The Translation of Films 1900-1950

This rich collection of articles and essays by film historians, translation scholars, archivists, and curators presents film translation history as an exciting and timely area of research. It builds on the last twenty years of research into the history of dubbing and subtitling, but goes further, by showing how subtitling, dubbing, and other forms of audiovisual translation developed over the first fifty years of the twentieth century.

This is the first book-length study, in any language, of the international history of audiovisual translation which includes silent cinema. Its scope covers national contexts both within Europe and beyond. It shows how audiovisual translation practices were closely tied to their commercial, technological and industrial contexts. The Translation of Films, 1900-1950 draws extensively on archival sources and expertise. In doing so it revisits and challenges some of the established narratives around film languages and the coming of sound. For instance, the volume shows how silent films, far from being straightforward to translate, went through a complex process of editing for international distribution. It also closely tracks the ferment of experiments in film translation during the transition to sound from 1927 to 1934 and later, as markets adjusted to the demands of synchronised film.

The Translation of Films, 1900-1950 argues for a broader understanding of film translation: far from being limited to language transfer, it encompasses editing, localisation, censorship, paratextual framing, and other factors. It advocates for film translation to be considered as a crucial contribution not only to the worldwide circulation of films, but also to the art of cinema.

Carol O'Sullivan was awarded a PhD in Modern and Medieval Languages by the University of Cambridge in 2002. Prior to taking up a post at the University of Bristol in 2013, she taught at the Universities of East Anglia and Portsmouth. She has published articles and book chapters on audiovisual translation, multimodality, translation history, and literary translation, and is the author of Translating Popular Film (2011). Her current project is on the history of subtitling in English-speaking territories. She is a past Board member of the European Society for Translation Studies, and is currently Editor-in-Chief of the journal Translation Studies.

Jean-Francois Cornu is a professional translator specialising in subtitling and the translation from English into French of books on cinema and art. A former Senior Lecturer at the University of Rennes-2, France, he is also an independent film researcher focusing on the history and practice of film translation, and the work of Alfred Hitchcock. In 2014, he published Le doublage et le sous-titrage : histoire esthetique (Dubbing and subtitling: history and aesthetics). He is a member of ATAA, the French association of audiovisual translators, and co-founder of its online journal L'Ecran traduit.