The fictional and translational dimensions of the language used in dubbing

Research on dubbing has traditionally focused on the description of the dubbing process, its relation to subtitling and the different dubbing constraints. More recently, dubbing scholars seem to have turned their attention to the language used in dubbing, which offers great potential for research and has been long-neglected in the literature. One of the issues that remains unexplored in this field is the study of original film dialogue and its influence on dubbed dialogue. It is still uncertain how much of the language used in dubbing comes from original film dialogue and how much is specific to dubbing. The aim of this article is precisely to present a possible description of the language used in dubbing, and more specifically of the Spanish dubbing language, on the basis of its relationship, or lack thereof, with original film dialogue. After a general overview of the main approaches to the study of dubbing language, a description is presented of the Spanish dubbing language, regarded here as film dialogue dubbed into Spanish. Its features are divided into two groups, the fictional dimension and the translational dimension, which account respectively for its condition as (a) film dialogue (b) dubbed into Spanish. It is argued that this type of description may contribute to a better knowledge of dubbese as well as to ascertain what in the dubbed dialogue is down to the dubbing process and what comes from the original script, thus lying beyond the reach of the dubbing translator.