2How to be Indian in Canada, How to Be Indie in Italy: Dubbing a TV Sitcom for Teenagers

Marina Manfredi

Introduction

Over the past 25 years, audiovisual (AV) communication technologies have had a profound impact on the role of the printed word in children’s and adolescents’ lives. With respect to the previous generation, young people have been relying much more on AV media than on books, magazines and comics for the scope of their education and entertainment. However, while research on translating children’s literature has developed within translation studies (TS) in the past 30 years, audiovisual translation (AVT) aspects of products for younger audiences have received less attention than other AVT topics. Even though there has been a growing interest in youth-targeted films and television programmes, most of the existing publications concentrate on animated cartoons (Di Giovanni, 2010; González Vera, 2012; O’Connell, 2000; Varga, 2012) and less on teen series (Bianchi, 2008).

Along similar lines, immigration has been a growing phenomenon in many European countries over the past decades, leading to multilingual and multicultural societies. Therefore, multicultural studies are on the rise, especially from a sociological and political perspective, but also in educational and literary fields. Nevertheless, no specific studies have been carried out on the role of AVT in coping with issues related to identity, diversity and power relationships. I would argue that, although in the 21st century AVT can be said to enjoy the status of a mature discipline in its own right (Remael et al., 2012: 13), it could still expand its borders through a cross-disciplinary approach.

The aim of this contribution is to demonstrate that even a specific field like AVT, with its distinguishing features and constraints, could gain fruitful insights from subfields within TS such as children’s literature translation and postcolonial translation, when dealing with a new subgenre like multiethnic/multicultural sitcoms for a younger audience, which entails comparable issues.

This chapter focuses on Italian dubbing, not only because Italy is historically a dubbing country, but also because AV products addressed to children are typically dubbed all over the world. By employing a cross-disciplinary approach – grounded in TS, mainly in the theory of translating for children and postcolonial TS, with insight from television studies and humour studies – I carry out a translational analysis of selected aspects of the teen-oriented Canadian sitcom How to Be Indie and its Italian dubbing. Although the investigation mainly concerns the verbal code, I also take into account other multisemiotic aspects typical of AV products, as well as connections with the socio-cultural context. In particular, I focus on a widely explored issue within AVT, culture-specific items (CSIs), which play a major role in conveying the multicultural identity of the characters in the sitcom under scrutiny.

Theoretical Framework

Although AVT is deeply affected by its technical constraints, practical problems and commercial interests, it is my belief that a theoretical framework can offer valuable insight for an informed practice of translation. In what follows, I discuss how both the theory of translating children’s literature and postcolonial translation, which are relatively recent phenomena within TS, can serve this purpose.

Translating for ‘children’

Let us start from a definition of the term ‘children’. Products for children need to be viewed in a broad sense, as ‘written or published for children and we include the “teen” [texts] aimed at the “young adult” or “late adolescent”’ (Knowles & Malmkjaer, 1996: 2). Children’s literature can also be said to encompass a wide range of text types, not only ‘board books for the smallest readers, picture books both conventional and sophisticated, fairy tales, poems, information books, psychological novels, serious fiction and complex adolescent novels’ (O’Sullivan, 2013: 451), but also ‘everything that a child reads or hears’ (O’Connell, 2006: 22). It is clear from this point of view that AV products – like plays, puppet shows, video games, radio and TV programmes, films, videos and sitcoms – are also parts of this landscape. This is why, as O’Connell (2006) points out, one of the key scholars in the field of translation for children, Oittinen (2000), prefers the general term ‘receptor’ to ‘reader’, ‘listener’ or ‘viewer’.

All these text types share a common ground: their very specific audience, a particular kind of receptor with distinctive needs and views. Following Oittinen (2000), the expression ‘translating for children’ is preferred over ‘translation of children’s literature’, for two main reasons. First, it allows the inclusion of AV texts, or, as O’Connell (2006: 22–23) labels this field, ‘screen translation for children’. Second, it conveys a fundamental issue in this special kind of translation, based on asymmetrical communication: texts are meant for children but are designed by adults. Likewise, within the framework of television studies, researchers make clear that ‘children’s television is produced not by children but for them’ (Casey et al., 2008: 31) and state:

[a]nalysis of children’s television should, then, take as its starting-point the fact that [it] is not so much a reflection of children’s interests but of adult constructions of children’s interests, fantasies and desires. As such, children’s television can be productively analysed in terms of the social, cultural and ideological boundaries between adulthood and childhood they set up. (Casey et al., 2008: 31)

This concept finds parallels in the translation and dubbing of TV products for children. Moreover, translation for children rests on a central paradox: on the one hand, foreign texts are translated in order to introduce children to other cultures; on the other hand, foreign elements of those cultures are most often eliminated or adapted since younger readers are not deemed capable of understanding them, given their limited world knowledge. On this point, Lathey (2006: 12) remarks that only empirical reception studies could offer a response to the amount of foreignness with which younger receptors can cope. In practice, both in the publishing and AV worlds, texts for children tend to be heavily adapted to the target culture. Even from a theoretical perspective, mainstream scholars working in the field of translation for children argue for a ‘domesticating’ (Venuti, 1995: 20) approach. As Oittinen (2000: 76) underlines: ‘[w]hen translating, a specialist translator edits the source text in relation to certain readers and reasons. Every act of translating for children, too, has a purpose, scopos, and all translations should be domesticated according to this scopos’.

Klingberg (1986), one of the first academics to pay serious attention to the translation of children’s literature, is critical of the tendency to neutralise cultural differences, which prevents foreign cultures from being spread and known. This view can be linked to major issues raised by postcolonial theory of translation, which are discussed in the next section.

Postcolonial translation

Postcolonial TS emerged in the mid-/late 1980s, out of the influences exerted by disciplines such as anthropology, ethnography and colonial history (Manfredi, 2010). Scholars working within this framework critically discuss notions of power, alterity and identity entailed in the act of translation, which is seen as a means of either ‘repressive force’ or ‘liberating power’ (Simon, 2000: 28).

One of the earliest and fiercest attacks on translation as an instrument of the hegemonic power came from India, through the voice of Niranjana (1992: 21), who questioned the commonly held view of interlingual translation as a bridge between different cultures, positing the act of translation as a political action and ‘a significant technology of colonial domination’. However, far from arguing for the demise of translational activity, she maintained that it could be exploited as a liberating force. Niranjana (1992: 173) calls for an ‘interventionist’ policy of ‘resistance’ to the power of the coloniser’s language and contends that it can be pursued through a practice of literalism, hence through a translation rich in calques and borrowings, which could help preserve the Otherness of a different culture. Spivak (1992: 378–379) tallied with Niranjana in arguing for literalism as a means to highlight difference without over-assimilating it to Western values. Their stance can be clearly linked to the Anglo-American ‘foreignising’ translation method championed by Venuti (1995).

More recently, alternative and less radical positions have been put forward by other scholars, in the wake of Bhabha’s (1994) notion of hybridity. Due to the growing phenomena of migrancy, exile and diaspora, many postcolonial writers are representative of hybrid cultures because their identity is fragmented, as they live across borders. In this new map, the polarity between self/other, us/them, East/West, First/Third World is questioned, because of the existence of what has been called a ‘Third Space’ (Bhabha, 1994: 36), a ‘space-in-between’, where cultures meet. According to Bhabha, this ‘Third Space’ can represent the starting point for postcolonial translation strategies.

Following this claim, Tymoczko (2000) and Wolf (2000) start from the assumption that nowadays translation is more than a means for bridging gaps between different cultures; it is a tool for producing meanings that originate from a multicultural encounter. A translation can thus be the result of a dialectical interaction between different cultures that hybridise without giving up their characteristics (Wolf, 2000: 131). For this reason, a translator should opt for another kind of ‘interventionist’ strategy (Wolf, 2000: 130), where what is ‘new’ comes to life and where cultures are mingled. As Nergaard (2009: 511–512, my translation) notes: ‘the space where we move is mixed and hybrid, separations and differences are in the world and not between different worlds. It is in this space that translations take place’. I would argue that such views can prove useful to investigate issues of foreignisation/domestication in a multicultural televisual product addressed to a younger audience.

Methodology

Aware that AVT research is moving away from case studies, I have decided to focus on a specific and limited example because we are dealing with a new genre in the Italian landscape, which could be labelled ‘multiethnic/multicultural sitcom for a younger audience’.

The investigation is mainly concerned with dialogues, but not taken in isolation from their audio and visual context. The AV text is considered in its multisemiotic nature and, when necessary, I take into account the verbal and nonverbal dimensions of communication, following Delabastita’s (1989) distinction between the acoustic-verbal, the acoustic-nonverbal, the visual-nonverbal and the visual-verbal elements involved, as suggested by Díaz Cintas (2008: 3).

In particular, I examine CSIs, otherwise labelled as culture-specific references (Chiaro, 2009: 155), a term borrowed from Franco Aixelá (1996), who defines CSIs as follows:

[t]hose textually actualized items whose function and connotations in a source text involve a translation problem in their transference to a target text, whenever this problem is a product of the nonexistence of the referred item or of its different intertextual status in the cultural system of the readers of the target text. (Franco Aixelá, 1996: 58)

This model is held to be a suitable tool for classifying strategies employed by the (dubbing) translator on the basis of functional considerations. Indeed, it allows the consideration of any linguistic/cultural element as a CSI, not in absolute terms, but according to its function in a certain context, be it a specific scene or a combination of semiotic signs. The concept of ‘item’ is employed in a broad sense, not limited to words but including any cultural instance. For mere analytical purposes, I classify instances of translation strategies borrowing Franco Aixelá’s (1996) taxonomy, which distinguishes two macro-categories of translation, i.e. conservation and substitution, both of which contain several micro-strategies. Since Franco Aixelá’s categorisation is applied to literary texts, I select those strategies that best serve the purpose of analysing an AV text.

Despite being aware of the specific nature of text in AVT, the terms source text (ST) and target text (TT) are used, in line with television studies, according to which ‘a text is, in the first instance, a television programme’ (Casey et al., 2008: 288).

Given that the sitcom under investigation is typically based on humour, a salient feature of the genre itself and a widely explored issue in AVT (Chiaro, 2010), I also refer to humour studies, in particular to the incongruity theory proposed by Morreal (1989). According to this view, ‘humour arises from ill-fitting elements introduced into a context of expectation’ (Brock, 2011: 263). From a linguistic perspective, as illustrated by Brock (2011), incongruities can be based on the source language (SL) system, be in contrast with it or pertain to alternative language systems.

The approach in these pages is basically descriptive, in the conviction that, for a real assessment of the quality of a dubbed product, only receptors could be reliable evaluators.

Material and Context

The study focuses on How to Be Indie (HTBI), a Canadian situation comedy created by scriptwriter Vera Santamaria together with executive producers John May and Suzanne Bolch. The show premiered on the Canadian network YTV in 2009; it was produced by Heroic Film Company, based in Toronto and specialising in programming for kids and tween-age audiences, and ran for two seasons, each containing 26 episodes of 25 minutes each (2009–2011). The series was also aired in the UK on the Disney Channel (2010–2011) and in Australia on ABC (2009–2012). Dubbed versions were released around the world, from Latin America to Africa, distributed by DHX Media. In Europe, HTBI was screened in France on Canal J as Indie à tout prix (2010), and more recently in Germany on KiKA as How to Be Indie – Wie ich lerne, ich zu sein (2013–). The Italian version Essere Indie (EI) was broadcast on the satellite channel DeAKids (Sky, www.deakids.it), a channel specially addressed to kids and youth audiences, in 2010, and its dubbing director was Federico Danti.

The sitcom (or kid-com) addresses teenagers, or rather tweens, which is short for ‘tween-age’ and refers to somebody who is nearly, or has only just become, a teenager. The term is often used in marketing or broadcasting fields for a target market/audience. In the series, the main character is a 13-year-old Indo-Canadian girl, Indira Mehta – named Indira by her parents and siblings and nicknamed Indie by her friends – who emigrated from India to Canada with her family. Even though she is constantly torn between her traditional and eccentric South Asian parents rooted in their original culture and the typical school and daily life of a Western teenager, Indie never loses her identity. Through funny and absurd situations and her sense of humour, she invariably manages to find her path in life, which is neither Indian, nor Canadian, but her own. She is proud of being equal to her peers, albeit different. The message is clearly a call for integration, inclusion and acceptance of diversity.

As a televisual product cannot be separated from the environment in which it is consumed, the contexts where the sitcom was aired (Canada and Italy) are analysed from a sociocultural point of view in an attempt to assess whether the two audiences were ready for such a programme. Canada has had the status of a multilingual and multicultural country for a long time. As Pascua (2003: 278) reminds us, back in 1988, ‘when Parliament in Ottawa passed the Canadian Multiculturalism Act […], Canada became the very first country to acknowledge and encourage cultural and racial diversity via legislation’. It has thus been accustomed to diversity for over 25 years. Over the past 15 years, immigration has been soaring in Italy, leading to a much more multicultural society than that of the end-of-the-millennium scenario. Before releasing the series, DeAKids commissioned a sociological research on the topics of integration and cross-culturalism, based on video interviews of school children in Italian junior high schools. As the media reported (Sala, 2010), data were not encouraging: problems of integration, on the part of young people and their families, came to the fore. However, the rise of immigration also entailed positive aspects such as the fundamental role that youth could play in casting a positive light on cultural diversity.

DeAKids sells itself as a funny channel for young people, merging the originality and quality of the products, and aiming at the goal of edutainment, i.e. ‘entertainment that is designed to teach something’ (www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/edutainment). It is thus clear that the acquisition of such a sitcom aimed at Italian teenagers also had a political, cultural and ethical purpose. Even though access to the translation brief given to the translator and/or dubbing translator could not be gained, it is my contention that an AV product that reflects a multicultural vision of society requires a special concern for multicultural issues.

In the next section, basically endorsing the conceptual frame set up by postcolonial TS, a translational analysis is conducted of the main CSIs included in the first four episodes of the first season and their translation for an Italian audience. The four episodes are: (1) ‘How to make your rep’/‘Come farsi un buon nome’; (2) ‘How to have your samosa and eat it too’/‘Come ottenere il tuo samosa e mangiartelo’; (3) ‘How to get on Carlos Martinelli’s capital “L” list, and live’/‘Come finire sulla famosa lista di Carlos Martinelli e sopravvivere’; and (4) ‘How to trick your parents into treating you like a grown up’/‘Come convincere i tuoi genitori a trattarti come un adulto’.

Analysis

Within the dialogue exchanges of the Canadian sitcom, the multicultural nature of the characters is conveyed at both phonological and lexico-grammatical levels. However, as is typical of AVT and dubbing in particular (Chiaro, 2009: 158), language varieties and accents are rarely reproduced in the target language (TL). For example, Indie’s mother, father and grandfather display a strong Indian English accent, whereas in the Italian version they speak standard Italian. Similarly, Indie and her friends speak American and Canadian English, which is standardised in the TT, without conveying any geographical hint. A systematic study of the solutions adopted in dubbing EI should also include naturalness of dialogue; however, due to space constraints, CSIs are the main focus of this study. Let us now move on to analyse how the most relevant CSIs have been rendered in EI, through a selection of illustrative examples.

Conservation

Along a cline ‘from a lesser to a greater degree of intercultural manipulation’, Franco Aixelá (1996: 61) distinguishes two main categories, i.e. conservation and substitution, which could be associated with foreignising and domesticating methods of translation. Each comprises a number of subcategories, which function as micro-strategies of translation. The macro-category of conservation includes repetition, orthographic adaptation, linguistic (non-cultural) translation, extratextual gloss and intratextual gloss (Franco Aixelá, 1996: 61–62). Out of the five micro-strategies, we will only consider repetition and linguistic (non-cultural) translation.

Repetition

Repetition, intended as the conservation of the CSI intact (Franco Aixelá, 1996: 61), tends to be employed when rendering conventional proper names, even in translation for children. It is not surprising that in EI the characters’ names have been maintained, since they reflect their multicultural origins: India for Indira (Indie) Mehta, her sister Chandra and her brother AJ, Philippines for Abigail (Abi) Flores and Canada for Marlon Parks, Indie’s best friends. Her grandfather, Babaji, is named through a typical Indian term of address, Baba, meaning ‘father, grandfather, ascetic, child’ (Hawkins, 1984: 6), followed by the respectful suffix ji. Also in this case the CSI has been transferred in the TT, where it conveys the Indianness of the character that a neutral translation as ‘grandfather’ would not.

More surprising is the repetition of a fictional name like Buster, an aggressive chicken, introduced by Babaji as ‘Buster, beak of death’ and rendered into Italian as Buster, il becco della morte (episode 1x03). While the literal translation of ‘beak of death’ into il becco della morte is quite descriptive for both English-speaking and Italian kids, and a close-up shot shows the chicken’s beak even before it is involved in a humorous scene, Buster, a colloquial and slang term for ‘a person who or thing which busts a specified thing, or causes it to break or burst’ (OED, www.oed.com), can be amusing exclusively for the source audience. After examining the shots where the chicken is mentioned, lip-synchronisation does not seem a real problem and such a choice can be interpreted as a technique to maintain the repetition of the sound b (Buster-beak and Buster-becco), probably funny and appellative for children. Alternatively, this micro-strategy might simply be a consequence of a wider macro-strategy of foreignisation.

The choice of repeating general names of animals, like ‘caribou’ (episode 1x03) and ‘grizzly’ (episode 1x01), could be partly linked to problems with lip-synchronisation. For example, a close-up shot appears on screen when Indie’s mother mentions the caribou while recalling a party that she found extremely amusing and showing the viewer a videotape that contains a documentary entitled Life and Death in Northern Canada. As regards grizzly, visual-nonverbal elements can be potentially complementary to the verbal code: Indie pretends she has escaped a grizzly attack and simulates it through theatrical gestures that emphasise the bear’s ferocity. A grizzly could sound rougher and more threatening than a common orso [bear] for Italian tweens as well. However, ultimately, both translation choices might represent a way to convey the Canadian environment.

Repetition also concerns typically Anglo-American festivities like Halloween, nowadays widely celebrated across the world, including Italy. In this specific case, a visual constraint must have affected the translation choice, since the Halloween episode ends with a banner that functions as a message for the viewer: Happy Halloween–Felice Halloween (episode 1x04).

Repetition of the fictional name of a game like ‘Quidditch’ could be linked to the particular type of young audience, in a clear intertextual reference to the well-known Harry Potter series. Humour lies in the fact that it is Babaji, Indie’s traditional and witty grandfather, who is totally absorbed in the audiobook and is unexpectedly late for dinner:

1. Episode 1x02

Babaji: It’s in the middle of the quidditch match!

Sono nel bel mezzo dell’incontro di quidditch!

[I’m right in the middle of the quidditch match!]

Not surprisingly, the realm of food offers a large number of examples. Names of Indian dishes are always kept in the TT, not only when in combination with the visual code, but also when limited to the verbal code. The visual code can aid comprehension, but even though the young viewer is not familiar with a specific dish, maintaining its Indian name can still convey cultural Otherness. For example, samosa, a ‘triangular fried pastry stuffed with meat or vegetable’ (Hawkins, 1984: 84), is at the core of an entire episode (1x02), entitled ‘How to have your samosa and eat it too’/‘Come ottenere il tuo samosa e mangiartelo’, centred on the Wonderful World O’ Food Day, when boys and girls are asked to bring to school their traditional dishes to celebrate cultural diversity.

Significantly, although not associated with the visual code, also CSIs like pani puri, i.e. ‘small round of fried wheaten cake’, with ‘water’ (Hawkins, 1984: 78, 72) and tandoori (chicken) (episode 1x03) are repeated in the TT. While tandur, i.e. baked in a large earthen oven, is a cooking style that could be understood by those Italian tweens who are familiar with so-called ethnic food, pani puri is virtually unknown in Italy. But their function in the action seems, again, to highlight the multicultural nature of the characters.

Repetition also occurs to instantiate humour. When school bully Carlos Martinelli trips a schoolmate up, making him drop his tray containing his meal and fall down, covered with spaghetti and sauce, he shouts:

2. Episode 1x03

Carlos: Pasta la vista, baby.

Pasta la vista, baby.

The pun is directly transferred into the TT, where it keeps the same function. Humour lies in the incongruity of another language, i.e. the Spanish greeting hasta la vista. The visual-nonverbal image of pasta on the floor may help the viewer appreciate (and understand) the joke. At the same time, repetition seems to convey the multicultural nature of the character, probably of Spanish origin, as his first name Carlos suggests.

Linguistic (non-cultural) translation

Conservation is not limited to isolated items. For instance, Babaji’s Indian proverbs – most probably calques from Hindi or other Indian languages – are maintained in the Italian TT through the strategy of linguistic (non-cultural) translation, which accounts for the linguistic transparency of the CSI (Franco Aixelá, 1996: 61). Let us look at the following example:

3. Episode 1x01

Babaji: The bruisest banana is quite often the sweetest.

La banana ammaccata spesso è la più dolce.

[The bruised banana is often the sweetest.]

Reference to the Indian cultural environment could be self-evident - banana is a fundamental crop in India and a very popular fruit among all classes of people, who consume it either fresh or cooked, both ripe and raw (http://nhb.gov.in/report_files/banana/BANANA.htm). However, in the form of the proverb, Indie (and the viewer) find it difficult to grasp the real meaning.

Another instance of linguistic (non-cultural) translation is the rendering of the game ‘kiss me in the closet’ into baciami nell’armadio (episode 1x03). In this case, even though the CSI can sound foreignising to the Italian young viewer, whereas other games would have been more familiar, the choice of such a solution matches with the plot and the visual elements.

Substitution

Within the macro-category of substitution, Franco Aixelá (1996: 63–64) includes six different micro-strategies, namely synonymy, limited universalisation, absolute universalisation, naturalisation, deletion and autonomous creation. Out of these strategies, occurrences of limited universalisation and of naturalisation are considered below.

Limited universalisation

Limited universalisation (Franco Aixelá, 1996: 63) takes place when a CSI in the ST is deemed too obscure and is replaced with another reference belonging to the SL culture, but more familiar to the target audience. While names of Indian dishes are constantly repeated in the Italian TT, a typical North American kind of food is translated through the strategy of limited universalisation:

4. Episode 1x01

Abi: It’s sloppy joes.

Marlon: Sloppy joes? I’m alive again!

Oggi ci sono gli hamburger.

Ci sono gli hamburger? Son risuscitato.

[We have hamburgers today.

Do we have hamburgers? I’m resurrected.]

‘Sloppy joes’, i.e. sandwiches made of ground meat, are mentioned by Abi and Marlon on the first day back at school, but without any association with a visual element. The (dubbing) translator in this case felt free to replace the CSI with another typical American dish, much better known to Italian tweens.

Naturalisation

Naturalisation, the replacement of a CSI with one more typical of the target culture (Franco Aixelá, 1996: 63–64), has been employed at different levels, such as in the educational field to refer to grading systems:

5. Episode 1x01

Indie: Where are the 7th graders so I can feel superior?

Dove sono quelli di 2a media? Voglio sentirmi superiore.

[Where are those from the 2nd year of secondary school? I wish to feel superior]

Another instance of naturalisation can be found when Babaji, talking to his granddaughter, uses what looks like a calque of some Indian expression:

6. Episode 1x01

Bhaba Ji: I’m trying to impact wisdom... Grain for your coconut.

Sto cercando di infondere un po’ di saggezza in questa tua zucca vuota.

[I’m trying to instil wisdom in this empty pumpkin of yours – empty pumpkin: idiom for ‘fat head’.]

Since the dialogue in this case is combined with a visual element, namely Babaji’s gesture of patting the girl’s head, the reference to a coconut seems to have been deemed too foreignising and domestication has been preferred. A further interesting case of naturalisation occurs when the mother talks to Chandra and AJ and says:

7. Episode 1x02

Mother: Stop talking to your sister and behave like a family.

Smettetela di chiacchierare e portate questo in tavola.

[Stop chatting and take this to the dinner table.]

The Italian naturalised dialogue actually matches the scene, where Indie’s brother and sister take dishes to the dinner table. Conjectures could be made about such a choice, maybe related to sociocultural issues. Arguably, reference to good manners and proper behaviour were felt too ambiguous for the average Italian tween, perhaps not so used to lending a hand in domestic affairs.

Combined strategies

In some cases, different strategies have been combined. For example, on the above mentioned ‘Wonderful World O’ Food Day’, Indie has to share the South Asia booth with a self-confident boy, Ram Ramachandran, who creates original ‘biryani cones’ (episode 1x02), i.e. cones stuffed with ‘rice, cooked with meat and vegetables’ (Hawkins, 1984: 11). This CSI is rendered in the TL as coni biryani, through repetition and linguistic (non-cultural) translation. Likewise, ‘onion pakoras’ (episode 1x03), ‘fried salty pastry stuffed with vegetables’ (Hawkins, 1984: 71), proudly cooked by Indie’s mother for her party in the basement, are rendered as pakora di cipolla.

Similarly, combined strategies of translation are employed when Indie recalls Ram’s weird dishes during the previous year’s celebration of cultural diversity. In this specific case, visual-verbal elements in the form of intertitles appear on the screen, are read aloud by Indie and are translated in the TT, both visually and acoustically:

8. Episode 1x02

Curried nougat

Skinwiches

Papadamsicles

Torrone al curry

Tramezzini di pelle di pollo

Ghiaccioli al papadums

[Curried nougat

Chicken skin sandwiches

Papadams icicles]

Since such visual-verbal elements are technically replaced by new ones, the (dubbing) translator might have taken the liberty of manipulating the material by employing substitution. However, repetition was adopted when dealing with Indian references, such as ‘curried’, prepared with curry and ‘papadams’, i.e. ‘thin lentil-cakes, fried till brittle’ (Hawkins, 1984: 72).

As regards ‘skinwiches’, a typical example of humour based on a non-instantiaton of the SL (Brock, 2011: 264), both linguistic (non-cultural) translation and a sort of intratextual gloss (di pollo [of chicken]) have been adopted to recreate the pun.

Even opposed strategies of conservation and substitution have been combined within the same CSI. Again, this occurs when other codes are involved, in particular visual-verbal. When Ram tries to sabotage Indie and her traditional ‘samosa’, he puts up a poster on the school board that reads:

9. Episode 1x02

Chef Ram’s biryani cones vs Indie’s lame-osas.

I coni biryani dello chef Ram contro i sam-schifosa di Indie.

[Biryani cones of Chef Ram vs sam-disgust[ing]osas of Indie.]

Since the message is also verbalised – Ram makes fun of Indie through a loudspeaker – the (dubbing) translator chose to maintain the reference to samosas, at the very core of the episode, and in turn tried to recreate humour by coining a neologism. Thus, ‘lame-osas’ (from ‘lame’, with the figurative meaning of ‘imperfect or defective, unsatisfactory’) has become schif-osas, where schifoso is a colloquial term for ‘disgusting’.

An ‘Interventionist’ Postcolonial Translation?

Although limited in scale, this analysis revealed that dubbing the Canadian sitcom HTBI into Italian is fundamentally foreignising, which is atypical for a TV product addressed to a younger audience. Since it is most often concerned with instances of Indian CSIs, repeated in the TT, I would like to argue that it is in line with some of the most radical interventionist strategies proposed by postcolonial scholars like Niranjana and Spivak (see section ‘Postcolonial Translation’). This hypothesis seems confirmed by the fact that conservation is employed even when no other multimedia elements are involved. Conversely, substitution mainly regards references to the US or Canadian world, as well as scenes where multisemiotic codes do not play an essential role.

As mentioned at the beginning, I will not evaluate the dubbed product and the level of tolerance towards foreignness that the younger audience is estimated to possess as only actual viewers could do so effectively. As O’Sullivan (2013: 453) highlights, ‘what children actually understand, and how much “foreignness” they can and do cope with is the great black box of translating for children’.

Radical strategies as proposed by Niranjana and Spivak, not unlike Venuti’s foreignisation, seem to be the most valid approach to adopt when translating a multicultural text with the aim of preserving its cultural specificity and diversity. Nevertheless, this solution is not necessarily the only viable choice. Without denying the value of this approach in itself, it might be merged with a more moderate view, like that suggested by Wolf (2000), who advocates another type of interventionist strategy, where cultures are mingled (see section ‘Postcolonial Translation’).

In verbal-written texts like literary ones, as argued elsewhere (Manfredi, 2010, 2012), a more moderate approach might entail combining strategies of foreignisation and domestication, to aid the aim of respecting both the foreignness of the ST as well as the different target reader. In these cases, the addition of extratextual or intratextual glosses, in the form of glossaries and footnotes or amplifications, respectively, could represent a viable solution. Certainly, it is not the case of AVT. When the visual dimension does not concur to make cultural references clear, alternative solutions could perhaps be sought, even sacrificing foreignisation. Although such a strategy is fundamental to respect the cultural and ethical values of the sitcom, the needs of the target viewer should also be taken into account, if the final aim is also that of diffusing different cultures. In today’s globalised world, postcolonial translation might have a dual role, as an unrivalled means of preserving different cultures and, at the same time, as an invaluable channel of disseminating them.

Concluding Remarks

This study is a preliminary attempt to explore a new genre, at least in the Italian AV landscape. If and when this new genre develops and consolidates, a larger corpus for investigation will be available for more extensive and systematic research. Larger-scale research might also include other language pairs, in order to see whether any parallels can be established and to assess whether new norms can be discerned in this particular area of translation for children.

One of the main objectives of this chapter has been to demonstrate that a cross-disciplinary approach to AVT, mainly informed by postcolonial TS, can be particularly useful. Most importantly, as repeatedly said, I firmly believe that reception studies should gain ground. In order to create a product that meets the end users’ needs, a sample of its estimated target audience should be part of the process and their opinions taken into consideration when deciding on the main translation approach. Psychologists could also be involved, to study the audience’s experience of viewing such a televisual product, for example in terms of their ability to concentrate on such complex issues. A dialogue with intercultural agents might also offer further insight.

On the other hand, a call for education that takes multiculturalism, or rather interculturalism, as its core could come from the AV medium itself. Nowadays, television is an influential medium that could be integrated into intercultural education and teachers could be involved in projects that exploit multimedia texts. By inserting the sitcom into their activities, they could play an active role in educating young people to accept diversity, also through translation and dubbing. The benefits could be both educational and commercial, since it could pave the way for the broadcasting of other similar sitcoms.

References

Bhabha, H.K. (1994) The Location of Culture. London/New York: Routledge.

Bianchi, D. (2008) Taming teen-language: The adaptation of Buffyspeak into Italian. In D. Chiaro, C. Heiss and C. Bucaria (eds) Between Text and Image: Updating Research in Screen Translation (pp. 183–195). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Brock, A. (2011) Bumcivilian: Systemic aspects of humorous communication in comedies. In R. Piazza, M. Bednarek and F. Rossi (eds) Telecinematic Discourse. Approaches to the Language of Films and Television Series (pp. 263–280). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Casey, B., Casey, N., Calvert. B., French, L. and Lewis, J. (2008) Television Studies: The Key Concepts (2nd edn). London: Routledge.

Chiaro, D. (2009) Issues in audiovisual translation. In J. Munday (ed.) The Routledge Companion to Translation Studies (pp. 141–165). London: Routledge.

Chiaro, D. (ed.) (2010) Translation, Humour and the Media. London: Continuum.

Delabastita, D. (1989) Translation and mass-communication: Film and TV translation as evidence of cultural dynamics. Babel 35 (4), 193–218.

Díaz Cintas, J. (2008) Audiovisual translation comes of age. In D. Chiaro, C. Heiss and C. Bucaria (eds) Between Text and Image: Updating Research in Screen Translation. (pp. 1–9). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Di Giovanni, E. (2010) Shifts in audiovisual translation for children: Reviving linguistic-driven analyses. In E. Di Giovanni, C. Elefante and R. Pederzoli (eds) Écrire et Traduire pour les Enfants: Voix, Images et Mots/Writing and Translating for Children: Voices, Images and Texts (pp. 303–320). Brussels: Peter Lang.

Franco Aixelá, J. (1996) Culture-specific items in translation. In R. Álvarez and M. Carmen-África Vidal (eds) Translation, Power, Subversion (pp. 52–78). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

González Vera, P. (2012) The translation of linguistic stereotypes in animated films: A case study of DreamWorks’ Shrek and Shark Tale. The Journal of Specialised Translation 17, 104–123. See www.jostrans.org/issue17/art_gonzalez.pdf (accessed 27 January 2017).

Hawkins, R.E. (1984) Common Indian Words in English. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Klingberg, G. (1986) Children’s Fiction in the Hands of the Translators. Malmo: CWK Gleerup.

Knowles, M. and Malmkjaer, K. (1996) Language and Control in Children’s Literature. London: Routledge.

Lathey, G. (2006) Introduction. In G. Lathey (ed.) The Translation of Children’s Literature (pp. 1–12). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Manfredi, M. (2010) Preserving linguistic and cultural diversity in and through translation: From theory to practice. Mutatis Mutandis 3 (1), 45–72.

Manfredi, M. (2012) Preservare/divulgare l’alterità linguistico-culturale: La traduzione postcoloniale come doppio atto etico. In S. Arduini and I. Carmignani (eds) Giornate della traduzione letteraria 2010–2011 (pp. 64–70). Roma: Voland.

Morreal, J. (1989) Enjoying incongruity. Humor 2 (1), 1–18.

Nergaard, S. (2009) ‘Cosa significa traduzione oggi?’ In R.M. Bollettieri Bosinelli and E. Di Giovanni (eds) Oltre l’Occidente: Traduzione e alterità culturale (pp. 479–518). Milano: Bompiani.

Niranjana, T. (1992) Siting Translation: History, Post-Structuralism and the Colonial Context. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

O’Connell, E. (2000) Minority language dubbing for children: Strategic considerations. In G. Jones (ed.) Proceedings of the Mercator Conference on Audiovisual Translation and Minority Languages (pp. 62–72). Aberystwyth: Mercator Media.

O’Connell, E. (2006) Translating for children. In G. Lathey (ed.) The Translation of Children’s Literature (pp. 15–24). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Oittinen, R. (2000) Translating for Children. New York: Garland.

O’Sullivan, E. (2013) Children’s literature and translation studies. In C. Millán and F. Bartrina (eds) The Routledge Handbook of Translation Studies (pp. 451–463). London: Routledge.

Pascua, I. (2003) Translation and intercultural education. Meta 48 (1–2), 276–284.

Remael, A., Orero, P. and Carroll, M. (2012) Audiovisual translation and media accessibility at the crossroads. In A. Remael, P. Orero and M. Carroll (eds) Audiovisual Translation and Media Accessibility at the Crossroads (pp. 13–21). Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Sala, A. (2010) Indie, debutta la sit-com anti razzismo. Corriere della sera, 19 April. See www.corriere.it/spettacoli/10_aprile_19/essere-indie-razzismo-integrazione-bambini-scuole_a8b08048-4b8e-11df-b8c5-00144f02aabe.shtml (accessed 27 January 2017).

Simon, S. (2000) Introduction. In S. Simon and P. St-Pierre (eds) Changing the Terms: Translating in the Postcolonial Era (pp. 9–29). Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press.

Spivak, G.C. (1992) The politics of translation. In L. Venuti (ed.) The Translation Studies Reader (2nd edn; pp. 369–388). London: Routledge.

Tymoczko, M. (2000) Translations of themselves: The contours of postcolonial fiction. In S. Simon and P. St-Pierre (eds) Changing the Terms: Translating in the Postcolonial Era (pp. 147–163). Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press.

Varga, C. (2012) Childish translation vs. translation for children: The subtitling of fictional dialogues in cartoon movies. In M.B. Fischer and M. Wirf Naro (eds) Translating Fictional Dialogue for Children and Young People (pp. 357–376). Berlin: Frank & Timme.

Venuti, L. (1995) The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. London: Routledge.

Wolf, M. (2000) The Third Space in postcolonial representation. In S. Simon and P. St-Pierre (eds) Changing the Terms: Translating in the Postcolonial Era (pp. 127–145). Ottawa: University of Ottawa.