Appraising Dubbed Conversation

Abstract

The ‘authenticity’ of fictional dialogue is widely held to play a pivotal role in shaping the audience’s perception of the quality of a film. Yet the factors that account for the authenticity of both original and dubbed film conversation remain largely under-researched. This paper begins by outlining key contributions from the fields of stylistics, film studies and corpus-based translation studies that have enhanced our understanding of the specific nature and dynamics of fictional dialogue and its translation. A common assumption that underpins these approaches is that the success of the narrative and characterization-enhancing resources deployed in a film is contingent on the build-up of interpersonal alignments through a combination of prefabricated orality and spontaneous-sounding conversation. And yet both film theory and dubbing studies have so far focused on phenomena that take place within a single turn-at-talk and hence neglected the study of the sequential dimension of film dialogue. Drawing on the analysis of four scenes of the English and Spanish versions of Twelve Angry Men (Sidney Lumet, 1957), this article attempts to demonstrate the advantages of Martin’s (2000a) systemic functional modelling of the exchange, especially his notion of ‘telos’. Ultimately, this paper assesses the advantages of a heightened awareness of the sequential configuration of dialogue among dubbing practitioners.

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