Estefanía Mayor García
DUBBING AND SUBTITLING: CHARACTERS’ PORTRAYAL IN TV SERIES
One of the most debated issues about audiovisual translation is the so difficult task of choosing between dubbing or subtitling. The objective of this essay is to analyse the importance of this type of decisions when talking about TV series, taking into account to what extent it harms the portrayal of the characters. The TV series chosen to develop this work is “Gossip Girl”, based on the novels written by Cecily Von Ziegesar. It is amazing how the series can change so much just because they are dubbed, and the most interesting thing about “Gossip Girl” is the characters’ portrayal. Later on in the essay, we will be able to see all this differences …ver más…

In fact, only the text is the one that can be manipulated because in the end, it has to fit in with them. These features are intrinsic to audiovisual translation and the people working on it cannot do anything. The “translation product” that must be obtained at the end, involves all these audiovisual aspects, aural and visual, along with the new text that has been created to adapt the film or the programme to a new language. This is not only taken into account when dubbing, but also when subtitling. Subtitles cannot modify any audiovisual factors in the production, it only consists on texts out of the audiovisual frame.

DUBBING VS. SUBTITLING:
When talking about audiovisual translation, these two terms are the first ones to have in mind. The translator or adaptor, has to choose between using one or the other (or they are simply told to use one or other option) but both of them have their good and bad points.
On the one hand, dubbing films or other type of audiovisual texts, is like “revoicing” the text in a synchronized way, and it involves to use different actors from the ones acting in the original version. These actors should be involved in the text to the extent that they are playing the same role as the actor in the original one, but they are not seen. They just lend their voices to the text and that is it, although they have to do it in an appropriate way. One of the most important advantages of dubbing is