Multilingualism in Italian dubbing : strategies, trends and norms on the streaming platform Netflix

Abstract

In the last decades, the multilingualism that characterises contemporary multicultural societies has featured in an increasingly prominent position in Western cinema and TV productions. Films and TV series have begun to employ linguistic diversity as a means to pursue realism, and as a vehicle for narration and character portrayal. As far as the field of audiovisual translation is concerned, on-screen multilingual discourse practices and conversational strategies, such as code-switching, are considered a thorny issue for translators. The different forms and functions of multilingualism, as well as the strategies adopted and problems it poses in translation have been widely investigated in relation to cinema, and more limitedly television, while the latest development of home entertainment, OTT platforms, is yet to be explored in this respect. This study aims to explore the norms for the dubbing into Italian of multilingual instances on streaming platforms, more precisely, Netflix. The research focuses on five Netflix Originals - Gentefied, Unorthodox, Emily in Paris, Queen Sono, Messiah – selected because of their multilingual nature. Furthermore, the study seeks to investigate whether the translation trends linked to streaming platforms differ from the established norms and more recent tendencies of Italian dubbing, as far as multilingualism is concerned. This could be particularly relevant considering the increasing influence of platforms like Netflix on the shifting media world, as it could provide a useful insight regarding the direction assumed by evolving translation norms for multilingual audiovisual productions.