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In:Corpus Use in Cross-linguistic Research: Paving the way for teaching, translation and professional communication
Edited by Marlén Izquierdo and Zuriñe Sanz-Villar
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 113] 2023
► pp. 124–141

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Chapter 7
Film dialogue synchronization and statistical dubbese

A corpus-based pilot study of English-Spanish conversational markers

 | University of León
Published online: 2 November 2023
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.113.07gut
This paper reports on one of the main problem-triggers in film dialogue synchronization for dubbing: conversational markers (CMs). The synchronized film scripts (TT2s) from the TRACEci corpus of English-Spanish cinema scripts, ready to be delivered by dubbing actors, are compared with their draft translations (TT1s) and with non-translated Spanish data from the guiones subcorpus of CORPES XXI. Results confirm that the number of CMs has been reduced in the TT2s in favor of synchronization and that certain CMs are indicators of English-Spanish statistical dubbese (overuse), causing unwanted redundancy. The analysis benefits from corpus data and is intended to help both students and professionals to improve the acceptability of their translations.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Film dialogue synchronization for dubbing and statistical dubbese
  • 3.Problem-triggers: Conversational markers
  • 4.Data and method
  • 5.Results and discussion
    • 5.1Most frequent CMs in the draft translations (TT1s)
    • 5.2Synchronization techniques (TT1s vs. TT2s)
    • 5.3In search for statistical dubbese
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
References (32)
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