The translation of audiovisual humour. The case of the animated film Shark Tale (El Espantatiburones)

Abstract

The main purpose of this paper is to perform an analysis of the Spanish dubbing of the animated film Shark Tale, whose title in Spanish is El Espantatiburones. The analysis will focus on the humorous resources of the source text, on the kind of problems that arise when dubbing, and, finally, on how the translator has dealt with them. This film was not chosen fortuitously, since it is a film that poses various translation difficulties when dubbing it into Spanish: numerous cultural referents, witty puns related to the visual semes, invented words or coinages and intertextualities, amongst others.