Sprachhegemonie und der Gebrauch von Untertiteln in mehrsprachigen Filmen

Language Hegemony and the Use of Subtitles in Multilingual Films – Abstract In the interlingual transfer of monolingual films, subtitles usually are merely regarded as an aid for the viewer of a different language group to understand the film dialogues in a foreign language. This (written) modality of (overt) film translation should therefore help the target audience to understand a complex communicative situation which unfolds in verbal, paralinguistic, visual and audio elements. In the age of globalization and immigration, however, films are often produced in more than one language. The production of multilingual films in German-speaking countries has increased dramatically since the 1990s. Up to now, a large variety of comedies and dramas which draw inspiration from the clash of different cultures and languages have found their way to the screen. Now it is high time for the film translation industry to meet the challenge of transferring films with more than one dominant source language into another language. New challenges call for new solutions, and therefore the plurality of languages in the source film could require a plurality of translation modes. The following article examines the role of subtitles in multilingual films dubbed into German and into Italian, taking into account various strategies that range from omission to overuse of subtitles in dubbed multilingual films.