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AVT Dubbing - Strategies

The document discusses the challenges and strategies involved in dubbing, emphasizing the need for naturalness and synchrony in translated dialogue. It highlights various translation techniques such as matching visemes, changing word order, and the use of amplification or reduction to maintain isochrony. Additionally, it addresses the complexities of translating dialects and the potential for cultural adaptation in the dubbing process.

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16 views17 pages

AVT Dubbing - Strategies

The document discusses the challenges and strategies involved in dubbing, emphasizing the need for naturalness and synchrony in translated dialogue. It highlights various translation techniques such as matching visemes, changing word order, and the use of amplification or reduction to maintain isochrony. Additionally, it addresses the complexities of translating dialects and the potential for cultural adaptation in the dubbing process.

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Translation

Strategies of Dubbing
Lect. Dr. Jalil Naser Hilu
Naturalness in dubbing
Dialogue is written by scriptwriters and later
delivered by actors in such a way as to maintain
the illusion of spontaneity and naturalness, but
film dialogue is often different from natural
conversation as it does not contain so many false
starts, repetitions, hesitations, etc. Audiovisual
texts are thus characterised by discourse that is
“spoken and seemingly spontaneous, yet planned
and elaborated”
This has been captured by the concept known as
prefabricated orality
Naturalness in dubbing
In an attempt to comply with lip sync and
other synchronisation requirements,
dubbed dialogue sometimes resembles
the original in following its syntactic
structures or imitating its lexical choices.
According to Banos (2014), “the linguistic
patterning of domestic and dubbed
fictional dialogues differs significantly” (p.
407).
Naturalness in dubbing
In consequence, translated dialogue does not
sound natural in the target language, and viewers
can often recognise that what they are watching is
a translated rather than an original version. This
specific type of discourse has come to be known
as dubbese, alluding to translationese,
characterised by unidiomatic language use and
calques. The artificial nature of dubbed dialogue
has been demonstrated, for instance, in
unidiomatic turns of phrase, Anglicisms, or
interjections
Translation strategies in
dubbing
Due to the stringent demands of synchronisation,
maintaining strict faithfulness to the original is
often not the primary focus in dubbing. As Vِge
(1977, p. 120) suggests, “if synchrony is the
overruling requirement, this automatically implies
a translation which is less than faithful to the
original”. Instead of faithfulness, the emphasis lies
on achieving naturalness and credibility in
dialogue, as well as maintaining lip sync and
isochrony (Długosz, 2004). Consequently, certain
translation strategies employed in dubbing
diverge significantly from those used in other
forms of AVT.
Translation strategies in
dubbing
 Matching visemes
To ensure proper lip sync, dialogue writers often
prioritise solutions that align with the mouth
movements on screen, rather than strict accuracy
in translation. In essence, they select words or
expressions that match the visemes displayed. For
instance, when translating the English phrase “I’m
sorry” into Arabic, the typical translation would be
“‫”المعذرة‬.
Translation strategies in
dubbing
 Changing word order
Chaume (2014, p. 74) also notes that lip sync
strategies may require the translator or dialogue
writer to change the order of the words. For
example, the English utterance “the parson has a
house which belonged to…” could be rendered
into Arabic as “‫ البيت يملكه رجل دين‬....”
Translation strategies in
dubbing
 Repetition
Because of synchrony requirements, a convenient
translation technique employed by dialogue
writers is to use a target language word that is
identical or very similar to the source language
word. For instance, English football will
conveniently become futbol in Polish, Fußball in
German or fútbol in Spanish. This could also mean
retaining a source language word, such as a
cultural reference, in its original form if it can be
assumed to be known in the target language, e.g.
Halloween.
Translation strategies in
dubbing
 Literal translation
Dubbing translators sometimes resort to direct or
literal translation. This strategy can be used to
translate established equivalents. For instance,

Charity begins at home.


Diamonds cut diamonds.
Translation strategies in
dubbing
 Literal translation
However, literal translation in dubbing often comes at
a cost: as demonstrated by a number of descriptive
studies which analysed translation strategies used in
dubbing, translators often resort to literal translations
instead of creating idiomatic expressions which would
sound more natural in the target language (see
Ranzato, 2016; or Romero- Fresco, 2009). The reason
for this is that it may sometimes be easier to stick to
the structure and phrasing of the original text to
maintain isochrony and lip sync. By focusing too much
on literal translations, the resulting dubbed product
can often sound unnatural and fall into the category of
Translation strategies in
dubbing
 Amplification or reduction
In order to maintain isochrony – especially in lip-
readable shots – and adhere to the time
constraints of the original dialogue, dialogue
writers often face the need to expand or reduce
their translations.
Translation strategies in
dubbing
Reduction
When the target text exceeds the length of the
original dialogue, reduction becomes necessary.
This reduction strategy involves removing phatic
elements and non- essential linguistic
components, such as interjections, modal verbs,
vocatives, and any “redundancies with the
images” (Chaume, 2014, p. 73). Additionally,
deictic expressions like “this” or “here” can be
used as substitutes for longer proper names or
phrases as part of the reduction strategy.
However, unlike in subtitling or VO, all sounds
produced by actors, both verbal and non- verbal,
Translation strategies in
dubbing
If the target text is shorter than the original
dialogue, it may need to be expanded. Chaume
(2014, p. 73) calls this strategy amplification
and explains that it may take the form of
repetition, explanation, and paraphrase, as well as
using longer synonyms. He also notes that these
solutions “confer a fresher and more oral touch to
the translation, another of the agreed dubbing
standards” (Chaume, 2014, p. 73).
Translation strategies in
dubbing
 Substitution
Chaume (2014) argues there is “a conscious
agenda to domesticate the translated text” (p. 69)
in order to create an illusion of reality.
Domestication may involve replacing the original
names of characters and places with others,
typically from the target culture (Baker & Hochel,
1998). As the original language cannot be heard
in dubbing, this type of AVT allows translators to
replace foreign elements, for instance when they
are assumed to be unknown to the target viewers,
with more familiar items. This strategy is known
as substitution or cultural adaptation. Chaume
Dialects and accents in
dubbing
When a film or TV series is produced in a
particular language variety, it is usually translated
into the standard form of the target language.
In terms of translating dialects, Chaume (2014)
summarises the general approach by stating that
“most authors agree that dialects have no
equivalents in other languages, and that equating
the dialect of a source language in the source film
to another dialect from the target language in the
target version can be politically incorrect”
Dialects and accents in
dubbing
Dialects can serve an important function in
cinema, adding to authenticity and realism.
Filmmakers use dialects to “sketch in a
character’s past and cultural heritage, to
locate each person in terms of his or her
financial standing, education level,
geographical background, or ethnic group”
(Kozloff, 2000, p. 82). However, using clichéd
dialects can lead to racial stereotyping, which
Hollywood has historically been guilty of (Kozloff,
2000). A famous example is the Black Vernacular
English used by Mammy in Gone with the Wind (“I
think he gonna shoot hisself”, “You know what
THANK
YOU

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