Vulgarization or non-vulgarization in dubbing from English into Italian? Insights from Netflix TV series

Abstract

This paper explores the representation and translation of swearwords in a corpus of English Netflix series dubbed into Italian. The TV series selected for this study encompass the most popular genres on the platform, including teen, dramedy, action, and mystery, making them representative of widely consumed content. The analysis begins with a comprehensive examination of the occurrence, extent, and function of swearwords in the original soundtracks, by considering variations across genres and semantic domains. The second part of the analysis offers a detailed exploration of the translation strategies employed to convey swearwords in the Italian dubbing of Netflix series, emphasizing genre-specific differences and the influence of language pair and cultural context on strategy selection. The results distinctly reveal that Italian dubbed dialogues often mitigate the offensiveness of swearwords, in contrast to the vulgarization tendency detected in previous studies for dialogues dubbed in Spanish. This divergence may be attributed to cultural factors and lower tolerance among Italian audiences.