The Mediation is the Message Italian Reg

ARTICLE
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journal of
CULTURAL studies
© The Author(s), 2009.
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Volume 12(5): 509–525
DOI: 10.1177/1367877909337859

The mediation is the message
Italian regionalization of US TV series as
co-creational work
●

Luca Barra
Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Italy

● The article focuses on the co-creational labour made by
professionals (and non-professionals) who, in a non-Anglo-Saxon country such as

Italy, adapt and modify (heavily or slightly) the ‘original’ media products
(i.e. TV series) in order to make them accessible to the domestic audience. After a
concise introduction on the ‘Italianization’ process, the article proceeds to describe
two ways of adapting nationally: the professional translation and dubbing system
and the grassroots fansubbing phenomenon. The attention is both on the
production routines and on their influence on the meaning of the text. ●

ABSTRACT

● dubbing ● fansubbing ● globalization ● media production
media professionals ● national adaptation ● subtitling ● TV series
translation studies

KEYWORDS
●
●

In my childhood, some elderly English ladies … often gave me books as
presents … All were in the language of the donors: whether I could read
it, none of them paused to reflect. (T.W. Adorno, 1951/2005: 26)

Introduction
Media products have become – and, to some extent, have always been –
global: the constant diffusion of worldwide corporations and cultural phenomena, the ‘reduction’ of the world (or at least of some of its parts) into
what Marshall McLuhan called a ‘global village’ and the international
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mobility of both technologies and texts are fundamental aspects that shape
the culture and the world we live in. But this situation is multifaceted: as a
matter of fact, global media products often arrive to national – in this essay,
Italian – contexts in a partially different form, specifically reformulated for
local audiences and dissimilar from what was originally conceived by authors
and professionals who worked on them.
Texts, originally intended for a different language and culture, have to face
an ‘Italianization’ process: this term defines a series of sophisticated routines,
on both the production and consumption side, that mediate between the cultures of countries of origin and destination, giving birth to a new, specifically

created, product. The mediation influences both the form and meaning of the
text and its reception and success (or failure), leads to linguistic and cultural
adjustments necessary to translate (in the widest sense) and to adapt effectively
the product, involves different media workers. The Italianization process
absorbs a large number of professionals, who bring their ‘occupational
ideology’ (Deuze, 2007) – or better, ideologies, often in conflict, a pre-formed
series of ideas and working habits, each one at the same time cause and consequence of the nature of media working routines and of consequent ‘media
logic’. And those ideas, following uncommon paths, have to be summed to
original professionals’ ones, giving birth to a unique mix of creation and
re-creation practices that affect every foreign text.
The awareness of the transnational exchange of media products has frequently lead to oversimplifying this process in terms of ‘globalization’,
often conceived as ‘cultural imperialism’, and ‘glocalization’, where prominence is given to local resistances and negotiations (Sassen, 2007). Focusing
on mediation and distribution procedures forces to re-collocate in a powerful position another dimension, never really disappeared but too often
underestimated: the nation, ‘imagined community’ (Anderson, 1991) that –
although constantly losing strength on the political and economic side in a
‘networked society’ – still maintains a huge cultural impact. The nation is
an important constructor of meaning. As Roland Barthes (1957) pointed
out, if language and culture universality is only an ‘intermediate myth’,
aimed to transform the real world into an image, ‘history’ into ‘nature’,
national identity enables the recognition of the important role played by

history in society and culture.
Arjun Appadurai’s (1996) work on the Indian ‘decolonization’ of cricket is
a good example, on one side, of the carrier function played by national identity in shaping and redefining media products (and vice versa), and, on the
other side, of the strict relationship, in the mediation processes, between
production and consumption, constantly bargaining meanings and uses.
These nationalization practices are not confined to ‘post-colonial’ civilizations, as in India, but also apply successfully to – and gain relevance into –
more ‘homogeneous’ cultures, as in the case of the USA and Italy. The
proximity – partially induced by the media – only makes the task of noticing
changes and routines harder.

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So, regionalization and adaptation processes are usually planned on a
national basis. This happens for various reasons. The first one is linguistic:
in many countries, including Italy, language is a fundamental element of
national identity; in order to reach a wide audience, the linguistic barrier has

to be overcome, and so the translation plays a fundamental (although not
exclusive) role in the Italianization process. The second reason is tied to the
media system, ‘the media set of a given moment in a society, and its network
of relationships, complementarities, mutual exclusions, interdependence’
(Ortoleva, 2002: 28), whose partitions are organized nationally. Even multinational media conglomerates usually have national subsidiaries in charge of
some productions; distribution networks (publishing houses, broadcast frequencies, CDs and movies) mainly coincide with national borders; marketing and promotion are often scheduled differently (in timetables and forms)
according to the destination country; finally, ‘whatever form the industry
takes in a particular country, it operates within nationally specific state regulatory systems that might include censorship boards, cultural ministries,
and broadcast licensing agencies’ (Bielby and Harrington, 2008: 11). A third
reason is due to the conservative habits of mainstream audiences, and –
maybe, consequentially – of media workers. For instance, if the public is
socialized to dubbing – and, at least in Italy, it is – the majority would refuse
a non-dubbed movie: to reach a wide audience, it is better not to change
deep-rooted consumption traditions (and expectations).
The global trade of media products has often been studied as an
‘Americanization’, a sort of ‘colonization of the imaginary’ (Augé, 1997)
lead by a powerful – often irresistible – central empire towards economic,
social and cultural world peripheries (De Grazia, 2005). Even when the
attention is centered on the ‘middle range’ of world distribution practices
(as in Bielby and Harrington, 2008), the country of origin, where markets

takes place, matters far more than the destination one, with its own
reception. Instead, the analysis of the Italianization process allows us to
turn the tide: the focus shifts from the partial levelling caused by the progressive diffusion of a media koiné, a common language, to the variety of
interpretations, variations, re-appropriations produced by the encounter –
however, not au pair – of two different cultures, habits, languages, media
systems, production routines.
This article will focus on the Italianization of US TV series. These adaptation processes apply to a pre-formed audiovisual text (the ‘ready-made’, in
professionals’ terms), which is inevitably affected, varied and modified
through the work of several ‘mediators’. They mediate between the (original) authors and professionals and the (national, Italian) audiences, but
remain often unknown to both. This kind of co-creational work, that involves
people with diverse skills and backgrounds, will be explained in the next two
sections, dedicated to two different forms of series adaptation: the highlyprofessional traditional dubbing system and the new grassroots fansubbing
communities.

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Invisible actors and beyond: Professional Italianization
In Italy, just as in the other big European countries where English is not the
first language, Anglo-Saxon TV products (and movies) are generally dubbed,
in order to be easily understood and appreciated by a wider public – who
increase the ratings, or buy the tickets or the DVDs. Therefore, Italian people
see a partially different version of the text, distant in many ways from the
original one: nevertheless, the audience is so used to Italianized series and
films that it barely notices the complex work involved in the adaptation.
The series is identified and defined by the names of its authors, directors and
lead-role actors, while no one usually pays attention to other professionals
that play a major role in making a text ready for – and successful to – an
Italian audience.
The Italianization process involves a large number of heavily specialized
professionals, who participate in the co-creation of the Italian edition of a
US franchise: the Italian version of the Simpsons (Barra, 2007, 2008), for
instance, presents light or major changes both in technical aspects – the entire
sound track, some frames – and in meaning – cultural references, linguistic
gags, accents and dialects … These professionals, involved in stable production routines, work on the text bringing in different conceptions of translation and dubbing, preconceptions on the Italian audience,1 interiorized labour
procedures. They are part of a group with a definite ideology, that intends to
perpetuate – in the easiest way – the role of this particular kind of translation,

also against the more and more diffused (but still confined into minority)
request of an ‘original’ version. As Bielby and Harrington point out,
televisual elements vary considerably in their ability to travel undistorted
through the site of distribution – from the TV text itself (routinely altered
by dubbing, subtitling and censorship) to its genre categorization to the
reputational identities of the actors, actresses, producers, and creators
attached to it, and so on. Each element is negotiated, contested, and reexamined during distribution, often by a set of different actors working in
a different business culture than at other sites of the circuit. (Bielby and
Harrington, 2008: 172–3)

All the ‘automatisms’ apply to all audiovisual products imported, and affect
or modify each one of them.
These production – better, mediation – routines are deeply rooted in the
cinema dubbing system, born in Italy soon after the introduction of cinematographic audio. In almost 80 years, the processes have been constantly
optimized, thanks to technological and cultural innovations, and became interiorized by both media professionals and the audience. With the birth of television and the arrival of a large number of foreign ‘ready-made’ products,
they were applied, with few changes, to television industry.
In order to underline the impact of this kind of co-creational work, it is
important to analyse each step of the Italianization process of a TV series,

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focusing mainly on the professionals involved and on the subsequent variations
the original text undergoes.
The first step is ‘rights acquisition’. In order to be broadcast in Italy, the
series has to be bought: the international distributor sells the rights for international syndication to free networks and pay TV,2 sometimes allowing the
‘cherry-picking’ of single top products, more often through volume rights
deals that consent only a low level of selection. The licence allows a certain
number of repeats in a set period of time, after which the deal has to be
renewed. At this stage the main role is performed by broadcaster professionals (network director and staff, sometimes a specific internal structure): they
can decide, on the basis of the network’s needs and spaces, if a product must
or must not be bought and scheduled, and – consequently – if it can or cannot be seen on that channel (or, if any network buys it, in Italy). When the
licence is acquired, the international distributor provides the local broadcaster with all the necessary support material (copies of each episode, dialogue transcriptions, original sound track, BGM sound track with only
background music and songs). Then the Italianization process can start.
The following stage is ‘translation’. The first conversion in Italian is made
only on the basis of the original script, reporting all the episodes’ dialogues
and voices. It is a preliminary phase, where the translators, often selected

through blind tests, transpose the lines and create the base working material
for the next step. The translators, who often work also in the literary or technical translation field, bring with them specific ideas, theories and working
habits that influence the final product.
The third step is ‘adaptation’. At this stage, the Italian dialogues that will
be declaimed during the dubbing phase are prepared: the first ‘strictly loyal’
translation has to be adapted in order to match the video, with both an
‘expressive’ synchronism – the pronunciation, pauses, rhythms of the
Italian translation have to coincide with those of the video, performed in
another language – and a ‘labial’ one – the translation must consider the
movements of the lips, the vowels, the expressions made by the actors on
video. The ‘adapters’ (also known as ‘dialogue writers’) must pay attention
to the times and lip-synch, but also to the sense of the phrases: the lines
must convey the most of the original meaning, at the same time being natural and reflecting the original language complexity (verbal gags, jargon,
different linguistic registers, catchphrases). The references to the original
culture – habits, products, holidays, institutions, press, TV and radio programmes, media landscape, political and cultural personalities, star system,
etc. – must be made clear to Italians: so it is an adapter’s task to decide
whether to maintain the genuine one (e.g. Diet Coke), to simplify it (e.g. a
drink), or to translate it into its national correspondent (e.g. Coca Cola
Light). The third possibility, often chosen to simplify the series reception for
a wider audience, can ‘betray’ the original text, testifying ‘provincialism’: to

take examples from the Italian Simpsons, Wired has become its literal translation Collegato, although the original magazine is widely known in Italy;

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Fred Flintstone has been replaced in Homer’s line by Marco Columbro, the
(then) popular presenter of the comedy programme Paperissima; references
to the catchphrase ‘Che barba che noia’ (‘What a bore!’) of the Italian sitcom Casa Vianello have been inserted in at least two episodes. So, adapters
generally prefer well-known Italian hooks to the supposedly obscure original meanings. During the adaptation phase, also other modifications can be
decided, which not only affect the viewer’s interpretation of the text, but
change it deeply: it is the case of the Italian version (La tata) of US series,
The Nanny, where the Jewish origin of the main character played by Fran
Drescher has been transformed into an Italo-American descent, made clear
by a wide use of Southern Italian dialects and accents.3 Adaptation is a central moment, where the quality of the Italian edition has its base, but it is a
not so clearly defined step too, in the middle between translation and dubbing
and influenced by both. Of course there is an ‘official’ figure, the adaptor; but
several different professionals are somehow involved: translators can do
important adapting choices, voice actors and directors can make changes during the process, network executives can propose variations. Each figure has
different working backgrounds, levels of power, abilities and purposes. As
a result, some adaptation changes are not made (or not only) to improve
voice synchronism, language complexity or precise cultural references, but
according to a simplified idea of the audience – often considered by media
workers as lazy, lethargic, unwilling to discover anything new – or looking for
a simplification of the job – following a traditional routine is easier (and timesaving, and cheaper) than finding individual solutions for each case.
Another common practice, then, is a frequent indulgence towards stereotypes,
an easy way-out that could ‘level out’ the translated text: for instance, criminal, lazy or bungling characters are often given a Neapolitan accent (e.g. in
The Simpsons, Chief Wiggum, in Italy known as Commissario Winchester),
confirming a national stereotype obviously absent in the original text.
The fourth stage is ‘dubbing’. For each character the Italian voices are
selected, who will record the lines of the translated script that will be, in a
later phase, associated with the video. Different from adaptation, dubbing is
a completely structured phase, with formalized roles, workplaces and routines. After some preliminary steps – the choice of voices for main, recurring
and single-episode characters; the division of each episode in small parts
(called rings); the scheduling of the dubbing turns following the voice’s availability – the dubbing process begins. The ‘dubber’ (also called ‘voice actor’)
takes place in the dubbing room, with a script, the microphone, the original
sound diffused in the headphones, the video flowing on a screen; he records
his dialogue lines during a three-hour turn, often alone (single column), sometimes with others (group column). They are the more artistic-oriented professionals of the dubbing process, who often want to be considered as ‘halved’
or ‘invisible actors’, completely able performers lending their voice to another
actor’s gestures (Baccolini et al., 1994; Castellano, 2000; Gurisatti, 1986).
Close to the dubber, still in the dubbing room, there’s the ‘dubbing assistant’,

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whose job is to control in real time the synch and the length of every line,
eventually inviting the actor to repeat some lines. In the direction room, separated by a glass, the ‘dubbing director’ gives indications concerning quality,
tone of voice, single effects, while the ‘sound engineer’ sets the recording of
every track. National contracts, co-operatives and unions protect all these
professionals; all have a highly specialized job, with highly specialized routines. The problem here is that professionals’ objectives are not necessarily
those of the authors, the ‘original’ professionals or the broadcasters: the
nature of labour could affect the text and its meanings. Here are a few
examples: the involvement of different people in different stages working on
the same series could bring consistence problems, such as translations of
names shifting from one season to another; the interventions operated ‘live’
on the script by dubbers and the dubbing director could insert some mistake,
or oversimplify a simplified text; the necessity to reduce times and the fear of
being called back to the studio to re-dub some parts could lead to censorship
and auto-censorship processes, as in the case of the word ‘hashish’ eliminated
by an Italian Simpsons episode.4 Economic motivations can interfere with
dubbing too: once again with The Simpsons, some songs are translated and
sung by the dubbers (i.e. Iron Butterfly’s In a Gadda da Vida) to make the
jokes more comprehensible, while others (i.e. Stonecutter’s We Do) are only
subtitled due to high costs; to create mutual promotion, some Italian TV hosts
dub as a guest voice one single episode, often superimposing their personality
on previously appeared characters (i.e. Paolo Bonolis’ rendition of Lionel
Hutz). To recap, ‘the dialogue is a planned construction’ (Barra, 2007), where
cultural preconceptions and working issues are mixed.
The fifth step is ‘post-production’. It includes all the elaborations made to
‘create’ the Italian physical copy of each episode. The audio post-production
embraces the synchronization and mixing of the different music and dubbing
tracks, finally united in a single sound track harmonized with video. The video
post-production consists of eventual subtitling – if there are parts spoken in
a third language, conventionally not translated in the sound track – and of
graphic interventions to explain signs and other textual information – visual
changes usually limited to cartoons or comedies, such as in Simpsons’ witty
posters and road signs on the streets and in front of the church. Each of these
tasks also requires specialized professionals, whose role is to provide to the
Italian version the best quality and coherence: i.e. the same words appearing
both on video and on audio must be translated in the same way.
The last (major) stage is ‘scheduling’.5 The broadcasting professionals have
to decide where and when the TV series has to be scheduled: the channel, if
the broadcaster owns more than one, and the time slot in which the product
will be broadcast. These choices inevitably influence the Italian perception of
the TV series: primetime is considered more ‘popular’ than late night; the collocation in a young-targeted channel is different from a mainstream one with
mature audience, or from a niche one over satellite. This different perception
contributes to modify – and identify – the Italianized product. Programming

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decisions are taken on the basis of many variables: evaluation of the text,
forecast on the expected public, counter-programming strategy, ‘traditional’
fixed positions. Once again, preconceptions about the audience formulated
by professionals directly shape the Italian interpretation – and, at least partially, reception – of a foreign product. Once again, media workers’ traditional routines can count as much as the characteristics of the series on
the final output. And the scheduling choices, especially in a long-running
series, can interfere with adaptation and dubbing routines. For instance, The
Simpsons’ first two seasons (1991) were scheduled late at night, targeting an
adult audience: adaptation and dubbing were particularly gross and vulgar,
with dysphemisms added to the original script, in order to mark a precise distinction with ‘normal’ cartoons. Since series three, all the following seasons
have been (and still are) scheduled in daytime, looking for a younger audience: so ‘bad words’ are now censored, cut or masked directly in the adaptation step, even when they are present in the original lines.
As can be seen in this quick review through the routines of Italian
regionalization, a great deal of people intervene to adapt and modify, slightly
or heavily, the original series, accumulating unexpected meanings, personal idiosyncrasies and common stereotypes into the original structure: each
of these media workers, notwithstanding – or maybe because of – their high
professionalism, contributes in many ways to co-create the Italian edition
of the TV series. And so, to co-create the TV series tout court, as it will
be perceived in Italy. Often the impact of this kind of co-creative practice is
hidden, or underestimated. But it strongly affects the text and its reception.
Professionals and their production routines, on a national basis, impose –
sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously – their habits and purposes:
with divergent solutions during different steps, with (auto)censorship owed
not to free-thought policies but ‘only’ to the nature of work, with preconceptions on the audience, with the diffusion (or, more often, the reinforcement) of national stereotypes. The result is a changed text: the Italian version
of Lost is similar (but not equal) to Lost viewed in the USA (and different
once again from the French and German one).

Volunteer communities: Grassroots Italianization
Alongside the professional adaptation and dubbing system, in a convergent
culture where ‘old and new media collide’ and where grassroots tactics and
corporative strategies continuously adapt to and interfere with each other
(Jenkins, 2006b), new practices of translating US TV products, and TV series
in particular, for the national audiences emerge. Italianization processes, at
least sometimes, can shift from large media institutions to niche fan communities: it is the phenomenon globally known as ‘fansubbing’ (a contraction of
‘fan subtitling’).
The ‘fansubbers’ are groups of people who translate foreign TV series
that have yet to be broadcast domestically, prepare the national subtitles for

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each episode and spread this translation through the web. They are direct
descendants of the anime fans who, in the 1980s and the 1990s, distributed
subtitled versions of the Japanese animation products that were not broadcast at all or were commercialized only in deeply revised and modified versions (Díaz Cintas and Muñoz Sánchez, 2006; Leonard, 2005). Following
the massive growth of peer-to-peer networks, file-sharing programs and
broadband, these practices have become easier and have widely expanded
from the anime subculture, interweaving with other fandoms of single
products, specific genres (such as science fiction or fantasy), or American
TV series in general (Hills, 2003; Scaglioni, 2006, 2007). No more an
instrument to fill a ‘cultural sink’, ‘a void that forms in a culture as a result
of intracultural or extracultural flows’ (Leonard, 2005: 283), the fansubbing moves to popular TV products, and engages a battle not only with
geographical distance, but also with ‘official’ programming practices: on
one side, the dubbing accused by fan groups of simplifying too much the
original semantic complexity; on the other side, the heavy delays in the
Italian scheduling of US TV series. Consequently, since the Italian broadcast
of Lost’s (dubbed) first season in 2005, individuals and small groups of fans
previously involved in grassroots translations, together with several newcomers, coagulated into larger ‘generalist’ communities, aimed at subtitling
as soon as possible a large number of products: the two main groups are
Subsfactory (http://www.subsfactory.it) and Italian Subs Addicted, or Itasa
(http://www.italiansubs.net).6 The ‘collective intelligence’ of a growing
group of fans, applied by Henry Jenkins, starting from Pierre Lévy’s work,
to Survivor’s spoiler communities (2006a), attempts here to supply other
fans with a service – the ‘loyal’ translation of single episodes – and, consequentially, to negotiate ‘official’ textual times – allowing to view the
episodes according to US schedule – and meanings – diffusing new practices
and conventions. The subs also become the base of a lot of subsequent
interpretative work on US TV series, made by fans and fan groups through
blogs, forums, wikis, which create other ‘unofficial’ Italian interpretations
of the original text.
Lost represented a switch from a ‘niche’ to a sort of ‘mass niche’ (Barra
and Guarnaccia, 2008a). Fansubbing, even if rapidly growing and diffusing
beyond tech-savvy circles, cannot yet be usefully compared for its significance
– and consequences – to the previously described ‘official’ adaptation: while
the first involves tens of thousands of highly involved fans, the last concerns
several millions of TV viewers. However, bearing in mind the different
weights, it is important to analyse the fansubbing Italianization practice for a
number of reasons: the peculiar organizational structure developed, through
a trial-and-error process, by mature fansubbing; the possibility to compare
institutional and grassroots audiovisual translations; the potential – and quite
unpredictable – ‘butterfly effects’ (Pérez Gonzalez, 2006) that fansubbing
methods can inspire in or produce on the entire translation field.
Fan subbing communities are always based on totally free and voluntary
labour supplied by ‘affiliated’ fans: high motivation is the real engine of all

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the work. Subbers decide to participate in these groups because they love
American TV series (or some of them), or because they want to practise the
English language (many fansubbers are students), or even because they are
keen to invest some of their free time in being part of a group, sharing interests and thoughts with peers. However, each community has evolved into a
fully-structured organization, in order to optimize the job and manage the
growing number of people involved without losing precious time and work
quality. So, the spontaneous workforce also comes to deal with defined production routines, with a hierarchic organization so clear to all participants –
the ‘fan career’, completely internal to the community, is based on merit,
seniority, time spent in the group’s activities – as that includes recruiting
(before joining the community, every fansubber has to pass a translation test)
and banning practices (inactive fansubbers are sent off). The classic distinction between ‘enthusiasts’ and ‘petty producers’ (Abercrombie and Longhurst,
1998) becomes here really complex: while the subtitles, fan-produced cultural
objects, are freely distributed on the Internet, the community organization
gradually comes closer to a marketplace, with subscriptions to pay the server
costs, banners and other forms of promotion.
The first step here is ‘video and transcript acquisition’. After an episode
has been broadcast over US TV, its video is available in few hours on p2p
networks. In the meanwhile, some international (usually, French or Chinese)
site prepares the transcript of this episode – a text file with the dialogue lines,
taken straight from US teletext pages or from TV audio with the help of a
voice recognition software – or directly its English language subtitles. The
Italian ‘team manager’ – usually, the ‘subtitle editor’ – looks for the raw
video file and the transcript and provides them to the ‘team’, the group of
community fansubbers that will work on that specific episode. A high quality of the original text is a necessary start for a good translation, but the technical and semi-automatic nature of the work and the strict working
deadlines often force to neglect accuracy, and damage – or slow down – the
entire fansubbing process.
The second stage is ‘synching’ or, more often, ‘re-synching’. The transcript
has to be transformed into a ‘real’ subtitle, with the right time-codes that
make a phrase appear on screen, and then make it fade away. In most cases,
the task is reduced to an attentive check of video correspondence to timing
with text blocks, and to some changes to visually realign the subs to the
Italian community standards. A devoted working figure – the ‘syncher’ (also
called the ‘timer’) – deals with a proper PC program and develops specific
working skills, such as precision and reflexes: a community member unable
or uninterested to translate, but willing to participate and help its group, the
syncher does not modify directly the meaning of the text, but contributes fundamentally to enhance – and ‘naturalize’ – the viewer’s experience.
The central step is ‘translation’ and ‘adaptation’. The team manager divides
in parts the English subtitle and allocates them to the team members, the
‘subbers’, according to everyone’s ability and free time. First, every subber

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watches the episode, in order to understand the plot and usefully collocate
its part into the flow of events (and expressions). Then, with the video
going on in the background, the translator starts the conversion of his lines
into Italian language, constantly supported by online and offline references
and by other team members, easily reachable on community forums or with
IM and chat. Every subber will translate according to his knowledge, his
habits, his ideas on ‘best translation’ and hypothetical viewer, giving birth
to a ‘personal’ sequence of lines, that will have to be fully integrated with
the previous and following ones prepared by others: i.e. some choose a
completely ‘loyal’ approach, while others prefer a more playful translation.
Moreover, the subtitle form imposes technical restrictions to the translation:
i.e. each line must contain an average number of words; and the visual
shape of the lines must be harmonious and coherent. Beyond usual adaptation problems – idioms, slang, cultural references – and textual limitations,
there is another factor to be considered: the group dynamics of the communities, which sometimes interfere with the translation. It does not necessarily mean that the work made by amateurs is less accurate than a
professional translation: on the contrary, in time, fansubbers have reached
(and, maybe, overcome) professional standards. But some characteristics of
the communities, or of the roles played by each subber into them, may have
bold consequences on the text. For instance, a strong fellow peers group can
be reflected in a more lighthearted approach towards adaptation, while a
more traditional one – often solidly tied with earlier fandom groups – can
choose a more ‘purist’, even redundant, way of translating. Itasa, mainly
composed of high school and college students, sometimes deliberately
chooses, in particular with comedy series and sit-coms, to translate the cultural references to US culture freely into their Italian correspondents, in
order to simplify the general comprehension of single jokes, in a logic near
to professional adaptors’ one: i.e. in a Pushing Daisies’ episode, a dog’s
name, Bubblegum, has been transformed into ‘Cingomma’, a dialectal term
used only in some Italian regions. Subsfactory, grown out of traditional
science fiction fandom groups, instead, is strictly tied to original interpretation, and always offers explications and notes that can weigh down the
vision of the series. The necessity of promoting (or stressing the participation in) the community can lead to minor textual changes too, as in the
Weeds’ episode where according to the subtitle Shane Botwin types
www.italiansubs.net on his laptop instead of www.youtube.com. Again,
some news, events or idioms born within the community may reflect on the
subtitles. In some subtitles released by Italian Subs Addicted the word
‘attrasimante’ appears, which does not exist in the Italian language but has
been used in the community’s forum, just for fun or to reinforce the affiliation to the group. More seriously, a 24 subtitle made by a Subsfactory team
has been dedicated, with few lines at the end, to a subber involved in a car
accident. Finally, the strong identities – via nickname – of some translator can
lead to a sort of star system, providing additional ‘mythological’ meaning to

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a ‘simple’ subtitle, as in the case of MetalMarco, one of the Itasa administrators, who for an entire season has been able to put his signature in the apical point of every Lost episode’s cliffhanger, in order to be easily remembered
by the viewers. All these distortions, even if in a slighter way than professional dubbing, can interfere with textual meanings, and have to be taken
into account considering the Italian (partial) reception of TV series.
The fourth stage is ‘revision’. Once again, the action returns to the team
manager, who at this stage plays a central role: the editor collects the different translated pieces of the episode subtitle, puts them together and controls
each line in order to ensure overall consistency and quality. A first technical
revision focuses on typing mistakes, line lengths, synch errors, misshapen text
blocks: after some practice, every editor develops some tricks and automatisms, which can grant uniformity (and work as a signature). A second logical, and more complex, revision follows: the editor must homogenize and fuse
his team’s varied translations, correct incomprehensions and inaccuracies,
check that the same word has always been translated in the same way, eventually contact team members asking for explanations. To subbers’ ideas and
idiosyncrasies, at this moment, the editor adds (maybe overlaps) his previous
thoughts on the TV series, on his voluntary job, on translation practices, on
the public who will use the subtitles: and this, directly or indirectly, influences
the final product (the text file containing the subtitles) and – in a more indirect way – the whole episode that will be watched through this.
The last steps are ‘controlling’ and ‘publishing’. In such a hierarchical
organization as the fansubbing communities, there are some figures that only
intervene before the team for a specific TV series is formed and a team manager appointed (i.e. to look for and pick the series that have to be translated,
to assign them to different community members), and after the translation
of each episode has been completed. The ‘administrators’ and ‘webmasters’
manage the community, control its virtual spaces, take decisions on possible
developments, decide the in-groups and out-groups, and organize meetings
and other stuff. In sum, they are the constant point of reference for community members. In addition, they have full control over almost everything the
fansubbing group produces: so, every subtitle is rapidly checked by one of
them and, only after approval, is published on the community website (and
then on p2p networks), where everyone can download – and use – it. It is
important to note that – to partially avoid ethical and legal problems – on
the websites only the textual files with the translated subtitles are released,
the so-called soft subs: at the same time, on p2p networks can easily be
found hard subs, inclusive of the original video, officially ‘ripped’ by external people. The necessity to reduce release times – often the subtitle is published just a day after US transmission – and at the same time to pass through
different control stages – frequently tied to a bureaucratic logic, not to work
quality issues – can easily lead to some incongruence. The hierarchical structuring is seen as necessary to control the community as it becomes wider: to
power corresponds high responsibility, but anyone can work hard to reach

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a more important position; and even out-groups and ‘generic’ fans see this
constant professionalization as an useful indicator, granting a continuously
growing rapidity and translation quality.
Web-based subbing communities are based on free time, passion, friendship, fandom experience. But in recent years they have evolved production
routines, roles and tasks becoming more and more similar to professional
dubbing. Consumers, especially fans, have not only become ‘prosumers’ (or
‘produsers’; Deuze, 2007), but are reaching a semi-professional level of specialization and organization, in order to be useful to – offer a qualified service to, and get in contact with – other consumers and fans. At the same time,
fans’ intentions and purposes can remain very far from professionals’ ambition: while the latter have to reach a broader audience, the former can easily
be loyal and translate according to an ‘enriched’ involvement and engagement
with the TV series, common to fan cultures.
To sum up, a different way of watching the TV series, based prominently
on web, forums and peer-to-peer networks, ends up producing a new kind
of Italianization. To a certain extent, it presents a structure similar to the
professional one, with correspondent tasks, objectives, translation problems
and roles involved. However, there remain many differences, mainly attributable to different purposes – even conflicting ones: the desire to see the TV
series in advance of Italian scheduled broadcast, eventually accepting a lower
level of quality; or instead the idea of educating the general audience, often
coupled with the crusade against traditional dubbing diffused in niche fan
groups, that instead requires a highly loyal translation – and to a different
audience – as said, a sort of ‘mass niche’ largely composed by technologically
savvy people, and their friends.
Fansubbing reveals to be a new form of co-creational labour, fan (and fun)based, maybe less invasive than professional Italianization, but – exactly as
this – not predicted (or approved) by original authors.

Conclusions
After describing the production routines and the main adaptation problems
related to the Italianization process applied to TV series, and generally to
audiovisual transfer, it is time to draw some conclusions.
The meaning of media products, when the text is translated and adapted
to another language and culture, is not an easily, or stably granted datum, but
configures itself as the result of an intricate and complex negotiation, where
co-creative mediation practices described in the essay, on both professional
and amateur sides, play a prominent role. ‘When the focus of analysis is
global television syndication, the omission of distribution as a key site on the
circuit significantly limits our ability to understand television in the context
of cultural globalization’ (Bielby and Harrington, 2008: 173), and the insertion of a specific mediation role between production and distribution cannot

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work without a deep focus on cultural and professional practices at play in
the destination country, here Italy. The ‘domestication’ of the original text
usually takes form through dominant translating and adapting conventions that deeply influence and modify the product’s meaning and its reception. Translators’ ‘invisibility and effacement’ (Pérez Gonzales, 2006) reveal
themselves as nothing else than a rhetoric instrument, used to hide and cover
the ‘natural’ alterations due to voluntary choices – that enforce stereotypes,
that endorse the traditional ‘poor’ image of the implied TV audience or an
active one – or to the essence of production and organization routines – that
simplify the processes through automatisms, auto-censorship or other easy or
less easy way-outs. Although the image of the intended public is a constant
guide to amateur and professional adaptors, according to the interpretation
given, it can lead to very different results: a ‘flattened’ dubbing or an
extremely loyal translation, etc.
The co-creative nature of the Italianization process further complicates if
we take into account the ties and mirroring between professional and amateur adaptations. On one hand, subbers necessarily consider the previous professional dubbing of long-running series: if Lost character Hurley
interacts with other people calling them ‘coso’ (‘dude’), fansubbers must take
it into account during their translation. On the other hand, professionals
sometimes can make a wide, and generally undeclared, use in their job of the
subtitles available on the Internet, in a constant shift between the appreciation of semi-professional translation’s high levels of quality and the exploitation of user-generated content freely diffused for commercial purposes (as
noted in Deuze, 2007): the fans, who claim that even some of their translation mistakes have been ‘copied’, tend to consider this ‘contribution’ to professional routines as an honour, a sign that their work goes far beyond a
‘niche’ collected around a community.
In conclusion, it becomes clear, when studying and analysing global products and their national reception, the importance of paying attention to the
different kinds of mediator roles – indifferently professional or amateur, as
there are so many similarities in production routines and logics: from the constant consideration of the implied audience – sometimes not so different
between dubbers and subbers, as shown in Itasa’s approach to comedy – to
the mediations necessary to translate the cultural references to another
culture, from the regular consideration of times and costs that limits some
possibilities – as in the deliberate choice of a ‘poor’ translation that can occur
in both professional and amateur fields, even if for different reasons – to the
complex interaction between ‘Italian’ and ‘US’ meanings.
Definitely, TV series appear to be different when viewed in the ‘original’ or
in the Italian version. And it is up to the viewer – and to the scholar – to
understand that no neutral adaptation does exist. And to acknowledge that
the programme he/she’s watching can not only be seen in several places of a
highly-connected media environment, but also in a variety of ways, that add
(or exclude) meaning to different aspects of a text also on account of the
implications of the hidden re-creative work of many people.

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Acknowledgement
I would like to thank the people that made this article – and the research behind
it – possible: Prof. Peppino Ortoleva, who first inspired and guided me into academic research on media history, and convinced me to study Italianization; Prof.
Aldo Grasso and Prof. Massimo Scaglioni, who let me continue the investigation
and gave me useful advice; Fabio Guarnaccia, who analysed with me the dynamics of fansubbing communities; and Elena Cappuccio, for practical indications.

Notes
1 Audience Studies have long focused on broadcasters’ and professionals’
preformed ideas about their public, at least since Ang (1991). Livingstone
(1998), for instance, refers to these preconceptions as an ‘implied audience’.
2 The two kinds of rights, for free and pay TV, can lead sometimes to two different Italianized versions of a single series (e.g. South Park, dubbed first for
free-to-air television and then, in a more loyal – and vulgar – edition, for a
thematic channel).
3 Also the parental relationships between the characters have been inexplicably changed: Fran’s mother and grandmother became two aunts. It is easy to
imagine the complexity to adapt the episodes, especially the Jewish-themed
ones, according to these restrictions; while it is not so easy to understand the
reasons why the adapters chose such a deep Italianization.
4 In the participant observation made during the Italian dubbing of The
Simpsons and described in Barra (2007, 2008), the dubbing director Tonino
Accolla (also Homer’s dubber) decided to eliminate the word, present in the
original script, in order not to be called back to studio by the network, who
schedules The Simpsons in daytime.
5 Scheduling is listed as a final practice for discursive reasons, and to take into
account re-runs and eventual timetable shifts. But when a single mediator
(i.e. the broadcaster) controls all the Italianization process, often the scheduling decisions are taken earlier in the process, together with rights acquisition, and may inform dubbing decisions since the very beginning.
6 Both communities involve directly 300 fans in the translation process, diffuse the subtitles of nearly 200 TV series and are visited everyday by thousands of people willing to download the latest subs (Barra and Guarnaccia,
2008a,b).

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