To translate or not to translate – the case of Neapolitan dialect on English screens

The (un)translatability of the linguistic varieties of a geographical, ethnic and social type is particularly felt in subtitling which, due to the well-known space and time constraints, does not automatically represent in translation certain features of speech such as dialect, emphatic devices including intonation, code-switching etc. (Hatim and Mason1997; Díaz-Cintas and Remael 2007), and where varieties of language in source texts are generally translated into standard target language. A case in point is the conservative approach (Berezowski 1997) adopted in ‘The Brilliant Friend’ TV series, the recent television adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s hugely successful Neapolitan Novels. Differently from the tetralogy – where very little dialect appears – the TV series restored 1950s dialect-speaking (up to 70% of the first season contains conversations in Neapolitan dialect) but it only airs standard Italian subtitles for non-Neapolitan Italians and standard English subtitles for English-speaking audience. As a result, although Neapolitan dialect in ‘My Brilliant Friend’ saga is a compelling narrative device highly instrumental to represent/develop characters, heighten/elaborate their feelings, situate them in time, space, and social context, and is crucial to sketch out the shifting historical frame, to a non-native speaker all these differences in speech are no longer noticeable in a captioned show where no distinction is made between Neapolitan dialect and Italian. By investigating the role of Neapolitan dialect in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels and the no-dialect policy of its TV series subtitles, this study aims to address (some of) the theoretical and practical problems faced by screen translation of regional varieties and to offer a contribution to the underdeveloped area of study of dialects and languages of minorities in AVT.