Análisis de la traducción de los referentes culturales en Friends

Abstract

En este trabajo se analiza el modo en el que se han traducido algunos de los referentes culturales que aparecen en la primera temporada de la serie Friends, con el fin de demostrar que muchos se han traducido a pesar de no ser conocidos en la cultura metaEvery year lots of comedies, both films and TV series, are dubbed into Spanish. Many/nof them base most of their humour on cultural references. Translators have the/nobligation to keep the same humorous intention when it comes to transfer them, but it is/nvery difficult to determine the exact target spectator’s knowledge of a certain reference./nThe main aim of this paper is to analyze how some cultural references have been dealt/nwith in the dubbed version of Friends, more specifically in the first season, to be able to/ntest two hypothesis: that a large number of cultural references have been transferred/ndespite not being known in the target culture and that references have been translated by/ndifferent means depending on the thematic area they belong to. In order to test the first/nhypothesis, a survey has been carried out to establish the target culture’s knowledge of/nparticular referents. Then 70 cultural referents have been analyzed and, taking into/naccount the survey results, a different –and hopefully more effective– solution has been/nprovided when necessary. Regarding the second hypothesis, it has been tested by/nclassifying the references by translation technique and thematic area, so differences/nbetween areas can be expressed as percentages. Both percentages from the survey and/nfrom the classification allow us to affirm that the two hypothesis are true. Basically, this/nstudy shows the difficulty of determining the target audience’s cultural background and/nthe need for a reception study in this field.