The Use of memes in the audiovisual translation of the TV show Disenchantment

Abstract

It is through translation that we have access to films, series, music, documentaries and so many other media that reflect the culture of their origin country. Dubbing and subtitling are facilitators for accessing this content. These two processes are carried out in a thorough manner, considering speech, dialogue time, vocabulary and especially the understanding of who will access the content. Observing the target audience, some situations within the translation process stand out, they are the transcreation, adaptations and domestications, which will normally use equivalent elements from different cultures, such as the translation of popular sayings, jokes that refer to elements common to the source text culture and modified in the target text. Currently we can also observe an unusual and innovative insertion in the audiovisual translations of some works, the use of memes, which are images and texts that go viral on the networks and also end up appearing in physical communication environments in a very similar way to popular sayings and idiomatic expressions commonly used. These elements are already being inserted into dubbings and subtitles, like the tv show “Disenchantment” produced and distributed by Netflix and which will be the material to be analyzed in this text. The purpose of this work is to observe and analyze how these adaptations with memes occur, what is their purposes and to analyze how memes connect to the starting context and the final context.