Fansubbing and TV series: an example of subtitling hybrid proposal

Abstract

The first and basic idea about my dissertation came into my mind long time ago, during my not really conventional and standard study path. In the first year of my Master’s Degree at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, I was actually in Australia and I did something completely different from what I was supposed to do; nevertheless, over there (or better say “Down Under”) I had the possibility to attend some RMIT University lessons of the Master of Translating and Interpreting, with a specific focus on Media and Audiovisual Translation (AVT). Since that moment, I started to “investigate” the vast and fascinating world of AVT just out of personal curiosity, both from the perspective of a student of Interpreting and Translation who simply wants to acquire new knowledge in an interesting and constantly developing field of study , and also from the side of an amateur and passionate lover of movies and TV series. As a matter of fact, the term “translation” is quite immediately associated with “words” rather than “images”; however, even if it is true that all translation takes shape thanks to and by means of words, the scenario is continuously changing and AVT has evolved to the point where it is now, as a discipline, one of the most vibrant and vigorous fields within Translation Studies (Gottlieb 2004: 88). Starting from these premises, I literally stumbled upon the fansubbing phenomenon (becoming funsubber for a while) and on the lack of comprehensive and complete works on audiovisual translation (in Italian, for instance). Hence, my thesis would like to offer some possible suggestions for further paths and future investigations and the main aim is to present a research study with a multidisciplinary and bottom-up approach, not mainly focused on linguistic and translational issues. It is necessary, in fact, to be aware of the existence of aspects of audiovisual translation that are different, inescapable and complementary and it is essential to start to analyze them in a systematic way and on different levels (Perego and Taylor 2012: 12). This is the reason why a part of this dissertation has been written in English. After a general overview on AVT, briefly analyzing dubbing, subtitling and voice-over as the three main modalities, I will introduce the European situation, focusing on the new challenges and on what is presently changing in some countries; then I will deepen the subtitling topics giving a quick glance to the essential features of professional subtitles and dedicating a special paragraph to the TV series. Consequently, I will examine the fansubbing phenomenon, centering my research on the Italian scenario to highlight the characteristics of amateur subtitles. Afterward, my proposal of a hybrid subtitle between the professional and the amateur ones will be shown by an example, namely the subtitling of the pilot of a new American TV series, followed by a translation analysis and a cinematographic sequences analysis of the most important scenes.