MUFiTAVi

The MUFiTAVi project aims to describe the reality of the translation of multilingual TV series.
We aim to discover professional and social practices along with the norms and criteria of this
specific translation challenge. We will analyse TV series translated in Spain from the
beginning of the new millennium onward, in order to compare the norms and tendencies
when rendering linguistic diversity for dubbing and subtitling. We will deal with translations
from English (because of its prevalence in the audiovisual markets), and into Spanish and
Catalan (the target languages of the academic, professional and social context of the
research team). The project will pay special attention to gathering a representative number of
samples of how the phenomenon of multilingualism has been dealt with in 21st-century TV
series. We do not intend to restrict the number of language varieties that constitute the “third
language,” i.e. the variety that is not the source or target language, since this project intends
to analyse the functions of this variety in order to deal with the related criteria for its
translation. We will also study the case whereby the presence of the “other” language
happens to be exactly the same language as the main target language for the translation
(e.g., US English-language films with utterances in Spanish, and their dubbed or subtitled
versions for Spain). Thus, we aim to provide reliable data for refining existing theoretical
models of multilingualism in audiovisual translation, and to compare tendencies across
translation types.
The MUFiTAVi project will create a consultable database of 300 entries, resulting from about
3,000 hours of TV series, over a range of at least 10 different series, available on internet TV
platforms during 2019, where excerpts from multilingual TV series (e.g., Breaking Bad, The
Wire, Dexter, Modern Family) will be spotted and transcribed, allowing users to search
languages and language variations with a range of translation options. This will be a useful
tool at several levels, complementing the results of the Trafilm project, offering quantitative
and qualitative data for research, and providing a new didactic resource for translator training
and foreign language learning. Finally, it will provide guidance and assistance for translators
faced with multilingual dialogues to translate, providing them with options and suggestions
resulting from empirical studies.