Subtitling in the digital era: TV crime drama series in domestic languages

Abstract

This study is set within the context of extensive academic attention to and exploration of audio and visual data as resources, methods and practices in the Digital Humanities (henceforth DH) (Gallitelli 2016). DH are seen and understood as a large and heterogeneous container that accommodates different research areas and affects various media. It is a relatively young field of study, inextricably linked to the development of information technologies within which the audiovisual dimension plays a central role. Audiovisual texts as forms of knowing, learning and entertaining have recently achieved a strategic position in the field of DH alongside current advances in computing. The digital access to audiovisual materials such as media communication and the visual arts has favoured the dissemination of digitalized audiovisual collections through for- and/or non-profit platforms, thereby enabling the circulation of audiovisual materials online. For the purpose of this research, a Corpus of Police Procedurals has been compiled. It is an English–Italian parallel corpus including three episodes of contemporary police procedurals which contains, on the one hand, a transcript of source dialogues (English original) and its Italian subtitles and, on the other hand, the Netflix subtitles (English and Italian as language pairs). The three episodes belong to three different TV police crime dramas set in different geographical areas: the Icelandic The Valhalla Murders (henceforth TVM) (RÚV 2019, Netflix, BBC Four 2020), the Finnish Deadwind (originally Karppi, Yle TV2 2018, Netflix 2020) and the English Luther (BBC One 2010; Fox Crime, Netflix 2011). Against the backdrop of the phenomenon of digitalization of crime drama series in different languages through AVT, this study sheds light on the language employed in the interlingual translation of Netflix English, Icelandic and Finnish crime drama series into Italian, and on any possible act of domestication.