Film Dubbing

The language of Nigerian video films, its choice, and those of subtitling and dubbing, have long escaped scrutiny, and only attracted scholars’ attention within the past ten years. The present study, based on the analysis of 19 films in English, French, Dutch, Igbo and Yoruba and on data gathered from three personal surveys and interviews dated 2009, 2012 and 2013, seeks to add to this burgeoning field by considering whether the language issue hinders the reception of Nigerian films outside their linguistic area, and surveying what has been done so far in that regard. Its finding first reveal that, while European audiences seem to prefer dubbing, Africans opt for subtitling; they also confirm that in the end, the true success of Nigerian films, whether subtitled or dubbed, will be measured in the way they cut across cultures, not just languages.

The subtitling of taboo and offensive language is a virtually unexplored aspect of both the translation and the audiovisual communication fields. The spatial and temporal limitations imposed on subtitles due to the physical constraints of the screen and the need to provide spectators with a comfortable reading speed oblige subtitlers to reduce or condense the length of subtitles by discarding words that are not deemed vital to understanding. Habitually, taboo and offensive words and expressions are among the first candidates to be jettisoned in order to save space, which can entail a loss of information that might have told viewers about a character’s personality, background and emotional state and, at the very least, deprives foreign audiences of exposure to these elements of language which are intimately tied to the source culture and its traditions and belief system. The following is a descriptive study of an audiovisual corpus comprised of three complete episodes from the first, second and third seasons of the Netflix Original series Orange is the New Black, professionally translated into Castilian Spanish and officially aired on the Netflix website. Taking an inductive approach to the taboo and offensive language in the corpus, the researchers analyzed 270 subtitles with over 300 taboo terms and words in order to identify the frequency of the translation strategies used in the transfer from source to target languages and then compared the taboo/offensive load of the subtitles between the source and the target texts to observe the changes in this load. The conclusions reached would suggest that, although some condensation is inevitable in subtitling, skilled translators can minimize the loss of these legitimate and generally colorful language elements, providing viewers with additional and often necessary character and narrative information and allowing them the chance to explore these linguistic features of the source language and its culture in the interests of a richer and more complete viewing experience.

This article emerges out of my ongoing research into the historical developments of cinematic sound from the analogue eras to the digital realm, and conceptualises the specific practices of designing ambient sounds (or a lack thereof) in the ‘dubbing era’ of Indian cinema (1960s to 1990s). The basic argument that I will develop is that the creative practice of designing sound in Indian films of this period inculcated a technologically informed approach using analogue sound processing with expressionistic and melodramatic overtones that led the spectator to imagine the pro-filmic space instead of bodily experiencing it in cinematic sound. In this article, following film analysis and finding actual evidence in the interviews of sound practitioners, I will demonstrate that magnetic recording and dubbing rendered the cinematic imagination of this period as something spectacular, with extravagant songs and dances in foreign locations and actions packed with studio-manipulated and synthetic sound effects. Add to this a deliberate lack of ambience, and this practice triggered a cinematic experience of emotive tension and affective stimulation.

The research project aims to investigate a form of language variation (as represented in fiction) defined here as 'disorderly speech' (DIS). It refers to the representation of linguistic output of a character supposedly temporarily affected by a number of factors, such as drug or alcohol consumption, lack of sleep, or psychological instability. To this end, I analyse examples of fictional drug-affected speech drawn from the film "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" (1998, Gilliam), and its translation into Spanish. The phenomenon is approached considering Mayoral’s thesis on the translation of language variation (1999), Bleichenbacher’s analysis of multilingualism (2008), and Corrius and Zabalbeascoa’s L3 model (2011). The methodology involves identifying linguistic phenomena used in the film to portray a character’s condition that would give rise to some sort of DIS, comparing them with the solutions chosen in the dubbed version as well as the subtitles of the DVD edition to render it, and proposing translation solutions of my own. The results of the study show a partial loss of the disorderly speech effect in the official translations, which could be avoided by transcending the current conventions of the industry and applying the models and strategies proposed by the author.

Este estudio parte de la premisa de que, del mismo modo que el comportamiento, la expresión facial y el lenguaje corporal de una persona pueden actuar de indicios a la hora de reconocer si se encuentra bajo los efectos de alguna sustancia (alcohol, drogas,
etc.), la alteración también se puede apreciar en su forma de hablar. Extrapolada a la ficción audiovisual, esta premisa me ha llevado a identificar un abanico de casos de lo que he denominado lenguaje alterado (Parra López, 2014). Mientras que la alteración resulta incontrolable para el personaje, siempre es deliberada por parte del autor y a menudo desempeña una función narrativa, retórica, estilística o caracterizadora en el texto que requiere la consideración del traductor. A juzgar por el escaso trato que ha recibido en los ámbitos de la lingüística y la traducción, uno podría considerar el lenguaje alterado como un fenómeno periférico, tan peculiar como excepcional. Sin embargo, estudios sobre el tratamiento del alcohol y las drogas en el cine nos demuestran todo lo contrario. Mi ponencia se centra en el análisis de este fenómeno en numerosas películas de habla inglesa, como Leaving Las Vegas (Cazès, Fischer, Stewart, y Figgis, 1995), Almost Famous (Bryce, Crowe, y Crowe, 2000) o The Big Lebowski (Coen y Coen, 1998), y de sus versiones dobladas y subtituladas al español. Lejos de criticar las soluciones de traducción adoptadas, el objetivo es describir la variedad de formas y niveles en los que se manifiesta la alteración en las tres versiones analizadas y despertar la conciencia y el interés de académicos y traductores en esta particular forma de variación lingüística.

This paper deals with dubbing and its specifics in Slovakia. The categorization of countries according to their preference in audiovisual translation is reconsidered and redesigned around the current data regarding audiovisual translation in Europe. The focus of the article then shifts to dubbing in Slovakia and to some extent Czech Republic, where there is a strong preference for dubbing over subtitling in television production. A heuristic basis for the process of dubbing production based on personal experience and observations of the author is introduced and some issues that arise during this process are addressed. The current situation and changes in comparison to the past in the (Czecho-)Slovak dubbing are depicted and analyzed. The paper offers a brief outlook on dubbing from a rather empirical point of view. Introduction The tradition of dubbing is characteristic of only a few countries in Europe. Audiovisual translation (AVT) has a much richer history and tradition in those countries that naturally felt the need to dub or subtitle what was produced in other states and in foreign languages. Some countries opted for subtitling, others for dubbing or voice-over. Even today, we can call certain countries " dubbing countries " and other " subtitling countries " (Gottlieb in Baker, 2001 p. 244) and, although this division has turned out to be insufficient (see e.g. Szarkowska, 2005), it is clear that the tradition of dubbing as a prevailing form of audiovisual translation is present only in some countries. This paper looks closely at how the countries are divided according to their prevailing audiovisual translation preference and then takes a closer look at the process of dubbing production in Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

For the Chinese, Hamlet is identified and has been widely associated with a peculiar voice and name: Sun Daolin who interpreted, dubbed, and recreated the celebrated character with subtlety, depth, and personal charisma. When Laurence Olivier’s masterpiece, Hamlet (1948), was imported and translated in China in 1958, it became instantly a big hit across the nation and an unparalleled apotheosis of translation of and into Chinese accomplished through Bian Zhilin’s masterful translation, Chen Shuyi’s seasoned directing, and Sun Daolin’s virtuoso dubbing and performance. The three of them were prominent artists, scholars, stars, celebrities, and cultural officials in mid-late twentieth century China. My article explores and traces the reception, reinterpretation, and recontextualization of Hamlet in China across different epochs from its huge success in early PRC (People’s Republic of China), through the censure of the work during the Cultural Revolution, to its resurrection and even a broader appeal during the post-socialist, reform era.

Central to this historiography is my attention to the critical, (pro)active, and fluid roles the translators, performers, and creative personnel have played in the process. By highlighting the dynamic, multifaceted screen-sound-public personae these cultural agents have built and their complex negotiations between the variety of texts, cultures, languages, and sociopolitical settings, I show that the search for a Chinese Hamlet is not only a translation, but also a meta-translation (translation-in-translation), an intro-translation (self-reflection) of the very position and dilemma of intellectuals and individual subjectivities in socialist China, and an inter-translation between literature, theater, film, popular culture, and social life.  Moreover, the translation and the translated provide another vibrant angle to investigate Chinese film and cultural production as well as a comparative frame key to understanding China’s sociopolitical change and international relations during the second half of the twentieth century.

The paper compares the original screenplay of My Best Friend's Wedding (1997, written by Ronald Bass) with its Italian version, Il matrimonio del mio migliore amico (by Mauro Trentini, 1997). Among the various genres, romantic comedy creates more difficulties for the dubbing scriptwriter, given the differences between the American sense of humour and the Italian one. Quite a few puns and jokes may prove to be untranslatable. This paper analyses only three aspects of the culture specific references: personal names and nicknames, placenames and the use of pronouns.

Este artículo analiza la recepción del doblaje en España a partir de la encuesta llevada a cabo en 1934 por la revista cinematográfica Films Selectos. Esta encuesta constituye un documento de interés puesto que brinda acceso al punto de vista de los lectores y a los criterios en los cuales se basaron a la hora de apoyar o de combatir el doblaje.

The globalize world that we live in has experience an increased demand for all sorts of products, from exotic food to the ultimate scientific and technological developments. Anything we want is at our fingerprints, but we cannot deal with everything since the beginning: most of the products we can achieve need to be properly adapted to the target country, region or culture that is going to take advantage of it.
One of these products that need to be adapted for foreign consumption is TV series. Focusing on our country, we have experience an increased demand for foreign TV series, especially those coming from the UK and EE.UU. As a result, there has been an increased demand for both translators and dubbing actors in charge of translating and adapting American and British series so that anyone can have access to them in Spain. The problem is that translators in charge of the translation of these series are not equally prepared for this task, and so the results are not always good enough.
The aim of this work is to analyze the dubbing errors committed in the translation of the TV series Arrow (2012- ), specifically focusing on the dubbing errors committed in this series’ pilot.

The global trade in media commodities involves an entire secondary mechanism intended to port, acclimatise, and make palatable foreign content to a local audience. This process, known as ‘localization,’ is typically associated with linguistic conversion but can involve other forms of adaptation such as editing or replacing portions of both sound and image with content specifically tailored to local tastes and customs, a process referred to as ‘culturalization.’ The industry lore on localization and culturalization presents the work of adaptation as an unstable and bewildering terrain requiring constant learning and flexibility. A form of “industrial reflexivity,” this genre of knowledge transfers onto the field of cultural production the temperament of post-industrial, post-national working practices, emerging as “part of both corporate macrostrategies and human microstrategies” for balancing acts of power within the global cultural industries (Caldwell 34).

To illustrate such strategies, my presentation looks at ways of acquiring knowledge in the localization industry by comparing cultural geography publications to the more situated and tacit forms of expertise transfer by practitioners at the dubbing studio. Much ‘culturalization’ theory relies on assumptions about the world that are presented as self-evident: that the market dictates the terms, that success depends on a sensitive adaptation of a film or a game to local contexts, but also, that audiences from various cultures ultimately desire the same geopolitical ideals of social and political order. Upon closer examination of how cultural and linguistic transactions, in the form of dubbed media, we begin to see that abstract assumptions cannot explain what happens in practice. My presentation aims to demonstrate that industry lore introduces new cultural geographies in which culture is positioned as abstract and illusory, and creative work is in constant need of correction and tutelage. How do actors involved in global media trade think? What cultural differences do they imagine, so that they may overcome them? Following the ethnographic turn in critical screen industry studies and production cultures present in the recent work Meyer, Perren, Holt, Deuze, Hesmondhalgh, Tinic, Banks, and others, I will examine how a global media cultural compass is fashioned to create a need for expert navigators, which in turn influences production environments and shapes the experience of dubbed media. Alongside examples from my own post-production studio work, I will analyse the discursive localization and culturalization strategies employed by highly specialized print media (in contrast to direct exchanges of information at the studio) as para-governmentality tools, or psy-technologies, aiming to shape and control “industries, practices, and subjects . . . . in ambiguous and chaotic ways” (Conor 122) for the purpose of dominating foreign markets and mobilizing maximum public attention.

On the face of it, the proposition that translation is an unnegotiable feature of world cinema seems an unproblematic, almost banal, claim, intuitively corroborated by each new globe-spanning simultaneous release of a (Hollywood) blockbuster received as enthusiastically in Chennai as in Kyiv. As scholars arguing for translation’s infrastructure-like function in a globalized world have pointed out, its ‘invisible’ presence is the prerequisite for both its ubiquity and its pervasiveness, in cinema as much as it is in other pathways of the globalized world. Yet, as the South Korean director Bong Joon- Ho said (in Korean) when receiving his 2020 Oscar for Parasite—a first-ever ‘foreign’ film so recognized—the ‘one-inch barrier’ of a subtitle at the bottom of the frame has under some circumstances been an insurmountable obstacle to a film’s global circulation. Studying world cinema under the sign of translation will thus entail charting the mechanisms needed to move films across linguistic fault lines, as well as the pathways determining those flows.

In the aftermath of the Second World War, the introduction of silent 16mm celluloid stock gave rise to a very popular form of cinematic culture in Thailand. This local film production developed in close relation with its largely rural audience and ended at the beginning of the 1970s, when the practice of shooting films in 35mm Cinemascope regained momentum. This research focuses on a non-inventoried archival collection of Thai 16mm movies and retraces their historical context of emergence. The research explores how these low-budget melodramatic fictions, initially interpreted by professional dubbers in live performances, can be characterised as attractions incorporated in the paradigm of an oral theatrical experience derived from older practices of folk drama. The main question addressed is to what extent the wide circulation of 16mm movies might have provided a margin for the popular Thai cinema of that time to become a significant horizon of cultural expression, at the confluence of former local narrative traditions and Cold War modernity.

L’animazione negli Stati Uniti e in Giappone ha avuto origini e vicissitudini differenti ed è stata recepita dal pubblico statunitense e da quello giapponese in modi diversi. L’obiettivo di questa tesi sarà illustrare e mettere in evidenza come queste differenze nei Paesi di partenza, il modo di intendere l’“animazione” e soprattutto di doppiarla, si rispecchi anche e soprattutto nel modo in cui questi prodotti vengono recepiti, adattati, e doppiati nel nostro paese, andando spesso incontro a trattamenti molto diversi per scopi e per il pubblico di destinazione. Per questo la mia tesi analizzerà il caso di due film d'animazione usciti nello stesso anno nelle sale cinematografiche italiane: uno è "Frozen" della Walt Disney. L'altro è "Si alza il vento" dello Studio Ghibli. A corredo del mio studio sono presenti interviste ad alcuni dei doppiatori coinvolti nei progetti d'animazione.