The presence of Spanish in American movies and television shows. Dubbing and subtitling strategies

Abstract

The existence of a large Latin American community living and working in the United States has been the main cause for the Spanish language to have gradually found its way into the North-American society. Those belonging to this community use both Spanish and English on a daily basis, although not usually to the same degree: Spanish is normally spoken in colloquial situations, whereas English is the language used in work or academic contexts. The code-switching between the two languages emerges as a tool of identification with both cultures. Over the past few years, the cultural reality of all those people who are able to alternate English and Spanish in the same conversation has emerged in the United States as a new theme for movies and television shows. In this paper, I shall analyze the presence of codeswitching in several American audiovisual products. I will also examine the translation, dubbing and subtitling strategies used by the American screenwriters and the Spanish translators when this bilingual situation occurs in a script.