Are we all together across languages? An eye tracking study of original and dubbed films

In one of the first attempts to apply eye-tracking technology to the area of dubbing, this chapter reports on an experiment conducted in 2016 with viewers of the original English and dubbed Italian version of Wes Anderson’s Grand Budapest Hotel. The study analysed the gaze behaviour of participants watching different scenes, focusing on variations in attentional synchrony and visual momentum. The results show less attentional synchrony and a higher visual momentum for the dubbing viewers. They also support the existence of the so-called dubbing effect, an unconscious eye movement strategy performed by dubbing viewers to avoid looking at mouths in dubbing, which prevails over the natural and idiosyncratic way in which they watch original films and real-life scenes.