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In:Reassessing Dubbing: Historical approaches and current trends
Edited by Irene Ranzato and Serenella Zanotti
[Benjamins Translation Library 148] 2019
► pp. 263–280

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Chapter 13
Constructing youth identities in dubbed movies

A view from Italy

 | Università di Pisa
Published online: 6 August 2019
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.148.13cia
Abstract
This study aims to make a contribution to the area of linguistic and cultural representation in audiovisual texts by contrastively analysing how scriptwriters and translators construct the image of American and Italian youth culture. The main focus of the investigation is the translation of potentially challenging topics such as teenage sexuality, drug consumption, and violence. The analysis is based on a small, self-compiled parallel corpus of American teen movies and their Italian dubbed versions pertaining to the genre of “teen queen movies”, which depict the school life of teenagers and the contrasting relationships among different cliques and gangs (Driscoll 2011: 57). The results of the analysis revealed a change in target cultural norms with respect to previous decades. Sensitive topics tend to be retained rather than mitigated, which indicates that licentious and unrestrained behaviours on screen are regarded as more desirable than in the past.
Article outline
  • 1.Youth language and spontaneous speech
  • 2.Youth language and dubbing
  • 3.Aims and objectives
  • 4.Material and methodology
  • 5.Results and discussion
    • 5.1Sexual references
    • 5.2Drug consumption
    • 5.3Violence
  • 6.Discussion and conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
  • Filmography
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Filmography
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2025. From street talk to screen: the usage and reception of youth language in Spanish dubbing. Perspectives ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Muñoz, Pablo Zamora
2024. El léxico coloquial proveniente del lenguaje juvenil en la lengua de ficción española e italiana, versiones originales y meta. Babel. Revue internationale de la traduction / International Journal of Translation / Revista Internacional de Traducción 70:4 ► pp. 507 ff. DOI logo
Zanotti, Serenella
2024. Talking Young: The Language of Youth on Screen. In The Palgrave Handbook of Multilingualism and Language Varieties on Screen, ► pp. 363 ff. DOI logo
Bonella, Laura
2023. Language Variation in the Dubbing Into English of the Netflix Series Baby (2018–2020) and Suburra: Blood on Rome (2017–2020). Íkala, Revista de Lenguaje y Cultura 28:2 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo

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