Strategies of Glocalization in Audiovisual Translation: Dubbing Ava Duvernay's Selma into Italian
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.13136/2281-4582/2016.i8.575Keywords:
American literature, cinema, SelmaAbstract
Thirty years on from the exemplary three Selma to Montgomery marches led by Martin Luther King, Ava DuVernay directed the production of a featured movie, Selma, which portrays the complex events that persuasively contributed to the recognition of African Americans’ right to vote. The aim of the film was to celebrate the enormous effort that Martin Luther King and his supporters made in the fight for getting the Civil Rights Acts passed that same year. With the aim of analysing how, and to what extent, King’s oratory skill is exploited to shaping and consequently introducing the iconic figure to the source as well as to the target audience, this essay focuses on Martin Luther King’s linguistic choices both in public speeches and in more private communicative exchanges. The linguistic approach, including a comparative analysis of the two versions, will also shed light on the most relevant changes that the adaptation process for Italian viewers brought about. Such discrepancies (though apparently slight) will prove to be decisively influential in the construction of King’s and other characters’ identities to the point that target viewers can actually encounter ‘different’ characters than in the original version.References
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Socio-Political Perspective”. Advances in Language and Literary Studies 4/1 (2013): 20-26.
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Dynamics of Intergroup Communication. Eds. Giles, Howard, Reid, Scott and Jake Harwood. Bern:
Peter Lang, 2010. VIII, 331. 105-128.
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to the Here and Now.” The Rolling Stone. http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/reviews/selma20141223#ixzz4CCY5Nm4w. Last Visited June 21, 2016.
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Public Affairs 9.1 (2006): 51-78.
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---. The Translator's Invisibility: A History of Translation. London: Routledge, 1995.
Wilson, Kirt. H. “Interpreting the Discursive Field of the Montgomery Bus Boycott: Martin Luther King Jr.’s
Holt Street Address.” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 8.2 (2005): 299-326.
Wolfram Walt, Caroline Myrick, Jon Forrest, and Michael J. Fox, “The Sociolinguistic Significance of Martin
Luther King Jr.” submitted to American Speech, 2015.
American Film, London/ Oxford /New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2001.
Dallek, Robert. Lyndon B. Johnson: Portrait of a President. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Delisle, Jean, Lee Jahnke, Hannelore and Monique C. Cormier. Terminologie de la Traduction. Translation
Terminology. Terminología de la Traducción. Terminologie der Übersetzung. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins, 1999.
Eco, Umberto. Dire quasi la stessa cosa. Esperienze di traduzione. Milano: Bompiani, 2003.
Edwards, John. Language and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Fairclough, Norman. Language and Power. London: Routledge, 2013.
Farber, Stephen. “‘Selma’: AFI Fest Review.” The Hollywood Reporter.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/selma-afi-fest-review-748467. Last Visited June 18, 2016.
Freire, Paul. Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014.
Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. London: Verso, 1993.
Greco Larson, Stefanie. Media & Minorities: The Politics of Race in News and Entertainment. Washington
DC: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006.
Green, Jonathon. Slang down the Ages. The Historical Development of Slang. London: Kyle Cathie Limited,
1993.
Green, Lisa. African American English. A Linguistics Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2002.
Guerrero, Ed. Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film (Culture and The Moving Image).
Philadelphia: Temple University, 1993
Jacobson, Roman. “On Linguistic Aspect of Translation.” On Translation. Ed. A. Reuben Brower. Harvard
Studies in Comparative Literature. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959. 232 – 239.
---. “Identity.” Language and Identities. Eds. Carmen Llamas and Dominic Watt. Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press. 2010. 9-17.
Joseph, John E. Language and Politics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006.
Kotz, Nick. Judgment Days: Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Laws that changed
America. Boston: Mariner Books, 2006.
Labov, William. “Academic Ignorance and Black Intelligence”. The Atlantic 72 (1972a): 59-67.
---. Language in the Inner City: Studies of Black English Vernacular. Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania, 1972b.
Leff, Michael, Utley, Ebony. A. “Instrumental and Constitutive Rhetoric in Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘Letter from
Birmingham jail’.” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 7.1 (2004): 37-51.
Ludu, Andrei. Boundaries of a Complex World. Berlin: Springer, 2016.
Macedo, Donaldo, Bessie Dendrinos, and Gounary Panayota. The Hegemony of English. London:
Routledge, 2003.
Macedo, Donaldo. Literacies of Power: What Americans Are Not Allowed to Know. New York: Westview
Press, 1994.
Mazur, Iwona. “The Metalanguage of Localization: Theory and Practice.” The Metalanguage of Translation.
Eds. Gambier Yves and Luc van Doorslaer. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2007. 145-166.
Means Coleman, Robin. African American Viewers and the Black Situation Comedy. Situating Racial Humor,
New York: Garland, 1998.
Mereghelli, Paolo. “Selma - La strada per la libertà”. Corriere della Sera- Iodonna.
http://www.iodonna.it/viaggi/weekend/2015/cinema-14-febbraio-film-recensioni50253300192.shtml?refresh_ce-cp. Last Visited June 23, 2016.
Miller, W. Jason. “Don’t turn back’: Langston Hughes, Barack Obama, and Martin Luther King, Jr.” African
American Review 46.2-3 (2013): 425-438.
Moody, David L. The Complexity and Progression of Black Representation in Film and Television. Lanham:
Lexington Books, 2016.
Paolinelli, Mario, Di Fortunato Eleonora. Tradurre per il doppiaggio. La trasposizione linguistica
dell’audiovisivo: teoria e pratica di un’arte imperfetta. Milan: Hoepli, 2005.
Pedersen, Jan, “How is Culture Rendered in Subtitles?” MuTra 2005-Challenges of Multidimensional
Translation: Conference Proceedings.
http://euroconferences.info/proceedings/2005_Proceedings/2005_Pedersen_Jan.pdf. Last Visited July
22, 2016.
Rahman, Jacquelyn. “Middle Class African Americans: Reactions and Attitudes Toward African American
English.” American Speech 83.2 (2008):141-176.
Ranzato, Irene. La traduzione audiovisiva. Rome: Bulzoni, 2010.
Robertson, Roland. Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture. London: SAGE, 1992.
Scott, Anthony O. “A 50-Mile March, Nearly 50 Years Later: In ‘Selma,’ King Is Just One of Many Heroes.”
The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/25/arts/in-selma-king-is-just-one-of-theheroes.html?ref=movies&_r=3. Last Visited June 18, 2016.
Selby, Gary S. Martin Luther King and the Rhetoric of Freedom: The Exodus Narrative in America’s Struggle
for Civil Rights. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2008.
Sipra, Muhammad Aslam, Rashid, Athar. “Critical Discourse Analysis of Martin Luther King's Speech in
Socio-Political Perspective”. Advances in Language and Literary Studies 4/1 (2013): 20-26.
Sutton, Robbie M. “The Creative Power of Language in Social Cognition and Intergroup Relations.” The
Dynamics of Intergroup Communication. Eds. Giles, Howard, Reid, Scott and Jake Harwood. Bern:
Peter Lang, 2010. VIII, 331. 105-128.
Tottie, Gunnel. An Introduction to American English. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002.
Traver, Peter. “Selma: Ava DuVernay’s look at MLK’s March Against Racial Injustice Stings with Relevance
to the Here and Now.” The Rolling Stone. http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/reviews/selma20141223#ixzz4CCY5Nm4w. Last Visited June 21, 2016.
Vail, Mark. “The ‘Integrative’ Rhetoric of Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘I Have a Dream’ Speech”. Rhetoric and
Public Affairs 9.1 (2006): 51-78.
Venuti, Laurence. The Translation Studies Reader. New York: Routledge, 2004.
---. The Translator's Invisibility: A History of Translation. London: Routledge, 1995.
Wilson, Kirt. H. “Interpreting the Discursive Field of the Montgomery Bus Boycott: Martin Luther King Jr.’s
Holt Street Address.” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 8.2 (2005): 299-326.
Wolfram Walt, Caroline Myrick, Jon Forrest, and Michael J. Fox, “The Sociolinguistic Significance of Martin
Luther King Jr.” submitted to American Speech, 2015.
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