“Montalbano Sono!” Conveying the Identity of Sicily Through Subtitles: the Case of Inspector Montalbano

Giulia Magazzù "Gabriele d'Annunzio" University of Chieti-Pescara “Montalbano sono!” Conveying the Identity of Sicily Through Subtitles: The Case of Inspector Montalbano ABSTRACT The dialogue found in the Montalbano saga (an Italian television series produced and broadcast by RAI since 1999, based on the detective novels of Andrea Camilleri) is rich in register variation, from the “macaronic language” of Catarella, with its linguistic jokes and grammatical errors, to the use of the local dialect (adopted by peasants and lower classes), to Montalbano’s mixed interlanguage used with a phatic function, to Livia’s perfectly sounding Italian. The code-switching and code-mixing used by Camilleri represent a great challenge for the translator who has to make specific choices in order to render the translation intelligible to the target audience. Starting from Taylor’s (2000, p.153) definition of subtitles as “conveyors of meaning and guardians of culture,” the aim of this paper is to analyze the subtitling strategies adopted to translate into English the dialect and regionalisms in two episodes of “Inspector Montalbano” broadcast on BBC4 in 2008 and 2012, focusing on the factors of transculturality and extratextuality (where the former refers to how familiar the source and target cultures are and the latter has to do with whether the concept to be translated exists outside the source culture) that affect the choices of a translator when it comes to the transposition of a spoken, sociolinguistically marked dialogue into a subtitle that should convey the meaning of the source text. KEY WORDS AVT, dialect, culture-bound language 1. Introduction An audiovisual text is a multilayered semiotic construct comprising several signifying codes (mostly written, oral and visual) that operate simultaneously in the production of meaning. The typology of a film, its genre, the way it is organized and the meaning of all its elements result in a semantic structure that needs to be deconstructed as a whole by the spectator. TranslatoLogica: A Journal of Translation, Language, and Literature, 2 (2018), p. 111-125 “Montalbano sono!” Conveying the identity of Sicily Through Subtitles: The Case of Inspector Montalbano The translator's task thus is to master the functioning of all these different codes and to be able to cope with the incidence of both linguistic and non-linguistic signs within a translation (Chaume, 2004, p. 16-17). The peculiar nature of this complex text has deserved a specific branch of the already-multifaceted field of Translation Studies. Screen Translation, Audiovisual Translationand Multimedia Translation are all labels for a discipline that, unlike literary translation, has to exclude many of the most common translation aids (explanatory footnotes, glossaries, asterisks or asides), which may help the viewers understand what is going on the screen (Ascheid, 1997, p. 34). When foreign language television programmes are to be made available to a domestic market, two main contemporary adaptation methods are favoured: voice dubbing or a written dialogue summary in the form of subtitles (Ascheid, 1997, p. 32). Following Jakobson’s tripartition, subtitling is the only type of translation that can enter all three categories of translation: endolinguistic, interlinguistic and intersemiotic, shifting from the oral to the written mode. Therefore, subtitling has every right to be regarded as a very complex form of translation that has unsurprisingly received increasing attention from scholars, researchers and practitioners over the past 20 years. The scope of research on audiovisual texts encompasses uncovering multifaceted and complex procedures required to conduct audiovisual translation and the idea of working under the burden of technical time and space constraints1. Audiovisual translation is regarded as a multidisciplinary field that owes a lot to Descriptive Translation Studies with a target-oriented approach, Discourse Analysis, Pragmatics, Conversation Analysis, among others. Subtitles in particular stand out as a text representing the “in-between,” a written code that tries to retain and transmit elements of the spoken mode. The core question is well expressed by Díaz Cintas and Remael when they underline that “subtitling, being a hybrid language form with its own limitations, is therefore faced with a formidable challenge; how does one translate the sophistication of spoken language variants into a regimented written form”(Díaz Cintas &Remael, 2007, p.185)? Moving from this question, the aim of the paper is to focus on the subtitling strategies used to translate dialect and culture-bound language in the English 1 In order to reduce the impact of subtitling on screen it is common practice to present a maximum of two lines of 35 characters each. The length of a subtitle is also influenced by what it is supposed to be the average audience reading speed. An average viewer can read a two-line subtitle in six seconds. Therefore it is possible to work out a table of correspondence between duration of dialogue and number of spaces (Díaz Cintas & Remael, 2007, p. 69-99). 112 “Montalbano sono!” Conveying the identity of Sicily Through Subtitles: The Case of Inspector Montalbano version of “Il Commissario Montalbano,”2 an extremely successful Italian television series based on the novels by Andrea Camilleri (see section 2). Pedersen (2005) adopts the general umbrella term of extralinguistic culture-bound references (ECR) and underlines that what affects the translator’s choice for strategies are two main factors: transculturality and extratextuality. The former refers to how familiar the source and target cultures are and the latter has to do with whether the concept to be translated exists outside the source culture. Dialects are not simply a matter of lexicon, they “are characterized by non-standard grammar, specific lexical features and a distinctive accent”(Díaz Cintas & Remael, 2007, p.191). When it comes to translating dialect, both factors of transculturality and extratextuality can be problematic. Furthermore, it is quite straightforward that translating one dialect by choosing another one in the target language will render translation unintelligible to the majority of the target audience. On the other hand, in the globalised world, the current trend seems to be pushing towards localization and a widespread use of language variation in audio-visual products. Taylor’s definition of subtitles as the “conveyors of meaning and guardians of culture” (Taylor, 2000, p.153), emphasizes the power of words through which the audience can get a general understanding of the content without necessarily missing out on extralinguistic level thereof. 2. The Montalbano Saga and its language The literary and media phenomenon of Il Commissario Montalbanohas made a significant cultural impact in Italy. The success of Andrea Camilleri’s novels is global, with 25 titles of the Montalbano series published in Italy, of which 16 have now been translated into over 30 languages. The TV adaptation by RAI, the national public broadcasting company in Italy, began in 1999, and Montalbano was soon extensively discussed on the Internet and other media, such as the press, radio, and even comic books. In Italy, the series has become the nation’s favorite, while also receiving consistently high critical praise. The TV series were subtitled in 16 countries. In the UK, the TV series were first aired under the title Inspector Montalbano in 2008, and all 11 seasons and 30 episodes of the original RAI productions had been broadcast by September 2017. A lot of the popularity of both novels and TV series rests on the main protagonist, Salvo Montalbano, a fractious Sicilian detective who works in the police force of Vigata, an imaginary Sicilian town, lives a single life, is a gourmet and a long- 2 Translated into English as Inspector Montalbano. 113 “Montalbano sono!” Conveying the identity of Sicily Through Subtitles: The Case of Inspector Montalbano distance swimmer who owns a wonderful beach house. He is often confronted with criminal puzzles that necessitate his wits and stamina. His exceptional ability of dealing with bureaucratic and political matters allow him to to close the cases quickly and diligently despite constantly being under pressure. Salvo Montalbano’s speech, in line with Camilleri’s own literary jargon, is a mixture of standard Italian and Sicilian dialect, heavily imbued with ironic remarks and tones. 2.1. Camilleri’s language Those who come across any of Camilleri’s books are struck by the peculiarity of his language, an idiolect which merges Italian and the Sicilian dialect of his childhood. In her article “La lingua de ‘Il re di Girgenti’” (p. 37), the Canadian linguist Jana Vizmuller-Zocco (2004: 87-98), describes the language used in the Inspector Montalbano novel as characterised by three main mechanisms, which can be applied to the detective novels as well: 1) Code switching or functional alternation of codes when the communicative situation and/or the participants change; 2) code mixing or juxtaposition of two different language systems; 3) Lexical hybridisms or italianisation of the regional dialect.This is an intermediate level between Standard Italian and Sicilian. It can be considered as an “italianised Sicilian” created by apposing Italian morphemes onto Sicilian lexis. This analysis of the linguistic phenomena can be carried out perfectly by making use of Vizmuller-Zocco’s list3 of the major linguistic variations interwoven in Montalbano’s

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