Profanity and blasphemy in the subtitling of English into European Spanish: four case studies based on a selection of Tarantino’s films

The combination of profanity and blasphemy can be said to be one of the most delicate taboo categories to deal with on the screen. It is in the context of audiovisual translation (AVT) where professionals have to make challenging decisions when transferring these elements. Thus, should audiovisual t...

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Bibliographic Details
Author: Ávila-Cabrera, José Javier
Format: article
Publication Date:2020
Country:España
Institution:Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM)
Repository:Docta Complutense
Language:English
OAI Identifier:oai:docta.ucm.es:20.500.14352/6351
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/6351
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:811.111'25=134.2
791Tarantino, Quentin
Blasphemy and profanity
Interlingual subtitling
Descriptive Translation Studies
Faithfulness
Self-censorship.
Blasfèmia i profanitat
Subtitulació interlingüística
Estudis de traducció descriptiva
Fidelitat
Autocensura.
Cine (Ciencias de la Información)
Lengua española
Traducción e interpretación
Filología inglesa
3325.03 Cinematografía
5701.13 Lingüística Aplicada a la Traducción E Interpretación
5505.10 Filología
Description
Summary:The combination of profanity and blasphemy can be said to be one of the most delicate taboo categories to deal with on the screen. It is in the context of audiovisual translation (AVT) where professionals have to make challenging decisions when transferring these elements. Thus, should audiovisual translators be faithful to the source text or is it legitimate that they tone down the load of profanity and blasphemy? This paper describes the subtitling into European Spanish of a corpus composed of some of Tarantino’s films on the grounds of profane and blasphemous phrases which could provoke a strong reaction from the audience. Among the main goals of this paper are: scrutinising (1) if the religious phrases under analysis are transferred faithfully; and (2) whether or not cases of blasphemy in the target text have been encountered. In a nutshell, this study aims to explore the treatment of profanity and blasphemy in the subtitles produced for the Spanish audience.