Racial slurs in Italian film dubbing

This paper is aimed at exploring how racial slurs are dealt with in Anglo-American films and the way they are rendered in films dubbed in Italian. In particular, it will focus on the racist epithets 'nigger', 'gook' and 'zipper head' and will try to unveil the linguistic choices made by the Italian audiovisual translator in the dubbing phase. Furthermore, it will underpin the claim that taboo topics vary from culture to culture (Hughes, 2006; Allan and Burridge, 2006) and will try to shed light on a claimed change of censorship over time, which has shifted from sexual and religious topics to ethnic slurs (ibid.). The research analysis carried out in this paper will sometimes highlight a wide spectrum of translation patterns accompanied by subtle linguistic manipulations, especially in view of specific contexts and of the characters uttering the slur. Alternatively, the translation patterns which emerge will instead be fixed, given the poor variety of the corresponding slurs in the Italian culture. Finally, a particular focus will be placed on censorship in contemporary Anglo-American films. In this respect, 'the n-word' will come to the fore; it has characterized the majority of Anglo-American films since 2000 and has hallmarked a shift in censorship. The final question that this paper will put is whether Italian culture is ready or not for that shift.