Please join us for the next Leiden Translation Talk! All welcome!
Date: Wednesday 9 December 2020
Time: 16:00 / 4 pm (sharp!) (Leiden/Amsterdam time)
Platform: Kaltura Live Room https://smart.newrow.com/room/?wlk-375&fr=lti
Speaker: dr. Tim Reus
A frozen heart worth mining: Analysing theme in two dubbed versions of songs from the Disney films Frozen
This study compares the original, English-language versions of multiple songs from the 2013 Disney film Frozen to the two Dutch-language versions that were produced: one released in the Netherlands (the TT-NL) and one in Belgium (the TT-BE). I investigate the themes of love and fear and the dichotomy between those two as presented in the film. To support this inherently qualitative analysis, I use the triangle of aspects to generate quantitative data that helps describe the expression of these themes. It is found that in the songs of the TT-NL, the themes are expressed more directly and less comprehensively, resulting in a simplified and less prominent development of the themes. In the TT-BE, the themes are addressed slightly less comprehensively than in the original songs, but not as simplified as in the TT-NL version. This seems to be the result mainly of different translation strategies: the TT-NL focuses primarily on musical aspects, such as maintaining the rhyme scheme and recreating a singable rhythm, whereas the TT-BE concentrates more on the visual and verbal aspects, maintaining instances of symbolism and expressions of theme more rather than paraphrasing them. This study highlights the value of analysing animated musical film translation in great detail for both academic and practical, educational purposes.
Bio dr. Tim Reus
On 8 June 2020, Leiden Translation graduate Tim Reus defended – via Zoom! – his PhD dissertation “Musical, visual and verbal aspects of animated film song dubbing: Testing the triangle of aspects model on Disney’s Frozen” at University of Jyväskylä in Finland. If you’re interested in song translation, dubbing, or Frozen, you can download his dissertation here.
Or access one of his latest publications in Perspectives: Not a footprint to be seen: isolation in the interplay between words, music and image in two Dutch-language dubbed versions of ‘Let it go’ Available via https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0907676X.2019.1653947
More Tim Reus?
Read more about Tim’s work as an author, musician, translator, teacher and researcher on his personal blog: https://hetdwaalspoor.wordpress.com/about/
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