Racial slurs in Italian film dubbing

This paper explores how racial slurs are dealt with in Anglo-American films and rendered in films dubbed in Italian. It focuses on the racist epithets ‘nigger’, ‘gook’ and ‘zipper head’ with a view to unveiling the linguistic choices made by Italian audiovisual translators. Furthermore, it supports the claim that taboo topics vary from culture to culture and sheds some light on self-censorship, which has allegedly shifted from sexual and religious topics to ethnic slurs (Allan and Burridge 2006Allan, Keith, and Kate Burridge. 2006. Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ; Hughes 2006Hughes, Geoffrey. 2006. An Encyclopedia of Swearing: The Social History of Oaths, Profanity, Foul Language, and Ethnic Slurs in the English- Speaking World. London: M.E. Sharpe.). In some cases the analysis reveals a wide spectrum of translation choices accompanied by subtle linguistic manipulations. In other cases translation choices tend to be fixed owing to the limited range of corresponding slurs in Italian. Also, the paper discusses self-censorship in contemporary Anglo-American films. In this regard, it is observed that ‘the n-word’ has characterized the majority of Anglo-American films since 2000 and has hallmarked a shift in self-censorship. The final question that this paper addresses is whether Italian culture is ready or not for this change.