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Silence, sound, accents: Early film translation in the Spanish-speaking world

Adrián Fuentes-Luque

in The Translation of Films, 1900-1950

Latin America has played a major role in the history of film translation. Most of the research on film and audiovisual translation to date has focused almost exclusively on Europe, and there is ... More

Latin America has played a major role in the history of film translation. Most of the research on film and audiovisual translation to date has focused almost exclusively on Europe, and there is hardly any research on Latin American countries. Apart from the intrinsic interest in and need to expand research to other geographic, linguistic, and cultural contexts, in the case of Latin America there is also a double motive: the magnitude of the Spanish-speaking market; and the fact that, for many years, virtually all the translation into Spanish for audiovisual productions was carried out in specific Latin American countries. This chapter explores the development and implementation of audiovisual translation in the Spanish-speaking context, on both sides of the Atlantic, from intertitles to subtitles, multiple-language versions, and dubbing.Less

Introduction Film history meets translation history: The lure of the archive

Jean-François Cornu

Carol O’ (ed.)

in The Translation of Films, 1900-1950

This introductory chapter highlights how film translation history is a new discipline, a coming together of film history and translation history. It provides a definition of film translation as ... More

This introductory chapter highlights how film translation history is a new discipline, a coming together of film history and translation history. It provides a definition of film translation as encompassing all the conventional modes of film translation of the silent and talking periods. Because of the polysemiotic nature of the film medium, film translation includes related interventions of all kinds, such as editing changes and image and sound manipulation. The chapter also emphasises how this volume is driven by a multidisciplinary and international approach to film translation history, and contributes to scholarship seeking to transnationalise film history. It details the aims and structure of the book, and shows how crucial archival and access issues are to understanding the evolution of film translation, and to raising awareness about the nature of the films we watch and listen to.Less

Dubbing in the early 1930s: An improbable policy

Charles O’brien

in The Translation of Films, 1900-1950

This chapter uses the case of dubbing practices in the early 1930s to consider the possibility that the impact of screen translation techniques on film aesthetics is more significant than has been ... More

This chapter uses the case of dubbing practices in the early 1930s to consider the possibility that the impact of screen translation techniques on film aesthetics is more significant than has been recognised. The focus is on Hollywood’s unexpected adoption in 1931 of voice dubbing as its principal means of preparing films for the main foreign markets. Hollywood’s reliance on dubbing is contrasted with practices in the German film industry, its main rival for the world film market, where films for export were prepared in foreign-language versions rather than dubbed. Dubbing involved more than voice replacement to affect motion picture style in various ways. Trade press documentation is used to suggest that the dubbed American films of 1931 typically featured less speech; fewer close-ups of speaking actors; more reaction shots in dialogue scenes; more cuts overall; framings and props that concealed rather than displayed the actors’ moving lips; and other stylistic quirks.Less

Creativity under constraints: The beginning of film translation in Mandatory Palestine

Rachel Weissbrod

in The Translation of Films, 1900-1950

This chapter addresses film translation into Hebrew in Mandatory Palestine, from the 1920s to the 1940s, when silent films were gradually replaced by talkies and the need for translation increased. ... More

This chapter addresses film translation into Hebrew in Mandatory Palestine, from the 1920s to the 1940s, when silent films were gradually replaced by talkies and the need for translation increased. It combines ‘macro history’ with ‘micro history’, the study of history through primary sources. Its main primary sources are the autobiographies of two pioneering translators, Ya’akov Davidon and Yerushalayim Segal, who specialised in dubbing and subtitling, respectively. While local production at that time served Zionist ideology, the main function of foreign films was to provide entertainment. Film translators faced two obstacles: official British censorship and the objection on the part of some sectors of Jewish society to the screening of films in foreign languages, considered a threat to Hebrew. Despite these obstacles, translators had the freedom to import, invent, and experiment with new technologies, and to adapt not just the translation to the film, but also the film to the translation.Less

Conclusion The public face of film translation history

Jean-François Cornu

Carol O’ (ed.)

in The Translation of Films, 1900-1950

This concluding chapter goes beyond summing up the main issues addressed in the volume. It emphasises how its methodology was designed to foster an awareness of the significant stakes of film ... More

This concluding chapter goes beyond summing up the main issues addressed in the volume. It emphasises how its methodology was designed to foster an awareness of the significant stakes of film translation history for film history in general. It provides further leads to expand and deepen our knowledge of translated films as essential elements of film history and the film-going experience. A core element of the volume, key archival issues include the accurate identification and cataloguing of prints of translated films: silent films with localised intertitles, dubbed and subtitled versions of talking films. The editors remind the readers how they intend the volume to be a first step in identifying the material aspect of film translation history, and sharing the findings and related excitement with the general public.Less

‘A splendid innovation, these English titles!’ The invention of subtitling in the USA and the UK

Carol O’ (ed.)

in The Translation of Films, 1900-1950

This chapter offers the first account of the beginning of subtitling in the United Kingdom and in the United States. The release of foreign-language films with superimposed English titles began in ... More

This chapter offers the first account of the beginning of subtitling in the United Kingdom and in the United States. The release of foreign-language films with superimposed English titles began in both countries in the course of 1931, and became generalised in 1932. The chapter discusses early experiments in titling, including the use of interpolated titles after the fashion of silent films. It also raises a number of methodological problems, including the difficulty of interpretation of press data. This difficulty means that as yet we have only a provisional picture of early subtitling practices in the UK and USA, and for several of these early subtitled versions the nature and extent of the titling is not known. The chapter also discusses the question of survival of the material artefacts of these subtitled versions.Less

Film translation in Sweden in the early 1930s

Christopher Natzén

in The Translation of Films, 1900-1950

The main focus of this chapter is how the Swedish film industry settled on subtitling as its method of film translation in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The early 1930s saw a gradual shift towards ... More

The main focus of this chapter is how the Swedish film industry settled on subtitling as its method of film translation in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The early 1930s saw a gradual shift towards favouring subtitling over dubbing and intertitles. Subtitling was further promoted as new methods for providing the subtitles on the film were developed. A second focus in the chapter is the heightened media sensitivity brought on by dubbing and how this may be related to distributors’ experiments in film translation during the early years of conversion to sound. As the years progressed, a consensus developed in Sweden in favour of subtitling, which was perceived as unobtrusive, since it masked the technical construction of the film medium for those spectators who knew the spoken language in the film.Less

Sub/Dub Wars: Attitudes to Screen Translation

Tessa Dwyer

in Speaking in Subtitles: Revaluing Screen Translation

Focusing on the polarising nature of sub/dub debates, this chapter provides an overview of attitudes and approaches to screen translation both within and beyond screen culture. Dominating the little ... More

Focusing on the polarising nature of sub/dub debates, this chapter provides an overview of attitudes and approaches to screen translation both within and beyond screen culture. Dominating the little attention paid to translation within Anglophone Screen Studies, and shaping much research within Translation Studies, sub/dub wars encapsulate the entangled prejudices and value politics that beset the field. This chapter revisits insightful arguments posed by New York Times critic Bosley Crowther during his anti-subtitle campaign, before expanding the frame of reference for this debate by turning to Translation Studies and national screen translation preferences beyond the Anglo-American context.Less

A ‘delirium tremens’: Italian-language film versions and early dubbings by Paramount, MGM, and Fox (1930–3)

Carla Mereu Keating

in The Translation of Films, 1900-1950

This chapter sheds new light on the strategies that Paramount, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and Fox developed in the early 1930s to target the Italian-speaking market. It documents how the Italian ... More

This chapter sheds new light on the strategies that Paramount, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and Fox developed in the early 1930s to target the Italian-speaking market. It documents how the Italian government, local film traders, and the press responded to the majors’ Italian-language production during a critical turning point for the national film industry. The chapter draws on a range of historical records (diplomatic, censorship and administrative state documents, film prints, press reviews, and other publicity materials) from Italian and North-American archives. The findings show that the majors’ experiments with Italian dubbing and versioning were not always successful and elicited ambivalent responses in Italy; the findings also demonstrate the gradual emergence of dubbing as the most commercially viable solution for both the US majors and the Italian establishment. Incongruities in the archival records, and the scarcity of surviving film prints, pose interpretative problems and call for further empirical research in the field.Less

The reception of dubbing in France 1931–3: The case of Paramount

Martin Barnier

in The Translation of Films, 1900-1950

The international film trade changed dramatically with the generalisation of sound films. It became more difficult for Hollywood to export English-speaking films than during the silent era. One ... More

The international film trade changed dramatically with the generalisation of sound films. It became more difficult for Hollywood to export English-speaking films than during the silent era. One solution was multiple-language films, which helped French stars to become even more popular in France. The Hollywood studios quickly opted for dubbing as the best solution. The first two Paramount films dubbed into French were Derelict (as Désemparé) and Morocco (as Cœurs brûlés) in 1931. How were these dubbed versions received by critics and the trade press in France? Popular film magazines did not object to dubbed versions so much, while cinephile magazines considered they were rushed jobs. This chapter studies the evolution of the reception of dubbed films in France in 1931–3, using evidence from the trade and popular press. It traces the beginning of the opposition between original-language versions for upmarket movie theatres, and dubbed versions aimed at popular neighbourhoods.Less

The significance of dubbed versions for early sound-film history

Jean-François Cornu

in The Translation of Films, 1900-1950

Dubbing as a film translation technique has been largely taken for granted since its origins. Yet such origins are rarely looked into from historical, technical, and artistic perspectives. The study ... More

Dubbing as a film translation technique has been largely taken for granted since its origins. Yet such origins are rarely looked into from historical, technical, and artistic perspectives. The study of early French-dubbed Hollywood and European films has a lot to teach us. This chapter examines aspects of voice-acting, lip synchronisation, dialogue alteration, and sound mixing in nine American, German, and British films. It reveals how the makers of French dubbed versions, in Hollywood and in France, were keen on recreating the soundtrack of foreign films according to their own perception of sound and voice treatment, sometimes disregarding the source material to the point of ‘enriching’ it. This approach has major implications for the reception of these versions, but also for the study of the evolution of sound practices in the early sound period. The historical merits of these versions also have significant archival and exhibition implications.Less

‘Don’t mention the war’: The Soviet re-editing of Three Live Ghosts

Charles Barr

in The Translation of Films, 1900-1950

Silent films were commonly adapted for foreign markets not simply by translation of intertitles but, when desired, by more radical change, both to the titles and to the whole structure and thrust of ... More

Silent films were commonly adapted for foreign markets not simply by translation of intertitles but, when desired, by more radical change, both to the titles and to the whole structure and thrust of the narrative. The young Soviet Union systematically transformed films from the West in order to make them ideologically acceptable for its own public, as well as to train filmmakers in the craft of editing. The discovery in Moscow of the re-edited version of the 1922 Anglo-American production Three Live Ghosts—on which Alfred Hitchcock worked as title designer—enables an unprecedentedly full case study of this transformation process. Characters and their Great War context are ruthlessly reworked, in the service of a fresh anti-capitalist story. Finally, the same process is traced in reverse, in the sound period, through Hollywood’s own re-editing, for Cold War audiences, of its pro-Soviet wartime feature North Star into an anti-Soviet narrative.Less

Discontinuities and Resynchronisations: The Use of Sound in Polish Experimental Cinema from the 1930s to the 1980s

Daniel Muzyczuk

in The Music and Sound of Experimental Film

This chapter explores three distinct attempts in Polish film history to use the medium for research into synaesthesia. The first can be found in the films of Franciszka and Stefan Themerson made ... More

This chapter explores three distinct attempts in Polish film history to use the medium for research into synaesthesia. The first can be found in the films of Franciszka and Stefan Themerson made before the Second World War and after their emigration to Great Britain. Their experimental attitude is exposed through analysis of their work from 1944 entitled The Eye and the Ear. Second, the Experimental Studio of Polish Radio, established in the wake of Stalinism, became an important space where new approaches into investigating of the sound and vision relationship could develop. Primarily oriented towards electroacoustic composition, the studio was also used for producing scores for popular cinema. The third site for exploration was the Workshop of Film Form, a group of artists-filmmakers based in Łódź whose work exposed the primary elements of film language. Their research resulted in some of the best-developed experiments in synaesthesia.Less