“Is this Bizarro World?” The Adaptation of Characterisation and
      Intertextuality in German Audiovisual Translation
Creators: name: Peat, Nicholas
Publisher: name: Lancaster University
Year: 2018
Subjects: TRANSLATION
audio-visual translation
intertextuality
characterisation
German language
dubbing
subtitling

description: This thesis contributes to the scholarly understanding of intertextuality,
      characterisation and translation theory; building upon earlier analyses of
      audiovisual translation of genre television (e.g. Bosseaux 2015, Knox and
      Adamou 2011), my thesis undertakes analyses of interactions between
      recurring characters in the sixth season of the US television programme,
      Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
      
      The first major contribution of this thesis is the construction of a model
      of textual cues for characterisation specifically for audiovisual media
      (e.g. film, television), including non- English language media, building
      on Bosseaux’s (2015), Culpeper’s (2001) and Walker's (2012) models
      for dubbed television, drama and novels, respectively. The scene-based
      analysis of these textual cues in the original English, German dubbing and
      German subtitles allows the viability of my model for characterisation to
      be assessed with regard to the audiovisual-specific aspects they
      incorporate; examples include the visual features of a character's
      milieu (e.g. the furnishings with which characters are seen to surround
      themselves) or the visual representation of mental processes (e.g.
      hallucinations to which the viewer is privy), neither of which could be
      discerned from non-visual scripts or prose narration.
      
      The second major contribution of this thesis concerns intertextual
      references (see e.g. Fairclough 2003, Allen 2011) which, as a form of
      textual adaptation, are used in the text to create characterisation. As
      intertextual references are adapted in audiovisual translation (see e.g.
      Pérez-González 2014), the characterisation provided by those intertextual
      references is also adapted; these adaptations are the focus of analysis.
      For the purposes of this analysis, intertextual references are categorised
      as allusions, quotations, adaptations and co-text (categories chosen to
      reflect how intertextuality can be removed or introduced via audiovisual
      translation): these categories serve to help discern how specific forms of
      intertextuality are adapted in translation.
      
      These qualitative, scene-based analyses (Bednarek 2012) explore different
      ways in which audiovisual translation can adapt characterisation;
      adaptations via translation are considered in accordance with the specific
      limitations of dubbing and subtitles, as well as Systemic Functional
      Grammar (e.g. Halliday 2014) and multimodal codes (e.g. Chaume 2012), to
      explain salient decisions taken by translators. Through so doing, it is
      demonstrated that characterisation can be analysed in dubbed and subtitled
      texts and intertextual references can be analysed in terms of the
      characterisation they convey, which can be adapted in translation as the
      intertextuality is adapted. These are the contributions of this thesis to
      the fields of intertextuality, characterisation and translation.