Cupcakes, Marshmallows and Muffins. The Translation of Food Cultural References in Animated Films in Italy

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to explore the presence of Cultural References in animated films and to investigate the approach adopted by Italian dubbing professionals to deal with such culture-specific elements. The analysis is based on a corpus of twelve American animated films released between  2001 and 2018 by companies such as Disney, Disney-Pixar, DreamWorks, 20th Century Fox, Illumination Entertainment, Universal Pictures. By analysing the transcriptions of the English and Italian dialogues and the films, the paper identifies food and drink Cultural References and examines the translation strategies used in Italian dubbing. A comparison of older and more recent films throws light on differences through time as well as on translation patterns. The linguistic analysis of the English and Italian dialogues is complemented with comments by two Italian dubbing professionals on dubbing practice in Italy.