Translation for dubbing : an Interdisciplinary activity

Dubbing is one of the most common modes of audiovisual translation, and it involves the removal of the original soundtrack of a film and its substitution with another one in the language of the receiving audience. Since a film is an object made up of different codes that constantly interact with one another, it goes without saying that audiovisual translation, and consequently translation for dubbing, turns out to be an interdisciplinary practice, where both the discipline of film studies and that of translation studies interweave. Indeed, in a film the visual and the verbal codes are tightly linked, dependent one on the other. The translation of the verbal code, therefore, must necessarily take into consideration this linkage. First of all, for reasons related to lip synch requirements: the translated lines have to respect the length of the original ones, as well as the presence of bilabial and labiodental consonants, as they should, ideally, match the movements of the lips of the actors performing them. However, the respect of the relationship between the verbal and the visual code is not merely a matter of technical ability. Quite often the characterisation of the characters of a film relies both on visual and verbal aspects, especially when the characters belong to specific ethnic or social groups. In these cases, the linguistic peculiarities turn out to be extremely important and strictly linked to the extra-linguistic ones in the construction of the identity of the characters. Starting from these presuppositions, this paper aims to analyze the way translation plays a remarkable role in the maintenance of the characterization of Italian American gangsters in Italian dubbing.