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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,...