What Happens to Silences in Audiovisual Translation? A Quantitative Study of American and Japanese Dubbed Films

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the field of audiovisual translation studies by quantitatively examining the acoustic strategies used in the process of translating American films into Japanese and Japanese films into English. Focusing on silences in 120 versions of 35 American movies and 25 Japanese movies in their original language and in their respective translated versions in the genres of drama, science fiction (sci-fi), horror and animation, the author conducted a comparative analysis between languages and genres. The results showed it can be surmised that the incorporation of silences in the translation process arises not only due to the language and culture of the translation language, but also stem from the characteristics of specific genres. The findings highlight the importance of studying audiovisual translation further not only from a verbal perspective, but also from an acoustic perspective.