“Sunt! That’s French with a cedilla!” Subtitling and dubbing The Boys in the Band into Italian


Abstract


Voice is one of the means through which fictional people are characterised in audiovisual products. Through their voice, characters reveal their thoughts and personalities, including external and internal elements, such as their age, geographical and social origins, gender and sexuality, among others. The linguistic variety analysed in this article is the audiovisual fictional representation of gayspeak, which is used to index characters’ homosexuality. This is a case study that focuses on the subtitling and dubbing of the 2020 Netflix adaptation of The Boys in the Band, which is an American drama film based on the homonymous play written by Mart Crowley in 1968; it can be considered a seminal work for gay literature, in that it is allegedly one of the first plays to address homosexuality openly, something that had never been seen before. The original script in English, the Italian subtitles and the script of the Italian dubbing will be analysed in parallel, with particular attention to some scenes which will be selected and discussed on the basis of their relevance in the use of gayspeak and its translation. This research focuses on the excerpts that creatively deviate from the original text, at least in one of the two audiovisual modalities analysed.

 


DOI Code: 10.1285/i22390359v48p245

Keywords: Audiovisual Translation Studies; Gayspeak; sexuality; dubbing; subtitling.

References


Baer B. J., Kaindl K. 2017, Queering Translation, Translating the Queer. Theory, Practice, Activism, Routledge, New York-London.

Baker P. 2008, Sexed Texts, Equinox, London.

Bauer H. 2015, Sexology and Translation. Cultural and Scientific Encounters Across the Modern World, Temple University Press, Philadelphia.

Brown P., Levinson S. C. 1987, Politeness. Some Universals in Language Usage, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Butler J. 1990-2006, Gender Trouble. Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Taylor & Francis, New York.

Cameron D., Kulick D. 2006, The Language and Sexuality Reader, Routledge.

Chagnon K. 2014. La manipulation et la censure du discours queer dans la traduction française de deux séries télévisées: Les enjeux de la reception, Master’s thesis, Concordia University.

Chaume F. 2006, Screen Translation: Dubbing, in Brown K. (ed.), Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics – 2nd edition, Elsevier, pp. 6-9.

Collins Dictionary. https://www.collinsdictionary.com/ (20/12/2021)

Crystal D. 1975, The English Tone of Voice: Essays in Intonation, Prosody and Paralanguage, Arnold, London.

Culpeper J. 2011, Impoliteness. Using Language To Cause Offence, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Culpeper J. 1996, Towards an Anatomy of Impoliteness, in “Journal of Pragmatics “ 25, pp. 349–367.

De Marco M. 2009, Gender Portrayal in Dubbed and Subtitled Comedies, in Cintas J. D. (ed.), New Trends in Audiovisual Translation, Multilingual Matters, Bristol, pp. 176-196.

De Marco M. 2016, The ‘Engendering’ Approach in Audiovisual Translation, in “Target” 28 [6], pp. 314-325.

Epstein B.J., Gillett R. 2017, Queer in Translation, Routledge.

Ferguson S. L. 1998, Drawing Fictional Lines: Dialect and Narrative in the Victorian Novel, in “Style” 2, pp. 1-17.

Gross L. 1991, Out of the Mainstream, in “Journal of Homosexuality” 21 [1-2], pp. 19-46.

Hall S. 1997, Representation. Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, Sage Publication and Open University.

Harvey K. 1998, Translating Camp Talk. Gay Identities and Cultural Transfer, in “The Translator” 4 [2], pp. 295-320.

Harvey K. 2000, Describing Camp Talk: Language / Pragmatics / Politics, in “Language and Literature” 9, pp. 240-260.

Hayes J. J. 1976 (2006), Gayspeak, in Cameron D., Kulick D. (eds.), The Language and Sexuality Reader, Routledge, London, pp. 68-77.

Hodson J. 2014, Dialect in Film and Literature, Palgrave MacMillan, Houndmills.

Kozloff S. 1996, Overhearing Film Dialogue, University of California Press Berkeley, CA.

Kushner T. 2018, Introduction, in Crowley M. (ed.) The Boys in the Band, Samuel French, no page.

Lakoff R. 1975, Language and Woman's Place, Harper & Row, New York.

Legman G. 2006, The Language of Homosexuality: an American Glossary, in Cameron D., Kulick, D., (eds.), The Language and

Sexuality Reader, Routledge, London, pp. 19-32.

Lewis E. S. 2010, “This is my Girlfriend, Linda.” Translating Queer Relationships in Film: A Case Study of the Subtitles for Gia and a Proposal for Developing the Field of Queer Translation Studies.”, in “Other Words: The Journal for Literary Translators” 36, pp. 3-22.

Lippi-Green R. 2012. English with an Accent: language, ideology, and discrimination in the United States, Routledge, London.

McEnery T. and Hardie, A. 2012, Corpus linguistics: Method, Theory and Practice, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Motschenbacher H. 2011, Taking Queer Linguistics Further: Sociolinguistics and Critical Heteronormative Research”, in “International Journal of the Sociology of Language” 212, pp. 149-179.

Nagel J. 2003, Race, Ethnicity, and Sexuality: Intimate Intersections, Forbidden Frontiers, Oxford University Press, New York.

Orrù P. 2014, Lingua e alterità. Lo stereotipo dell’omosessuale nel cinema italiano del Novecento, in “LID’O. Lingua Italiana D’Oggi” 9, Bulzoni Editore, Roma, pp. 47-86.

Pavesi M., Formentelli M., Ghia E. 2015, The Language of Dubbing: Mainstream Audiovisual Translation in Italy, Peter Lang.

Ranzato I. 2012, Gayspeak and Gay Subjects in Audiovisual Translation: Strategies in Italian Dubbing, in “Meta” 57 [2], pp. 369-384.

Ranzato I. 2015, Translating Culture Specific References on Television, Routledge, New York.

Ranzato I., Zanotti S. 2018, Linguistic and Cultural Representation in Audiovisual Translation, Routledge, New York, London.

Swann J., Deumert A., Lillis T., Mesthrie R. 2004, A Dictionary of Sociolinguistics, Edinburgh University Pres, Edinburgh.

Villanueva J. I. 2015, You Better Work. Camp Representation of RuPaul’s Drag Race in Spanish Subtitles, “Meta” 60 [2], p. 376.

von Flotow L. 2000, Translation Effects: How Beauvoir Talks Sex in English, in Hawthorne M. C. (ed.), Contingent Loves: Simone de Beauvoir and Sexuality, University Press Virginia, Richmond, pp. 13-33.

von Flotow L., Josephy-Hernández D. E. 2019, Gender in Audiovisual Translation Studies: Advocating for Gender Awareness, in Pérez-González L. (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Audiovisual Translation, Routledge, London, pp. 296-312.

Zwicky A. M. 1997, Two Lavender Issues for Linguists, in Livia A., Hall K. (eds.), Queerly Phrased. Language, Gender and Sexuality, Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 21-3


Full Text: PDF

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.
کاغذ a4

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribuzione - Non commerciale - Non opere derivate 3.0 Italia License.