La música referencial y su influencia en la traducción del cine de animación

The musical code is paramount in the making of animated films. Due to the absence of direct sound in this cinematographic medium, their production usually begins by recording a temporary score –which include music and sound effects– in order to provide animators with narrative development and visual timings. When it comes to translation, depending on their relevance to the film plot, songs and musical numbers can be transferred to the target text by adapting the lyrics to the music, non-translating or creating new lyrics with no overt relation to the source lyrics. As for the incidental music, its function is mainly to complement the image, but sometimes it plays a crucial role by representing, for example, cultural or intertextual references. This implies a considerable challenge for the audiovisual translators and mediators, due to the near impossibility to modify the film soundtrack. The target text is thus created according to the pre-established music and other semiotic content, leaving to the translator the decision of adapting dialogues (or not) according to these elements. The exploratory analysis of an illustrative corpus of recent animated films dubbed into Spanish, will show some of the translation strategies and techniques adopted in those sequences where the musical code is a determining factor.