Tóth József (szerk.): Nyelv, kultúra, megértés: új kutatási módszerek a humán tudományok területén
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2. Nyelvhasználat és interkulturalitás
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Dialects on screen. Display of dialectal significance in the series Poldark • Nóra Estélyi-Tala, Ildikó Hortobágyi
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8. Dialects in subtitling and dubbing

8. Dialects in subtitling and dubbing

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When conveying dialectal features into another language on screen, according to Bruti and Vignozzi (2017), three major features can be distinguished. “First of all, dialectal markers and expressions are often cultural specific and thus it is difficult to find an equivalent solution in the target language that has the same connotations […] The choice of how to render dialects is therefore inevitably connected with the genre of the movie and with the effect the dialogue adapter decides to convey to the audience” (Bruti, Vignozzi, 2017: 50).

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In some fortunate cases, the perception of the dialectal varieties in the source language coincides with that of the target-language dialects. Koch (2009) writes the following about a German movie, Manitou’s Shoe (2001) and its English dubbing: “The bad guy is speaking with a British English accent (Received Pronunciation) while the good guys are speaking General American English, or the so called Network English. The effects are the same as caused by the German varieties”.

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Other translators turn to other methods, trying to avoid geographical associations. As Ranzato (2010) notes, in Italian dubbing, there is a trend to replace regional dialectal features with non-geographically-specified lexicon, which instead may be incorrect or highly informal. This way, dialects are naturalised in the target language (TL) text. “A few exceptions can be found when the accent is foreign, such as a French or Spanish accent on English or German lips. The usual procedure is to retain such accents in the target text (TT) so that the foreign character speaks Italian with a marked accent (e.g. in Tarantino’s 2009 film Inglourious Basterds, the German character Hans Landa retains his accent in Italian)” (Dore, 2021: 132). As Dore (2021) summarises Ranzato’s analysis on the Italian dubbing of Cockney and Estuary English speech, it can be seen that the loss of certain dialectal characteristics can be compensated for by creativity: using rhymes, unusual prosody, or unlocalised language varieties.

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Probably due to the length constraints detailed above, both dubbing and subtitles tend to opt for standardisation. With reference to the Jordanian film Captain Abu Raed and its English subtitles, Ethelb (2019) writes: “dialects are more neutralized and flattened than adapted literally” (p. 43). Ellender (2015) writes about the movie Trainspotting and its French subtitles: “In the corresponding subtitles, no attempt is made to recapture non-standard SL [source language] pronunciation in the TL” (p. 23). “In the Russian synchronization no dialects are employed, all characters are speaking standard Russian. This means that no schemes are evoked by different varieties” (Koch, 2009).

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It is important to mention that omission, or lost information, can also be a conscious choice from the translator’s part. “[W]hen dubbing is employed, language- and culture-specific issues usually get ‘lost in translation’” (Ranzato, 2010: 110). As a consequence, “parts of the original texts [are] toned down, modified or omitted, especially if they refer to sensitive or taboo topics” (Dore, 2017: 124), resulting in “ideological manipulation” (Díaz Cintas, 2012).

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However, it seems that the choice for either standardisation or creativity is also genre-dependent.

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[T]he dub of comedies and animated films is likely to be more creative, containing also regional varieties (Chiaro, 2008; Bianchi, 2014), whereas in other films there is a drive to reduce language variation by choosing a supra-regional and unmarked variety, which can in part be attributed to the attempt to reduce morphological and syntactic variation in line with prescriptive grammatical rules. (Bruti, Vignozzi, 2017: 50)

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This may be due to the fact that comedy “allows operators more room for successful manoeuvre” (Chiaro, 2008: 18).

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

As a glimpse into the Anglo-Saxon trends in transposing dialects onto an English screen, it is worth taking a look at two different approaches to the English dubbing of two different non-English-speaking movies using foreign accents. “Whereas intralinguistic (L11) and interlinguistic (L13) foreign accents were neutralised (L2) in High Seas, these have been preserved in the English dub of Hache. This is likely because entire groups of characters speak in foreign ways, and are characterised by the associated dialectal memes” (Hayes, 2021: 11). With reference to the latter movie, Hayes notes that “through linguistic variation, dialectal memes attached to accents have achieved characterisations of noteworthy resemblance in both the originals […] and dubs […], although dubbed identities are somewhat more nuanced” (Hayes, 2021: 15). As we can see, the direction of the translation does not seem to influence the choice of approach regarding dialects.
 
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