The Perception of Dubbing by Italian Audiences

Between January and May 2003, Italy’s main TV channels broadcast an average of 352 hours of dubbed produce each week. The privately owned Mediaset group alone broadcast 218 hours weekly, thus qualifying as the most significant sponsor of the TV dubbing industry in Italy. Programmes which undergo the process of dubbing in Italy are mainly films and TV series, for a total of over 2000 minutes airing on weekdays and as might be expected, most produce is translated from American English. But what do we know about the quality of the translation of such programmes? In an era of instant communication with any location on the planet, ever more discerning audiences must surely be aware of the myriad of “culture bumps” (Leppihalme 1997) with which they are presented and with which screen translators have had to deal prior to airing. In extreme cases audiences are even witness to a radically different text from the original. Are audiences aware of this? Are they conscious of the fact that the language they hear is more artificial than the customary artificiality of TV talk (Goffmann 1981)? And even if they are, does this matter? After all, if a programme is a huge commercial success, is it of any importance if it is lacking in linguistic nuances or if it is culturally impenetrable in places? Moreover, should audiences be left to work things out independently as is traditionally the case, or could screen translations somehow assist audiences in understanding target texts to the full? All these issues involve quality, a problematic area which has been largely ignored as the European dubbing industry has invisibly gone ahead and done its own thing without much external control. This paper will illustrate the research design of a large scale research project which sets out to assess the quality of dubbed television programmes in Italy. Based upon a corpus of 1000 *mpg files reduced from over 300 hours of dubbed TV programmes, by means of Web Technology, a robust sample of respondents (over 5000) Italian viewers have been tested on their perception of dubbed Italian

Intercultural theatrical encounter and the dramaturgy of surtitles

Theatre surtitles have tended to be seen as a necessary inconvenience. However, recent technological developments have streamlined the provision of translated captions and these advances are influencing awareness of and attitudes to the use of surtitles in theatre spaces. Taking the ITA’s Roman Tragedies as an illustration, this article examines the application of surtitling technology in theatre translation. The intermedial performance of surtitles positions surtitles within new media dramaturgy, creating a form of interlinear translation. The dramaturgical effect of the integration of surtitles into production demonstrates how technological intervention can operate to co-produce the humanity of intercultural theatrical encounter. / Les surtitres de théâtre ont eu tendance à être considéré inconvénients nécessaires. Cependant, les développements technologiques récents ont simplifié la fourniture de sous-titres traduits et ces progrès influent l'utilisation des surtitres dans les espaces de théâtre. En étude de cas, cet article prend l'œuvre d'Ivo van Hove, Tragédies romaines [tragedie romaine in italics, please], pour examiner l'application de la technologie surtitrage en traduction théâtrale. La performance intermédiale des surtitres résonne avec la nouvelle dramaturgie médiatique, ce qui crée une forme de traduction interlinéaire. L'effet dramaturgique de l'intégration des surtitres dans la production affiche l'interaction de l'intervention technologique avec l'humanité de la rencontre théâtrale interculturelle