Cinema, music and translation: Pedro Almodóvar subtitled in Portugal

Abstract

Since the birth of cinema music has been an important part of movies. In Pedro Almodóvar's work the soundtrack occupies a central place, not only speaking of the characters but also participating in the narratives. The final goal of this research is to confirm the existence of translation tendencies or norms in the specific case of the songs that integrate the films, based on the distinction established by Toury (1985) between preliminary norms and operational norms. We study a corpus composed by the last eight feature films of the Spanish director ”“ from All about my mother (1999), which won the Oscar for the best foreign language film until the last film debuted in Portugal, Julieta (2016). We will see if inter-comprehension and linguistic and territorial proximity can influence the solutions adopted in subtitling. The research allows us to conclude that there is no homogeneity in the translation proposals adopted and, therefore, there is no clear trend to translate the songs since only a third of the songs are subtitled, which will inevitably cause losses in nuances and connotations transmitted through songs. Finally, when we contrast our results with those presented in other investigations about the translation of the director's films into other languages and cultures, we find that there is also no uniformity in the data obtained.