Investigating the genesis of translated films: a view from the Stanley Kubrick Archive

ABSTRACT

This article reports on a study of translation-related material in the Stanley Kubrick Archive, housed at the University of the Arts, London College of Communication. By examining a variety of documents from this extensive collection, it attempts to show what archival materials can reveal about the genesis of the foreign-language versions of Kubrick’s films, focusing on the film director’s role and degree of intervention in the translation process. Building on previous research on filmmakers’ role in translation and linking with recent developments in the research on accessible filmmaking. I argue that Kubrick’s case provides a significant example of ‘unorthodox’ practices within the film industry, offering an alternative model in which film translation is integrated within the creative process of filmmaking through the film director’s active participation in the translation process.

KEYWORDS:

• Stanley Kubrick
• film translation
• archival research
• Dr. Strangelove
• filmmakers’ role in translation
• subtitling

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank the Stanley Kubrick Film Archives LLC, Warner Bros., University of the Arts London and the Stanley Kubrick Archive’s donors for granting me permission to publish extracts from unpublished material. I am also grateful to Georgina Orgill and all members of staff of the Stanley Kubrick Archive for their help and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Serenella Zanotti is associate professor of English language and translation at Roma Tre University, Italy. She has published widely in the fields of audiovisual translation, cross-cultural pragmatics, translator manuscript genetics and translingualism. Her current research in the area of AVT focuses on reception history, archives, and cross-cultural representation. She is the author of Italian Joyce. A Journey through Language and Translation (Bononia University Press 2013) and co-editor of numerous volumes, most recently Linguistic and Cultural Representation in Audiovisual Translation (Routledge, 2018), James Joyce’s Silences (Bloomsbury, 2018), Donne in traduzione (Bompiani, 2018) and Mediating Lingua-cultural Scenarios in AVT (Cultus: The Journal of Intercultural Mediation and Communication, forthcoming).

ORCID

Serenella Zanotti http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6622-7775

Notes

1. This manipulative adaptive approach, heavily oriented on target-language markets, has been part of Hollywood’s strategies of filmic distribution on foreign-language markets since the very beginning (see Vasey, 1997).

2. Telex, December 20 [1971], SK/13/8/3/24. Original spelling is left unchanged in all quoted material.

3. “The Letters of Stanley Kubrick”, 2008.

4. Typescript (carbon copy), SK/11/9/120. The file contains the correspondence between Jack Weiner and Kubrick on the distribution of Dr. Strangelove and its foreign versions.

5. Letter by Jack Weiner to Stanley Kubrick dated July 26, 1963, SK/11/9/120.

6. Typescript (carbon copy) dated July 29, 1963, SK/11/9/120.

7. Typescript (carbon copy), September 2, 1963, SK/11/9/120.

8. Typescript (carbon copy), SK/11/9/120 (my emphasis).

9. Typescript, SK/11/9/120 (my emphasis).

10. Ferdinando Contestabile had a renowned reputation as a dialogue writer in Italy at the time (see Paolinelli & Di Fortunato, 2005, p. 19).

11. Letter by Jack Weiner dated 29 January 1964 (SK/11/9/120).

12. Typescript (1 page) inserted before page 1 of the dialogue list (SK/11/4/1/2). Created for use by dubbing translators and subtitlers and provided by the distribution or production company, dialogue and spotting lists contain ‘every piece of spoken word or noise […] as well as definitions, which are descriptions of words, slang, or phrases found in the film that need explanation in order to make a good translation’ (Bathfield, 2000, p. 34). The annotated dialogue list is therefore ‘a key document’ that is meant to facilitate the task of the translator, ‘helping to dispel potential comprehension mistakes’ (Díaz Cintas & Remael, 2007, p. 74). See also Perego (2007) and Artegiani and Kapsaskis (2014).