Implications of globalization and linguistic standardization in subtitling standards and visual dialect as a strategy for subtitling linguistic variation

Abstract

Globalization and standardization go hand in hand. Linguistic standardization is an important element to guarantee the unity of a language and, in the case of Spanish, it is strongly present both in the language policies and in the speakers’ awareness. The 21st century has witnessed the construction of a new Pan-Hispanic linguistic policy and the planning of a Spanish pluricentric norm in which no variety should prevail over the others. But, despite the institutionalized discourse in favour of the unity of Spanish and its strengthening as a language of globalization, separate translations are still produced for Castilian and Latin American Spanish, the latter known in the translation world as neutral Spanish: a variety that is intended to avoid localized linguistic uses. This variety, also used in television newscasts and even in some soap operas produced for international broadcasting with the intention to reach the largest audience, arouse in the communities of practice as a collective construction developed empirically by translators and communicators without the support of an official standardization. Although neutral Spanish has official recognition in several countries, it still presents important gaps that need to be tackled. Globalization and technological advances have not only led to linguistic standardization, they have also brought important changes in the existing subtitling standards for the different languages. The aim of this paper is to present a brief history of this evolution and to analyse some examples of translations in order to discuss the negative effects that the excessive adherence to the standard norm and to neutral Spanish may have in the expressive power of film and series subtitles, resulting in an aseptic language that, besides erasing the marks of orality, neutralizes characters’ traits that inform us about their psychological state, age, gender and geographical and social origins. This paper also poses the need for a new approach to the subtitling of expletives and multilingual films and explores the creative possibilities of the visual dialect as a strategy for capturing linguistic variation.