Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.38003/zrffs.18.1
The Substitution of Cultural Elements in Film Dubbing and Subtitling From English to Italian
Andrea Rogošić
orcid.org/0000-0003-4741-1061
; University of Split, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Abstract
Source culture elements that do not have a corresponding equivalent in the target language represent one of the biggest challenges in the translation process. When translating such elements, it is necessary to resort to interventional translation strategies to achieve the dynamic or functional equivalence of the text or its skopos. The application of substitution is especially frequent in humorous audiovisual texts as a means to preserve the humorous effect. Cultural substitution implies the replacement of the original element of culture with an element of the target culture or a third culture that is comprehensible to the target audience. Situational substitution is achieved by replacing a cultural element from the source text with an element that is not culturally bound, but fits the context. This paper analyses the use of substitution in the dubbing of cultural elements from English to Italian with a corpus of five comedy films. A comparative analysis of subtitles affirms that the use of substitution in subtitling is much less frequent due to the coexistence of the original soundtrack and subtitles which could undermine the translation credibility. Cultural substitution was applied in a greater number of cases because the loss of a culturally bound element implies the loss of allusion and the reduction of the humorous effect. A modest share of examples of substitution with target culture elements confirms the fact that translators did not strive for a radical domestication, while their approach to substitution with third culture elements is indicative of their awareness of cultural distance.
Keywords
cultural elements; substitution; dubbing; subtitling; translation strategies; humour
Hrčak ID:
340855
URI
Publication date:
12.12.2025.
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