Babel tower

Yesterday and today I attended the international colloquium held by Montpellier III University about audiovisual translation. The focus was on multilingualism in films.

First, Reine Meylaerts delivered a conference about multilingualism, explaining that translation does not only occur between different cultures, but also within cultures (think about the countries where two languages are official and mandatory). I really liked her idea of seeing the translator as something other than a mere craftsman, more like a multilingual writer.

Then there were several conferences to choose from. So here is what I saw:

  • Delia Chiaro talked about the emotional rollercoaster of multilingual films. She highlighted the fact that today, a film does not belong to one and only genre. Today it’s more about mixing: mixed languages, mixed sensations. She presented an extract of The Pink Panther to illustrate a funny kind of multilingualism.
  • Giuseppe de Bonis talked about multilingualism in Hitchcock movies, especially in their Italian dubbed versions. He explained how the multilingualism was used as a semiotic device and was a vehicle for suspense.
  • Elena Sanz Ortega made a lively presentation of her work turning around two main movies: Babel & Inglorious Basterds. She analyzed the role of language and translation strategies in these two films.
  • Eugénie Zvonkine talked about multilingualism in Kazakh cinema. In this area, the language can mean several things: the city vs the country or the intimate vs the public sphere.
  • Tiziana D’Amico talked about the idea of using colour in subtitles to differentiate the several languages that are spoken in a multilingual film. She took the example of the Russian movie Kukushka.
  • Katarzyna Sepielak talked about the translation techniques used in the Polish voice-overs of Nine and Avatar.
  • Simon Labate talked about translating French into French. What do you do when in an English movie, a character is just there to interpret what a French character says? That’s what we saw in extracts of Encounters of the third type. Dubbing had to get creative.
  • Ilaria Parini talked about the Italian versions of the multilingual films L’auberge espagnole and Les poupées russes. She pointed out all the inconsistencies that could be found in the most difficult intercultural references.
  • Jean-François Cornu shared his own view of multilingualism, explaining that it can be about real languages, but also accents, plays on words, invented languages or international coproductions, showing us several extracts of dubbed or subtitled movies.
  • Bruno Péran explained that translating for the theatre was a very special kind of translation as the audience receives at the same time the play actually played by the actors in the original language and the subtitles (surtitres in French). With various examples he explained that the directors also have the possibility to play with these subtitles and make them a part of their work.
  • Agnès Surbezy explained that for the theatre, the subtitles can be an added value, they have a presence on stage and can become partners for the actors too.  To play with these subtitles, one can use typography or use a contradictory effect for instance.
  • Adriana Şerban read Francine Kaufmann’s paper where she expressed her testimony of being subject and object of the movie Shoah by Claude Lanzmann. She interpreted in Hebrew for the film and her work was submitted to special conditions (no notes, had to privilege conviviality, had to be at a certain place near the camera so that the people could look at the camera while looking at her). The interpreter was just part of the film’s polyphony.
  • Marie Biscio, Irene de Higes Andino and Elena Sanz Ortega offered to build a research network on multilingualism in audiovisual material. This would imply creating a website, a mailing list and maybe even creating a database.
  • To conclude, the organizer of this conference, Adriana Şerban, announced that the papers of this colloquium would be gathered in a paper publication.

Being a video-game translator I’m slightly familiar with some audiovisual translation difficulties, but I discovered many things throughout these two days. It was really great to see these clear presentations with so many examples to illustrate the different concepts and strategies. Since it was not possible to attend all the conferences (several of them taking place at the same time), I’m looking forward to reading the paper publication!

 

Image by seriykotik1970

Oh bonjour 👋

Inscrivez-vous pour recevoir directement chaque nouvel article du blog directement dans votre boîte mail.

Ici, le rythme de publication est lent, et vos informations ne seront utilisées à aucune autre fin. Consultez ma politique de confidentialité pour de plus amples informations.

Oh bonjour 👋

Inscrivez-vous pour recevoir directement chaque nouvel article du blog directement dans votre boîte mail.

Ici, le rythme de publication est lent, et vos informations ne seront utilisées à aucune autre fin. Consultez ma politique de confidentialité pour de plus amples informations.