The perception of dubbese: An Italian study

Every day Italian TV viewers are exposed to a vast amount of heavily mediated audiovisual texts translated into their native language which contain a wide array of references to all the specific aspects and features of the source languages and cultures. Dubbese is the hybrid language used by the Italian dubbing industry to transpose both fictional and non-fictional foreign TV and cinema productions. This paper will illustrate the results of a large scale research project based upon a corpus of over 300 hours of dubbed TV programmes which set out to assess what Italian TV viewers perceive and understand of the culture-specific references contained in dubbed filmic products.