Throughout history, artificial languages have often developed side by side natural languages, and although some of them have been relegated to the status of bizarre experiments, others have prospered and, as with Esperanto, are used to this day. In this sense, literature and cinema have often posited themselves as important arenas of linguistic creativity and have repeatedly voiced the impact new languages can have in societies where intercultural and interlinguistic issues are brought to the fore. From the Newspeak created by Orwell in 1984 to the Nadsat we find in A Clockwork Orange by Burgess, artificial languages have often represented important tools through which authors could question the relationship between language and power, the linguistic representation of Others, its consequences, and so on. In particular, because the genres of science fiction and, to a certain extent, fantasy represent the ideal settings in which the creativity of language can express itself, many of the artificial languages created throughout the 20th and the 21st century stem from this type of production. This paper therefore aims at analyzing some of the instances of artificial languages as represented in some of the most popular science fiction products of our age (the Star Wars saga in particular), focusing specifically on the way they were translated audio-visually for the Italian audience. As my paper suggests, the ineffective and often inadequate translations of these languages, which represent essential aspects of the fictional universes construed in these works, go to the detriment of the viewers’ enjoyment and, more fundamentally, affect the many implications the source texts have at a linguistic, cultural, and philosophical level.

Translating artificial languages and alien identities in science fiction (multilingual) films / Canepari, Michela. - In: US-CHINA FOREIGN LANGUAGE. - ISSN 1539-8080. - 16:1(2018), pp. 30-47. [10.17265/1539-8080]

Translating artificial languages and alien identities in science fiction (multilingual) films

michela canepari
2018-01-01

Abstract

Throughout history, artificial languages have often developed side by side natural languages, and although some of them have been relegated to the status of bizarre experiments, others have prospered and, as with Esperanto, are used to this day. In this sense, literature and cinema have often posited themselves as important arenas of linguistic creativity and have repeatedly voiced the impact new languages can have in societies where intercultural and interlinguistic issues are brought to the fore. From the Newspeak created by Orwell in 1984 to the Nadsat we find in A Clockwork Orange by Burgess, artificial languages have often represented important tools through which authors could question the relationship between language and power, the linguistic representation of Others, its consequences, and so on. In particular, because the genres of science fiction and, to a certain extent, fantasy represent the ideal settings in which the creativity of language can express itself, many of the artificial languages created throughout the 20th and the 21st century stem from this type of production. This paper therefore aims at analyzing some of the instances of artificial languages as represented in some of the most popular science fiction products of our age (the Star Wars saga in particular), focusing specifically on the way they were translated audio-visually for the Italian audience. As my paper suggests, the ineffective and often inadequate translations of these languages, which represent essential aspects of the fictional universes construed in these works, go to the detriment of the viewers’ enjoyment and, more fundamentally, affect the many implications the source texts have at a linguistic, cultural, and philosophical level.
2018
Translating artificial languages and alien identities in science fiction (multilingual) films / Canepari, Michela. - In: US-CHINA FOREIGN LANGUAGE. - ISSN 1539-8080. - 16:1(2018), pp. 30-47. [10.17265/1539-8080]
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11381/2840988
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