Journal Article

Linguistic variation in Italian neorealist cinema: A multimodal analysis of subtitling

Raffi, Francesca

2022

Overview

This paper focuses on the standard and non-standard language varieties present in the original dialogue, i.e. the source text (ST), of Miracolo a Milano by Vittorio De Sica and its English subtitles, i.e. the target text (TT). A two-level multimodal analysis was performed on an annotated corpus to identify the different diegetic functions established by the intermodal relations present in the ST and to assess the impact of the adopted translation strategies in preserving, modifying, or eliminating these intermodal relations in the TT. The results of the textual level of analysis show that the non-standard oral variety is used in the TT as the only solution to translate the non-standard varieties of the ST. However, this choice does not convey information about the geographical origins or social background of the characters, and only signals the informal register of the conversation. At the diegetic level, in the TT, the standard variety associated with the wealthy characters and the non-standard oral variety associated with the slum dwellers maintain the intermodal relations and diegetic functions established in the ST. In some cases, however, the non-standard oral variety in the TT eliminates or modifies the diegetic functions originally assumed.

• Publisher: Cogent,Taylor & Francis Ltd,Taylor & Francis Group
• Subject: Characters / Corpus analysis / Dialects / Humanities / Italian language / Italian neorealism / Language / Language varieties / linguistic varieties / Linguistics / Motion picture directors & producers / Multimodality / Nonstandard dialects / Social background / Standard dialects / Subtitles & subtitling / subtitling / Translations