Multilingual Films in Translation

Multilingual films in translation

Audiovisual translation: towards a new scenery

Audiovisual translation (AVT) is one of the most common forms of translation encountered in contemporary societies. The number of audiovisual products available is enormous and increasingly accessible to a wide range of users. AVT represents a separate area of study within translation studies; its terminology is nonetheless far from being settled. Dubbing and subtitling are the two major types of screen translation within the profession and the most widely recognized by the audience, partial-dubbing, interpreting, subtitling for the deaf and the hard-of-hearing (SDH) and audio description for the blind and partially sighted (AD).

During the 1960s and 70s, a number of AVT studies were carried out, but AVT was still limited to a marginal area within the field of ST. It was during the 80s that research in the AVT discipline became productive, with works that concentrated mainly on the issue of dubbing versus subtitling. The 80s also witnessed a significant growth in the audiovisual field reflected by a dramatic rise in the number of publications. The golden age of AVT truly took off in the 90s with the proliferation of literature in the field of TS and the consolidation of a general and academic interest in audiovisual translation.

AVT research has become a very active field in Europe, to the point that two regular international conferences are held annually (Languages and Media, Media for All) and a research group, ESIST (European Association for studies in Screen Translation), has been established to facilitate the exchange of information and to promote professional standards in the training and practice of AVT.

Certain areas have not received enough consideration in AVT studies so far. In recent years, the ever-growing presence of multilingualism in films has attracted the attention of film and audiovisual scholars, who have examined the phenomenon from different perspectives as a specific problem for translators and audiences. AVT academics have focused mainly on the issues involved in the translation of multilingual films and on the possible strategies and techniques that are or can be employed. Other works have addressed such issues as the use of multilingualism to create humorous effects, the issue of ideological manipulation in the translation of multilingual films, and the relevance of multimodality in the translation of multilingual films.

Dubbing and subtitling

Dubbing and subtitling are the most common AVT modes, which are defined as the technical means used to perform the linguistic transfer of an audiovisual text from one language to another. Dubbing is the replacement of the original track of any audiovisual text's original dialogues with a translated track on which dialogues have been recorded, while the soundtrack containing the music and special effects remains; subtitling consists in presenting a written text that recounts the original dialogue of the speakers, as well as the discursive elements that appear in the image, and the information contained in the soundtrack.

In a dubbed film, the viewer watches the original image and listens to translated dialogues; in a subtitled film, the viewer reads the translated subtitles, watches the original images, and hears the original dialogue in another language or languages. Dubbing or subtitling is the best option. This debate is becoming obsolete, since both modalities can now coexist in the same country. The aim of a dubbed version is to preserve the cinematic illusion according to which the characters express themselves in the target language. In the case of subtitled films, the original text and the translated text coexist. Both dubbing and subtitling have to face contextual constraints that influence the translators' work.

Subtitling constraints

• Their written nature
• The physical constraint of available space
• The inevitable reduction of the source text

Dubbing constraints

• The indispensable synchrony between source language dialogue and target language dialogue
• Lip synchronization, especially when characters are shown in close-ups
• Voice-matching, according to which the dubbing actors' voices need to be a credible match for the characters on screen

Countries have been traditionally divided into subtitling and dubbing countries. The opinion of dubbing has been deeply rooted in European countries with one widely spoken language (Italy, Spain, France, and Germany) while less populated countries such as Denmark, Greece, Portugal, the Netherlands, and Scandinavian countries have opted for subtitling. Nevertheless, habits, demands, and expectations of audiences nowadays are undergoing rapid transformation and the dichotomy between countries opting for dubbing and countries opting for subtitling is fading away. Cinema audiences in big European cities now have the possibility of choosing whether to watch the same film dubbed or in its original version.

The current technological improvements have made the dubbing/subtitling division too simplistic, since both AVT modalities can easily coexist in the same country, thanks to the options provided by DVD format. This difficulty now meets with the new challenges of exchange of and access to audiovisual programmes such as digital streaming platforms, legal and illegal peer-to-peer exchange, fansubbing, and fandubbing.

The screening tradition in Italy

Italy traditionally belongs to the category of dubbing countries, more specifically lip-synchronized dubbing. Dubbing became technically viable in 1931 and was immediately used as an ideological tool that allowed censorship and manipulation of films during the fascist regime, when cinema was becoming an important tool of mass entertainment. The choice of dubbing was the natural consequence of a fascist law introduced at the end of 1929, which forbade the use of foreign languages on any occasion. Foreign sound films were made silent and shown in Italian cinemas with brief subtitles that summarized the essence of the dialogues.

The process of dubbing turned out to be a more suitable solution for the Italian audience, also because of the high rate of illiteracy in Italy at the time. The practice of dubbing in Italy has been one of local standardization, explicitation, and naturalization. The number of Italian cinemas that offer foreign films in their original version with subtitles is increasing where multicultural realities and multilingualism are flourishing. Even in smaller cities in order to satisfy not only the increasing number of foreign residents but also locals who would rather listen to the actors' original voices. Although in the past this phenomenon was limited to art house films and film festivals, nowadays it has also been extended to commercial cinemas.

The introduction of mass-storage devices, the DVD market, and television digital platforms have increased the availability of subtitled products and allowed for a continuous re-use and distribution of audiovisual products. Old films that had been distributed on VHS needed to be transferred into the new DVD medium. A traditional dubbing country such as Italy has now adapted to the fact that most of the film releases and television programmes need to be both dubbed and subtitled in order to be distributed on DVD. The increasing presence of and need for subtitling in Italy reflect the recent tendency of this marginal activity to destabilize the central position of dubbing within the Italian polysystem (refers to cultural systems made up of predominant and accepted and rejected products or norms that interact with each other). The coexistence of the dubbed and subtitled versions that characterized the DVD format has enhanced the "vulnerability" of AVT. This vulnerability leads to a "defensive" style of translation, aimed at assuring the viewers that...