Translating Racial Slurs: A Comparative Analysis of Gran Torino Assessing Transfer of Offensive Language between English and Italian.

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on the role played by translations in constructing a cultural product. It chooses the American film 'Gran Torino' (2008) as its source text and discusses the ideological and cultural implications of rendering racial slurs from English into Italian. The dissertation therefore sets the analysis against a backdrop of contemporary North American and European culture understood in linguistic and behavioural patterns and questions the role of audiovisual translational norms in the source culture and tasks of translators in general when dealing with such highly sensitive, culture-bound issues pertaining to the meaning transfer of lingua-cultural taboos. The comparative analysis of the audiovisual texts takes a Critical Discourse perspective, with a strong ideological focus on the possible translation effects.