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Part of
Reassessing Dubbing: Historical approaches and current trends
Edited by Irene Ranzato and Serenella Zanotti
[Benjamins Translation Library 148] 2019
► pp. 211–227

Chapter 10
Representing orality through questions in original and translated film dialogue

Due to their preeminently spoken nature, direct questions are favourite loci to represent orality in telecinematic talk, where they are overrepresented and fulfill both mimetic and diegetic functions (Ghia 2014). However, no systematic comparisons have been drawn between translated and non-translated film dialogue in the same target language to identify potential register-specificities in question representation. Based on the analysis of the Pavia Corpus of Film Dialogue (Pavesi 2014), this chapter investigates question usage across dubbed and original Italian film dialogue, on both a formal and a functional level. Findings show common traits between the two registers, but document differences in pattern distribution, which typify dubbed discourse and may result from both source text interference and T-universals (Chesterman 2004).

Keywords: film dialogue, dubbing, direct questions, orality markers, T-universals
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Direct questions from conversation to fictive orality
  • 3.Translation universals
  • 4.The study
    • 4.1Aim and research questions
    • 4.2Methodology and material
    • 4.3Results
      • 4.3.1A case in point: Weak connectors
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 6 August 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.148.10ghi
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Ghia, Elisa
2019. (Dis)aligning across different linguacultures: Pragmatic questions from original to dubbed film dialogue . Multilingua 38:5 ► pp. 583 ff. DOI logo

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