“To boldly go where no series has gone before”. <i>Star Trek - The Original Series</i> in Italia: il linguaggio della tecno-scienza, il doppiaggio, il fandom

• Main Author: Giulia Iannuzzi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Università degli Studi di Cagliari 2014-12-01
• Series: Between
• Subjects: Fantascienza; Star Trek; Serie televisive; Doppiaggio; Traduzione; "Due culture"; "Letteratura e scienza"
• Online Access: http://ojs.unica.it/index.php/between/article/view/1343

This essay consists of a critical analysis of the Italian dubbing of Star Trek. The Original Series (1966-1969), which was partially translated and shown on Italian television between 1979 and 1981. The study of the dubbing is approached considering translation as a complex cultural phenomenon (drawing on studies such as Even-Zohar and Venuti's), and using the case of Star Trek also as an example of broader phenomena and dynamics, namely the presence of American science fiction series on Italian television, and the difficult relationship in Italy between humanistic and scientific cultures (here, Pierpaolo Antonello's contributions are the milestones), to which the essay attributes the noticeable simplification and flattening the techno-scientific language undergoes during translation in the Star Trek episodes considered. This general tendency to simplify (and even remove) technical and scientific terminology in the Italian version can be explained by two main factors: the idea that Italian viewers are less well educated scientifically than Americans, and limited investment (in terms of both financial and professional resources), on the part of the TV channel and dubbing company (TMC and ADC). Both these aspects reveal a perception of a television series as merely a commodity product, typical of the years preceding the current new golden age of American series, but still not unknown in contemporary Italy (as has been shown in other cases, by studies such those by Buonomo, Izzo and Scarpino, and Ranzato). The analysis of the Italian dubbing of Star Trek in the present essay is accompanied by a preliminary overview of the translation and airing of American science fiction series in Italy between the 1950s and the 1970s, and by a survey of the fortunes of these series across different media over the same period. Star Trek, at the center of one the biggest and most profitable contemporary cultural franchises, and one of the most well organized fandoms (studied also by Henry Jenkins on more than one occasion), arrived in Italy too with its novelizations and derivative products. The Italian fandom proved to be both remarkably devoted and uncommonly well-informed from the cultural and scientific point of view: after protesting loudly about the poor quality of The Original Series dubbing, the Italian Star Trek Club obtained the right to oversee the translations of many of the subsequent series and publications.