Dubbing Othering and Belonging: The Latinx Voice As the Self in One Day at a Time

Abstract

Netflix’s 2017 reboot of the sitcom One Day at a Time centres on a Latinx family, whose dialogue, featuring English and Spanish, portrays an authentic Latinx culture on television. This article considers the socio-pragmatic functions of code-switching, which creates a linguistic distinction between Latinx and non-Latinx characters. This contrast raises concerns about how such language use is dubbed for Spanish-speaking audiences. Focusing on Season 1 of this show, the article explores how this linguistic distinction was captured and what that can teach translators and dubbing houses about preserving linguistic duality in scripted texts portraying culturally ‘hybrid’ or fluid identities.

Keywords:

• Code-switching
• Latinx
• Sociolinguistics
• Translation Studies
• Television
• Dubbing
• Socio-Pragmatics

Notes

1 Unless otherwise specified, the acronym ODAAT is used throughout the paper to refer to the 2017–2020 reboot rather than the 1975–1984 production.

2 Gerard Jones, ‘The Norman Lear Sitcoms and the 1970s’, in The Sitcom Reader: America Re-viewed, Still Skewed, ed. Mary M. Dalton & Laura R. Linder (Albany: SUNY Press, 2016), 107–20 (p. 111).

3 In the article, we use the term Latinx to denote unspecified gender. Furthermore, it serves as a nod towards inclusion.

4 See Mareike Jenner, Netflix and the Re-invention of Television (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).

5 See Elena Di Giovanni & Yves Gambier, ‘Introduction’, in Reception Studies and Audiovisual Translation, ed. Elena Di Giovanni & Yves Gambier (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2018), vii–xii (p. x).

6 Antonio Flores, Gustavo López & Jynnah Radford, ‘2015, Hispanic Population in the United States Statistical Portrait’, Pew Research Center; available at <https://www.pewhispanic.org/2017/09/18/facts-on-u-s-latinos-trend-data/> (accessed 7 June 2019).

7 See Roshawnda A. Derrick, ‘Code-Switching, Code-Mixing and Radical Bilingualism in U.S. Latino Texts’, Doctoral dissertation (Wayne State University, 2015), and Roshawnda A. Derrick & Richard Huizar, ‘The Post-Modern Latinx: Spanish/English Language Mixing on Instagram’, Afro-Hispanic Review, 38:2 (forthcoming). See also Remy Attig, ‘Coco and the Case of the Disappearing Spanglish: Negotiating Code-Switching in the English and Spanish Versions of Disney and Pixar's Animated Film’, in Hybrid Englishes and the Challenges of/for Translation: Identity, Mobility and Language Change, ed. Karen Bennett & Rita Queiroz de Barros (New York/London: Routledge, 2019), 151–62.

8 Micòl Beseghi, ‘The Representation and Translation of Identities in Multilingual TV Series: Jane the Virgin, a Case in Point’, in Multilingüismo y representación de las identidades en textos audiovisuales/Multilingualism and Representation of Identities in Audiovisual Texts, ed. María Pérez L. de Heredia & Irene de Higes Andino, MonTI. Monografías de Traducción e Interpretación, Special Issue 4 (2019), 145–72 (p. 148).

9 Alfredo Richard (Vice-President of Corporate Communications, Telemundo), interviewed by Roshawnda A. Derrick, 2 December 2018.

10 See Erica McClure, Aspects of Code-Switching in the Discourse of Bilingual Mexican-American Children (Urbana: Center for the Study of Reading, Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1977); Carol W. Pfaff, ‘Constraints on Language Mixing’, Language, 55:2 (1979), 291–318; and Shana Poplack, ‘Sometimes I’ll Start a Sentence in English y termino en español’, Linguistics, 18:7–8 (1980), 581–618. See also Ana Cecilia Zentella, ‘Spanish and English in Contact in the United States: The Puerto Rican Experience’, Word, 33:1–2 (1982), 41–57, and John M. Lipski, Linguistic Aspects of Spanish-English Language Switching (Tempe: Center for Latin American Studies, Arizona State Univ., 1985).

11 See Almeida Jacqueline Toribio, ‘Accessing Spanish-English Code-Switching Competence’, International Journal of Bilingualism, 5:4 (2001), 403–36; Eugenia Casielles-Suárez, ‘Radical Code-switching in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao’, BHS, XC:4 (2013), 475–87; Domnita Dumitrescu, ‘Dude was figureando hard: el cambio y la fusión de códigos en la obra de Junot Díaz’, in Perspectives in the Study of Spanish Language Variation: Papers in Honor of Carmen Silva-Corvalán, ed. Andrés Enrique-Arias, Manuel J. Gutiérrez, Alazne Landa & Francisco Ocampo (Santiago de Compostela: Univ. de Santiago de Compostela, 2014), 397–434; and Lukasz D. Pawelek & Roshawnda A. Derrick, ‘Ethnolinguistic Narratives of Latinidad: Radical Language Mixing, Nostalgia and Hybridity in Chávez-Silverman’s Killer Crónicas’, Nueva Revista del Pacífico, 68 (2018), 82–104.

12 See John J. Gumperz, Discourse Strategies (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 1982). See also, Poplack, ‘Sometimes I’ll Start a Sentence in English y termino en español’, and Guadalupe Valdés-Fallis, ‘Social Interaction and Code-Switching Patterns: A Case Study of Spanish/English Alternation’, in Bilingualism in the Bicentennial and Beyond, ed. Gary D. Keller, Richard V. Teschner & Silvia Viera (Jamaica, NY: Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingüe, 1976), 53–85.

13 Gumperz, Discourse Strategies, 75–80.

14 Cecilia Montes-Alcalá, ‘iSwitch: Spanish-English Mixing in Computer-Mediated Communication’, Journal of Language Contact, 9:1 (2016), 23–48 (pp. 31–40).

15 Regarding plays, see: Sheri L. Anderson, ‘Status & Solidarity through Codeswitching: Three Plays by Dolores Prida’, MA dissertation (Texas A&M University, 2004); Carla Jonsson, ‘Code-switching in Chicano Theater: Power, Identity and Style in Three Plays by Cherríe Moraga’, Doctoral dissertation (Umeå University, 2005); and Cecilia Montes-Alcalá, ‘Bicultural Dramas: Spanish-English Code-Switching in Bilingual Plays’, Bilingual Review/La Revista Bilingüe, 31:2 (2012–2013), 125–40. On blogs, see: Cecilia Montes-Alcalá, ‘Blogging in Two Languages: Code-Switching in Bilingual Blogs’, in Selected Proceedings of the Third Workshop on Spanish Sociolinguistics, ed. Jonathan Holmquist, Augusto Lorenzino & Lotfi Sayahi (Somerville: Cascadilla Proceedings Project, 2007), 162–70. For more on songs, see the following studies by Linda Ohlson: ‘ “Baby I’m sorry, te juro, I’m sorry”: subjectivización versus objetivización mediante el cambio de códigos inglés/español en la letra de una canción de bachata actual’, in Spanish in Contact: Policy, Social and Linguistic Inquiries, ed. Kim Potowski & Richard Cameron (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2007), 173–89; ‘El cambio de código español/inglés en la letra del rap “mentirosa” de Mellow Man Ace’, Moderna Språk, 102:2 (2009), 84–95; and ‘ “Soy el brother de dos lenguas … ”: el cambio de código en la música popular contemporánea de los hispanos en los Estados Unidos’, Doctoral dissertation (University of Göteborg, 2008). Regarding the socio-pragmatics of social media platforms, see Derrick, 'Code-Switching, Code-Mixing and Radical Bilingualism in U.S. Latino Texts', and Derrick & Huizar, ‘The Post-Modern Latinx’.

16 Sociolects and ethnolects are, respectively, language varieties typical to specific social or ethnic groups. The terms are less common now than they were when Berman originally published his 1985 article, as they risk homogenization and stereotyping.

17 Antoine Berman, ‘Translation and the Trials of the Foreign’ (1985), in The Translation Studies Reader, ed. Lawrence Venuti (New York/London: Routledge, 2000), 284–97 (p. 294).

18 See Rainier Grutman, ‘Refraction and Recognition: Literary Multilingualism in Translation’, Target. International Journal of Translation Studies, 18:1 (2006), 17–47.

19 See Sandra Kingery, ‘Translating Spanglish to Spanish: The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao’, Translation Review, 104:1 (2019), 8–29. See also Remy Attig, ‘Intralingual Translation As an Option for Radical Spanglish’, TranscUlturAl. A Journal of Translation and Cultural Studies, 11:1 (2019), 23–35, and Ellen Jones, ‘ “I want my closet back”: Queering and Unqueering Language in Giannina Braschi’s Yo-Yo Boing!’, Textual Practice, 34:2 (2020), 283–301.

20 See Attig, ‘Coco and the Case of the Disappearing Spanglish’. See also Beseghi, ‘The Representation and Translation of Identities in Multilingual TV Series’, and Montse Corrius & Patrick Zabalbeascoa, ‘Language Variation in Source Texts and Their Translations: The Case of L3 in Film Translation’, Target. International Journal of Translation Studies, 23:1 (2011), 113–30.

21 See Reine Meylaerts, ‘Heterolingualism in/and Translation: How Legitimate Are the Other and His/Her Language? An Introducction’, Target. International Journal of Translation Studies, 18:1 (2006), 1–15.

22 See Jenner, Netflix and the Re-invention of Television.

23 Annette Hill, ‘Media Audiences and Reception Studies’, in Reception Studies and Audiovisual Translation, ed. Di Giovanni & Gambier, 3–19 (pp. 3–4).

24 See Kwame Anthony Appiah, ‘Thick Translation’ (1993), in Translation Studies Reader, ed. Venuti, 417–29, and Paul Bandia, ‘Post-Colonial Literatures and Translation’, in Handbook of Translation Studies, ed. Yves Gambier & Luc van Doorslaer, 4 vols (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2010–2013), I, 264–69. See also Gayatri Spivak, ‘Translating into English’, in Nation, Language and the Ethics of Translation, ed. Sandra Bermann & Michael Wood (Princeton: Princeton U. P., 2005), 93–110.

25 Evelyn Nien-Ming Ch’ien, Weird English (Cambridge, MA: Harvard U. P., 2004), 11.

26 Ch’ien, Weird English, 11.

27 Felix M. Padilla, Latino Ethnic Consciousness: The Case of Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans in Chicago (Notre Dame: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1985).

28 Padilla, Latino Ethnic Consciousness, 5.

29 Padilla, Latino Ethnic Consciousness, 8.

30 Ch’ien, Weird English, 20.

31 Beseghi, ‘The Representation and Translation of Identities in Multilingual TV Series’, 150.

32 In all examples Spanish words will be given in bold.

33 Tiina Tuominen, ‘Experiencing Translated Media: Why Audience Research Needs Translation Studies’, The Translator, 25:3 (2019), 229–41 (p. 230).

34 Stanley Fish, Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities (Cambridge, MA: Harvard U. P., 1980). See also Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction (Malden: Oxford Blackwell, 2008 [1^st ed. 1983]), 54–90.

35 Ch’ien, Weird English, 17.

36 Lourdes Torres, ‘In the Contact Zone: Code-Switching Strategies by Latino/a Writers’, MELUS, 32:1 (2007), 75–96 (p. 77).

37 Torres, ‘In the Contact Zone’, 78.

38 Valdés-Fallis, ‘Social Interaction and Code-Switching Patterns’, 58.

39 McClure, ‘Aspects of Code-Switching’, 19.

40 Torres, ‘In the Contact Zone’, 79.

41 Gumperz, Discourse Strategies, 76.

42 Laura Callahan, ‘The Role of Register in Spanish-English Codeswitching in Prose’, Bilingual Review/La Revista Bilingüe, 27:1 (2003), 12–25 (p. 15).

43 Torres, ‘In the Contact Zone’, 92.

44 Beseghi, ‘The Representation and Translation of Identities in Multilingual TV Series’, 148.

45 See Donna M. Goldstein & Kira Hall, ‘Postelection Surrealism and Nostalgic Racism in the Hands of Donald Trump’, Hau. Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 7:1 (2017), 397–406.

46 See Nilda Flores-González, ‘Latinx Youth Response to the “Trump Effect” ’ [unpublished Guest Lecture], St Francis Xavier University, 27 February 2020; and Mark Hugo Lopez, Ana González-Barrera & Jens Manuel Krogstad, ‘More Latinos Have Serious Concerns about Their Place in America under Trump’, 25 October 2018, Pew Research Center, Hispanic Trends; available at <https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2018/10/25/more-latinos-have-serious-concerns-about-their-place-in-america-under-trump/> (accessed 27 October 2020).

47 See Attig, ‘Intralingual Translation As an Option for Radical Spanglish’.

48 See Attig, ‘Coco and the Case of the Disappearing Spanglish’, 158–59.

49 Zentella, ‘Spanish and English in Contact in the United States’, 54.

50 See Beseghi, ‘The Representation and Translation of Identities in Multilingual TV Series’.

51 Grutman, ‘Refraction and Recognition’, 22.

52 See Fish, Is There a Text in This Class?

53 Luca Barra, ‘The Role of Adaptation and Dubbing Professionals in Shaping US TV for Italian Audiences’, Journal of European Television History & Culture, 2:4 (2013), 101–11 (p. 101).

54 Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/la Frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1999), 80–81.

55 Paul Bandia, ‘Literary Heteroglossia and Translation: Translating Resistance in Contemporary African Francophone Writing’, in Translation, Resistance, Activism, ed. Maria Tymoczko (Amherst: Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 2010), 168–89 (p. 185).

56 See Charlotte Bosseaux, ‘Investigating Dubbing: Learning from the Past, Looking to the Future’, in The Routledge Handbook of Audiovisual Translation, ed. Luis Pérez-González (London/New York: Routledge, 2019), 48–63 (pp. 50–52).

57 Appiah, ‘Thick Translation’, 427.

58 See Grutman, ‘Refraction and Recognition’, 20–21, and Allison M Rittmayer, ‘Translation and Film: Slang, Dialects, Accents and Multiple Languages’, in Translation: Comparative Perspectives, ed. A. Joseph McMullen, Comparative Humanities Review, 3 (2009), 1–12 (p. 10).

59 As with English-speaking actors who may adopt a New York, Southern or British accent to play a part, it is not particularly unusual for a native speaker of Spanish to imitate or adopt an accent from another region in TV and film.

60 See John M. Lipski, ‘Socio-Phonological Variation in Latin American Spanish’, in Handbook of Hispanic Sociolinguistics, ed. Manuel Díaz-Campos (Oxford: Blackwell, 2011), 72–97 (pp. 75, 80 & 84).

61 See Tamara Leah Falicov, Latin American Film Industries (London/New York: Bloomsbury, 2019), 1; and Adrián Fuentes-Luque, ‘Exploring Venezuela’s Audiovisual Translation Landscape’, Journal of Multicultural Discourses, 15:1 (2020), 104–17 (pp. 106–09).

62 See Real Academia Española & Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española, Diccionario de la lengua española, ed. del Tricentenario (2020), <https://dle.rae.es/plátano> (accessed 30 April 2021).

63 AsíHablamos.com, El diccionario latinoamericano, <https://www.asihablamos.com/www/significado/palabra/comemierda> (accessed 29 April 2021).

64 Francisco Moreno Fernández, La lengua española en su geografía (Madrid: Arco/Libros, 2009), 273–74 and, by the same author, Variedades de la lengua española (Abingdon/New York: Routledge, 2020), 73.

65 Chente Ydrach, ‘Marcel Ruiz: el actor más joven que he tenido en el podcast’, YouTube video, 2 April 2019; available at <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKjFyKtMMX4&t=343s> (accessed 29 April 2021).

66 See Bosseaux, ‘Investigating Dubbing’, 55, and Zoë Pettit, ‘Translating Register, Style and Tone in Dubbing and Subtitling’, The Journal of Specialized Translation, 4 (2005), 49–65 (p. 51).

67 Peter Fawcett, ‘The Manipulation of Language and Culture in Film Translation’, in Apropos of Ideology: Translation Studies on Ideology, Ideologies in Translation Studies, ed. María Calzada Pérez (Manchester/Northampton, MA: St Jerome Publishing, 2002), 145–63 (p. 157).

68 See Roshawnda A Derrick, ‘Radical Bilingualism in Junot Díaz’s Texts’, Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 12:2 (2019), 309–42; and Derrick & Huizar, ‘The Post-Modern Latinx’.

69 See Hill, ‘Media Audiences and Reception Studies’.

70 See Attig, 'Coco and the Case of the Disappearing Spanglish’, and Beseghi, ‘The Representation and Translation of Identities in Multilingual TV Series’, 155.

71 See Kingery, ‘Translating Spanglish to Spanish: The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao’.

* Disclosure Statement: No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.