Domestication-examples

Part of the issue with domestication is that there is more than just a single anglophone country of significant cultural influence. The UK and the Republic of Ireland, the US, Canada, Australia, New-Zealand and the English-speaking African countries all have their own cultural references. This also applies to other languages. Spanish has Spain and Latin America vying for the placement of their own particular cultural references in domesticating subtitles.

The examples below are testament to the cultural differences occuring in the UK and America respectively.

The conversation (and equivalent subtitles), between Rémy Pasquier (played by Frank Dubosq) and his love interest; the Captain of the ship on which he organises the entertainment, goes as follows:

– Dites-moi... j' ai remarqué que vous aviez un léger accent.

[You have a slight accent]

– Vous êtes Ch' ti?

[Carribean?]

The domestication in the second of the two subtitles is clearly one destined for American audiences. The reasoning behind this particular domestication is that American/ Canadian audiences, for the most part, are not deemed to know of the particularities of North-Eastern France, nor its unique Ch' ti culture and idiom. The domestication conversion fails to capture the humour of the remark since there is nothing inherently comical about being from the Carribean- nor does it evoke any strong stereotypes, whilst both these conditions are true for the perception of Ch' ti culture from a French point of view (in the Source language).

In the film, Frank Dubosq plays a character (Rémy Pasquier) that acts like a dim-wit. It is probable that this act is a genuine expression of the character. His redeeming characteristics are his honesty, purity, and his big-heart; which eventually save the day after a series of trials and plot twists. For the character of 'Rémy', his remark about the captain being Ch' ti is sincere; and this is funny in more than one sense. For one it shows that he is clueless about the origin of the Captain' s Southern Italian accent in French, and this wild guess is funny because it is so far off. If there is an accent in French he ought to know, it is the Ch' ti accent. This generalisation for Rémy; that any accent other than the standard accent in French is Ch' ti, and the background knowledge that most of the audience would have of the film Bienvenue chez les Ch' tis, (2008) makes his remark seem very Ch' ti itself, and funny. Rémy is a similar character to Dany Boon's 'Antoine Bailleuil' in Bienvenue chez les Ch' tis, so the bringing together of these two films with the one remark recalls all of the humour common to both films.

The subtitled adaptation of this humour does not have the same culturally-coded humouristic impact and is forced into missing the point completely, for there not being an American cultural equivalent of Ch' ti, and Ch' timi (the language spoken by the Ch' tis.)

Filmography

Dany Boon (Director). (2008). Bienvenue chez les Ch' tis. [Motion Picture] France: Pathé Renn Productions. Retrieved from https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/video/detail/B01M7VU8CD/ref=atv_dp_pb_core?autoplay=1&t=5 on 24.02.2019.

Eric Lavaine (Director). (2011). Bienvenue à bord. [Motion Picture] France: Pathé. Retrieved from https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/video/detail/B00R22ETS8/ref=atv_yvl_list_pr_1 on 22.02.2019.