Entendre une langue, en lire une autre au cinéma

Abstract

This article examines the various conventions that govern dubbing and subtitling multilingual films. The presence of several tongues ​​within a single movie has new implications when the film is translated for a foreign audience. The article addresses specifically the issues that affect the relationship between the “idiom seen”, the one that is read in the form of subtitles or that is present in written form within the film’s diegesis, and the “idiom heard”, which corresponds either to the language pronounced in the original film, or the one that has been superimposed in its dubbed version. What are the possible consequences arising from the use of subtitles or dubbing for translation? Are the dialogues standardized through a single tongue? If it is the case, are there signs that indicate that there were two different idioms ​​in the original version? Are the written words translated? If so, how? Using examples from a plurality of films, the article provides an overview of the implications of this translation exercise. It puts forward the idea that language in cinema is an “insoluble” question: a film is not a neutral linguistic space.