Evolution of the translation of Culture-Bound Terms in TV sitcoms from the 1960s to 2010s

Abstract

Translation is transferring a message from one language to another. One of the most used type of translation is audiovisual translation which can be produced in different forms such as dubbing. The procedure to dub an audiovisual product varies depending on the character of it. In this paper, audiovisual translation is analysed in sitcoms from the 1960s until the 2000s taking into account the cultural markers these comedies contain. The methodology used to analyse this evolution is comparing the scripts of a chapter of the sitcoms chosen with the Spanish dubbed version of them. The sitcoms taken into account in this research are Bewitched (1960s), George and Mildred (1970s), Alf (1980s), Friends (1990s) and Two and a Half Men (2000s). In order to analyse the translation of culture-bound terms, several strategies (extracted from Fernandez Guerra’s article Crossing Boundaries: The Translation of Cultural Referents in English and Spanish (2012)) are explained. After that, the cultural terms found in the chapters are classified according to these strategies. The results show that the chapter from the sixties is not culturally adapted while an increase of cultural adaptation can be observed from the seventies until nowadays.