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Article published In:
Audiovisual Translation: Theoretical and methodological challenges
Edited by Yves Gambier and Sara Ramos Pinto
[Target 28:2] 2016
► pp. 288–301

Cross-cultural pragmatics and audiovisual translation

| University of East Anglia, Norwich
In this article, audiovisual translation (AVT) is considered contrastively from a cross-cultural pragmatics perspective, in its uses of language across languages and cultures. This inevitably broaches questions of linguistic and cultural representation, critical in a world in which the global availability of cultural products is ever greater. They are a main focus in this paper, with related questions about the development of subtitling and dubbing language as idiosyncratic varieties and expressive media, and implications for representation and its impact on audiences. AVT research has had many challenges to confront in its early days and these are relatively uncharted territories. Yet current developments like fansubbing and other crowdsourcing activities are re-defining the name of the game and heralding significant changes, in AVT practices and in the ways they and the products and responses they generate are accounted for in research (as evidenced in emerging re-evaluations of quality and subjectivity, e.g.; see Pérez-González 2012, 2014). These are central concerns in mapping the way forward.
Keywords: audiovisual translation, cross-cultural pragmatics, linguistic/cultural representation, pragmatic situatedness
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Pragmatics and cross-cultural applications to audiovisual translation
    • 2.1Linguistic background
    • 2.2Applications to AVT – concerns, methodologies, basic issues
    • 2.3Case and corpus-based studies, from narrative texture to cross-cultural representation
  • 3.Limiting factors
  • 4.The pragmatics of AV texts: challenges and potential
    • 4.1Pragmatic and representational shifts – the conundrum of cultural a-synchrony
    • 4.2Audiovisual language in filmic contexts – the ‘other’ space of language
  • 5.Pragmatic perspectives in AVT – making linguistic and cultural representation matter
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 9 August 2016
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https://doi.org/10.1075/target.28.2.09gui
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[no author supplied]
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