The strange case of The Big Bang Theory and its extra-ordinary Italian audiovisual translation: a multimodal corpus-based analysis

Abstract

The (ab)use of a highly scientific and quaintly specialised language characterises the American sitcom The Big Bang Theory as a geek-oriented production which, by means of its humorous multimodal discourse, seems to be addressed to a community of speakers who co-share the same lexicon, ideas and habits, i.e. mainly young nerds. However, while in the source text the humorous discourse is primarily construed around some geeky in-jokes, the Italian audiovisual dubbed product seems to completely change the context of situation, thus avoiding any reference to the specificity of the language of the source text. The result is a predictable failure to accommodate the humorous discourse of the American series, preventing the Italian audience a full appreciation of its subtle humour. By means of an integrated multimodal and corpus-based approach, this paper aims to introduce the ‘community factor’ in the analysis of joke typologies staged in AVT artefacts. A multimodal model, which takes into consideration semiotically expressed humour, is introduced here, with the aim of capturing some interesting instantiations of the humorous discourse and specialised language which need to be re-allocated in the target product.

Keywords:

• semiotically expressed humour
• dubbing
• ‘community factor’
• multimodal corpus-based approach

Notes on contributors

Giuseppe Balirano, PhD in English for Special Purposes, is researcher in English Language and Translation at the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, University of Naples ‘L'Orientale’. His current research interests lie in the fields of MDA and AVT, humour and post-colonial English Linguistics. His most recent work includes: ‘Towards a Turkish EU-entity: A Semiotic Approach to the Reading of EUROPA's Website Cyber-representation of a “European Turkey”’ in Textus - Identity Construction and Positioning in Discourse and Society, 2009; and, ‘Detecting Semiotically Expressed Humor in Diasporic TV Productions’ in Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, 2008. He cooperates as teacher trainer for Express Publishing.

Notes

1. Due to its enormous and immediate success and the several awards received – such as the Television Critics Association Award, the People's Choice Award for Favorite Comedy, some best actors’ Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor and a Golden Globe for Best Performance – the show is going to be renewed with a new 2013–2014 season.

2. For the analysis of the humorous discourse, I will refer to Raskin's ‘Semantic Script Theory of Humor’ (1985), a theory which has its foundations in Chomsky's transformational generative grammar, later summarised in Attardo (1994, 2001), who combines this approach with several different methodologies in the field of linguistic-based humour research.

3. Jab lines (Attardo, 2001) are humorous elements fully integrated in the text in which they appear without disrupting the flow of the narrative. They are indispensable to the development of the humorous text and differ from punch lines, which generally occur in a final position in jokes, since they may occur in any other position in the text. This difference may also result in a different textual function since the jab line does not interrupt the course of the text; neither can it cause a reinterpretation of the whole text (2001, p. 82–83). The concepts of visual and musical jabs were introduced by Balirano (2007) and Balirano and Corduas (2008) with the aim of analysing non-verbal humorous resources which, just like a jab line, can trigger a humorous line within a text in a non-final position.

4. According to the information provided at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Big_Bang_Theory_episodes

5. It was the strong negative reaction from the fansubbers, who had already watched the series in its original language and partly translated it, that brought the Italian company Post in Europe to appoint Leslie James La Penna as new dubbing director, while Anton Giulio Castagna was hired as the new dialogue adaptor. Consequently, most of the geek in-jokes have been successfully re-proposed within the dialogues with precise references to the community of nerds represented.