Paolo Virzì’s glocal comedy in English subtitles: an investigation into linguistic and cultural representation^*

* Although the research was carried out jointly by the three authors, Veronica Bonsignori wrote sections 1.1, 3. and 3.1.; Silvia Bruti wrote sections 4., 4.1., 4.2. and 5; and Annalisa Sandrelli wrote sections 1., 2., 2.1. and 2.2.

ABSTRACT

Paolo Virzì’s film production is deeply rooted in Italian (often Tuscan) contemporary society, with a focus on the daily lives of ordinary people and the difference between their true selves and their public persona. The language spoken by his colourful characters, which includes regionalisms, slang, colloquialisms and a vast array of idiosyncratic traits, is the quintessence of Virzì’s world and of his bittersweet irony. In this contribution, we aim to illustrate how these culture-specific scenarios are transposed in the English subtitled versions of three recent Virzì films, namely La prima cosa bella [The first beautiful thing] (2010), Paolo Virzì, Italy, Tutti i santi giorni [Every blessed day] (2012), Paolo Virzì, Italy, and Il capitale umano [Human capital] (2014), Paolo Virzì, Italy. We identify the indices of regional or Italian identity, linguistically or culturally expressed, in the three aforementioned films, with a view to elucidating the difficulties behind their translation in the English subtitles.

KEYWORDS:

• representation
• subtitles
• idiolects
• regionalisms
• colloquialisms

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Veronica Bonsignori is a researcher in English language and linguistics at the University of Pisa, Department of Philology, Literature and Linguistics. She holds a PhD in English linguistics (2007) from the University of Pisa, where she teaches English for tourism and business English. Her interests are in the fields of pragmatics, sociolinguistics, audiovisual translation, multimodality and English for Specific Purposes (ESP). She has contributed to national and international conferences and published several articles, focusing on the transposition of linguistic varieties in Italian dubbing (2012, Peter Lang), and on linguistic phenomena of orality in English filmic speech in comparison to Italian dubbing, as in the paper co-authored with Silvia Bruti on introductions and wishes (2016, Equinox). She also authored the monograph English Tags: A Close-up on Film Language, Dubbing and Conversation (2013, Cambridge Scholars Publishing) and co-edited with Belinda Crawford Camiciottoli the volume Multimodality Across Communicative Settings, Discourse Domains and Genres (2016, Cambridge Scholars Publishing).

Silvia Bruti, PhD in English from the University of Pisa, is associate professor of English language and linguistics at the University of Pisa and director of the University Language Centre. Her research interests include topics such as discourse analysis, (historical) pragmatics, corpus linguistics, audiovisual translation and language teaching. She has published widely in these areas and contributed to national and international conferences. She has investigated issues in intercultural pragmatics and audiovisual translation, e.g. the translation of compliments, conversational routines and terms of address in interlinguistic subtitles and dubbing. Among her recent publications are a monograph on the translation of politeness (2013) and a co-authored volume on interlingual subtitling (2017).

Annalisa Sandrelli is lecturer in English language and translation at UNINT in Rome, where she teaches liaison interpreting, respeaking, and film language and audiovisual translation on the MA in interpreting and translation, and audiodescription on the MA in audiovisual and multimedia translation and adaptation for subtitling and dubbing. Her research interests include corpus-based interpreting studies, audiovisual translation, and legal interpreting/translation. She has taken part in several EU-funded projects on legal interpreting and translation (Building Mutual Trust, Qualitas, Understanding Justice); she is a member of the Eurolect Observatory and of the LARIM research group on interpreting, and coordinates the DubTalk/TVTalk project. Her most recent research on audiovisual translation includes a corpus-based study on the manipulation and censorship of sensitive references in the Italian dubbing of gay-themed TV series and a study on language variation in the Italian dubbing of Downton Abbey, both published in 2016.

ORCID

Veronica Bonsignori http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3329-7413

Notes

* Although the research was carried out jointly by the three authors, Veronica Bonsignori wrote sections 1.1, 3. and 3.1.; Silvia Bruti wrote sections 4., 4.1., 4.2. and 5; and Annalisa Sandrelli wrote sections 1., 2., 2.1. and 2.2.

1. ‘the regional color of the language […] becomes the key to access a small world of small things which would be impossible to portray beyond a culturally and linguistically provincial viewpoint’ (our translation).

2. The authors wish to thank film director Paolo Virzì and his personal assistant Ester Ligori for their cooperation.

3. Dubtalk is a joint University of International Studies of Rome (UNINT)–University of Pisa project that has created a parallel corpus of contemporary US and UK films and TV series and their Italian dubbed versions. See dubtalk.unint.eu for more details on the transcription conventions and methodology.

4. No relation to the Italian conjunctions e and o (namely ‘and’ and ‘or’), or to the interjections eh and oh.

5. In all the examples the items highlighted in bold are the ones discussed in the paper, those in italics correspond to words or expressions that are omitted in the subtitles, and the Ø symbol indicates the omission of that feature from the English subtitles.

6. A film released in 1995 by French filmmaker and actor Mathieu Kassowitz that depicts the difficult lives of immigrant families in the multi-ethnic borders of Paris.