“The unknown heroes of the silver screen”. Film translators in the late silent era

The aim of this paper is to examine the emergence of film translation as a profession in Italy in the late silent era. Using contemporary periodicals, censorship records and archival material, this paper will examine the intricacies and complexities of the film translator’s craft, in which technology played a significant role. As previous studies have shown, translating films in the 1920s entailed much more than translating words (Nornes 2007) – it was a far more radical and material process of creatively re-shaping and adapting the film text to meet the requirements of local audiences, exhibitors, and censorship boards (Vasey 1997). Silent film translation was “a holistic process” (O’Sullivan and Cornu 2018: 16) involving not only the translation of title cards, but also a variety of operations ranging from film re-editing to the creation of paratexts such as film novelizations, to more radical reworkings.

Drawing on a range of primary sources, this paper will investigate the work and modus operandi of film translators between the late 1920s and the early 1930s, with the aim of uncovering elements of continuity in film translation practices from the last decade of silent cinema to the early days of dubbing. The discourse around film translation will be examined, with a view to illuminating terminological aspects, film translators’ socio-cultural background, as well as the public image and the legal status of the profession.