Translating Culture Specific References on Television

The Case of Dubbing

Irene Ranzato

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317399605
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Filología
• Subtopic: Lingüística

Translating Culture Specific References on Television provides a model for investigating the problems posed by culture specific references in translation, drawing on case studies that explore the translational norms of contemporary Italian dubbing practices. This monograph makes a distinctive contribution to the study of audiovisual translation and culture specific references in its focus on dubbing as opposed to subtitling, and on contemporary television series, rather than cinema. Irene Ranzato's research involves detailed analysis of three TV series dubbed into Italian, drawing on a corpus of 95 hours that includes nearly 3, 000 CSR translations. Ranzato proposes a new taxonomy of strategies for the translation of CSRs and explores the sociocultural, pragmatic and ideological implications of audiovisual translation for the small screen.

1 Introduction

Dubbing has always been Italy’s preferred form of audiovisual translation (AVT). Apart from a modestly growing share of cinemagoers and film experts who advocate the superiority of subtitling over dubbing, it is symptomatic that in Rome—the capital of the country and the city with the largest number of cinema theatres in Italy¹—there is only one cinema which regularly shows films in the original version with Italian subtitles and five cinemas which show films in their subtitled versions on selected days and times. Very few film critics, in their reviews, occasionally recommend their readers to watch some films in the original version with subtitles.² As for dubbing, it is rarely commented on and ends up being mostly ignored as if it were not a part of the end product or too natural a part of it to need any comment. It is a fact that this vital component of the target film is somehow taken for granted by the general public and is seldom put into question by the experts in the field.

Statistical surveys report that, in 2014, 91.1% of people above 3 years of age in Italy watched television and, among these, 88.4% did so every day (Istat 2014: 253). This figure is consistent with the general European trend which stated 97.6 percent as the percentage of television viewers across Europe in 2002 (Spadaro 2002: 2), but a comparison with the data relative to book readers and newspaper readers in Italy³ shows that the percentages are lower and sometimes much lower than the ones relative to many other European countries.⁴ These data clearly show that television is the vehicle of information and entertainment most favoured by Italians.⁵

The percentage of foreign fictional programmes on Italian television is much higher than that of Italian productions. Autochthonous programmes are still a minority against the massive importation of foreign programmes, especially from the USA, that has been taking place since 1956 and, more steadily, since the 1970s.⁶ Foreign fictional programmes on television have always been dubbed. Since the beginning of satellite television in 1994, cable television in 1997, and more recently, terrestrial digital television in 2003, Italian viewers have been given the option to watch most films and serials in the original version with subtitles, but the number of people who avail themselves of this possibility is small, and the large majority watches them dubbed in Italian. However, the increasing presence of audiovisual materials on the internet in the last few years and the spreading phenomenon of fansubbing among young people (Bruti and Zanotti 2013; Díaz Cintas and Muñoz Sánchez 2006; Massidda 2015; Pérez-González 2006) have started a process which will probably change, at least partially, people’s relationship with subtitled programmes in Italy and, presumably, in other countries too.⁷

This substantial exposure to translated audiovisual texts has had an impact on the Italian language, which has been analysed both by AVT scholars (Baccolini et al. 1994; Bollettieri Bosinelli et al. 2000; Freddi and Pavesi 2009; Heiss et al. 1996; Pavesi 2006; Pavesi, Formentelli and Ghia 2014) and by researchers interested in the evolution of the Italian language (Banfi and Sobrero 1992; Cresti 1982; De Mauro 1991; Maraschio 1982; Mengaldo 1994; Pasolini 1972/1991; Raffaelli 1983, 1985, 1991, 1994, 1996, 2001; Rossi 1997, 1999, 2002, 2003, 2008; Setti 2003). Most of the analyses carried out to date clearly show that today’s Italian language contains numerous calques, loan words, and translational routines directly derived from the translated dialogues of films and TV series, particularly from English. Even words which have not entered the everyday lexicon and are recognised as restricted to film dialogue—such as strizzacervelli, partly calqued on ‘shrink’—are considered acceptable in some contexts, generally ironic or comedic.

Studies on dubbing in Italy, however, have not evidenced the differences, if any, between the adaptations for cinema and those made for television, either from a translational or technical (i.e., sound mixing, lip synchronisation, or acting) point of view. This is somehow surprising as the attitude of professionals and audiences towards the two media is very different in present-day Italy. Cinema has gradually come to be perceived as an art form as well as a form of entertainment, and the behaviour of the professionals involved in the creation of the dubbed versions and in the distribution of the films has changed accordingly over the decades. In addition, cinema is perceived by many as a source of culture and/or entertainment which is actively chosen by viewers. On the contrary, works of fiction primarily broadcast on television are considered in Italy purely as a form of entertainment and are, on the whole, more passively received. In this sense, television has traditionally been regarded as a popular medium suitable for mainstream productions and for less-demanding audiences. There is almost no discussion in Italy, if not in academic circles, on themes such as quality TV or auteur television, which have long been the object of television studies and of critics’ reviews in other countries (Edgerton and Jones 2009; Jancovich and Lyons 2003; Leverette et at. 2008; McCabe and Akass 2007; Nelson 2007)⁸. It is impossible to overlook the gap which divides the often very high standard—in terms of script writing, acting, camera work, photography, art direction, costumes, and editing—of the original quality programmes imported from countries such as the USA and the UK from the often much lower standard of fiction shows produced by the Italian neotelevision.⁹

Nonetheless, both dubbing for cinema and for television share some common ground as it was Mussolini and his Fascist government (1922–1943) who created Italy’s dubbing industry from scratch. As it happened in other European countries which experienced similar dictatorial governments, notably Spain and Germany (Danan 1991: 612; Díaz Cintas 2001: 64–66), dubbing in Italy served as one of the most useful tools of control on language and content, and it was actively used to this end. The origins and the evolution of early film dubbing in Italy still weigh heavily in the present day through overt and covert manipulating and censoring practices, on the translators’ attitudes towards the audiovisual text, and on the translation strategies they implement.

The general aim of this book is to describe the strategies adopted by translators in their dubbing of television series from English into Italian. More specifically, I intend to detect the norms, if any, which govern the work of the translators in this field. To draw substantial conclusions, my analysis is conducted on a corpus of television fiction shows which is not only sufficiently large but also varied in terms of genre, content, language use, target audiences and audience reception.

The main focus of my analysis is the translation of culture specific references (CSRs). This subject, which is explored from a theoretical point of view in Chapter 4, has widely been recognised as one of the most problematic translation issues, not only in the field of audiovisuals (Pedersen 2005, 2007, 2011) but also in literary translation in general (Leppihalme 1994, 1997, 2011). Their transfer into other languages and cultures is particularly relevant in the case of fiction television texts as this kind of audiovisual programme usually contains a great number of cultural elements. Their role in the text can be varied, and the specific function they fulfil in the various series composing the corpus is analysed in the corresponding chapters. Generally speaking, such elements are used by authors to give colour and substance to their scripts and to provide the text with features which are often intimately embedded in the source culture (SC) and to which the audience, or parts of the audience, can relate. They stimulate mnemonic associations and at the same time appeal directly to people’s emotions as they can evoke images and feelings that are familiar to the source audience (SA).

As mentioned, the social and historical contexts in which dubbing was originally created in Italy have had an impact on its subsequent evolution that can still be seen when dealing with issues of censorship and manipulation of content. As the specific lens through which I have decided to carry out my translational analysis is that of CSRs, the concept of manipulation seems to be, in this respect, more relevant than that of censorship, as discussed in Chapter 3. Potentially sensitive (and thus potentially more censurable) features such as bad language (swear words, taboo words, etc.) and contents related to political and sexual themes are, deliberately, not the object of this analysis, as they would have opened up new and compelling areas of research. However, as the concepts of censorship and manipulation are closely related, they will be relevant for some of the case studies, in particular Six Feet Under, discussed in Chapter 7.

The methodological foundation of my research is Toury’s (1980, 1995) notion of norms in translation. Descriptive Translation Studies, of which Toury is one of the major representatives, see translation as the result of a socially contexted behavioural type of activity. Toury (1980: 51) defines norms as being central to the act and the event of translating as they are “the translation of general values or ideas shared by a certain community—as to what is right and wrong, adequate and inadequate—into specific performance-instructions appropriate for and applicable to specific situations”.

My aim is to map out the strategies activated by translators in response to cultural constraints and detect the norms that are prevalent in the case of dubbing into Italian. What are the patterns that can be detected, if any? Do the professionals involved in the creation of the new target version (translators, adapters, and dubbing directors) consistently behave according to given patterns? As discussed by Even-Zohar (1990), when an external culture is central and considered an important reference model for the importing system, the texts from that culture tend to be translated preserving many elements typical of the original culture. Even if they are difficult for the receiving audience to understand, these elements are the object of great interest. The examples contained in the corpus are used to verify this assumption. What are, in other words, the translators’ attitudes towards what Lefevere (1992) calls the universe of discourse (objects, customs and beliefs) expressed in the original text in relation to the universe of discourse of their own society?

The main criterion to have guided the selection of the material for this analysis was the need of compiling a sufficiently large corpus since it was deemed that norms, trends, tendencies or regularities in translation could not be detected with sufficient clarity by analysing only one television programme. Not only should the corpus be large, but it should also cover various genres, contain a substantial number of episodes, and possibly involve different adapters so that the findings could be considered repre...