23 – my translation). This paper illustrates the difficulties met when dubbing two essentially British films set in very different social situations.
The Accented Voice in Audiovisual Shakespeare
The Dialects of British English in Fictional Texts, 2021
The reflections contained in this chapter take the cue from the evidence, sustained with various nuances by more than one author, that, in Elizabethan times, there was not a dialect literature so understood and that “dialects, for Renaissance authors, have nothing to do with ‘home’” (Blank 1996, 3). The lack of connection between dialectal features and regionality arguably applies also to the plays of William Shakespeare: the voices of his non-standard characters are mainly portrayed in terms of class dialects rather than regional dialects (Delabastita 2002, 305) and draw on stereotypes as means to construe individual characterisations and create humorous situations. As Blank goes on to state, “juxtaposing a peasant dialect with the King’s English was, often enough, played for laughs” (Blank 1996, 3). In a way which is perhaps counter-intuitive, given the premises, this chapter will not be concerned with the comparatively few examples of non-standard varieties included in Shakespeare’s plays. This is rather the starting point of an investigation which involves some of the plays’ contemporary afterlives – namely film and television adaptations – and which could be summarised in the following research query: what happens when Shakespearean texts are adapted into audiovisual narratives in which accents and dialects are consistently and sometimes unexpectedly used? Audiovisual adaptations, not only of Shakespeare’s plays, but of the classics in general, often showcase characters speaking with marked accents and/or in dialect even when in the original texts these same characters are not identified by any distinct regional trait. In this chapter I will consider some significant adaptations from both cinema and television in order to highlight some relevant typecastings and understand the function of a given variety in the audiovisual texts, even when, as is generally the case, there is no indication of regionality in the respective Shakespeare’s plays. The latter ‘originals’ have in fact been chosen as a privileged site for investigation exactly because of their comparative lack of non-standard varieties with respect to other more diatopically varied examples in English literature. The addition of regional voices in the relative audiovisual adaptations, conspicuous as it is, renders their function arguably more revealing to the scholar’s eye. Conversely, the use of dialects has rarely been foregrounded in the analysis of these Shakespearean afterlives, neither in relation to the source text nor to their contemporary import. The adoption of this viewpoint will hopefully add facets and further problematise the topic of multilingualism in Shakespeare.
Interjections in Shakespeare’s "Hamlet" and their Polish translations
2019
The present paper aims at investigating the problem of translating interjections from English into Polish. William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and its Polish translations by J. Paszkowski (1961), M. Słomczyński (1978), and S. Barańczak (1990) are chosen as the corpus for the present study. The analysis of the translations of the original English interjections will reveal the translational strategies followed by the translators. The fi rst part of the paper is devoted to a short discussion concerning the defi nition and taxonomy of interjections. Next, the problem of the role interjections play in drama is discussed on the basis of the specialist literature. Finally, different translation strategies are presented followed by the analysis of the corpus material.
Translating Shakespeare for the Twenty-First Century
2004
Most of the essays collected here were first presented as papers at the international conference of the Institute for English Studies of the University of Oporto devoted to the theme of "Translating Shakespeare for the Twenty-First Century" (December 2000). We wish to thank Manuel Gomes da Torre and Gualter Cunha of the University of Oporto for their generous support throughout the project. We are also grateful to the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (Portugal) for funding the Institute's research and academic activities, including the translation conference. Thanks are due also to all the contributors of this volume, both for their adherence to the project from which this book springs and for the kindness with which they responded to the editorial queries which were submitted to them at various stages. Finally, we would like to extend our gratitude to Kristine Steenbergh of Utrecht University, who prepared this volume for publication with great efficiency and a fine sense of accuracy. Naturally, it is the editors who assume full responsibility for any errors that may have found their way into the final version text.
Accent and Dialect in Literary Adaptations and in Translation
The Palgrave Handbook of Multilingualism and Language Varieties on Screen, 2024
This chapter deals with the use of accent and dialect in literary adaptations and in dubbing. Firstly, it ofers an overview of the studies related to their use in literature and it presents and analyses some relevant examples of novels written in the twentieth century. It also investigates the strategies used in their Italian translations. Secondly, it refers to the major studies dealing with the use of accent and dialect in audiovisual products, and considers the flm adaptations of the novels analysed in the previous section, as well as their Italian dubbed versions.