It is impossible to envisage audiovisual translation without keeping in mind the senses: “the translator writes for sight and sound, that is to say for a speaker and a listener, not for a reader”. (T. Le Nouvel). Dialogue is meant for performance and representation, whether in Original Version, or in the various kinds of Translated Versions that may be produced (subtitling, dubbing, voice-over, audiodescription or subtitling for the hearing impaired, etc.). This pragmatic purpose leads to yet another dimension, that of embodiment in its primary meaning: the fleshing out of a character by an actor, which is paramount in dubbing.

Argument

It is impossible to envisage audiovisual translation without keeping in mind the senses: "the translator writes for sight and sound, that is to say for a speaker and a listener, not for a reader". (T. Le Nouvel). Dialogue is meant for performance and representation, whether in Original Version, or in the various kinds of Translated Versions that may be produced (subtitling, dubbing, voice-over, audiodescription or subtitling for the hearing impaired, etc.). This pragmatic purpose leads to yet another dimension, that of embodiment in its primary meaning: the fleshing out of a character by an actor, which is paramount in dubbing. In this, the main issue is the reproduction for a foreign audience of the workings of synchronisation, the original synchresis:
It is synchresis that allows dubbing, post-synchronisation and sound effects, and gives these operations such enormous scope. Thanks to synchresis, there are dozens of possible or admissible voices for a single onscreen body and face. (M. Chion) Adaptation is carried out to help express an author’s voice but also for performance by an actor, who transfers verbal elements into voice and inscribes them in the fabric of the movie.

This results in a dichotomy for the foreign viewer: "Dubbing is what makes voices and bodies simultaneously present and absent – the voice of the dubber and the body of the actor are present onscreen while the dubber’s body and the actor’s voice have disappeared" (F. Berthet). The cinematic text is conveyed both by body language and voice. The audiovisual translator works for an author but the voice actor will be the one conveying the target text to its final audience : “even though a voice may be inscribed in diegesis, even though it is visible onscreen thanks to the face using it to speak to another character, it comes out of the film and speaks directly to the viewer." (D. Sipière). This results in a double utterance. Hence, the viewer’s active cooperation is necessary for the reception of a translated film. He/she will be sensitive to authenticity in the rendering of dialogue, whether in dubbing or in the original sound/subtitle dyad. Such authenticity is paramount in shaping the audience’s appraisal of the film’s quality (L. Perez-González) The conjunction of aesthetic and economic consequences makes the translation of sensory impressions more than a hermeneutic question.
In other forms of audiovisual translation, the question of the senses is also important: subtitling exerts extra pressure on the eye as the viewer is required to read a text and view pictures simultaneously, which entails a specific relation to the images:
The audiovisual translator already faces a temporal constraint at the time of writing, as his work must be inscribed in a flux of pre-existing images whose sequence he is absolutely unable to alter. (R. Lambrechts)
The translator is placed in the midst of a complex chain that ranges from the writing of a text in another language to its reception in the movie theatre and includes multiple partners liable to have an impact on the sensory dimension of the translated film: the author, the dubbing director, the actors, and the audience.

Contributions on audiovisual translation and its various techniques are invited on the following topics amongst others:
the specificity of orality in film writing and sound production
the constraints of sound/image synchronization in a dubbed version and its consequences on the cinematic text.
managing and transfering the original vocal landscape (rhythm, sounds)
translating the non-vocal and/or non-verbal meaning on screen
transfering onomatopoeia, song(s)
sensory specificities of a musical film translation
comparing sensory constraints for the spectator of a dubbed vs subtitled version
the interaction between vision and sound in subtitling
the specifics of subtitling for the hearing impaired in compensating for auditory deficiencies and audio-description in compensating for visual impairment
the relationship between the original image and its audio description for the visually impaired
comparison between film sub-titling and sur-titling at the theatre or the opera
translating "on the edge of meaning" : interjecting, cursing, etc.

Finally, papers/articles might also address another form of translation, intralinguistic, adapting literary texts for the screen: how does a film transcribe visually and sonically for the viewer what the initial author created in written form for the reader?

Submission guidelines

Talk proposals (a half page in English or in French) plus a short CV should be sent to:

• Frédérique Brisset: frederique.brisset@univ-lille3.fr
• Bruno Poncharal: bruno.poncharal@orange.fr

by 31 March 2016 at the latest

TRACT (center for research in translation and transcultural communication) Conference 14-15 October 2016, Université Sorbonne nouvelle – Université de Lille 3

Scientific committee

• Fabrice Antoine, Pr, Université de Lille
• Sabrina Baldo, MCF, Université d'Evry
• Frédérique Brisset, MCF, Université de Lille
• Delia Chiaro, Pr, Université de Bologne, Italie
• Jean-François Cornu, traducteur-adaptateur et chercheur indépendant
• Bruno Poncharal, Pr, Université Sorbonne nouvelle Paris 3
• Aline Remael, Pr, Université d'Anvers, Belgique
• Louise Von Flotow, Pr, Université d'Ottawa, Canada