ISSN: 1579-9794
Hikma 23(1) (2024), 363 -367
CHAUME, FREDERIC & PAPPENS, JEAN-NOËL. DOUBLAGE ET
SOUS
-TITRAGE. GUIDE D’UNE PROFESSION EN PLEIN ESSOR. FRANCE,
L’HARMATTAN, 2021, 246 PP., ISBN 978-2-343-23594-3.
Doublage et sous-titrage. Guide d’une profession en plein essor (2021)
is a valuable contribution to audiovisual translation (AVT) scholarship, offering
a comprehensive overview of both dubbing and subtitling in France. Beyond
some of the seminal AVT works (e.g. Chaume 2004, 2012; Díaz-Cintas &
Remael 2007, 2021), early French works related to dubbing or subtitling can
be found in Lapierre (1932), Artaud (1933), Delisle (1934), Sadoul (1939,
1945), l’Anglais (1960), Cary (1960), or Caillé (1960), among others. Although
some scholars have recently taken stock of AVT as a discipline (see Pérez-
González, 2019; Bogucki & Deckert, 2020), or reviewed the status quo of
dubbing or subtitling in specific countries (Sokoli, 2009; Lukić, 2016; Cerezo
et al., 2016; Torralba et al., 2019), updated French practices are not always
visible in the existing literature. Despite this sizable body of AVT research,
current French revoicing and subtitling practices deserve further attention, and
the present book sets out to charter this territory across an introduction and
seven chapters.
In the introductory chapter, titled Le doublage et le sous-titrage à l’heure
du numérique (“Dubbing and subtitling in the digital era") De los Reyes Lozano
frames AVT as a discipline combining translation, cinema, and media studies.
He argues that the digital revolution has altered how audiovisual content is
consumed (i.e. media, languages, accessibility features), which in turn has
triggered growth in the number of audiovisual texts that need to be translated
and the number of viewers exposed to these texts. De los Reyes Lozano
highlights the gap between the growing development of AVT studies and the
scarcity of research on AVT in France. The need for this book, which offers a
theoretical and practical overview of AVT in France, particularly dubbing and
subtitling, is hereby justified. Readers will find in this section a thorough and
updated overview of the new trends in audiovisual consumption and the way
they affect AVT.
In the first chapter, Le texte audiovisuel (“The audiovisual text”),
Chaume & Pappens disentangle the particularities of the audiovisual text,
which results from the combination of two channels (the visual and the
acoustic) by which different meaning codes interact to convey information.
After that, related but sometimes confusing concepts are clarified, such as the
difference between channel, medium, mode and code. The notion of code
being a key theoretical element in the book, a brief explanation of meaning
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codes is provided, although this concept is not fully developed until chapters
five and six.
The second chapter, La traduction audiovisuelle (“Audiovisual
translation”), conveys the need for AVT teaching to focus on practical
professional knowledge beyond theories. Chaume & Pappens offer an
overview of the AVT professions in France, with a particular emphasis on
cinema, television, and video on demand (VoD) services. The authors define
AVT, clarify some terminological dissimilarities within the discipline, and
remind the reader of the different AVT modes (namely dubbing, subtitling,
voice-over, simultaneous interpreting, narrations, partial dubbing, free
commentary, and accessible modes) to explain their impact on the French
market, thus uniting theory and practice in an interesting way. Unfortunately,
in this section some readers might miss a deeper examination of the
accessible modes: audio description, subtitling for the deaf and hard of
hearing, and sign language interpreting. The authors indeed devote most of
the chapter to dubbing and subtitling, which is a patent limitation. They
struggle therefore to highlight how the analytical and methodological approach
presented is valid for every AVT mode. Although this applicability is in principle
true, since every AVT mode is restricted by acoustic and visual channels, it
would have been revealing if Chaume & Pappens had clarified to what extent
the model can be reproduced in other AVT modes. Finally, the chapter offers
an updated and thorough review of AVT history, from silent films to the current
technological evolution towards digital and cloud systems, the irruption of
streaming services, and the development of machine translation, among other
advancements.
The third chapter, La pratique de la traduction audiovisuelle
(“Audiovisual translation practice”), examines practices in the French AVT
market. Chaume & Pappens discuss the phases of dubbing (called détection,
translation, adaptation, and interpretation in France) and subtitling.
Afterwards, the conventions of subtitling (lines, characters, orthographic rules,
text condensation, and space and time restrictions) and dubbing (takes,
dubbing symbols, or the particularities of bande-rythmo) in France are
explained. Given their idiosyncrasies, it is worth mentioning the particular
interest of Chaume & Pappens’ discussion on French dubbing symbols,
uncommon in other dubbing traditions (for instance, an underscore such as
“____” is placed under the intervention of a character when they do not appear
on screen). Finally, the chapter closes with valuable information about French
rates in dubbing, subtitling and voice-over, legal aspects, and professional
organisations, such as the Association des Traducteurs Adaptateurs de
l'Audiovisuel (ATAA).
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Hikma 23(1) (2024), 363 -367
The fourth chapter, Un modèle d’analyse des textes audiovisuels à des
fins traductologiques (“An audiovisual text analysis model for translation
purposes”), proposes a comprehensive model that categorises different
factors of the translation process that affect transfer in an audiovisual text. The
model is based on previous proposals by Chaume (2004; 2012) and makes a
distinction between both an external dimension (i.e. professional aspects,
sociohistorical aspects, factors related to the communication process, and to
the reception of audiovisual texts) and an internal dimension (i.e. textual
aspects, both those shared with other translation varieties and those specific
to AVT). The potential of this model lies in how it moves away from a purely
linguistic perspective and acknowledges that AVT is also determined by many
extralinguistic factors, such as each country’s professional tradition, or
changing sociohistorical conventions, among others.
The fifth chapter, Le canal acoustique (“The acoustic channel”), covers
the aural information transmitted by means of the linguistic, paralinguistic,
musical, special effects, and sound position codes. In the same vein, the sixth
chapter, Le canal visuel (“The visual channel”), tackles the visual information
conveyed through the iconographic, photographic, mobility, shot, graphic and
editing codes. These two chapters are perhaps the least innovative, since they
draw on Chaume’s (2004; 2012) well-known contributions, so readers might
already be familiar with these contents. The seventh and final chapter is called
Récapitulation (“Summary”), and it briefly encapsulates the main aims and the
contents addressed throughout the book: the audiovisual text, AVT in France,
the analysis model, the visual and acoustic channels, meaning codes, among
other elements.
In conclusion, Doublage et sous-titrage. Guide d’une profession en
plein essor proves to be a valuable reference for AVT researchers working in
France or having French as a working language. Practitioners and students
will find an up-to-date and thorough overview of AVT as a discipline with a
clear focus on the industry. I believe the book strikes an excellent balance by
combining essential theoretical elements of AVT with professional
perspectives, ensuring a wide range of discussions will reach potential
readers. However, as the title suggests, this work focuses mainly on dubbing
and subtitling, so media accessibility modes remain virtually untouched.
Though likely due to space restrictions, this is a limitation that the editors and
authors may want to revisit in future editions of this book. This limitation does
not detract from the value of this scholarly work, and the editors do remark, in
their introductory chapter, how media accessibility practices need to be further
explored in French AVT scholarship. They thus hint at a natural continuation
of this book to address French-language accessibility, which readers would
warmly welcome.
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REFERENCES
Artaud, A. (1933). Les Souffrances du Dubbing. In Œuvres Complètes III
(1978). Gallimard, 85–87.
Bogucki, Ł & Deckert, M. (2020). The Palgrave Handbook of Audiovisual
Translation and Media Accessibility. Palgrave Macmillan.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42105-2
Caillé, P. F. (1960). Cinéma et Traduction. Le Traducteur devant l'Écran. Le
Doublage. Le Sous-titrage. Babel, 6(3), 103–109.
Cary, E. (1960). La Traduction Totale. Babel, 6(3), 110–115.
https://doi.org/10.1075/babel.6.3.02car
Cerezo, B., Chaume, F., Marzà, A., Torralba, G., Martí Ferriol, J. L., Granell,
J. & Martínez Sierra, J. J. (2016). La traducción para el doblaje en
España: mapa de convenciones. Publicacions de la Universitat Jaume
I.
Chaume, F. (2004). Cine y traducción. Cátedra.
Chaume, F. (2012). Audiovisual Translation: Dubbing. St Jerome.
Delisle, P. (1934). Dubbing ou Version Originale Sous-titrée ? Avant-Scène.
Díaz-Cintas, J. & Remael, A. (2007). Audiovisual Translation: Subtitling. St
Jerome.
Díaz-Cintas, J. & Remael, A. (2021). Subtitling: Concepts and Practices.
Routledge.
L’Anglais, P. (1960). Le Doublage, Art Difficile. Meta, 4, 109-113.
https://doi.org/10.7202/1057330ar
Lapierre, M. (1932). Cinéma : Doublage Cinématographique et Traductions
Littéraires. Les Primaires, 31, 849–852.
Lukić, N. (2016). Audiovisual Translation in Serbia: History and Professional
Considerations. Hieronymus, 3, 64–89.
Pérez-González, L. (2019). The Routledge Handbook of Audiovisual
Translation. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315717166
Sadoul, G. (1939). La Question du « Doublage » des Films Étrangers.
Regards, 282, 88–93.
Sadoul, G. (1945). La Querelle du Doublage. Deux Réponses à Jacques
Becker : Denis Marion, Georges Sadoul. L’écran français, 5.
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Sokoli, S. (2009). Subtitling Norms in Greece and Spain. In J. Díaz-Cintas, &
G. Anderman (Eds.), Audiovisual Translation. Language Transfer on
Screen (pp. 36-48). Palgrave Macmillan.
Torralba, G., Tamayo, A., Mejías-Climent, L, Martínez Sierra, J. J., Martí
Ferriol, J. L, Granell, J., De los Reyes Lozano, J., De Higes, I., Chaume,
F. & Cerezo, B. (2019). La traducción para la subtitulación en España:
mapa de convenciones. Publicacions de la Universitat Jaume I.
[A
LEJANDRO ROMERO-MUÑOZ]
