Cover not available
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
References (64)
References
Adamou, Christina and Simone Knox. 2011. “Transforming Television Drama through Dubbing and Subtitling: Sex and the Cities.” Critical Studies in Television 6/1: 1–21. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Agost, Rosa. 1999. “Serialitat i traducció.” In Cuerpos en serie, ed. by Vicente Benet and Eloísa Nos Aldás, 91–106. Castellón: Universitat Jaume I.Google Scholar
Altman, Rick. 1984. “A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film Genre.” Cinema Journal 23 (3): 6–18. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Armstrong, Nigel. 2004. “Voicing ‘The Simpsons’ from English into French: a story of variable success.” JosTrans: The Journal of Specialised Translation 2: 97–109, available online [URL] (last access 13 April 2020).
Audissino, Emilio. 2014. “Dubbing as a Formal Interference: Reflections and Examples.” In Media and Translation: An Interdisciplinary Approach, ed. by Dror Abend-David, 97–117. New York & London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Baños, Rocío. 2014. “Insights into the false orality of dubbed fictional dialogue and the language of dubbing.” In Media and Translation: An Interdisciplinary Approach, ed. by Dror Abend-David, 75–95. New York & London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
. 2009. La oralidad prefabricada en la traducción para el doblaje. Estudio descriptivo-contrastivo del español de dos comedias de situación: ‘Siete vidas’ y ‘Friends’. Unpublished Doctoral Thesis. University of Granada, Spain.Google Scholar
Baños, Rocío and Fredric Chaume. 2009. “Prefabricated Orality: A Challenge in Audiovisual Translation.” Intralinea 6, available online [URL] (Last access 20 April 2020).
Barragán Mallofret, Daniel and Juan Luis Castro Fernández. 2005. “Arqueología de la justicia. Arqueología de las víctimas de la Guerra Civil Española y de la represión franquista.” Rampas 7: 149–174. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bastianes, María. 2018. “Un clásico difícil. Censura y adaptación escénica de La Celestina bajo el franquismo.” Hispanic Research Journal. Iberian and Latin American Studies 19 (2): 117–134. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cabrera Martín, Marta. 2014. La impunidad de los crímenes cometidos durante el fascismo. Obligaciones del Estado español bajo el derecho internacional. Luarca, Asturias: Asociación Española para el Derecho Internacional de los Derechos Humanos.Google Scholar
Calhoun, John. 2004. “The Ox-Bow Incident.” Cineaste 29 (3): 55–6.Google Scholar
Camus-Camus, Carmen. 2015. “Negotiation, Censorship or Translation Constraints? A Case Study of Duel in the Sun.” In Audiovisual Translation. Taking Stock, ed. by Jorge Díaz Cintas, and Josela Neves, 8–27. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar
Caron, Caroline-Isabelle. 2003. “Translating Trek: Rewriting an American Icon in a Francophone Context.” The Journal of American Culture 26 (3): 329–355. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de. 1605. El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Madrid: Ediciones de la Lectura, 1911.Google Scholar
Chaume, Fredric. 2004. “Film Studies and Translation Studies: Two Disciplines at Stake in Audiovisual Translation.” Meta: journal des traducteurs, 49 (1): 12–24. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chiaro, Delia. 2007. “The Effect of Translation on Humour Response: The Case of Dubbed Comedy in Italy.” In Doubts and Directions in Translation Studies: Selected Contributions from the EST Congress, Lisbon 2004, ed by Yves Gambier, Miriam Schlesinger and Radegundis Stolxe, 137–152. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clark, Walter Van Tilburg. 1940. The Ox-Bow Incident. New York: Random House, The Modern Library Classics, 2004.Google Scholar
Cronin, Michael. 2009. Translation goes to the Movies. New York & London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Díaz Díaz, Benito. 2016. ”Tiempos de violencia desigual: guerrilleros contra Franco (1939–1952).” Vínculos de Historia 5: 105–120. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ellis, Jack C. 1995. A History of Film. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.Google Scholar
Even-Zohar, Itamar. 1978. “The Position of Translated Literature within the Literary Polysystem.” In The Translation Studies Reader, ed. by Lawrence Venuti (2000), 192–197. London & New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
García Rodrigo, Francisco Javier. 1887. Historia verdadera de la Inquisición. Tomo 3. Madrid: Alejandro Gómez Fuentenebro.Google Scholar
Gomery, Douglas. 1980. “Economic Struggle and Hollywood Imperialism: Europe Converts to Sound.” Yale French Studies 60, Cinema/Sound: 80–93. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Görlach, Manfred. 2001. A Dictionary of European Anglicisms. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gottlieb, Henrik. 2012. “Old Films, New Subtitles, More Anglicisms.” In Audiovisual Translation and Media Accessibility at the Crossroads. Media for All 3, ed. by Aline Remael, Pilar Orero and Mary Carroll, 249–272. Amsterdam: Rodopi. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heinink, Juan B., Florentino Hernández Girbal and Robert G. Dickson. 1992. Los que pasaron por Hollywood. Madrid: Verdoux.Google Scholar
Hock, Hans Heinrich. 1991. Principles of Historical Linguistics. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Holmes, James S. 1972. “The Cross-temporal Factor in Verse Translation.” Meta: journal des traducteurs 17 (2): 102–110. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Houston, John A. 1952. “The United Nations and Spain.” The Journal of Politics 14 (4): 683–709. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jakobson, Roman. 1959. “On linguistic aspects of translation.” In On Translation, ed. by Reuben A. Brower, 232–239. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jarvinen, Lisa. 2012. The Rise of Spanish-Language Filmmaking. Out from Hollywood’s Shadow, 1929–1939. New Brunswick, New Jersey & London: Rutgers University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jowett, G. S. 1990. “Moral Responsibility and Commercial Entertainment: Social Control in the American Film Industry 1907–1968.” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 10 (1): 3–31. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Keating, Carla Mereu. 2014. “The translation of ethnonyms and racial slurs in films. American blackness in Italian dubbing and subtitling.” European Journal of English Studies 18 (3): 295–315. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kilgarriff, Adam; Rychlý Pavel; Srmrz Pavel & David Tugwell. 2004. “The Sketch Engine.” In Proceedings of the Eleventh EURALEX International Congress, 105–115. Lorient: Université de Bretagne-Sud.Google Scholar
Laviosa, Sara. 2011. “Corpus-Based Translation Studies: Where does it come from? Where is it going?” In Corpus-Based Translation Studies. Research and Application, ed. by Alet Kruger, Kim Wallmach and Jeremy Munday, 13–32. London: Bloomsbury. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Luyken, Georg-Michael, Thomas Herbst, Jo Langham Brown, Helen Reid and Hermann Spinhof. 1991. Overcoming Language Barriers in Television Dubbing and Subtitling for the European Audience. Manchester: European Institute for the Media.Google Scholar
Merino, Raquel. 2001. “Presentación de la Base de Datos TRACE (Traducciones Censuradas Inglés-Español).” In Trasvases culturales: literatura, cine y traducción 3, ed. by Eterio Pajares, Raquel Merino and José Miguel Santamaría, 287–295. Zarauz: Universidad del País Vasco.Google Scholar
Merkle, Denise. 2010. “Censorship.” In Handbook of Translation Studies. Volume 2, ed. by Yves Gambier and Luc Van Doorslaer, 18–21. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Myers, Lora. 1973. “The art of dubbing.” Filmakers Newsletter 6: 56–58.Google Scholar
Naranjo, Beatriz. 2015. “Translating Blackness in Spanish Dubbing”. Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada 28 (2): 416–441. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nornes, Abé Mark. 2007. Cinema Babel. Translating Global Cinema. Minneapolis & London: Minnesota University Press.Google Scholar
Pavesi, María. 2019. “Corpus-based audiovisual translation studies: ample room for development.” In The Routledge Handbook of Audiovisual Translation, ed. by Luis Perez-González, 315–333. London & New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
. 2016. “The Space of Italian Dubbing: From Naturalness to Creativity in Fictive Orality.” In The Languages of Dubbing. Mainstream Audiovisual Translation in Italy, ed. by Michela Canepari, Gillian Mansfield and Franca Poppi, 13–30. Roma: Carocci.Google Scholar
. 2005. La traduzione filmica. Aspetti del parlato doppiato dall’inglese all’italiano. Roma: Carocci.Google Scholar
Parini, Ilaria. 2009. “The transposition of Italian American in Italian dubbing.” In Translating Regionalised Voices in Audiovisuals, ed. by Federico Federici, 157–178. Roma: Aracne. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Perea Delgado, Luisa M. 2012. “’Los de la Sierra’, presencia de la guerrilla antifranquista en los montes de Tarifa.” Al Qantir 12: 184–197.Google Scholar
Pérez Galdós, Benito. 1905. Aita Tettauen. Madrid: Viuda e hijos de Tello.Google Scholar
Pérez-González, Luis. 2014. Audiovisual Translation. Theories, Methods and Issues. London & New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Queen, Robin. 2004. “‘Du hast jar keene Ahnung’: African American English dubbed into German.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 8 (4): 515–537. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rabadán, Rosa. 1991. Equivalencia y traducción. Problemática de la equivalencia translémica inglés-español. León: Universidad de León.Google Scholar
Sanderson, John D. 2010. “The Other You. Translating the Hispanic for the Spanish Screen.” In Polyglot Cinema. Migration and Transcultural Narration in France, Italy, Portugal and Spain, ed. by Verena Berger and Miya Komori. 49–71. Vienna & Berlin: Lit Verlag.Google Scholar
Shuttleworth, Mark and Moira Cowie. 1997. Dictionary of Translation Studies. Manchester: Saint Jerome.Google Scholar
Snell-Hornby, Mary. 1988. Translation Studies: An Integrated Approach. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Spolsky, Bernard. 1998. Sociolinguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Stone, Howard. 1957. “Los anglicismos en España y su papel en la lengua oral.” Revista de Filología Española Vol. XLI (1/4): 141–160. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Toury, Gideon. 1995. Descriptive Translation Studies – And Beyond. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Trudgill, Peter. 2003. A Glossary of Sociolinguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Valdeón, Roberto A. 2018. “Language and translation in classic westerns: revising stereotypes in They Died with their Boots on and Fort Apache.” Language and Intercultural Communication 18 (6): 681–693. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Venuti, Lawrence. 1995. The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. London & New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wach, Szymon. 2013. “Calquing English Terminology into Polish.” Academic Journal of Modern Philology 2: 161–169.Google Scholar
Willis García-Talavera, James F. 2002. “El programa de mano Metro Goldwyn Mayer en los inicios del cine sonoro: las versiones en habla castellana.” Revista Latina de Comunicación Social 52: 602–618.Google Scholar
Databases and dictionaries
Cambridge Dictionary. Open access. [URL]
Diccionario de la lengua española. Real Academia Española. Open access. [URL]
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Sanderson, John D.
2023. A Stranger in the Saloon: Lexical Disruption in the English Translation for Euro-Westerns Dubbing. Íkala, Revista de Lenguaje y Cultura 28:2 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 4 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.