"Parfait de traduction". The translation of culture specific items for the Spanish audience in films about French cooking

This paper tries to show the way in which the world of French cooking is presented to the Spanish audience in two audiovisual texts made in America: Ratatouille (2007) and Julie & Julia (2009). An analysis of two North American culinary theme films as if they were parfaits is provided, the translation (or non translation, in some cases) of Culture Specific Items (CSIs) into Spanish being one of the layers. A count has been made of all the strategies followed in the translation of CSIs; particular attention is devoted to the translation of food terms, proper names and other cultural aspects of the films. This first layer of our parfait. Working together with the linguistic code in the building of an image of the French cuisine is the second layer, the dubbing performance, which shows a French accent partout. At a third level, the use of French music in both films contributes greatly to a recreation of a typically French atmosphere. This part of the analysis refers to the musical code, designed to help sell the French image. The combination of the various meaning codes will prove delicious in the real gourmet kitchens at Ratatouille’s and Julia’s

Audiovisual Translation as a Tool for the Dissemination of Scientific Research

This paper gives a thorough overview of some of the audiovisual productions made to this day under the auspices of the University of Zaragoza with the aim of disseminating scientific knowledge. It unveils what research groups and audiovisual producers are most active, whether their videos have been translated to English and if so, which translation mode has been chosen. The analysis of a sample taken from the most productive groups reveals that the practices applied in subtitling for parameters like spatial layout, duration, and text editing need to be improved to enable optimal readability and comprehension, and a good international reception of these productions

Translation of temporal dialects in the dubbed versions of Shakespeare films

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

The Evolution of Cockney: Features and Influences on Estuary English

Este trabajo de fin de grado trata de entender las mayores influencias que del Cockney en el habla de los jóvenes británicos del sureste de Inglaterra, mediante el estudio de su evolución en el último siglo. El ensayo pone en perspectiva las características más importantes de los tres aspectos del dialecto: fonética, gramática y léxico. Para esto, se ha seleccionado un corpus que ilustrase la descripción que los académicos dan sobre el Cockney, y, de esta manera, poder ver la evolución que el dialecto ha podido tener. Este estudio es principalmente descriptivo, y contrasta los diferentes periodos temporales de esta variedad lingüística. Al revisar el sociolecto tradicional de Londres, las influencias que este ha tenido en los británicos se pueden apreciar claramente. El trabajo sugiere que esta nueva variación lingüística del sureste de Inglaterra no es simplemente una variación del Cockney, sino que se trata de un dialecto completamente diferente, aunque esté muy influido por este. Esto se debe a que ha tenido muy poca variación y en muchos casos tal variación lo ha distanciado incluso más del acento RP (pronunciación recibida) en vez de acercarlo. Esto implica que la gramática y el léxico del inglés estuario debería estudiarse más a fondo para demostrar su estatus de dialecto

Audiovisual materials: a way to reinforce listening skills in primary school teacher education

This paper aims to show the effective use of audiovisual materials in the teaching of EFL to primary school teachers. For that purpose a representative sample of undergraduate students of the Degree in Primary Education with a pre-intermediate B1 level was selected. The students, whose ages ranged from 18 to 22, belonged to the so-called E-generation (Prensky 2001). In the first stage of the study a questionnaire was distributed in order to shed light on our students’ level of English as well as on the ways and resources they have used to learn English. It revealed that oral communication skills (listening, speaking and pronunciation) were usually underestimated. Bearing in mind these results, the present study proposed two main activities, one focused on listening comprehension and another on the improvement of pronunciation through audiovisual material

Gaining a Voice

Students lack a voice of their own in secondary school; the English class could be the perfect place where to regain their voices and freely speak to the world. Unfortunately my thesis seems to assert that some English classes are not spaces where positive relationships and real communication among its members are fostered. In other words some English classes are still non-places where the language spoken is a non-language, just a constraining, restrictive code

Dialect Diversity in the Middle English Period

Languages around the world are not homogeneous. Any language is bound to suffer dialect variation within its grammar, lexis, and pronunciation and Great Britain is not an exception. There was a time in the UK when differences were at their peak. That happened during the Middle English period. The main issue of this paper is to comment on the most relevant differences within two great dialectal areas of Great Britain –North and South– by focusing on two texts from that period, specifically, from the 14th century. Therefore, the differences shown are a matter of geography, rather than chronological. Each text –the Northern manuscript The Bee and the Stork and the Southern text Ayenbite of Inwyt– has been analyzed both syntactically and morphologically in order to find out the most remarkable differences between them. This paper concludes with an explanation of the most relevant differences according to dialect and their gradual homogeneity as a consequence of the development of Standard English in the 15th century

Dubbed to Absurdity: Michael Scott’s Change of Personality in The Office's Spanish Translation.

AbstractThis dissertation aims to analyze the Spanish translation of The Office (US) in order to demonstrate how it manipulates the portrayal of Michael Scott’s personality. The analysis is based on Zabalbeascoa’s classification of jokes and Molina and Hurtado’s classification of translation techniques. The use of a two-layered comedy and a large amount of wordplay makes this show particularly difficult to translate. Thus, this paper will follow Castro’s steps to explain how he translated it. The analysis reveals that by gradually losing Michael’s charm and wittiness in the target text, the final product that reaches the target audience is slightly changed and they will never get to know the original Michael Scott.ResumenEste trabajo tiene como objetivo analizar la traducción al español de la versión americana de The Office para demostrar cómo esta manipula la personalidad de Michael Scott. El análisis está basado en la clasificación de chistes de Zabalbeascoa y en la clasificación de técnicas de traducción de Molina y Hurtado, y este trabajo sigue los pasos que tomó Castro al traducir la serie. La traducción de esta serie es particularmente compleja, ya que la versión original cuenta con muchos juegos de palabras y con una comedia bastante peculiar, llena de dobles sentidos. El análisis muestra que en la versión traducida se va perdiendo la carisma y el ingenio de Michael Scott hasta el punto de que el producto que llega a la audiencia española está ligeramente cambiado y esta audiencia nunca podrá conocer al verdadero Michael Scott.
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Where is RP going?: A Study of the British Royal Family's Speech

This dissertation aims at tracing the evolution that Received Pronunciation has experienced from its origins to nowadays. This evolution is followed from a historical, social and linguistic perspective, which reveals that RP may be diluting into other varieties of British English. In order to test this hypothesis, the Refined RP of the Royal Family has been taken as a symbol of steadiness that may have been affected by these changes. For this purpose, a corpus of video files has been selected with data from 1953 to nowadays, taking Queen Elizabeth II and the heirs to the throne, Prince Charles and Princes William and Harry, as representatives of the Royal Family’s speech. Following the evolution of several phonetic and phonological features through the samples, it is concluded that the Queen’s and Prince Charles’s accents are moderately adapting to the new times while Princes William and Harry’s RP is much more advanced and similar to the general, educated speech of their young contemporaries. These results would imply that RP is rapidly changing and probably, therefore, merging into more modern varieties such as Estuary English

A Sociolinguistic Approach to Downton Abbey English: Social Class, Gender, Geographical Origin and Context.

This undergraduate dissertation aims to study the variations in speech of the main characters in the British television series Downton Abbey, variations that are motivated by different extralinguistic factors, such as social class, gender, geography and context. Therefore, the characters’ speech has been examined with respect to these factors, in order to find the most representative linguistic features displayed in each of them. The reason why this specific corpus has been chosen for the main objective is that it presents a wide range of accents and dialects of the English language along the six seasons of the series. More specifically, twenty-five episodes from all these seasons have been used for the analysis. The results of the study indicate that, linguistically, the main features and differences are found in the field of vocabulary and phonology. They demonstrate how these extralinguistic factors influence the speakers’ way of speaking and, consequently, provide information about their identity and lives.<br /