Genre Cinema as an Object of Translation: Implications for Teaching

Abstract

The starting point for this research is the hypothesis that film translation is internally varied by its very nature, not only by the techniques used (voice-over, dubbing, subtitles), but also by a particular film’s genre, by analogy with the current translation typologies based on the criterion of a specific genre for a typical verbal text (i.e. literary, functional, specialist). Therefore, the translation of different film genres requires from the film translator a different approach to a given genre, a different way of strategic thinking, a thorough analysis of film material (verbal and visual), a close look at the word, picture and sound in translation as the components of aesthetics and the building blocks of the plot patterns of the film. These are tasks for the didactics of film translation. Such a hypothesis sets out the following objectives: 1) determining the linguistic invariant of the text with a set of formal-linguistic features, which is indicative of a given genre and which should be respected in translation; 2) analysing translation procedures focused on the level of maintaining the invariant in translation; 3) a proposal of practical applications in the academic didactics of film translation.