Can we do the right thing?: subtitling African American vernacular English into French

Situated at the intersection of Translation Studies, Sociolinguistics and Film Studies, this thesis provides an analysis of the subtitling into French of a corpus of films portraying speakers of African American Vernacular English (henceforth AAVE). By analysing the French subtitles, the thesis focuses on the possibility of using non-standard forms in the target language, on their potential impact on the reception of a film, and on the theoretical underpinnings of juxtaposing two linguistic varieties on screen. Chapter One examines the peculiar nature of interlingual subtitles in the polysemiotic context of films and the vulnerability of this form of translation. Chapter Two provides a description of the main linguistic and interactional features of AAVE, whilst Chapter Three analyses the way AAVE is represented in films, and studies how naturally occurring language is different from language used in films for the purpose of dialogue. Chapter Four provides an analysis of the subtitles of the films under study, and pays particular attention to how linguistic variation is conveyed – or not – in the subtitles. Chapter Five examines the use of verlan in French subtitles and its wider implications: through the juxtaposition of verlan and AAVE on screen, a cultural hybrid is created, and we investigate this hybridity in the light of Venuti’s concepts of domestication and foreignisation