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MINUTELLA, VINCENZA. (RE)CREATING LANGUAGE IDENTITIES IN
ANIMATED FILMS. DUBBING LINGUISTIC VARIATION. SWITZERLAND,
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN, 2021, 424 PP., ISBN 978-3-030-56637-1
(Re)Creating Language Identities in Animated Films is a timely and
outstanding contribution to a challenging area of study that has intrigued
many researchers and scholars in translation over the years (see, for
example, Chiaro, 2008; Corrius & Zabalbeascoa, 2011; Ranzato, 2018;
Dore, 2019; Parini, 2019; Yau, 2019). The topic is meticulously and
exhaustively discussed by the author, who provides the reader with deep
insight into linguistic variation and language identities in dubbing. How do
language varieties tend to be portrayed and recreated in Italian dubbed
texts? How do accents contribute to stereotyping characters in animation?
What strategies are commonly adopted by translators and dubbing
practitioners to deal with linguistic identities? These are some of the key
questions brought up and addressed by Minutella throughout the nine
chapters that constitute the book. By means of personal communications
with 16 dubbing professionals (mostly dubbing directors, dubbing actors and
dialogue writers) and a corpus-based study consisting of 37 English-
language animated films released between 2001 and 2017, the author
presents a clear and detailed picture of the linguistic representation of
foreign-accented characters in Italian dubbing.
After an introductory chapter (Chapter 1) on the methodology followed
and the most important ideas awaiting the reader, Chapter 2 attempts to
“shed light on the various people, factors and stages that impinge on the
final dubbed product” (p. 375), especially within the context of the Italian
language but extensible to other languages too. The chapter offers insights
into the agents participating in the translation, adaptation and recording
phases as well as into the multiple texts and documents accompanying the
source video files. The author also devotes several pages to the essential
role of voices and dubbing actors in (re)creating identities and engaging the
target audience in the filmic experience.
The translation of language varieties and multilingualism is discussed
in Chapter 3 of the monograph, which presents the reader with factual data
obtained from previous scholarly research and expert testimonies.
Minutella’s conversations with dubbing practitioners provide interesting food
for thought, especially regarding the strategies to translate linguistic varieties
in English-language animated films. Taking De Bonis’s (2014) classification
as a starting point, the author proposes five strategies to deal with language
variation: neutralisation, quantitative reduction, preservation, hypercharacterisation
(Parini, 2009), and adaptation/localisation/domestication/transformation. She
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also points out that the linguistic heterogeneity of the source version is very
often minimised in dubbing because of the difficulty of finding similar
connotations in different languages.
Chapter 4 introduces the corpus of animated films and describes the
languages and the regional or social varieties spoken by the characters in
the original English-language movies. The author gives a comprehensive
account of the regularities identified in the corpus under analysis, classified
by language groups: native varieties of English, non-native varieties of
English, and foreign languages or languages other than English. As
mentioned above, a total of 37 films meeting several selection criteria has
been examined qualitatively in the monograph. To be included as part of the
corpus, the films needed to be relatively recent, big budget, produced by US
film studios, and relevant in terms of linguistic variation. The three research
questions posited by the author are as follows: (i) which varieties and
languages do the animated characters in the films speak; (ii) what are the
most frequent language varieties spoken; and (iii) are specific accents and
language varieties used systematically to create specific stereotypes?
The subsequent chapters (Chapter 5, 6, 7 and 8) focus on the target
texts, namely the dubbed versions into Italian. Their aim is to ascertain how
language variation is portrayed and recreated in Italian dubbings and how
the characters’ identities are successfully conveyed through the language
varieties used in the dubbed versions of the animated films.
Chapter 5 deals with native varieties of English such as American,
British, Australian, Scottish, among others, and how these are treated in the
Italian text from a translational point of view. The key idea explored in this
chapter is whether characterisation through regional or geographical
variation in English is preserved in the Italian versions or, on the contrary,
neutralised and levelled out. Geographical and social differences are also
investigated in Chapter 6 but this time in languages other than English. After
examining the 12 films in the corpus that include dialogues in foreign
languages, Minutella arrives at interesting conclusions about the most
frequent strategies in dubbing to represent foreign languages. Chapter 7
revolves around linguistic identities when characters speak non-native
varieties of English (e.g. Spanish-accented English, French-accented
English, Russian-accented English, German-accented English, etc.). Her
study shows the most common strategies used in every one of these
ethnolects and elaborates on the close relationship between foreign-
accented English, stereotypes, and comedic purposes in dubbing. The
examples provided illustrate how the characters’ foreignness is recreated in
the Italian dubbed versions and the reasons behind the decisions made by
the dubbing team and/or the marketing department.
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Chapter 8 is specifically devoted to the recreation of characters who
speak Italian-accented English in the original version. In other words, the
author attempts to explore “what happens when the third language in the
original film (L3) coincides with the second language or the language of the
dubbed version (L2)” (p. 351). A number of examples from the animated
films under study are examined and illustrated in this chapter to show the
apparent connection between regional accents, comedy and
characterisation. As explained by Minutella, the stereotypes associated with
the Italian language also play a part when deciding on the dialect or accent
spoken by a certain character, although she acknowledges that the varieties
from the South of Italy are selected more often than the Northern varieties.
The book ends with the conclusion in Chapter 9, where the author
summarises the main patterns and regularities spotted in the use of
language varieties in both the source (how identities are created) and target
(how identities are recreated in dubbing) versions. Findings reveal that
speaking English natively or non-natively tends to determine the strategies
adopted in the dubbed version. For instance, characters speaking native
English in the source dialogue are generally devoid of any regional accent
when dubbed into Italian, whereas the presence of languages other than
English in the original film is usually retained as a way of portraying a given
character in dubbing. On the other hand, characters speaking foreign-
accented English tend to speak foreign-accented Italian in the dubbed
version, especially when it is important to represent the animated character
both verbally and visually. Such findings successfully demonstrate, as
observed by the author, that it is indeed possible to establish several
patterns in the way characters’ identities are (re)created by means of
linguistic variation and varieties in dubbing.
In sum, (Re)Creating Language Identities in Animated Films is an
engaging reading not to be missed by anyone interested in the fascinating
world of linguistic varieties and multilingualism in dubbing. The reader of this
book will gain a deep and thorough understanding of the way English
accents are represented in dubbed texts and the way characters are
connoted in Italian dubbings. The eminently academic and practical
perspective of the monograph will be especially attractive for researchers
and scholars in the field of audiovisual translation and dubbing in particular,
but it could also be relevant for translation students as well as practitioners.
The expert testimonies compiled by the author together with the
comprehensive corpus of animated movies analysed are the perfect addition
to a well-researched and carefully crafted volume that contributes to
enhancing the available literature in a flourishing area of research.
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REFERENCES
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the Disappearance Act in Screen Translations. In Helin, I. (ed.),
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Corrius, M., & P. Zabalbeascoa. 2011. Language Variation in Source Texts
and Their Translations. The Case of L3 in Film Translation. Target 23
(1), 113–130.
De Bonis, G. 2014. Dubbing Multilingual Films Between Neutralisation and
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Parini, I. 2019. Sleeping with the Fishes. Italian-Americans in Animation. In
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[SOFÍA SÁNCHEZ-MOMPEÁN]
