Re-shaping Languages and Stereotypes in Dubbing. David Ayer’s End of Watch (2013) from Chicano English to Italian

The present paper aims to investigate the role of language and Italian dubbing in the construction of ethno-types in a movie where Chicano English speakers are portrayed. Textual and non-textual elements will be taken into consideration, in order to account for the multimodal nature of movie characters' profile. After a general overview on Chicano communities, including historical, linguistic and stereotypical features, the topic will be tackled by taking David Ayer's movie End of Watch (2013) as a case study, along with the Italian dubbed text. The non-textual features of the movie will prove to be related to the existing tradition of stereotypical portrayals. Source and target text will be analysed quantitatively, so as to find the frequencies of the features that distinguish Chicanos as different from white Americans: Spanish code mixing and use of slang and profanities. The description of the main challenges of translating Chicano language and culture into Italian will be followed by a presentation of the frequencies in th target version. By observing the procedures adopted by the translators at a micro-level, it will be possible to state a hypothesis on which macro-level strategy might have inspired their work. A comparison between the two versions will also allow to infer the diegetic functions of the ethno-type in both source and target text, taking into account both common and dissimilar traits.