The Translation of Cultural References for Dubbing: Between Foreignization and Domestication

Abstract

This work focuses on the analysis of the cultural references which appear in the film Freedom Writers (La Gravenese, 2007). It will present both a categorization of such references, and relevant information about their contexts and it will analyze the strategies which have been used to translate them in the dubbed version. The analysis will be carried out independently for each category and for the film as a whole as well. The results will show that the strategies employed are diverse and that their use also varies according to the thematic category which has been analyzed. In general, it will be shown that the strategies of Complete retention, Direct translation by calque and Official Equivalent are the most widely used and that out of 71 strategies 37 (52%) are target-oriented and 34 source-oriented (48%), almost half and half.