The paper focuses on the news backgrounder, a sub-genre which has until now received less attention in translation studies. It is a major site of the journalist’s voice and is thus deemed a fertile field for the exploration of subjectivity and ideology in translation. The paper, dealing with the language pair English–Italian, stems from an emblematic context which led to two case studies allowing for interesting comparisons. The weekly news magazine Internazionale, counting on the collaboration of freelance professional translators and the news website Italiadallestero, supported by volunteer collaboration, are the focus of attention. The two cases share the same interest, i.e., how Italy and Italians are seen through the eyes of the foreign press and both fundamentally rely on translation. Issues of subjectivity and ideology are invariably entailed and conveyed through evaluative language choices. In order to examine their meaning and effects, the paper makes use of an approach that combines a product- and a context-oriented methodology, the former grounded on a text-focused qualitative analysis within the framework of Appraisal theory (Martin and White 2005), the latter based on interviews with (some of) the agents who were actually involved in the translation process.
This paper reports an investigation into the representation of “Italianness” in the recent Netflix Italian series Generazione 56k, which was exported to English-speaking countries. This series deals with characters from different generations and displays regional varieties. This qualitative study examined the macro- and micro-strategies used in the creation of English subtitles for the first season. The focus is on key functions of telecinematic discourse, i.e., characterisation, realism, and humour, realised through the use of (a) multilingualism in the broadest sense, including geographical dialects, and (b) multi-generational language (colloquialisms, “unconventional language”, particularly, teenage and youth language, and taboo). Findings reveal a tendency towards neutralisation strategies in the English subtitles. Even considering the constraints inherent in the subtitling mode, these strategies do not successfully represent “Italianness” with its local geographical diversity, and only partially convey the representation of multi-generational language, also affecting humour. The themes engaging millennials, however, are expressed and might be appreciated by an international audience. In the light of our analysis and conclusions, it may be interesting to understand whether younger generations, increasingly accustomed to “multilingualism” especially in Netflix programmes, would also envisage a different subtitling experience.
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