Dubbing into English

Dubbing has long been the accepted (and desired) form of film translation in many countries, for example Italy, Spain, Germany. However, in the English-speaking world, given that the majority of commercially successful films were and are still made in Hollywood, there has been less of a need for any translation strategy. The relatively small number of films that are translated into English, typically films of a certain prestige (Fellini, Fassbinder, Bunuel, Truffaut, etc.), are subtitled. However, as audiences in English-speaking countries have had very little or no experience of dubbed products, it has never been ascertained whether they would or would not welcome this form of audiovisual translation. An experiment was thus carried out with an English-speaking audience at Southampton University’s ‘Italian film evening’. The audience were asked to watch a short Italian film called Tutto Brilla dubbed into English and subsequently to fill in a questionnaire designed to ascertain their reactions to this product. The paper discusses the question of dubbing in general and then reports on the results of the experiment.