10.13125/2039-6597/803
Adapting translation for dubbing is not a mere linguistic fact: it is mainly the adaptation of cultures. In fact, audiovisual translation and adaptation implicitly takes into account the importance of the historical background behind the multiplicity of languages and cultures, and by doing so, it becomes a means of cultural diffusion. That peculiarity enables what we can describe as the &ldquo;socio-anthropological function&rdquo; of the adaptation of translation for dubbing, which is the object of the following paper. Through an analysis of some important landmarks that intersected the history of some Western countries in the last two centuries, it was possible to trace a lack of reciprocity in the usage of dubbing in the two biggest film markets: North America and Europe. Clearly, that helps cultural supremacy to penetrate into our lives in a very subtle way. As a result, the paper attempts to demonstrate how dubbing spreads all cultures in order to have an effectively global communication.&nbsp;
application/pdf
2039-6597
803
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en
Lidia Canu
Between
globalization
Dubbing: adapting cultures in the global communication era
Text.Serial.Journal
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/between
2
Theoretical Issues
2012-11-30
2012-09-20
2012-12-04
2012-12-05
1
Lidia Canu
2012/11/30
10.13125/2039-6597/803
Università di Sassari
2039-6597
4
globalization
en
Dubbing: adapting cultures in the global communication era
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/between/article/download/803/522
2
            Dubbing: adapting cultures
         in the global communication era

                                   Introduction

      As the modification of a given work, object or structure in order to
make it applicable or comprehensible in situations different from the
ones that have originated it, adaptation would be best described by its
correlation with dubbing and audiovisual translation. After all, we
now live in the global communication era, and cinema and TV
industries are relevant vehicles of the globalization process.
      Everyday for at least three decades now – ever since television
broadcasting became commercialized on private networks – we
Europeans have been exposed to situations, codes, and meanings
different from those that reflect the cultures we belong to. Through
such an exposure, we have acquired a great deal of information on
other cultures in the comfort of our local realities, while maintaining
our local means of expression, and our own culture. We have been able
to do this thanks to our long history of dubbing, with its extensive
usage of translation procedures such as transposition, and adaptation.
      Briefly, the latter is what Vinay and Darbelnet (1958) defined as
“le limite extrême de la traduction”, and a “situational equivalence”. In
fact, as language reflects the social reality in any given culture, some
situations referred to by the source culture and source language do not
find an equivalent in the target language. In such cases, adapters will
create a new situation: one that the target audience perceives as
familiar, and can thus be considered as being equivalent. In addition to
the quest for the right words, the sociolinguistic and cultural situations
to be translated and adapted are also highly constrained by the images
on the screen, with their kinetic – and also proxemic1 – aspects.

     1   For further clarification on the topic, cfr. Herbst 1994 and Pavesi 2009.


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Lidia Canu, Dubbing: adapting cultures in the global communication era



      Even though the verbal code is the only aspect a translator can
modify in order to make the audiovisual work accessible to different
linguistic communities, all the nonverbal codes can make an impact on
the dialogues and on the plot. Hence, the translator is left with the
great responsibility of dividing the work into its constituents, retracing
all patterns for both the verbal and nonverbal codes, in order to draw
them back together into a comprehensible whole (Paolinelli – Di
Fortunato 2005: 6) – which is equivalent in its expression, and
satisfactory in its communication.
      Therefore, it is clear that adapting translation for dubbing
concerns not only linguistic factors, nor the adaptation of codes alone;
rather, it is mainly the adaptation of cultures.

    1. Dubbing and the history of contemporary Europe
     The correlation between the adaptation of translation for dubbing
and the adaptation of cultures would be even more evident if we
analyze its history, and the way it intersected the continuum of events
that happened in countries such as Italy, France, Germany and Spain in
the twentieth century.
     In fact, dubbing was invented in the 1930’s in order to overcome
the crisis that many European markets were facing as a consequence of
the Talkie Revolution: the commercialization of sound films featuring
synchronized dialogues. By the time those talking pictures, or talkies,
were being pushed to expand in global markets, Europe was
experiencing the rise of far right, Fascism and totalitarian regimes
favored by the worldwide recession consequent to the Wall Street
Crash.
     Obviously, nationalist and totalitarian governments were alarmed
by the dialogues contained in the movies, for they could potentially
introduce ideas and ideologies contrary to those of the countries’
leaders. These dialogues could put Otherness within everyone’s reach,
including the less literates’, and this was clearly considered dangerous.
     This, of course, posed a problem for the American film industry,
as many European countries issued prohibitive laws against anything


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foreign. Under the Vichy regime, Francoist Spain, Hitler’s Germany,
and Fascism, dubbing was the only possible way of bypassing these
laws. And while it is a well-known fact that dubbing was a censorious
filter in those years2, it is also true that it started having an impact on
both the audience and the general public, and it has rapidly become a
useful tool for the spread of culture.
      This is even truer in Italy, where dubbing has held a great
importance in spreading the standard Italian language, and has had a
strong impact on the population's perception of a common idiom that
is not merely literary or academic3.
      At this point, it will be of some value to mention Sergio Raffaelli
(1996), who has appropriately distinguished an external and an internal
history of dubbing. The external history consists of the whole which
includes laws and customs, along with the social and cultural
vicissitudes that influenced the choice of the language to be used for
dubbing. It goes without saying that this history has gone through
many phases and turning points, and it is still evolving. As culture and
society change, the translational linguistic choices change too, and they
obviously influence the audience's choices. Besides, due to all of these
elements, dubbing contributed to shape a linguistic standard in the
thirties, a language that transcended regional boundaries. Dubbing
also brought to the forming of neologisms.
      The internal history of dubbing, on the other hand, consists of the
variations that dubbing has undergone through the decades. Basically,
the internal history includes the variations that arise from the external
history.
      Bearing this difference in mind, a further consideration of some
fundamental points would be in order if one wants to fully understand
the great role dubbing has played in the spread of cultures.
      The history of dubbing in Italy has witnessed two phases: a first
one that took place during the Fascism regime and lasted up until the

       2   For more information on early dubbings, cfr. Bergamo 1998 and Quaragnolo
1994
       3
           Cfr. Castellano 2000; Rossi 2005.


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Lidia Canu, Dubbing: adapting cultures in the global communication era



postwar period. It is possible to identify a strong conservatism of the
linguistic patterns in dubbing during that phase, although this had
some positive outcomes concerning the formation of neologisms and
the diffusion of the Italian language. In fact, the illiteracy rate in Italy in
the thirties was 25% out of a forty million people (Di Cola 2000: 29),
and most speakers still used to use their local dialects even in formal
contexts, for they could not speak any other language. However, with
the advent of dubbing, people began to use the Italian standard more
and more in every possible social context.
      The second phase began in the 1970s. The coming of private TV
networking marked a turning point: on the one hand, TV started to be
a means of mass communication, and subsequently, a carrier for those
subtle mechanisms that generate cultural hegemony, which increases
with the expansion of globalization. On the other hand, production
companies have imposed all dubbing cooperatives work shifts to save
as much time as possible, to the detriment of the quality of dubbing. In
fact, it is possible to observe a series of linguistic clichés that go under
the name of dubbese4, which contribute to immediately being able to
identify the movie as being American. These linguistic clichés that are
consequent to the short deadlines are clearly a growing problem,
especially nowadays, in the global communication era.

                         2. Dubbing and globalization

     In light of this information, dubbing can definitely be considered
as an effective tool for linguistic transmission. And as language is, in
Sapirian terms, “a social guide to reality”5, language transmission is
undoubtedly cultural transmission and this alone can enable the socio-
anthropological function of dubbing. In fact, two different cultural
contexts can be distinguished through dubbing, as the usage of a target
language ensures the signs of a source culture are perceived as useful
information, rather than portions of the target culture.


      4   Cfr. Antonini 2008.
      5
          Cfr. Sapir 1956.


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      The American film majors immediately realized this great
potential of culture circulation, and took action. In fact, American
producers started using dubbing to export their movies as much as
possible, but they have been actively impeding its usage in imports.
      Therefore, the incredible success of Hollywood movies through
the years is not entirely due to highly productive investments in
quality and aesthetics, but also precise marketing strategies that aim to
systematically dub all American films that are exported to foreign
markets, and subtly impede the circulation of foreign films into the
American market. Gregory Snegoff, an American voice actor, says in
his Doppiare negli Stati Uniti (1996: 78) that the only reason why dubbed
movies do not have great diffusion in the United States is because there
are not enough distributors and producers willing to invest in
dubbings.
      Despite the growing demand, foreign movies are only projected in
their subtitled versions at universities or film festivals, and they do not
position themselves well in local markets outside the New York and
Los Angeles areas – where people are more used and more incline to
the sound of foreign languages. He also adds that contrary to Europe’s
own, the American market is show business-based, and neither the
American population nor the American producers are sensitive to the
artistic side of productions, and the artistic quality of dubbings.
      Therefore, Snegoff, in line with many Italian translators, adapters,
and actors, believe that European films aiming to position themselves
in the American market should be dubbed in Europe. The question is
not only economic or artistic, but it takes on the ideological discussion
about globalization in its much debated terms: the hope for reciprocity
vs. the consequences of its real inequity.
      Careful investigation suggests that modern industries in the
cultural fields tend to reflect the spheres of the globalization process, of
which cinema and TV industries are relevant carriers. Those spheres
embrace cultural change, and they have been summarized by Ian Clark
(1997: 1) as




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Lidia Canu, Dubbing: adapting cultures in the global communication era



         […] The uniformity of political ideas and practices; the
      geographical extent of social interaction and reflexivity; the degree
      of integration of economic activities; the diffusion of technology
      (information, communication, transport) which overcome the
      significance of time and space; and the extent of the dissemination
      of cultural symbols and signification.

      All of these factors are clearly embedded in audiovisual works,
and are used by modern cultural and communications industries –
especially in the United States – that tend to create homologation of
lifestyles and cultures, with the aim of expanding the market for more
profit. The worldwide dissemination of cultural symbols and
significations pertaining to the United States has taken its toll on non-
Western societies, but it can have undesirable outcomes on Western
societies as well. Films – and audiovisuals in general – are carriers of
images, words, ideas and ideologies. All of these signs can be diffused
through mass communication technologies any time, any where.
Nonetheless, that diffusion is not equal on a global scale: when some
cultures are inevitably more powerful than others, in terms of politics
and economy, the risk is that the lack of reciprocity in the diffusion of
cultural signs accounts for the hegemony of a specific culture on
others, which may bring to a subtle form of acculturation, and which
makes communication a little less global than one expects it to be in the
so-called global communication era. After all, as the British sociologist
Anthony Giddens affirms, «globalization is political, cultural, and
technological, as well as economic, and it is diffused especially through
communication mass media» (Giddens 2000: 23).
      However, when the diffusion channels are imbalanced we find a
situation where all films and TV series produced by the American
major film studios are aimed to be distributed to the masses. In
addition to this, one of the distinguishing traits of the United States is
the fact that it is multiethnic, which results in the production of films
that are able to satisfy the tastes of a large number of people whose
cultural backgrounds are extremely different.




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      On the contrary, non-American films often carry more local
connotations, therefore, they would be much less comprehensible, or
have a lesser impact on a large audience; not to mention, film
producers in the rest of the world do not have the same access to
widespread distribution as the American majors do.
      Consequently, all of those successful American productions create
and shape a cultural context through which the vast majority of people
all over the world identify themselves. Spectators recognize themselves
in those films, in the actors, in the music the characters listen to, in the
books they read, in the clothes they wear, and in the food they eat. We
must face the fact that American majors have transformed commerce
into a portion of culture that is common to everyone, from the Western
World to the so-called 'Third World'. Clearly, this means that the the
role that films play in globalization is biased and the outcome is not
always positive. As Giddens suggests, for many people who live
outside Europe and Northern America, globalization has the
unpleasant aspect of 'westernization', or rather, 'Americanization'.
      In fact, especially regarding audiovisual works, we have a
situation that is very close to what Tomlinson (1999) defines as
“deterritorialization”, which is a weakening of the ties between time
and space, and a process of globalizing culture. We do need to bear in
mind, however, that this weakening is not so positive: with distances
no longer meaning anything, localities, separated by distances, also
lose their meanings (Bauman 1998: 18).
      Through deterritorialization, the impact of audiovisual (especially
televisual) media alters our repertoires of discoursive resources; it
changes our linguistic and cultural practices, and that in terms of
globalization, translates into a change of identity 6.
      After all, as Mufwene advises in his contribution to Blommaert's
The Sociolinguistics of Globalization (2010),

       some hegemonic languages, chiefly English, have spread
     world-wide, but have not only become “global”, but also

     6
         Cfr. Fairclough 2006.


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Lidia Canu, Dubbing: adapting cultures in the global communication era



      indigenized, both adapted to the new communicative habits and
      subjected to local norms. […] These factors, determine not only
      whether a speaker is (fully) integrated or marginalized, but also
      what social representations their communication in English
      conjures up of the speakers or the writer.

      The aural part is just as important as the visual one. Word’s ability
to convey emotions and transmit the structure and the organization of
reality plays a crucial role in the processes of intercultural encounter
and accommodation (“indigenization” as expressed in Stanford
Friedman 2004). To reciprocate the transmission of emotions and
structures of reality through dubbing would be fundamental if one
wants to look at communication as a global phenomenon, if one wants
to establish a dialogue between the societies in which both the adapted
text and the adaptation are produced and received (Hutcheon 2006:
149). With dubbing, one is not forced to become marginalized simply
for not speaking a hegemonic language. The adaptation of translation
for dubbing ensures everyone is able to grasp information about other
cultures without any single one of them becoming dominant.

                                  Conclusions
     Subsequent to this analysis, it would not have been hasty to
presume that the lack of reciprocity in dubbing non-American films
translates into cultural supremacy7, as all countries whose languages
are less widespread than English have automatically compromised
their position on the market. Also, there is some value in taking into
consideration that most Americans have always been deprived of the
knowledge of other cultures through films8.



      7 For further reading on the circulation of dubbed audiovisuals, Di Fortunato –
Paolinelli 1996.
      8 On the linguistic and cultural transpositions in dubbing, Baccolini –

Bollettieri Bosinelli 1994, Bollettieri Bosinelli – Heiss – Soffritti – Bernardini 2000;
Cary 1960; Chiaro 1994; Chiaro 2000, Chiaro – Heiss – Bucaria 2008; Delabastita


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     While the expressive value of American films remains
unquestionable, dubbing foreign movies to give Americans the
opportunity to access a myriad of diverse cultural worlds is not at all
taken into consideration by major film studios.
     It is clear that in this type of situation, which is now unlikely to
change any time in the near future, the only way to resist the cultural
supremacy subtly spreading through audiovisual channels is the use of
dubbing.
     After all, given the fact that anyone who does not belong to the
culture that dominates the audiovisual market becomes “local”9 –
«confined (and sometimes effectively imprisoned within) particular
localities» (Fairclough 2006: 21), dubbing presents itself as a useful tool
to overcome these difficulties. Spectators can take the signs and
information concerning the Other culture, while still maintaining the
local identities. They can be a part of the international community and
learn about other cultures, without being “globalized”, or
“Americanized”. In conclusion, dubbing allows for the adaptation and
spread of cultures, thereby creating a global means of effective
communication.




1989; Heiss – Bollettieri Bosinelli 1997, Paolinelli – Di Fortunato 2005; Pavesi 2005;
Taylor 2000.
      9
        Cfr. Bauman 1998.


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Lidia Canu, Dubbing: adapting cultures in the global communication era




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                            The Author

Lidia Canu
was born in Ozieri in 1984. She holds a BA in Linguistic mediation
(2006) and an MA in Modern Euro-american Languages and Literature
(2010) from the University of Sassari. She is currently a PhD student
with grant in Languages and Translation (XXVI cycle) at the same
institution. Her doctoral research project – Dubbing as cultural
democracy – investigates on the socio-anthropological implications of
dubbing and audiovisual translation. She attended as a speaker the
“Diari di Bordo” and “L'adattamento: le trasformazioni delle storie nei
passaggi di codice” Graduate Conferences respectively in 2011 and
2012, and she has also attended the Sociolinguistics Symposium 19 in
Berlin in 2012. She taught A1 and B1 English as part of the SSE project
at the University of Sassari in 2010/2011. She translated the booklet
“L'altra Oristano” in 2009.

      Email: lidiacanu@yahoo.com

                             L’articolo

Data invio: 30/08/2012
Data accettazione: 20/10/2012
Data pubblicazione: 30/11/2012




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Lidia Canu, Dubbing: adapting cultures in the global communication era




                         How to quote this article

Canu, Lidia, “Dubbing: adapting cultures in the global communication
era”, Between, II.4 (2012), http://www.Between-journal.it/




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