Cover not available
Part of
Reassessing Dubbing: Historical approaches and current trends
Edited by Irene Ranzato and Serenella Zanotti
[Benjamins Translation Library 148] 2019
► pp. 229–241

Chapter 11
English films vs Italian films

A comparative analysis via the Pavia Corpus of Film Dialogue and the WordSmith Tools

The objective of this paper is to address issues of comparability between English and Italian film dialogues. A comparison is drawn between dispersed words and n-grams extracted from the original English component, from the dubbed Italian component and from the original Italian component of the Pavia Corpus of Film Dialogue (Freddi and Pavesi 2009a; Pavesi et al. 2014; Zago 2018) via the WordSmith Tools software (Scott 2011). Besides identifying cross-linguistic dimensions of comparability between non-translated films, the paper examines the linguistic profile of dubbed Italian films against the background of both the language of original English films – the source texts – and the language of original Italian films. The findings suggest that film dialogue is a cross-linguistically stable register driven by the need to represent orality as well as by diegetic concerns.

Keywords: comparability, verbs, orality, diegesis, dispersion
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The Pavia Corpus of Film Dialogue
  • 3.Methodology
  • 4.Results and discussion
    • 4.1Dimensions of linguistic comparability between original English films and original Italian films
    • 4.2The translational perspective: Evidence from dubbed Italian films
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 6 August 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.148.11zag
References
Bednarek, Monika
2011 “The Language of Fictional Television: A Case Study of the ‘Dramedy’ Gilmore Girls .” English Text Construction 4 (1): 54–83. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2012 “ ‘Get us the Hell out of Here’: Key Words and Trigrams in Fictional Television Series.” International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 17 (1): 35–63. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Biber, Douglas, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad, and Edward Finegan
1999 Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Bonsignori, Veronica
2009 “Transcribing Film Dialogue: From Orthographic to Prosodic Transcription.” In Analysing Audiovisual Dialogue. Linguistic and Translational Insights, ed. by Maria Freddi, and Maria Pavesi, 185–200. Bologna: Clueb.Google Scholar
Bubel, Claudia
2008 “Film Audiences as Overhearers.” Journal of Pragmatics 40: 55–71. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dynel, Marta
2011 “ ‘You Talking to Me?’ The Viewer as a Ratified Listener to Film Discourse.” Journal of Pragmatics 43: 1628–1644. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Forchini, Pierfranca
2012 Movie Language Revisited. Evidence from Multi-Dimensional Analysis and Corpora. Bern: Peter Lang. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Freddi, Maria
2009 “The Phraseology of Contemporary Filmic Speech: Formulaic Language and Translation.” In Analysing Audiovisual Dialogue. Linguistic and Translational Insights, ed. by Maria Freddi, and Maria Pavesi, 101–123. Bologna: Clueb.Google Scholar
2011 “A Phraseological Approach to Film Dialogue: Film Stylistics Revisited.” Yearbook of Phraseology 2: 137–163.Google Scholar
2013 “Constructing a Corpus of Translated Films: A Corpus View of Dubbing.” Perspectives: Studies in Translatology 21 (4): 491–503.Google Scholar
2014 Linguistica dei corpora. Roma: Carocci.Google Scholar
Freddi, Maria, and Maria Pavesi
(eds) 2009a Analysing Audiovisual Dialogue. Linguistic and Translational Insights. Bologna: Clueb.Google Scholar
2009b “The Pavia Corpus of Film Dialogue: Research Rationale and Methodology.” In Analysing Audiovisual Dialogue. Linguistic and Translational Insights, ed. by Maria Freddi, and Maria Pavesi, 95–100. Bologna: Clueb.Google Scholar
Gregory, Michael
1967 “Aspects of Varieties Differentiation.” Journal of Linguistics 3 (2): 177–198. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Halliday, Michael, and Christian Matthiessen
2004 An Introduction to Functional Grammar (3rd Edition). London: Arnold.Google Scholar
Kozloff, Sarah
2000 Overhearing Film Dialogue. Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Nencioni, Giovanni
1983 [1976] “Parlato-parlato, parlato-scritto, parlato-recitato.” In Di scritto e di parlato. Discorsi Linguistici, 126–179. Bologna: Zanichelli.Google Scholar
Pavesi, Maria
2009 “Pronouns in Film Dubbing and the Dynamics of Audiovisual Communication. VIAL (Vigo International Journal of Applied Linguistics) 6: 89–107. Special issue on Language, Translation and the Media , ed. by Roberto A. Valdeón García.Google Scholar
2014 “The Pavia Corpus of Film Dialogue: A Means to Several Ends.” In The Languages of Dubbing. Mainstream Audiovisual Translation in Italy, ed. by Maria Pavesi, Maicol Formentelli, and Elisa Ghia, 29–55. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Pavesi, Maria, Maicol Formentelli, and Elisa Ghia
(eds) 2014 The Languages of Dubbing. Mainstream Audiovisual Translation in Italy. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Romero-Fresco, Pablo
2009 “Naturalness in the Spanish Dubbing Language: A Case of Not-so-close Friends.” Meta 54 (1): 49–72. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rossi, Fabio
1999 Le parole dello schermo. Analisi linguistica del parlato di sei film dal 1948 al 1957. Roma: Bulzoni.Google Scholar
Scott, Mike
2011 WordSmith Tools Version 6. Liverpool: Lexical Analysis Software.Google Scholar
Semino, Elena, and Mick Short
2004 Corpus Stylistics. Speech, Writing and Thought Presentation in a Corpus of English Writing. London/New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Stubbs, Michael, and Isabel Barth
2003 “Using Recurrent Phrases as Text-type Discriminators: A Quantitative Method and Some Findings.” Functions of Language 10 (1): 61–104. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Taylor, Christopher
2008 “Predictability in Film Language: Corpus-assisted Research.” In Corpora for University Language Teachers, ed. by Carol Taylor Torsello, Katherine Ackerley, and Erik Castello, 167–181. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Veirano Pinto, Marcia
2014 “Dimensions of Variation in North American Movies.” In Multi-Dimensional Analysis, 25 Years on. A Tribute to Douglas Biber, ed. by Tony Berber Sardinha, and Marcia Veirano Pinto, 109–147. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zago, Raffaele
2016 From Originals to Remakes. Colloquiality in English Film Dialogue over Time. Acireale/Roma: Bonanno Editore.Google Scholar
2018 Cross-linguistic Affinities in Film Dialogue. Leonforte: Siké Edizioni (New Series “English Library: The Linguistics Bookshelf”).Google Scholar