1. Introduction: The integration of the cultural turn into audiovisual translation studies
We are a media society. The degree of exposure to audiovisual culture to which we are subject cannot be compared to any other historical moment in the contemporary era, and it is increasing constantly. The mass media flood the information channels in any daily electronic device, and the emergence and spread of new media and new platforms either online or through streaming services pervade the everyday reality of our current societies with fast-flowing streams of information. This preponderance of audiovisual communication has not gone unnoticed for translation studies, a field that has observed the importance that any audiovisual product can have in mass communication. Audiovisual media are omnipresent, and we must take into account that we live in globalized societies in which the contact with other languages and cultures is constant and intense. In this context, audiovisual translation reveals itself as a tool of power and, at the same time, as a bridge that connects the different societies between which it mediates and acts (Díaz-Cintas, 2012a, p. 275).
Nevertheless, in spite of the ubiquity of translation in the audiovisual media and the enormous volume of audiovisual content that we receive through the filter of translation, it seems striking that, to a large extent, the general public is not aware that those discourses reach their final target after a process of mediation (Martín Ruano, 2016, p. 2). Moreover, and in parallel with this (lack of) perception of the processes of translation in audiovisual channels, there have been several voices from the academic field (cf. Díaz-Cintas, 2012b, p. 281) who still emphasize the need to work in the very core of audiovisual translation studies from a cultural perspective. Despite the tremendous impact of the cultural turn on translation studies since it was brought forward by Lefevere and Bassnett (1990) and the implementation of a paradigm shift that enabled new academic approaches to understand the translation task, there is still comparatively little research that tackles the cultural, social and ideological implications that emerge in the audiovisual linguistic transfer when compared with other fields like literary translation.
The preeminence of audiovisual channels has transformed the way in which we communicate and interact as a society, mainly due to the attractive format that combines the aural and visual channels, according to Díaz Cintas and Nikolić (2017, p. 1), and because of the endless semiotic possibilities it presents for the transmission of information. At the same time, and in view of this current relevance, they play an essential role in shaping knowledge. Therefore, there are different aspects which become clearly relevant in the translation task. These include the ideology behind the linguistic transfer, the information manipulation that can become censorship (or post-censorship, according to the latest trends in translation studies, cf. Pérez López de Heredia, 2018), or the power amassed by specific actors in the process of discourse rewriting (Gentzler, 2002).
The new globalized fiction (González-Iglesias and Toda, 2013, p. 28) that we are referring to, which is multilingual, multicultural and open to hybrid and fragmented social models in which the acknowledgement of the Other is at the same time a reality and a need, requires new translation mechanisms that go beyond dubbing and subtitling (Pérez López de Heredia, 2015) in order to satisfy the needs of all the viewers, but also new theoretical frameworks with which the cultural and identity representations of contemporary social realities may be analysed.
As Díaz-Cintas points out (2012b, p. 281), we cannot claim that there is no study on the audiovisual field that is based on the premises of the cultural turn, but they are still a minority. This, according to the author, becomes one of the greatest paradoxes in this area, “since audiovisual productions, particularly fictional programmes, would seem to lend themselves perfectly to this type of approach, given the wealth of cultural information conveyed by them and the fact that the linguistic fabric is only a part of the whole semiotic composite” (Díaz-Cintas, 2012b, p. 281). Along this same line, Pérez-González (2014) underlines the lack of coherence that we face when translation is presented as one of the most effective ways to carry out cultural representations through the different channels of transmission that make up the audiovisual medium. In view of these considerations, a negotiation is established between the technical limitations of this “constrained translation”, according to Mayoral, Kelly and Gallardo (1988), and based on the information provided by both the original product and the adaptation for the target audience. This negotiation becomes a fertile ground to shape and give structure to meanings associated to cultures, societies, identities, minorities and a long list of factors that will have an impact on the conception of those realities by the viewers of the translated version of the product.
This mechanism for the transmission of contents through a multicode system forces the translator to pay attention, simultaneously, to the information provided, among others, by images, sounds or the linguistic code (both orally and through onscreen text). Chaume (2004, pp. 16ff.) puts forward a detailed framework of analysis based on signifying codes of filming language that approaches the encoding of information through this semantic structure that is made up of different codes. As the author points out, the combination of all those codes “results in a semantic structure that the spectator deconstructs in order to understand the meaning of the text” (Chaume, 2004, pp. 16–17). Therefore, it is essential to consider all the channels at once (Perego, 2009, p. 58) and to offer a translation solution that balances and takes into account the information that each of them provides based on the relevance that they acquire in each specific solution (Zabalbeascoa, 2009, pp. 29–30).
This process of transference to the target language does not take place in an aseptic context. On the contrary, as we have already pointed out, there are different ideological factors that take part on the rewriting of the audiovisual product. However, as Díaz-Cintas (2012b, p. 284) warns us: “visual, time and space constraints should not serve as an excuse for toning down or leaving out controversial or sensitive elements present in the original dialogue”. This is particularly relevant in the creation of scripts and dialogues around minorities which have been traditionally discriminated against for different reasons. Be it because of their gender, race, sexual identity or socioeconomic level, discrimination against different groups has moved to the small and the silver screen alike, and it has overcome linguistic barriers thanks to translation. Like in other rewriting processes such as literary translation or the translation of advertising campaigns, the way in which language is used in the cinematographic medium or in the episodes of fiction series has a direct influence on the perception that the target audience will have about the groups and minorities that are being mentioned (Martínez Pleguezuelos, 2018, p. 39; cf. Martel, 2013, p. 278).
The enormous volume of cultural information that is transmitted through audiovisual discourses highlights their role as one of the main actors in the configuration of social realities and identities. However, given the permissiveness that currently seems to be becoming established in the processes of adaptation to the target audiences, it seems necessary to watch closely in order to find out how, why, with what intentions and under what conditions the original text is manipulated, in the sense that Hermans (1985) gives to the term from the field of translation studies. Along this same line, Díaz-Cintas reminds us that
[T]he role of the translation scholar is to unmask the ideology that motivates and justifies those precise deviations and, in so doing, to expose the power struggle at play between the different social agents participating in the translation process. Although faithful translation can also help propagate and perpetuate certain ideas and behaviours akin to certain regimes and dominant structures, especially when the programmes to be translated epitomise the core values propagated by those in power, it is the deviational translation that becomes the really interesting object of study.
(Díaz-Cintas, 2012b, p. 285)
Based on these premises, we will now focus our attention on those feminist approaches developed in the field of audiovisual translation. With this, we intend to observe the way in which the representation of gender and minority sexualities have been analysed in translated audiovisual products. In the words of Martínez Pleguezuelos (forthcoming), observing the discursive strategies used in the reconstruction of a minority “other” will be very helpful when LGBT characters are inserted in another culture and with another language. This will be particularly relevant in the treatment of some alleged globalized sexual identities which are filtered by translation and reveal themselves in a glocal scenario between the influence of globalization and the roots of their own culture. In the case of LGBTQI culture, as we shall see in the following pages of this research, it will be necessary to highlight their idiosyncratic cultural characteristics to raise awareness of the problems that may emerge in the translation of gay characters in the media. Based on this approach, we will analyse the strategies used in the dubbing of the series in our study. More specifically, we will discuss the linguistic variants that are used and the cultural and humour references based on minority sexualities that are featured in each episode in an attempt to find out to what extent their rewriting is an agent in the (re)construction of the minority sexual identities of its characters. These discursive elements are part of the configuration of gayspeak, which we will discuss over the next pages, and they contribute, from a cultural approach, to the challenges posed by the translation of this type of discourse in audiovisual media.
2. Gender and LGBT representation in audiovisual translation
“If you can’t see it, you can’t be it”. With this conclusive statement, Ranzato and Zanotti (2018, p. 1) start the volume that they edited on Linguistic and Cultural Representation in Audiovisual Translation, as they are aware of the enormous power that audiovisual media have nowadays. Films, documentaries, series or reality shows have become powerful loudspeakers that contribute to the construction of realities, identities and knowledge around different social groups, which means that in the mediated and mediatized context in which we currently live, “if you are not represented, you are out of the social arena” (Ranzato and Zanotti, 2018, p. 1). Moreover, in the globalized and hyperconnected world in which we live, the media emerge as platforms that can broadcast messages in seconds and that can cross linguistic borders through dubbing, subtitling or voice-over, thus bringing exogenous identity profiles to audiences that are thousands of miles away (Martel, 2013, p. 278).
In this regard, Cronin (2006, p. 1) reflects about translation and believes that it must be interpreted as a privileged site from which the study of the human identity in our societies may be approached. Translation, in the audiovisual cases that we refer to when discussing gender and sexuality, becomes a filter that provides the translator with the capacity to (re)create and (re)design characters and plot lines that are undoubtedly subject to the power structures that affect their job. We may cite here the words of Gentzler (2012, n.p.) when he points out that “[t]ranslation […] is both an activity of carrying something across from one language to another and part of the fundamental fabric on which the different societies are based”. In the particular case of issues related to gender and sexuality, De Marco (2006) highlights the relevance acquired by (translated) language in the configuration of identities in cinema and television, and she points out that translation has become one of the most fertile ways to provide visibility for minority groups such as women or the LGBTQI (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer, Intersexual) community as well as to confront the heteropatriarchal machinery that grants privilege to white heterosexual males.
Therefore, and considering the power of media, “it is not an exaggeration to state that AVT [audiovisual translation] is the means through which not only information but also the assumptions and values of a society are filtered and transferred to other cultures” (Díaz-Cintas, 2009, p. 8). Just as with any other type of text, fiction products are born in specific cultural contexts with marked social values which, according to De Marco (2012, p. 19), “determine the roles that individuals have to adopt vis-à-vis the other members who belong to the same system”. The information that is transmitted, and particularly the way in which it is transmitted, is affected by political, social, economic and cultural factors that pervade the discourse, and this ultimately shapes identity features such as race, sexuality of gender. In this process, as De Marco explains (2012, p. 41), translators participate actively in the creation of those meanings around gender and sexuality through the selection of lexis or grammar structures, or through the perspective with which the text is written.
Film studies have already started to analyse the different identity representations of women, lesbians, bisexuals, gay men or trans people, among others; as well as the effects this has on the social configuration of the viewers. Therefore, in a search for synergies with fields with which translation overlaps from both the theoretical and practical sides in its research, we adhere to De Marco’s proposal (2012, p. 68) when she encourages the development of new interdisciplinary studies that combine translation and gender studies in order to understand the way in which different values associated to gender and sexuality penetrate a society. This approach is in line with recent proposals in AVT studies on this topic (Martínez Pleguezuelos, 2018).
At the same time, according to De Marco (2012, pp. 69–70), audiovisual discourses can contribute to the generalization of certain clichés or stereotypes that, inevitably, will have an influence on the target audience when they are translated. Therefore, thanks to the rapprochement between both fields, a theoretical framework emerges with which we can discover how we can limit the reproduction of outdated stereotypes about women, trans people or gays, among many others, which no longer have a place in our current society. In this process, the extralinguistic aspects of translation are equally relevant since they allow us to observe the ideological asymmetries that can be observed in the transference between languages (Pérez López de Heredia, 2015).
The task is not simple when the identity references included in the rewritings do not fit similarly in the original and the target cultures. In these cases, translation reveals itself as a means of access for bodies that exist “in translation” and are produced discursively (Martínez Pleguezuelos, 2018, p. 15), based on determining ideological and power forces. Therefore, it is no longer possible to conceive of the old stereotypical representations mentioned by Díaz-Cintas (2012b, pp. 281–282) to represent characters in opposing sides as good or evil. Instead, we must move beyond that point and understand the way in which our usage of the language affects the perception of identity and, conversely, the extent to which the identities that have become crystallized in a society have an influence on the rewritings offered to the target audiences.
At the same time, different authors in the field of translation studies have noticed the positive effects of translation (Ramière, 2010, p. 100) on the visibility of the minorities that we are referring to for the general public (cf. Valdeón, 2010, p. 73), particularly in the societies that still relegate women or the LGBTQI community to a second-class status via discriminatory laws or humiliating social attitudes. Some of the pioneering authors in the field of representation of minority sexualities through translation were Harvey (1998, 2000a, 2000b, 2003a) or Keenaghan (1998), with studies that we will discuss below and to which we will add the latest academic contributions. It is obvious that the choice of identity features on which we base the rewriting of the characters –in our case, the LGBTQI community (Martínez Pleguezuelos, 2016) – and the characteristics on which we rely to recreate their identity will have a significant impact on the target audience. Therefore, as a sample, and as we will see in the different examples below, the use of a very feminine camp gay stereotype in the dubbing of a fiction product will activate the stereotypical image of gayness on the viewers, compared with a discourse that does not rely on those clichés. Visibility and projection in both cases will be completely different and it will contribute, to a very different extent, to normalizing the image of the gay community among the target audience.
3. Will & Grace (1998–2006)
After the series Ellen (ABC, 1994–1998), starring Ellen DeGeneres, and the controversial episode in which the main character of the show comes out of the closet –which, among other reasons, led to the series being cancelled–, Will & Grace (NBC) managed to introduce new plot arcs around homosexuality in an American audiovisual context that was until then refusing to open up to sexual minorities. In spite of the divided opinions that were voiced during the first episodes, the show was on air for eight seasons (1998–2006), with a total of 185 episodes, and it discussed topics like homophobia, interracial relationships, the exploitation of immigrants in the United States and, of course, sentimental relationships between same-sex individuals (Valdeón, 2010, p. 72).
Twelve years after the end of Will & Grace and before its return on this same year 2018, it is easy to recognize the barriers that this show crossed just by being aired on national television in the United States, and then dubbed in Spain and in many other countries. The social impact of a fiction product that allowed two gay men to enter the homes of millions of people in prime-time is undeniable at a time in which the visibility and representation of LGBTQI characters on the television schedule were at their lowest. At the end of the nineties there were very few secondary LGBTQI characters which were never discussed in any depth and which were often used merely as comic relief, and almost no main LGBTQI character. Given that scenario in which references to sexual minorities were limited and, in many cases, subject to stereotypes, the so-called “compulsory heterosexuality” described by Rich (1980) was the norm that everybody expected in fiction. However, this situation was altered by the arrival of Will & Grace, which shattered the normativity of sexuality by attacking its core: heteronormativity.
First of all, two of the main characters are openly gay men who did not need to come out of the closet for the viewers or to overcome any kind of traumatic experience of rejection within the social circle in which they spend their everyday lives. However, both characters are portrayed with very different identities. This, apart from granting visibility to the gay community, manages to show and promote the differences among the members of the community. The first of those characters, Will Truman, is a lawyer who works at a prestigious law firm. He is looking for a serious relationship and the series shows that he is completely different from the behaviours and attitudes that gay characters were built upon at the end of the nineties. On the other hand, Jack McFarland reproduces all the features that characterized effeminate gay men at that time: childish, carefree, narcissistic and shallow, but also likable and affectionate. In addition, the main cast included Grace Adler, Will’s best friend and owner of an interior design studio, and Karen Walker, an alcoholic and eccentric millionaire who works at Grace’s studio in spite of the fact that she does not need the money.
Mira (2012, p. 44) claims that “popular culture works through recognizable types; the fact that [an identity] does not exist dooms it to be silenced in the media”. Therefore, the presence of two gay characters who are so different between them made it possible to enlarge the spectrum of the gay community and to disprove the stereotype that burdened this group in most audiovisual products (Martínez Pleguezuelos, 2016, p. 214). This series arrived in Spain on the public national channel La 2, and then it was aired by different private channels (Fox TV, Sony TV), which rescheduled its different seasons for Spanish audiences. We will now analyse some relevant aspects of the dubbing into Castilian Spanish which, from the perspective of the cultural turn within audiovisual translation studies, may represent a challenge for the linguistic transfer.
4. The use of gayspeak in Will & Grace
In a seminal article about the study of the representation of homosexuality through audiovisual translation, Ranzato (2012, p. 371) claims that, out of all the speech communities that can be analysed from the perspective of translation, “[o]ne of the most interesting idiolects spoken by a community is the so-called gayspeak, the modes and ways of homosexual communication”. As Venuti points out (1998, p. 136), language is not only used as a means of communication, but it goes beyond that. The way in which we use it and the features that we associate with a specific group of speakers ultimately define that minority. This, together with the asymmetry of powers that can easily be detected in linguistic variants, leads us to a reflection on the mechanisms of re-writing that participate in the translation process. In addition, we can contemplate their capacity to promote the inequalities that we refer to or, on the contrary, to fight against the reduction of and discrimination against different communities (Martínez Pleguezuelos, 2017). In a situation similar to the one proposed by Cronin (2006, p. 73) about the degree of exposure to rejection suffered by every immigrant because of their marked accent in a language they are not native speakers of, different voices from translation studies have analysed different relevant aspects. These include the features that characterize gay discourse (cf. Harvey, 1998), the way in which they have been translated –particularly in audiovisual media (Ranzato, 2012), based on the characteristics attributed to their speakers– and the consequences that translating such a variant may have for a different audience, which is especially relevant in our study.
One of the pioneers in this field was Harvey (1998) with his study on camp talk and his translation of the dialogues in the play Angels in America, which was subsequently adapted for television. As a result of the analysis he carried out on this specific jargon, he established a descriptive framework for verbal camp (Harvey, 2000b, p. 243) with a classification of linguistic features that is based on four general discursive strategies:
In Will & Grace it is easy to find linguistic features that match the classification proposed by Harvey about camp talk based on the description he provides for each category. For example, in the “Paradox” section, we can find an implicit discourse in many dialogues that we can hear between the different gay characters that appear on the series, not just Jack and Will, but also different supporting or recurring characters that are featured in several episodes. In most cases, this feature is used with a comedic goal, and it generally involves some kind of sexual innuendo. We can see, for example, the beginning of the eighth episode in the sixth season, in which Jack wants to teach Will how to measure his blood pressure with a blood pressure monitor following the instructions he received at the nursing course that he is attending. In this case, we can observe an implication in Will’s question with an evident sexual reference that is intended to be funny for the viewers. The dubbed version for the Spanish audience followed the same strategy and the result was very similar to the original version.
We can find further sexual innuendo in a similar example with Will’s response to a comment by Jack when, after looking for a dog that goes missing in episode 3 × 18, the script includes the following response, with a clear underlying sexual reference:
Similarly, and within that same category of the Paradox, we can observe that a connection between “high” culture and “low” experience is also common in the references to musicals (i.e. The Sound of Music in episode 6 × 08), theatre plays or operas (i.e., references to the opera Madama Buttlerfly in episode 3 × 18).
In the category of “Inversion”, the most common cases are gender changes, particularly between the two main gay characters. This can be seen through alterations in their names, such as the use of “Willma” instead of “Will” in episode 6 × 06, or in a conversation in that same episode between Will and a gay man he just met and he is trying to seduce:
In the dialogue, Will shows him a picture of himself with his mother and he uses a feminine categorization of “sister” in which he includes himself and with a linguistic strategy that is mimicked in the dubbed version.
It is also easy to find wordplay, as Harvey includes in his classification, with comedic purposes in the series in our study. This is something that Ranzato (2012, p. 371) stresses as a characteristic feature of camp discourse1 in audiovisual discourse. Most of the cases that we found are deeply rooted in pop culture or the American society in which the series is framed, and this raises different challenges that we will discuss in the next section. As an example, in episode 6 × 05 Jack is taking part in a spelling bee. Just before Jack signs up, Will asks him:
The line “don’t ask, don’t spell” is a clear reference through wordplay to the controversial “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in the American army which prohibited soldiers from disclosing their sexual orientation. In this case, the translation solution misses both the pun and the cultural reference, and it is shown to the Spanish viewer without a political and social reference that generated much debate in the American society. Valdeón includes another example in this same line with the creation of a new term in episode 1 × 06 with the sentence: “I have identified the life form as… gaylien” (in Valdeón, 2010, p. 80), which was kept in the Spanish version: “después de un examen minucioso he identificado esta forma de vida como un gaylien”.
As we can see, the relevance of Harvey’s classification is evident in the analysis of Will & Grace. However, in the study of the camp variety used in the series both in the original and the dubbed versions, we believe that it is necessary to further discuss a different aspect: the social evolution of the creation of the LGBTQI community in the United States and in Spain, and to the social and identity policies that have affected its development. Different authors from the field of LGBTQI studies have analysed the asymmetries between the different attitudes regarding the defence of the rights of the community in different cultures (cf. Binnie, 2005) and the way in which this is an unavoidable problem for the rewritings regarding this issue (Martínez Pleguezuelos, 2018). Valdeón (2010) analyses the use of different lexical variants in Will & Grace to refer to the gay man and the problems that emerge when it becomes necessary to match different options in both languages.
There are many cases in the series, and it has not been possible to establish a pattern to define the use of a group of terms over another in the translation proposals that can be seen in the dubbed version. Therefore, for example, in episode 6 × 06 we can hear how Jack is referred to as “a queer little fellow”, which loses in Spanish part of its meaning (as an insult, but also as a term that has been reclaimed by the LGBTQI community to refer to themselves) with the proposal “un tipo extraño”. Similarly, the meaning of the translation of the term “fat queen” as “marica gordo” may be inappropriate or even insulting for some members of the gay community, since the conceptual shift in the different languages varies greatly. This is due to the fact that the fight for a visible identity in the LGBTQI community in the United States and in Spain has followed very different paths. In fact, the demands for the rights of this community in Spain have focused over the last decades on achieving social rights such as marriage and adoption by same-sex couples. The American culture, for its part, fought for the recognition of their identity as a separate entity from the heterosexual models (Preciado, 2005, p. 165). Therefore, social progress in the recognition of minority sexual identities in the USA does not run in parallel to the social evolution of the recognition of the LGBTQI community in Spain. Consequently, we believe that it is necessary to pay attention to the different social scenarios in both cultures in order to reach appropriate and accessible translation solutions for target audiences.
There are other cases in which some references that might be difficult to understand because of the cultural difference have been removed, such as in episode 6 × 05:
This sentence loses its reference to the “tranny bars” in Spanish with the alternative “drag queens”, and the semantic load of the term “tranny” fades almost entirely in the target language. Similarly, in that same episode, there is a change from “shemale” (“and this trophy, which I can only keep overnight because they need it tomorrow for the shemale egg toss contest”) to a mere “chicas” in Spanish (“y este trofeo, que solo puedo quedarme esta noche. Lo necesitan mañana para el concurso de chicas tirándose huevos”).
The following example found by Valdeón (2010, p. 80) is particularly striking because of the negative emphasis that can be observed in the Spanish version. This is in line with the social and cultural asymmetries that we mentioned above regarding the recognition of a gay identity and the reappropriation of the insult as a form of self-definition (Butler, 1997):
Beyond the difference between “gay” and “maricón” explained by Valdeón, the use of the verb “tachar” in Spanish highlights the insulting and offensive use of the Spanish option, which distorts the original message that the English version tried to convey. This did not go unnoticed for the authors that analyse the use of stereotypes in the construction of identities in audiovisual media (Ranzato, 2012, p. 371), or for other authors who interpret this translinguistic opportunity provided by translation as an open space (Bhabha, 1994, p. 38; Bennett, 2012, p. 43). This involves an exercise with which we can reflect on the negotiation of the discourse identity of a community (Guillot, 2012, p. 277), or as a more open way to present new identity paradigms that transcend the cultural borders of a society (Martínez Pleguezuelos, 2018; Di Giovanni and Gambier, 2018, pp. vii–viii).
After considering the difficulties involved in the translation of some of the contents of this series, we may reflect on the need for a classification based on the initial approaches of Harvey on camp talk that takes into account translation problems, not only according to the specific traits of the LGBTQI community, but also with regard to the intercultural and interlinguistic exchange involved. In this sense, proposals such as the one presented by Villanueva Jordán (2016) could solve some translation problems that appeared after the globalization and visibilization of the LGBTQI culture in mass media. For example, this author includes the category “Semiotic element” to point out the shift in the meaning of a term linked to the LGBTQI culture. Also, he uses the category “Discursive creation” to detect contents which convey a relevant message for the community.
5. The treatment of cultural references in Will & Grace
In the review of cultural references in Will & Grace we can find two main subcategories of cultural references that are closely connected to each other. The first one, according to Pedersen’s categorisation (2011) of extralinguistic cultural references could be classified into the “entertainment” section, since it is mostly a series of references to the audiovisual popular culture of the American mass media, including films, television series, actors, singers, songs, etc.
The second main group that we will discuss is directly related to an entire LGBTQI cultural system that is particular to this community in the United States. To a certain extent, it is much more complicated to delimit this category because of its open character, because it ranges from archetypes about different stereotypes of the gay community (the ubermale gay, the camp gay, the closeted gay, black and Latino gays, etc.) to cultural references in the world of music, cinema, television or art, to mention just a few. For example, the differences between the two well-defined identities of Will –male-acting and unaffected, with a stable job as a lawyer– and Jack –much more childish, very camp, an actor without a stable job or a stable life– are in themselves archetypal references within the gay community that will need to be taken into account in order to achieve an adequate rewriting in Spanish.
Similarly, finding references to singers like Cher or Madonna in the series will be an essential requirement to choose the best translation option, but it will also be necessary to be aware of the links that exist between those references and the gay community in order to overcome the cultural and linguistic gap in the most adequate way. Valdeón (2010, p. 75) discusses these references to the gay community based on traditional schemes “commonly associated with the gay world”, and he gives an example with the scene in episode 1 × 17 in which Will and Jack realise that they are in a gay bar when they hear Gloria Gaynor’s song “I Will Survive” in the jukebox. In this same line we can find an example in episode 3 × 07, in which Jack carries a Cher doll with him, he imitates her and he even meets the real singer in a restaurant; it is necessary to be aware that this specific artist is a major reference and an idol for a large number of gay fans.
This second group of references may represent a larger problem in translation because, in spite of the fact that the gay identity is becoming increasingly globalised (Martel, 2013), there are many references that are deeply rooted in the specific culture of each community. Therefore, a lack of awareness of the semiotic load of references such as cult films, songs, actors or a specific use of slang may lead to a translation that does not convey the meaning adequately. All these social and cultural elements that pervade the dialogues analyzed here will also be part of the discursive sphere of gayspeak due to the connotative load they bring, which must reach the target audience through translation. This will obviously influence the image of the gay identity that will be provided after the rewriting process carried out by the translator. For example, as we discussed above, the use of words that have traditionally been considered insults (“queer”, “fag” or “faggot” in English and “marica”, “maricón” or “nenaza” in Spanish) cannot be used in the same way in the United States and Spain because of the reluctance with which they are still met in some sectors.
If we look for specific examples of cultural elements, in the two categories that we have described we can find the intertextual character of those references –considering the way in which Taylor (2014, pp. 29–30) understands intertextuality based on Kristeva’s original proposal about this term. As many authors have already pointed out in this regard, finding those references is only the first step, because it is necessary to find a solution in the target language which is culturally and socially appropriate for the target viewer, as well as adapted to the constraints imposed by the rest of the channels (audio, images, music, etc.) on the text that is being translated (Díaz-Cintas, 2009, p. 9; Pettit, 2009, p. 44), and which is also in sync with the ideological structures and the system of values that dominates the target culture (Venuti, 2000, p. 470).
The solutions that were proposed for the Spanish dubbed version are in line with the different strategies established by Pedersen (2011) and Tomaszkiewicz (in Pettit, 2009, p. 45) for the translation of cultural references in the audiovisual field. We will present here some of the examples selected in our study and their translation, but it is necessary to point out that, as we have observed in the evolution of the series, the first seasons provided a much more domesticating version (Venuti, 1995), with options that were extracted from the target culture to bring the Spanish viewers closer to the content, than in the later stages of the series. Consequently, already in the pilot episode a strategy of substitution is used, as defined by Pedersen, in which the cultural reference is replaced by a completely different one in the target culture. Therefore, Jerry Springer is presented to the Spanish viewers as Cómbola (in a pun with the Spanish show Tómbola) and the response to “what are you watching on TV?” is again transformed in translation through substitution:
Similarly, a comment about Barbara de Angelis and her show “Making Love Work” is translated as “Isa Gremio” and “Lo que necesitas es pasión”. These solutions remind us of national references that are closer to the target audience. In these cases, the subtitling solutions are much closer to the original (Jerry Springer; “Hacer Funcionar el Amor,” by Barbara De Angelis). In another case in which a character is humming a song (“A room without windows, a room without doors”), a literal translation has been used both in the dubbed and in the subtitled version.
In some more recent episodes we can see that the strategy used in many cases is still substitution, such as in episode 6 × 05, with a reference to a reality show that was on TV when the series was first aired, and to its participants, the Hilton family:
As an example of cultural references from the LGBTQI community that we discussed above, in that same episode 6 × 05 a “leather bar” is mentioned:
This reference is rather well-known within the gay community and was transformed in the Spanish dubbed version into “en nuestro bar favorito”, a solution that takes a lot of information away from the target audience and does not convey the original meaning. In addition, we find a reference to the surname “DeGeneres” and to the television host Ellen DeGeneres, who is very well-known in the United States (although maybe not so much in Spain ten years ago), and who is a particularly significant reference for the gay and lesbian community. In the scene in which the surname is mentioned, Jack is participating in a spelling bee and he must spell that word. The dubbed version completely changes the contents, which leads to a nonsensical version in Spanish which might distract the target audience:
The relevance in the transference of this type of cultural references is, in our opinion, greatly important, both because of the contents that are shown to the target viewer and because of the projection of an image of the gay community that moves away from the original premises that the original version is based on. This explains the importance of being aware of the fact that no translation can take place in an isolated situation, but within a specific context, with concrete repercussions and consequences for certain groups that can have an influence on the entire society. Moreover, we observe that the configuration of the gay identity in the original and the dubbed versions reveal differences that underscore the cultural and social distance. This is shown, in turn, to all the viewers, which contributes to the creation of a specific image of the gay characters in the different societies that receive these messages.
6. Instances of humour in Will & Grace
One of the main aspects of the series in our study is, of course, the presence of a humour component throughout its different seasons. Humour has already been analysed in depth by different voices in the field of translation. More specifically, in audiovisual translation, authors like Chiaro (2000); Díaz-Cintas (2001); Fuentes Luque (2001) or Martínez Sierra (2006) have contributed substantially to unravel the complexities of comic effects in audiovisual media. Similarly, the classification proposed by Zabalbeascoa (1996) about the humour elements that we can find in the process of audiovisual translation and the subsequent model developed by Martínez Sierra (2008) and based on the latter are very valuable tools to discover and face the challenges of humour in an audiovisual text. Therefore, and according to the categorization proposed by Martínez Sierra (2008, p. 153), it is easier to analyse different jokes that we can find in Will & Grace, such as “if you’re looking for your Aunt Karen, she’s not here. She doesn’t work on days that end with ‘day’” (dubbed into Spanish as “si buscas a tu tía Karen no está. Nunca trabaja los días de diario”, episode 3 × 18), and to classify them according to the strategy adopted in the original version, which in this case is the group of linguistic elements in a play on words with the ending of the days of the week.
As we have already mentioned, the duality of channels in audiovisual translation may make it difficult to convey the message, and humour is no exception. The constraints imposed by images or sound, as suggested by Sanderson (2009, p. 125) limit the translators’ options in their quest to find a way to reproduce the humour and respects the information provided by all the channels. This is evident in our series, for example, in episode 3 × 07, during the chance encounter between Jack and Cher that we discussed above. With regard to the visual elements, we can highlight that Cher’s gestures and movements on the screen are also used as a comic resource and that they must be taken into account, and particularly so in this case, since they have a direct influence on the way in which the message must be conveyed, given the fact that they are used as a basis to cause hilarity. In addition, in this specific case, Cher sings a line from one of her songs, in English (the original soundtrack in English is used in the Spanish dubbed version: “If I could turn back time”), and Jack repeats it and insists that he can do a better impersonation of the singer. It is relevant, therefore, to pay attention to the inclusion of this line and its treatment in the Spanish text.
In parallel to this, Jiménez Carra (2009, p. 133) reminds us that, in order to achieve humour, it is necessary to have some degree of shared knowledge between the emitter and the receiver, “a factor that determines the translation strategies to be implemented”. In the case of Will & Grace, the representation of the gay identity and the linguistic variation that is portrayed in the original and the translated versions shows that many of the jokes use characteristic elements of the LGBTQI community, stereotypes or references to gay culture, which would fit into the category proposed by Martínez Sierra (2008) that describes elements about a community. Table 12 shows an example from episode 7 × 16:
Comments such as this find their comic effect in the commonplace clichés that have traditionally been reproduced in fiction products about gay characters. There are abundant examples in all the seasons, and we present here two more, from the second and the eighth season, as a sample:
Therefore, we agree with Jiménez Carra (2009, p. 141) when she states that “from a translational perspective, cultural referents are the source of some challenges even though this is not only a translation issue since, within the same community, not all references are fully understood by all its members”. The case of the increasingly globalised situation of the gay community seems particularly interesting from a translation perspective, but at the same time we believe that it sets out new challenges that will require a substantial amount of creativity from translators who have to rewrite jokes and puns about these globalised communities because of the asymmetric reception in different cultures who will receive this linguistic transfer (Valdeón, 2010).
7. Conclusions
After this analysis of the Spanish dubbed version of Will & Grace, we are aware of the difficulties that emerge in the translation of the different aspects that we have studied. In the dubbing process of an audiovisual product, transferring the message to the target language is not enough. Indeed, it is necessary to pay attention to all the constraints imposed by the different channels, to the limitations in space and time and to the simultaneous information that the viewer receives. In the case of audiovisual translation, we understand that the manipulation of the message is necessary in order to adapt to the different restrictions. However, it cannot be an excuse, as we pointed out already, to alter the core of the message that is conveyed to the final viewer.
In the case of the dubbing of Will & Grace we have observed that both the comic effects, the cultural references and the linguistic variation used by the main characters in the series manage to shape the identity of the members of the LGBTQI community, although not always along the same lines as in the original product. Be it because of the space and time limitations of this type of constrained translation, the external pressures on the translator that was in charge of the dubbing, or the social and cultural asymmetries between the original and the target contexts, there is at times a change in perspective in the translation into Spanish when LGBTQI identities are being shaped.
For this reason, and as we can infer from this study, we believe that it is essential to include a cultural approach in the translation of any minority sexual identity because of the consequences it has on their construction. As we tried to show in this study, this does not only occur with the use of the language by gay characters, but within a context and an entire group of references that are included in the culture and which shape the perception and the translation of the audiovisual product. As we pointed out at the beginning of this work, there is still a lot of work to do in this field in order to obtain a model for analysis that systematizes all the necessary technical parameters and at the same time takes into account the repercussions that the translated message may have.
Note
1.For an analysis of the features of camp in greater depth, see Sontag (1964).
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AuthorAffiliation
Antonio Jesús Martínez Pleguezuelos
Facultad de Filología de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Ciudad Universitaria, Edificio A,
Plaza Menéndez Pelayo s/n
28040 Madrid
Spain
[email protected]
