In the depths of Television Period Crime Dramas. Subtitling Ripper Street, Episode 1: I Need Light. A proposed EN>IT translation.

Abstract

For this thesis I wished to merge my passion for the Small Screen with my academic studies and investigate the field of audiovisual translation of Television Drama Series, providing an Italian version of subtitles for the first episode of the British Television Drama Ripper Street. This paper is divided into four chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the theoretical concepts of audiovisual translation (AVT) with a focus on the subtitling process. Chapter 2 is dedicated to the academic studies carried out until now on the audiovisual translation of Television series. The technique of dubbing has been taken into consideration as well, but the focal point is found in the third section of this chapter as it analyses the subtitling process applied to period TV dramas. A classification of the different kinds of Television Drama series and their features will be provided in chapter 3. The case study Ripper Street is also presented in this section together with some observations about the sociocultural historical context of the series and the reception in its Source Culture. Finally, chapter 4 focuses on the integral subtitling of the first episode of the first season of Ripper Street. This chapter contains a complete analysis of the Source Text (ST) from a translation perspective to this it follows the translation commentary. In this last part the strategies applied in the process of subtitling will be explained through different examples drawn from the text.