The representation of African American identity on screen for a Spanish audience: A multimodal approach to the dubbing of Luke Cage, Bamboozled, and Tropic Thunder
StuartGreen
University of Leeds
Abstract
Existing studies of translations of audio-visual productions that explore African American issues focus exclusively on African American Vernacular English and culturally specific references, the standardisation or omission of which are seen to compromise the originals’ critique of race and their value for in-group identity. This article takes a multimodal approach to three such productions dubbed for a Spanish audience. Firstly, it examines how characters’ African American identity is rendered not only by language but also visually and aurally. Comprehension in dubbed versions is more likely to be affected by non-linguistic matters, such as casting of voice talent. Secondly, it is shown how translations shape the audio-visual creation of a fictional world and extra-diegetic elements that address a particular audience and thus enable in-group identification along ethnic lines. Lastly, an alternative translation strategy is outlined that targets audiences from the international Black diaspora to whom such productions might appeal.
As Black History Months come around each year in the USA and UK, many cinemas, broadcasters, and streaming services now prioritise feature films, documentaries, series, and programmes that spotlight moments of Black history and explore the life experiences of Black people, both real and fictional. A great many of these have been made in recent years, as Black directors, scriptwriters, and actors have started to command the artistic freedoms for which they have spent many decades calling. Many of these productions are from the USA and focus on African American characters and stories in order to examine specific collective concerns, such as slavery (Emancipation; Fuqua 2022) and the intersections of race and class (Black-ish; Barris 2014–2022), and/or to commemorate significant figures and forms of cultural expression, as in the biographical drama Till (Chukwu 2022) and the documentary Summer of Soul (Thompson 2021). Such productions may be of interest to a general audience, as attested by the broad critical acclaim and substantial commercial success that many of them have enjoyed. Yet, they also perform a crucial role in reinforcing the ethnic identity and in-group identification of those who identify as African American. This can be for the simple fact that they prominently feature actors and characters of the same ethnicity, because of the connections that viewers establish with such characters on account of having had similar experiences and possessing similar values, and by offering positive role models that boost one’s concept of self (Behm-Morawitz 2020).
creator1997–2003Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Los Angeles, CA. 20th Century Fox Television 2004 DVD.
Discography
Alaska y Dinarama, performers
1986 “A quién le importa”, on No Es Pecado. Pozuelo de Alarcón. Parlophone Music, Spain 2006 Spotify.
Ernie and the Top Notes, performers
1972 “Dap Walk”, on The Funky 16 Corners. Los Angeles, CA. Now-Again Records 2019 Spotify.
Frank T, vocalist and composer
1998 “El tiempo de los intrusos,” on Discografía básica. Madrid. Zona Bruta 2005 CD.
Hayes, Isaac, vocalist and composer
1971 “Theme from Shaft”, on Shaft. London. Rondor Music 1989 CD.
Kamer, Cyril
, vocalist and lyricist 2020 “Somos”, ft. Moha the B. Los Rebeldes. Spotify.
Moha the B, vocalist and lyricist
2019 “Negrata”, ft. Godss Lurex. No publisher. Spotify.
Moha the B, vocalist and lyricist
2020 “Spain”. No publisher. Spotify.
Saadiq, Raphael
vocalist and composer2011 “Good Man”, co-composed by Taura Stinson, on Stone Rollin’. New York City, NY. Columbia 2011 LP.
Wonder, Stevie
vocalist and composer2000 “Misrepresented People”, co-composed by Gary Byrd, on Additional Singles and Rarities. Hilversum, Netherlands. UMG Recordings 2019 Spotify.
Wu-Tang Clan
performers1993 “Bring Da Ruckus”, ft. RZA, Ghostface Killah, Raekwon and Inspectah Deck, on Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers). New York City, NY. Sony Music Entertainment. Spotify.
References
Adami, Elisabetta, and Sara Ramos Pinto
2020 “Meaning-(Re)Making in a World of Untranslated Signs: Towards a Research Agenda on Multimodality, Culture, and Translation.” In Translation and Multimodality: Beyond Words, edited by Monica Boria, Ángeles Carreres, María Noriega-Sánchez, and Marcus Tomalin, 71–93. Abingdon: Routledge.
Allende-González, Carlos, Karen E. Shackleford, Lauren N. Keller, Cynthia Vinney, and Lawrence M. Drake
2020 “Watching Black Panther with Racially Diverse Youth: Relationships between Film Viewing, Ethnicity, Ethnic Identity, Empowerment, and Wellbeing.” Review of Communication 20 (3): 250–259.
Arampatzis, Christos
2013 “Las variedades no estándar en la comedia de situación estadounidense y su doblaje al español: un estudio descriptivo [Non-standard varieties in the US sitcom and their dubbing into Spanish: A descriptive study].” TRANS 17: 85–102.
Barlowe, Jamie
2003 “ ‘You Must Never Be a Misrepresented People’: Spike Lee’s Bamboozled.” Canadian Review of American Studies 33 (1): 1–15.
Behm-Morawitz, Elizabeth
2020 “Media Use and the Development of Racial and Ethnic Identities.” In The International Encyclopedia of Media Psychology, edited by Jan Van den Bulck. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley.
Bernado, Laurena
2021 “Whitewashing Diverse Voices: (De)constructing Race and Ethnicity in Spanish-Language Television Dubbing.” Media, Culture and Society 43 (7): 1297–1310.
Bosseaux, Charlotte
2015Dubbing, Film and Performance: Uncanny Encounters. Bern: Peter Lang.
Bosseaux, Charlotte
2018 “Investigating Dubbing: Learning from the Past, Looking to the Future.” In The Routledge Handbook of Audio-Visual Translation, edited by Luis Pérez-González, 48–63. Abingdon: Routledge.
Bosseaux, Charlotte
2019 “Voice in French Dubbing: The Case of Julianne Moore.” Perspectives 27 (2): 218–234.
Corrizzato, Sara
2012 “The Lingua-Cultural Importation of African American Identity in the Italian Dubbed Version of Spike Lee’s Bamboozled.” Word and Text: A Journal of Literary Studies and Linguistics 2 (2): 110–120.
2014 “The Evaluation of Intonation: Pitch Range Differences in English and in Spanish.” In Evaluation in Context, edited by Geoff Thompson and Laura Alba-Juez, 179–194. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
1993The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Green, Stuart
2011 “¿Cómo puedes ser tan negro? Rap y racismo en España. Entrevistas con Frank T y El Chojín [How can you be so black? Rap and racism in Spain. Interviews with Frank T and El Chojín].” Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies 15: 165–186.
Huet, Justine
2020 “Les super-pouvoirs du doublage français de Luke Cage ou l’art de desservir la communauté afro-americaine [The superpowers of the French dubbing of Luke Cage or the art of doing a disservice to the African American community].” Francophone Convergences 6 (2): 105–122. http://mrujs.mtroyral.ca/index.php/cf/index
Krims, Adam
2000Rap Music and the Poetics of Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
1992Blacks and White TV: African Americans in Television since 1948. 2nd ed. Chicago: Nelson-Hall.
Martínez Sierra, Juan José
2014–2015 “La traducción de nigger en Django Desencadenado: un enfoque ideológico [The translation of ‘n*****’ in Django Unchained: An ideological approach].” Prosopopeya: Revista de crítica contemporánea 9: 81–98.
2020 “Re-Envisioning Black Masculinity in Luke Cage: From Blaxploitation and Comic Books to Netflix.” The Journal of Popular Culture 53 (2): 454–472.
Méndez-Silvosa, Natalia, and Alicia Bolaños-Medina
2019 “La traducción al español del inglés afroamericano para doblaje: El caso de la serie Insecure [The translation into Spanish of African American English for dubbing: The case of the series Insecure
].” Parallèlles 31 (2): 32–46.
2010 “Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds: A Blueprint for Dubbing Translators?” Meta: Journal des Traducteurs 55 (4): 712–731.
Munday, Jeremy
ed.2009The Routledge Companion to Translation Studies. Rev. ed. Abingdon: Routledge.
Naranjo Sánchez, Beatriz
2015 “Translating Blackness in Spanish Dubbing.” Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada 28 (2): 416–441.
Navarro Andúgar, Juan, and Purificación Meseguer Cutillas
2015 “La identidad social a través del lenguaje: Estudio del doblaje de The Wire al español [Social identity through language: A study of the dubbing of The Wire into Spanish].” Opción 31 (5): 642–665.
2017 “How to Get Away with Blackface: Performances of Black Masculinity in Tropic Thunder.” The Journal of Popular Culture 50 (6): 1400–1420.
Thomas, Erik R., and Jeffrey Reaser
2004 “Delimiting Perceptual Cues Used for the Ethnic Labeling of African American and European American Voices.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 8 (1): 54–87.
2011 “ ‘You Got to Git Realistic’: The Dubbing of African American English into Italian.” In Challenges for the 21st Century: Dilemmas, Ambiguities, Directions. Papers from the 24th AIA Conference, Vol. II: Language Studies, edited by Gabriella Di Martino, Linda Lombardo, and Stefani Nuccorini, 129–139. Rome: Edizione Q; Dipartimento de Letterature Comparate, Università degli Studi Roma Tre.