Humour and other catastrophes: dealing with the translation of mixed-genre TV Series

Starting from a trend observed in the Italian dubbing of US series "Six Feet Under" (Bucaria 2005; Bucaria forthcoming) involving the deletion or toning down of most instances of potentially disturbing elements, this paper will take into consideration examples from three US TV series ("House MD," "Nip/Tuck" and "Six Feet Under") dubbed into Italian and presenting a mixture of drama and comedy, in an attempt to analyze the degree of manipulation or adaptation that they underwent in terms of the linguistic representation of clashing genres. With particular reference to the rendering of humorous comments produced in unexpected contexts, the analysis shows considerable manipulation in the translated versions and a consequent decrease in the humorous content of the target texts

Audiovisual Translation of Humor

When trying to offer a survey of audiovisual translation and humor, it will be useful first of all to briefly outline what we generally mean by the former and to delineate its scope. Variously referred to as audiovisual translation (henceforth AVT), screen translation, multimedia translation, or even constrained translation, this sub-discipline of Translation Studies encompasses the study of the linguistic and cultural transference of meaning in texts of a multimedia nature, which in other words imply a polysemiotic, simultaneous relationship between verbal and visual information. The types of multimedia texts that are potentially subject to this kind of interlingual adaptation include, for example, films and film trailers, television programs ranging from TV series to cooking shows and infomercials, DVD special features, websites and online content of various nature \u2013 including for example web series \u2013 videogames, stage plays, and news reports and documentaries

'I didn't think it was appropriate': Considerations on taboo humour in the subtitling classroom

This study uses a qualitative approach to the analysis of the translation strategies adopted by students when subtitling humour conveyed through profanities and dysphemistic expressions, sexual euphemisms, and humour on disability and religion

Genetically modified TV, or the manipulation of US television series in Italy

Although a considerable amount of research has been carried out in the field of global media studies on the ways in which US television and audiovisual products in general travel to different countries, little attention continues to be paid to the cultural and linguistic adaptation that such cross-cultural transfer inevitably requires and to the modifications to which these products become subject in the process. This paper focuses on the adaptation into Italian of a number of recent US television series containing controversial language and potentially disturbing themes, such as references to death, disability, sexuality/homosexuality and drugs. By analysing dubbed, subtitled, and fansubbed versions of such series, this study shows how the dubbed versions of the series tended to be toned down as far as taboo language and subjects are concerned, as opposed to the fansubbed versions and to some extent the official subtitles. In some of the more extreme cases the series seem to have undergone a \u2018genetic modification\u2019 of sorts, with Italian viewers watching sometimes radically different shows with respect to their US counterparts

Lexical and Syntactic Ambiguity as a Source of Humor: the Case of Newspaper Headlines

The paper analyzes some forms of linguistic ambiguity in English in a specific register, i.e. newspaper headlines. In particular, the focus of the research is on examples of lexical and syntactic ambiguity that result in sources of voluntary or involuntary humor. The study is based on a corpus of 135 verbally ambiguous headlines found on web sites presenting humorous bits of information. The linguistic phenomena that contribute to create this kind of semantic confusion in headlines will be analyzed and divided into the three main categories of lexical, syntactic, and phonological ambiguity, and examples from the corpus will be discussed for each category. The main results of the study were that, firstly, contrary to the findings of previous research on jokes, syntactically ambiguous headlines were found in good percentage in the corpus and that this might point to differences in genre. Secondly, two new configurations for the processing of the disjunctor/connector order were found. In the first of these configurations the disjunctor appears before the connector, instead of being placed after or coinciding with the ambiguous element, while in the second one two ambiguous elements are present, each of which functions both as a connector and a disjunctor

Dark humour as a culture specific phenomenon: a study in screen translation

The present study aims at analyzing how dark humour as a cinematic genre travels cross-culturally through a specific mode of audiovisual translation, i.e. dubbing. In particular, it takes into consideration the processes involved in dubbing humour from English into Italian as observed in the English- and Italian-language versions of ten British and American dark comedies from the 1940s to the 2000s. In an attempt to identify some of the main mechanisms of the dark humour genre, the humorous content of the films was analyzed in terms of the elements on which specific scenes are based, mainly the non-verbal and verbal components. In the cases in which verbal elements were involved, i.e. the examples of verbally expressed humour, the analysis was concerned with whether they were adapted into Italian and to what effect. Quantification of the different kinds of dark humour revealed that in the sample of dark comedies verbal dark humour had a higher frequency (85.3%) than non-verbal dark humour (14.7%), which partially disconfirmed the first part of the research hypothesis. However, the significance of contextual elements in the conveying of dark humour, both in the form of Nsp VEH (54.31%) and V-V (V+VE) (21.68%), provided support for the hypothesis that, even when expressed verbally, dark humour is more closely linked to context-based rather than purely linguistic humour (4.9%). The second part of the analysis was concerned with an investigation of the strategies adopted for the translation of verbal dark humour elements from the SL (English) into the TL (Italian) through the filter of dubbing. Four translational strategies were identified as far as the rendering of verbal dark humour is concerned: i) complete omission; ii) weakening; iii) close rendering; and iv) increased effect. Complete omission was found to be the most common among these strategies, with 80.9% of dark humour examples being transposed in a way that kept the ST’s function substantially intact. Weakening of darkly humorous lines was applied in 12% of cases, whereas increased effect accounted for 4.6% and complete omission for 2.5%. The fact that for most examples of Nsp VEH (84.9%) and V-AC (V+VE) (91.4%) a close rendering effect was observed and that 12 out of 21 examples of V-AC (PL) (a combined 57%) were either omitted or weakened seemed to confirm, on the one hand, the complexity of the translation process required by cases of V-AC (PL) and V-AC (CS). On the other hand, as suggested in the second part of the research hypothesis, the data might be interpreted as indicating that lesser effort on the translator/adaptor’s part is involved in the adaptation of V-AC (Nsp VEH) and V-V (V+VE). The issue of the possible censorial intervention undergone by examples of verbal dark humour in the sample still remains unclear

NPIT in the media: An overview of the field and main issues

This chapter explores the field of non-professional interpreting and translation in the media and outlines the main issues and problems

Media paratexts and translation: interdisciplinary perspectives

Drawing on examples from recent promotional campaigns created by streaming platform Netflix, this article reflects on translation and media paratexts from an interdisciplinary perspective. It includes discussion of marketing approaches, political and commercial constraints and priorities, theoretical frameworks, and future directions in media paratext research. It also introduces and contextualizes the contributions included in the special issue Media Paratexts and Translation

Taboo Comedy on Television: Issues and Themes

The chapter offers an overview of issues and themes in taboo comedy on television by way of Humour and Television Studies

End-user perception of screen translation: the case of Italian dubbing

Despite the lack of attention that has been so far devoted by the academic world to audience perception and enjoyment of Audiovisual Translation, it is clear that several lingua-cultural elements of dubbed texts might be problematic for foreign viewers and, as such, deserve further consideration. For example, what do viewers make of the numerous culture-specific references in dubbed texts? Are they disturbed by the unnatural sounding Italian expressions which are obviously calques from other languages? And if not, why do they tolerate them? This essay sets out to fill a gap in the field of research in Screen Translation by providing data on end user perception of dubbed programmes on Italian tv. In order to shed light on some of these issues, an experimental study was set up. A corpus of clips from American tv series dubbed into Italian was collected and shown to samples of viewers made up of cinema and tv experts, linguists, practitioners working in the field of dubbing, as well as lay members of the general public. Each of the clips contained an example of the problematic elements described above, with particular focus on highly culture-specific references and examples of dubbese. After watching the clips, respondents were asked to fill out a questionnaire which set out to measure their understanding and enjoyment of each excerpt. Results displayed widespread poor comprehension of culture-specific references and a varied degree of tolerance to dubbese.Apesar da falta de atenção dada pelo mundo acadêmico à percepção e satisfação do público em relação à Tradução Audiovisual, é claro que vários elementos lingüístico-culturais de textos dublados podem ser problemáticos para os espectadores estrangeiros e, desta forma, merecem ser considerados. Por exemplo, como os espectadores lidam com as numerosas referências culturais em textos dublados? Eles estranham as expressões em italiano que soam pouco naturais e que obviamente são calques de outras línguas? E senão estranham, por que os toleram? Este artigo pretende preencher uma lacuna no campo da pesquisa em Tradução Audiovisual ao fornecer dados sobre a percepção do usuário final de programas dublados na televisão italiana. Com o intuito de esclarecer algumas destas questões, um estudo experimental foi conduzido. Um corpus de clips de uma série norte-americana de televisão dublada em italiano foi coletado e mostrado para grupos de espectadores formados por especialistas em cinema e tv, lingüistas, tradutores, dubladores bem como membros do público em geral. Cada um dos clips continha um exemplo dos elementos problemáticos descritos acima, com ênfase particular nas referências tipicamente culturais e exemplos de “dublês”. Após assistirem aos clips, os participantes responderam a um questionário que mediu a compreensão e a satisfação de cada seqüência. Os resultados apontaram para uma baixa compreensão de referências culturais e um grau variado de tolerância ao “dubbese”