‘Where have all the varieties gone? The vicious circle of the disappearance act in screen translations’

Dealing with linguistic variation is one of the biggest challenges facing operators working in Screen Translation. In Italy, as elsewhere, the norm tends to be that of “homogenizing” social and regional varieties into a single standard variety of the language with the consequence that, not only is it quite common to hear a member of street gang and his/her lawyer speak in the same way, but also to be unable to distinguish a Scot from an American, a Texan from a New Yorker or an Austrian from a German. Of course, alternatively, screen translators may opt for substitution with a dialectal variety of the target language, but this neither conveys nor connotes the same encyclopaedic knowledge shared by audiences of the source language and culture. Furthermore, stereotypical connotations attached to regional dialects only risk complicating matters further. Thus, it would appear that the main strategy employed for the translation of any fictional product, be it a film, a serial or a cartoon, is the total, or almost total deletion of geo-social connotation in the target dialogues. This essay presents an overview of the typologies of variation which occur on screen, the norms which govern their translation and, finally, through the presentation of empirical data gathered in Italy, whether, and if so, how far, viewers are aware of the underlying sociolinguistic implications of what they see and hear.