Spoken language in film dubbing: target language norms, interference and translational routines

One main feature which distinguishes film translation from other translation types is the need to produce a text which quite closely mimics spoken language. To which degree such truthfulness is achieved and, more feasibly, which features are involved deserve in-depth investigation. More specifically, if translated films like all translated products first of all belong to the target language, the first aim of research is to define their status and their characterization within that system. In this framework, the researcher’s task is to identify which target language features systematically convey orality in the target text, to what extent target language features are used and what functions they serve. These may yield repeated and systematic patterns of selected features shared by translated products belonging to the same genre, for specific language pairs, in given periods of time. Starting from a small corpus of American and British films translated into Italian, a quantitative analysis of selected phenomena of spoken Italian associated with the constraints and situational factors of face-to-face communication has been carried out. The investigated phenomena include: personal pronouns, overall syntactic organization, weak connectors and marked word orders. The results suggest that major syntactic features of spontaneous spoken Italian tend at present to be reproduced in Italian film dubbing from English, with some features being systematically chosen as privileged carriers of orality. At least in some language areas and in the period investigated, dubbed spoken language appears to result from the interaction of target language norms - which play the most significant role -, source language interference - to a restricted extent -, and formulaic language, a feature which has been widely recognized as typical of the language of audiovisual translation.