by Gabriela González Meade
Little is known in the translation world, even in the audiovisual translation industry among linguists working mainly on subtitling, about what actually goes into dubbing adaptation and specifically about the accuracy approach when translating content for dubbing purposes. This session will explain the nature of the constraints that dubbing adaptors tackle on a daily basis in order to produce the best possible adaptation while juggling phonetics and isochrony with meaning and, additionally, providing a script that is easily interpreted by actors sitting in the booth and looking to perform their lines.
Script adaptation could be defined as a process in which the original movie script is rewritten in the target language, which entails the reformulation of every line and background voices in a way that makes the target viewer perceive it as original content in their own language.
The original content’s soundtrack, sound effects, and music tracks are left intact whereas the audio track containing the oral translation of the totality of the dialogues into the target language replaces the original dialogue audio track.
The key to making this reformulation as smooth as possible is to observe and match three main types of synchronization while translating the script so it can be called an adaptation:
1. Kinesic Synchrony or Body-Movement Synchrony
This is the part of the synchrony that complements the actors’ performances with body language and gestures that can be picked up when listening to the dubbing actor by making the translation they read on the dubbing script coherent to onscreen body movements by the original actors.
2. Phonetic Synchrony or Lip Sync
This is the lip movement matching component that is factored in when translating the original lines in the script into the target language. Articulatory movements of the actors, especially in close-ups, extreme close-ups, and detailed shots of the lips, must be phonetically matched so that it is visually natural and credible to the audience that dubbing actors pronounce words that include rounded vowels, bilabial and/or labio-dental consonants the way the original actors pronounce them.
3. Isochrony
Is made up by matching synchrony between utterances and pauses and their duration in the original language and by the original actors.
This is achieved by fitting the length of the translation with the length of the original actor’s utterance and entails a number of stylistic resources or translation techniques such as syllable count, repetition, periphrasis, gloss, paraphrase, synonymy, among many others.
Furthermore, producing a natural-and-spontaneous-sounding register in the translated script allows the adaptor to domesticate its lines so that audiences can have a more immersive experience as if the content they are watching had been originally written in their language.
