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Part of
Corpora in Translation and Contrastive Research in the Digital Age: Recent advances and explorations
Edited by Julia Lavid-López, Carmen Maíz-Arévalo and Juan Rafael Zamorano-Mansilla
[Benjamins Translation Library 158] 2021
► pp. 257–281

Chapter 10
The translation for dubbing of Westerns in Spain

An exploratory corpus-based analysis

ORCID logo

The aim of this paper is to analyze the process by which the audiovisual translation of American films has contributed to develop sociolects composed of distinctive lexis in various languages (Spanish or Italian, for instance) linked to specific genres such as Westerns or science fiction. With the compilation of a parallel corpus of source texts in English and their translation into Spanish, a diachronic analysis would enable researchers to identify linguistic recurrences that have developed them in a target culture. The Western, the most distinctive American film genre and culturally alien in origin to other cultural contexts, is chosen to analyze how a sociolect was formed in Spain with lexical elements, many of which did not follow word usage rules, but that became a requirement for acceptability in its polysystem.

Keywords: audiovisual translation, dubbing, film genre, Westerns, anglicisms, censorship
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical framework
  • 3.Parallel corpus selection and data compilation process
  • 4.Origin
  • 5.Corpus analysis
    • 5.1Introduction
    • 5.2Figures of authority
    • 5.3Firearms
    • 5.4Other translation strategies
      • 5.4.1Archaisms
      • 5.4.2Structural calque
      • 5.4.3Loan shift
    • 5.5Censorial issues
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Note
  • References
  • Databases and dictionaries
Published online: 8 December 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.158.10san
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