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.

Wuthering heights on the screen: exploring the relations between film adaptation and subtitling

This essay aims to confront the literary text Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë with five of its screen adaptations and Portuguese subtitles. Owing to the scope of the study, it will necessarily afford merely a bird‘s eye view of the issues and serve as a starting point for further research. Accordingly, the following questions are used as guidelines: What transformations occur in the process of adapting the original text to the screen? Do subtitles update the film dialogues to the target audience‘s cultural and linguistic context? Are subtitles influenced more by oral speech than by written literary discourse? Shouldn‘t subtitles in fact reflect the poetic function prevalent in screen adaptations of literary texts? Rather than attempt to answer these questions, we focus on the objects as phenomena. Our interdisciplinary undertaking clearly involves a semio-pragmatic stance, at this stage trying to avoid theoretical backdrops that may affect our apprehension of the objects as to their qualities, singularities, and conventional traits, based on Lucia Santaella‘s interpretation of Charles S. Peirce‘s phaneroscopy. From an empirical standpoint, we gather features and describe peculiarities, under the presumption that there are substrata in subtitling that point or should point to the literary source text, albeit through the mediation of a film script and a particular cinematic style. Therefore, we consider how the subtitling process may be influenced by the literary intertext, the idiosyncrasies of a particular film adaptation, as well as the socio-cultural context of the subtitler and target audience. First, we isolate one of the novel‘s most poignant scenes – ‗I am Heathcliff‘ – taking into account its symbolic play and significance in relation to character and plot construction. Secondly, we study American, English, French, and Mexican adaptations of the excerpt into film in terms of intersemiotic transformations. Then we analyze differences between the film dialogues and their Portuguese subtitles.

Creazione e sviluppo di corpora multimediali. Nuove metodologie di ricerca nella traduzione audiovisiva

The construction and use of multimedia corpora has been advocated for a while in the literature as one of the expected future application fields of Corpus Linguistics. This research project represents a pioneering experience aimed at applying a data-driven methodology to the study of the field of AVT, similarly to what has been done in the last few decades in the macro-field of Translation Studies. This research was based on the experience of Forlixt 1, the Forlì Corpus of Screen Translation, developed at the University of Bologna’s Department of Interdisciplinary Studies in Translation, Languages and Culture. As a matter of fact, in order to quantify strategies of linguistic transfer of an AV product, we need to take into consideration not only the linguistic aspect of such a product but all the meaning-making resources deployed in the filmic text. Provided that one major benefit of Forlixt 1 is the combination of audiovisual and textual data, this corpus allows the user to access primary data for scientific investigation, and thus no longer rely on pre-processed material such as traditional annotated transcriptions. Based on this rationale, the first chapter of the thesis sets out to illustrate the state of the art of research in the disciplinary fields involved. The primary objective was to underline the main repercussions on multimedia texts resulting from the interaction of a double support, audio and video, and, accordingly, on procedures, means, and methods adopted in their translation. By drawing on previous research in semiotics and film studies, the relevant codes at work in visual and acoustic channels were outlined. Subsequently, we concentrated on the analysis of the verbal component and on the peculiar characteristics of filmic orality as opposed to spontaneous dialogic production. In the second part, an overview of the main AVT modalities was presented (dubbing, voice-over, interlinguistic and intra-linguistic subtitling, audio-description, etc.) in order to define the different technologies, processes and professional qualifications that this umbrella term presently includes. The second chapter focuses diachronically on various theories’ contribution to the application of Corpus Linguistics’ methods and tools to the field of Translation Studies (i.e. Descriptive Translation Studies, Polysystem Theory). In particular, we discussed how the use of corpora can favourably help reduce the gap existing between qualitative and quantitative approaches. Subsequently, we reviewed the tools traditionally employed by Corpus Linguistics in regard to the construction of traditional “written language” corpora, to assess whether and how they can be adapted to meet the needs of multimedia corpora. In particular, we reviewed existing speech and spoken corpora, as well as multimedia corpora specifically designed to investigate Translation. The third chapter reviews Forlixt 1's main developing steps, from a technical (IT design principles, data query functions) and methodological point of view, by laying down extensive scientific foundations for the annotation methods adopted, which presently encompass categories of pragmatic, sociolinguistic, linguacultural and semiotic nature. Finally, we described the main query tools (free search, guided search, advanced search and combined search) and the main intended uses of the database in a pedagogical perspective. The fourth chapter lists specific compilation criteria retained, as well as statistics of the two sub-corpora, by presenting data broken down by language pair (French-Italian and German-Italian) and genre (cinema’s comedies, television’s soapoperas and crime series). Next, we concentrated on the discussion of the results obtained from the analysis of summary tables reporting the frequency of categories applied to the French-Italian sub-corpus. The detailed observation of the distribution of categories identified in the original and dubbed corpus allowed us to empirically confirm some of the theories put forward in the literature and notably concerning the nature of the filmic text, the dubbing process and Italian dubbed language’s features. This was possible by looking into some of the most problematic aspects, like the rendering of socio-linguistic variation. The corpus equally allowed us to consider so far neglected aspects, such as pragmatic, prosodic, kinetic, facial, and semiotic elements, and their combination. At the end of this first exploration, some specific observations concerning possible macrotranslation trends were made for each type of sub-genre considered (cinematic and TV genre). On the grounds of this first quantitative investigation, the fifth chapter intended to further examine data, by applying ad hoc models of analysis. Given the virtually infinite number of combinations of categories adopted, and of the latter with searchable textual units, three possible qualitative and quantitative methods were designed, each of which was to concentrate on a particular translation dimension of the filmic text. The first one was the cultural dimension, which specifically focused on the rendering of selected cultural references and on the investigation of recurrent translation choices and strategies justified on the basis of the occurrence of specific clusters of categories. The second analysis was conducted on the linguistic dimension by exploring the occurrence of phrasal verbs in the Italian dubbed corpus and by ascertaining the influence on the adoption of related translation strategies of possible semiotic traits, such as gestures and facial expressions. Finally, the main aim of the third study was to verify whether, under which circumstances, and through which modality, graphic and iconic elements were translated into Italian from an original corpus of both German and French films. After having reviewed the main translation techniques at work, an exhaustive account of possible causes for their non-translation was equally provided. By way of conclusion, the discussion of results obtained from the distribution of annotation categories on the French-Italian corpus, as well as the application of specific models of analysis allowed us to underline possible advantages and drawbacks related to the adoption of a corpus-based approach to AVT studies. Even though possible updating and improvement were proposed in order to help solve some of the problems identified, it is argued that the added value of Forlixt 1 lies ultimately in having created a valuable instrument, allowing to carry out empirically-sound contrastive studies that may be usefully replicated on different language pairs and several types of multimedia texts. Furthermore, multimedia corpora can also play a crucial role in L2 and translation teaching, two disciplines in which their use still lacks systematic investigation.

Analisi dell'umorismo e dei riferimenti culturali nella versione italiana del telefilm The Cosby Show

Il presente elaborato è stato scritto con l’obiettivo di accendere i riflettori su un ambito che rimane spesso nell’ombra: la traduzione audiovisiva e, in particolare, la traduzione audiovisiva dell’umorismo. A fare da cornice a questo quadro è la famosa sitcom I Robinson. La scelta del telefilm è tutt’altro che casuale: sono proprio le sue numerose repliche, trasmesse nelle fredde serate d’inverno, che mi hanno spinta ad approfondire il tema della screen translation. Nel primo capitolo si parla della trama e dei personaggi de I Robinson accompagnati da qualche curiosità sul telefilm. Il secondo capitolo, invece, è dedicato proprio alla screen translation e alla traduzione dell’umorismo nei prodotti audiovisivi. Il terzo capitolo, infine, presenta il confronto tra la versione originale e quella tradotta di alcune delle scene più divertenti de I Robinson.

Tradurre il multilinguismo al cinema: Lingue, identità culturali e loro rappresentazione sullo schermo

La presente ricerca ha un duplice obiettivo. Primo, individuare i modi in cui lingue e identità culturali diverse sono state rappresentate al cinema. Secondo, identificare le diverse strade imboccate dai professionisti del doppiaggio italiano quando si trovano a confrontarsi con un film in cui si parlano più lingue. La ricerca propone un approccio multidisciplinare che combina i contributi teorici sviluppati nel campo degli studi di traduzione audiovisiva con le modalità di analisi più comunemente utilizzate dalla semiotica del cinema. L'analisi si basa su un campione di 224 film multilingue prodotti dall'inizio degli anni Trenta alla fine degli anni Duemila. Particolare attenzione viene indirizzata al quadro teorico all'interno del quale viene interpretato il ruolo che il multilinguismo assume al cinema. Vengono identificate tre funzioni principali: conflitto, confusione e resa realistica. Un altro elemento chiave nell'analisi è costituito dal genere cinematografico prevalente a cui è possibile ricondurre ciascuno dei film selezionati. Sono individuati tre generi principali: il film drammatico, la commedia e il thriller. Nel film drammatico il multilinguismo agisce come un veicolo che produce e accentua il conflitto, mentre nella commedia esso di solito diventa un dispositivo comico che crea confusione e umorismo. Nel cinema thriller, invece, il multilinguismo funziona essenzialmente come un veicolo di suspense. Per quanto riguarda le soluzioni traduttive adottate nel doppiaggio italiano del cinema multilingue, sono rilevate tre macro-strategie: la conservazione, la neutralizzazione e la riduzione dell'originale dimensione multilingue. Ciascuna di queste tre strategie è passata a vaglio critico. Se nel primo caso si tratta di un tentativo di riprodurre fedelmente le originali situazioni multilingue rappresentate nel film, negli altri due casi si tratta di soluzioni che risentono fortemente delle specificità del doppiaggio come modalità di traduzione degli audiovisivi (fattori ideologici ed economici, nonché il problema tecnico dell'armonizzazione delle voci per i personaggi bilingue).

La traduzione audiovisiva: Doppiaggio e sottotitolaggio di Triple Standard

La tesi analizza il procedimento di doppiaggio e sottotitolaggio in italiano del cortometraggio in lingua inglese Triple Standard

Translating food on the Internet: from American TV series dubbed for the Italian audience to subtitles on YouTube.

The aim of this dissertation is to analyze the adaptation of food realia and food-related terms from English into Italian in the world of screen translation. Food has always been at the heart of every human being’s life and is an essential lens of analysis when trying to understand culture. With the awareness of what has been done in the past in American TV series dubbed into Italian and looking at how translations have been changing in the last decade, my thesis demonstrates how strategies are more inclined to an overt approach, which leaves the audiovisual text deeply tied to its source language and culture. The work will also include a practical subtitling exercise of three episodes of the currently most famous YouTube cooking show: Nerdy Nummies by Rosanna Pansino. The fact that the show is published weekly on a YouTube channel gives me the opportunity to comment on the evolution of media in the third millennium and how this implies an improvement as far as the knowledge, the skills and the possibilities for audiovisual translators are concerned.

Audiovisual translation on Portuguese news bulletin

The daily access to news broadcast is something that, generally speaking, we do not abstain ourselves from, whether it is to be aware of what is going on in our country or to be informed about international events. But are we attentive to how the information about those events, namely those that occur outside Portugal, reaches us? How is that information handled – and who handles it – until we have it at our disposal? Is the audience aware that a large part of the news must be translated and must have a linguistic treatment? And how can we describe that same translation and the way it is presented? This case study is just an example of translation‘s role and its crucial presence on TV news broadcast, considering the way translation is processed, how it is barely noticed – or not –, how it influences the construction of the story and how the story influences the translation process. This case study was presented at the 2nd International Conference ―Media for All‖, with the theme ―Text on Air, Text on Screen‖, which took place at the Polytechnic Institute of Leiria, on 7-9 November 2007. O acesso diário a serviços informativos noticiosos é algo de que, de um modo geral, não nos privamos, seja para ficar a par do que se passa no nosso país, seja para ficarmos mais informados sobre eventos e acontecimentos internacionais. Mas teremos noção de como essas informações sobre esses acontecimentos, nomeadamente os que têm lugar fora de Portugal, chegam até nós? Qual será o tratamento dado a essas informações – e quem trata essas informações – até serem colocadas à nossa disposição? Será que o público, de um modo geral, se apercebe que grande parte das notícias é alvo de tratamento tradutológico e linguístico? E como se caracterizará essa tradução e a forma de apresentação da mesma? O presente estudo de caso é apenas um exemplo do papel e da presença fulcral da tradução em serviços noticiosos televisivos, seja pela forma como é feita, pelo modo como passa despercebida (ou não), pela influência que terá na construção da peça noticiosa e pela influência que a peça noticiosa terá no modo como se processa a tradução. Este estudo de caso foi apresentado na 2ª Conferência Internacional ―Media for All‖, subordinada ao tema ―Text on Air, Text on Screen‖, que teve lugar no Instituto Politécnico de Leiria de 7 a 9 de Novembro de 2007.

Sherlock Holmes: from paper to the screen

Dissertação de Mestrado apresentado ao Instituto de Contabilidade e Administração do Porto para a obtenção do grau de Mestre em Tradução e Interpretação Especializadas, sob orientação da doutora Clara Sarmento Esta versão não contém as críticas e sugestões dos elementos do júri

Catalan beauty and the transnational beast: Barcelona on screen

This article explores the case of Barcelona as paradigmatic global city in such transnational productions as Vicky Cristina Barcelona by Woody Allen (2008) and Biutiful by Alejandro González Iñárritu (2010). Allen"s film shows the extreme dilution that national and linguistic identity undergoes under foreign eyes in its rendition of a"hip Barcelona" for tourists"invaded" by transnational subjects in search of bourgeois pleasures. Maybe in pursuit of a more"real" city, Iñárritu"s Biutiful moves to the Barcelona of the immigrants and the undocumented, a transnational and paradoxical location inhabited by those who need to cross borders in order to survive. Through reference to the work of Manuel Castells, Saskia Sassen, Neil Smith and Michel De Certeau among others, we argue that neither of these representations of the city is more real or unreal than the other. In their drastically divergent ways, both films contribute their external perspectives to the imaginary construction of Barcelona as a fascinating global city and can be seen as a dyptich of a transnational Barcelona. Further, they contribute to the ongoing debate about the polarization between the local and the global, the construction of urban boarders inside cities through gentrification, the transformation of the places we (would like to) inhabit, and the translation of all these into visual terms.

Clinical usefulness of the Screen for Cognitive Impairment in Psychiatry (SCIP-S) scale in patients with type I bipolar disorder

Background: The relevance of persistent cognitive deficits to the pathogenesis and prognosis of bipolar disorders (BD) is understudied, and its translation into clinical practice has been limited by the absence of brief methods assessing cognitive status in Psychiatry. This investigation assessed the psychometric properties of the Spanish version of the Screen for Cognitive Impairment in Psychiatry (SCIP-S) for the detection of cognitive impairment in BD. Methods: After short training, psychiatrists at 40 outpatient clinics administered the SCIP three times over two weeks to a total of 76 consecutive type I BD admissions. Experienced psychologists also administered a comprehensive battery of standard neuropsychological instruments to clinical sample and 45 healthy control subjects. Results: Feasibility was supported by a brief administration time (approximately 15 minutes) and minimal scoring errors. The reliability of the SCIP was confirmed by good equivalence of forms, acceptable stability (ICC range 0.59 to 0.87) and adequate internal consistency (Chronbach's alpha of 0.74). Construct validity was granted by extraction of a single factor (accounting 52% of the variance), acceptable correlations with conventional neuropsychological instruments, and a clear differentiation between bipolar I and normal samples. Efficiency was also provided by the adequate sensitivity and specificity. Limitations: The sample size is not very large. The SCIP and the neurocognitive battery do not cover all potentially relevant cognitive domains. Also, sensitivity to change remains unexplored. Conclusion: With minimal training, physicians obtained a reliable and valid estimate of cognitive impairment in approximately 15 minutes from an application of the SCIP to type I BD patients.

Clinical usefulness of the Screen for Cognitive Impairment in Psychiatry (SCIP-S) scale in patients with type I bipolar disorder

Background: The relevance of persistent cognitive deficits to the pathogenesis and prognosis of bipolar disorders (BD) is understudied, and its translation into clinical practice has been limited by the absence of brief methods assessing cognitive status in Psychiatry. This investigation assessed the psychometric properties of the Spanish version of the Screen for Cognitive Impairment in Psychiatry (SCIP-S) for the detection of cognitive impairment in BD. Methods: After short training, psychiatrists at 40 outpatient clinics administered the SCIP three times over two weeks to a total of 76 consecutive type I BD admissions. Experienced psychologists also administered a comprehensive battery of standard neuropsychological instruments to clinical sample and 45 healthy control subjects. Results: Feasibility was supported by a brief administration time (approximately 15 minutes) and minimal scoring errors. The reliability of the SCIP was confirmed by good equivalence of forms, acceptable stability (ICC range 0.59 to 0.87) and adequate internal consistency (Chronbach's alpha of 0.74). Construct validity was granted by extraction of a single factor (accounting 52% of the variance), acceptable correlations with conventional neuropsychological instruments, and a clear differentiation between bipolar I and normal samples. Efficiency was also provided by the adequate sensitivity and specificity. Limitations: The sample size is not very large. The SCIP and the neurocognitive battery do not cover all potentially relevant cognitive domains. Also, sensitivity to change remains unexplored. Conclusion: With minimal training, physicians obtained a reliable and valid estimate of cognitive impairment in approximately 15 minutes from an application of the SCIP to type I BD patients.

Synthetic lethality between eIF5A and Ypt1 reveals a connection between translation and the secretory pathway in yeast

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Genetic interactions of yeast eukaryotic translation initiation factor 5a (eIF5A) reveal connections to poly(A)-binding protein and protein kinase C signaling

The highly conserved eukaryotic translation initiation factor eIF5A has been proposed to have various roles in the cell, from translation to mRNA decay to nuclear protein export. To further our understanding of this essential protein, three temperature-sensitive alleles of the yeast TIF51A gene have been characterized. Two mutant eIF5A proteins contain mutations in a proline residue at the junction between the two eIFSA domains and the third, strongest allele encodes a protein with a single mutation in each domain, both of which are required for the growth defect. The stronger tif51A alleles cause defects in degradation of short-lived mRNAs, supporting a role for this protein in mRNA decay. A multicopy suppressor screen revealed six genes, the overexpression of which allows growth of a tif51A-1 strain at high temperature; these genes include PAB1, PKC1, and PKC1 regulators WSC1, WSC2, and WSC3. Further results suggest that eIFSA may also be involved in ribosomal synthesis and the WSC/PKC1 signaling pathway for cell wall integrity or related processes.