What’s in a Title? Transposing Dark Comedy Titles for Italian Viewers

The present paper sets out to explore the transposition from Eng- lish into Italian of film titles from a specific comedy subgenre –dark comedy. Based on the analysis of a robust sample of classic and con- temporary dark comedy titles and their transposition for the Italian market, the present study aims at collecting data on possible patterns underpinning the rendering of the dark humor elements in relation to the actual plots of the films. More specifically, I would like to argue that, although the recreation of a film’s title for a different culture might inevitably involve the foregrounding of different elements in the plot, translated Italian titles in which dark humor elements are maintained paradoxically tend to disambiguate the references to death, murder, crimes of various kinds, etc. This, however, is done in a caricature-like tone that actually foregrounds the comic elements rather than the potentially horrific ones.