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ABSTRACT
In Spain, as in other countries, reality TV seems to be a pervasive phenomenon, materialised in a myriad of domestic and foreign productions. The latter require interlingual translation, which in most cases takes the form of voice-over translation. Despite the prevalence of reality TV and voice-over translation in Spanish television, both fields are still widely underexplored. This article sets out to bridge this research gap by presenting an exploratory study of the translation of reality TV in Spain. To this end, it will first document the prevalence of foreign reality TV in Spanish TV schedules, to then explore the similarities and differences in traditional voice-over translation (i.e. used for documentary translation) versus voice-over translation for reality TV. The focus is on the different types of synchrony observed in voice-over translation, yet the discussion highlights other relevant issues (e.g. approaches to the translation of semi-spontaneous speech) and illustrates how this genre is challenging audiovisual translation (AVT) conventions, as well as blurring the boundaries between AVT modes.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Rocío Baños is senior lecturer in translation at the Centre for Translation Studies at University College London, where she teaches audiovisual translation and translation technology. She holds a PhD from the University of Granada, focused on spoken Spanish in dubbed and domestic situation comedies. Her main research interests lie in the fields of audiovisual translation, translation technology and translation training. She has published various articles in these areas. She has also co-edited a special issue of the journal Perspectives: Studies in Translatology on corpus linguistics and audiovisual translation and, more recently, a monograph entitled ‘Audiovisual Translation in a Global Context’. Her latest research focuses on ‘lesser forms’ of audiovisual translation, in particular on the voice-over translation of reality TV. She has also taken part in research projects concerning the use of audiovisual translation in foreign language learning.
Notes
1. In Spain, domestic reality TV programmes such as Gran Hermano (Big Brother) and training or talent shows such as La Voz (The Voice) or MasterChef and its derivatives (MasterChef Júnior and MasterChef Celebrity) often feature in the rankings of the 50 most watched TV programmes (SGAE, Citation2016, Citation2017). Regarding the latter, for instance, since its first season in 2013 the number of viewers watching the finals of the Spanish version of MasterChef has ranged from 3.7 to 5.5 million, achieving a 25–33% share rate (Migelez, Citation2016). Share ratings of Gran Hermano were impressive during the first two seasons (over 9 million viewers and 60–70% share rate for its finals) (Terán, Citation2012) and although they have decreased due many factors, including audience fragmentation, it is still a very popular show, with Gran Hermano VIP (Celebrity Big Brother) achieving a 29.8% share rate in 2015 (SGAE, Citation2016, p. 64).
2. The preliminary analysis considered all those Spanish channels accessible to a wider audience (i.e. free and widely available) that were broadcasting at the time the analysis was undertaken. These comprised generic channels (TVE 1, the public Spanish TV station belonging to the state broadcaster Radio Televisión Española; Antena 3 and La Sexta, private channels belonging to Atresmedia; and Telecinco and Cuatro, private channels owned by Mediaset), as well as non-generic channels. Given that non-generic channels abound, especially since the advent of Digital Terrestrial Television in Spain as a free service, the selection was narrowed down to those channels focusing on entertainment. These included Neox, Nova and Mega from Atresmedia, Divinity, FDF and Energy from Mediaset, Paramount Channel from Net TV, and Discovery MAX from Veo TV (SGAE, Citation2016). As foreign reality TV was hardly included (e.g. La Sexta, Cuatro, Neox) or completely absent (e.g. TVE 1, Antena 3, Telecinco, FDF and Paramount Channel) in some of these channels, it was decided to focus on those featuring a substantial amount of these texts; i.e. Nova, Mega, Divinity, Energy and Discovery MAX.
3. Although subtitles are now available for most TV programmes broadcast in Spain, reality TV programmes are available revoiced by default.
4. Following Matamala (Citation2009), Permanyer (Citation2012) referred to instances of unscripted conversation as ‘real speech’. However, I would like to contend here that this type of discourse is at best semi-spontaneous due to the contrived nature of reality TV programmes and the careful planning they go through, which also affects their discourse.
5. According to Italian translators and scholars, this term stands for ‘similar to lip synchrony’, but its origin has so far not been clearly pinpointed.
6. In line with existing conventions in Spain (Chaume, Citation2012), the following dubbing symbols have been used in the examples: / to represent short pauses and (P) for instances of overlapping utterances. Approximate time codes have also been included in the following format: minutes:seconds:milliseconds.
7. The terms ‘half-dubbing’ and ‘partial dubbing’, and relevant equivalents in other languages, such as semidoblaje (Bartoll, Citation2015) or demi-doublage (Gambier, Citation2004), have been used either as synonyms of voice-over, or to denote its variations and experimentations with this AVT mode (Chaume, Citation2013; Hendrickx, Citation1984). The versatility of these terms is in line with the approach taken by Hendrickx (Citation1984) when coining the term ‘partial dubbing’ and illustrating its potential as a prospective alternative to dubbing and subtitling. Yet, this has resulted in terminological confusion and nowadays these terms need to be carefully defined as they can lead to different interpretations.