Abstracts
Abstract
Foreign accents acted by Anglophone actors are a ubiquitous but politically and theoretically problematic feature of many audiovisual productions in the English-speaking world. This paper investigates the use of Tswana and Japanese accents in two BBC productions as acts of audiovisual translation (AVT) which are illustrative of a more general problematic of Western representations of non-Western languages and cultures. It argues that the phonological features of speech, which are classified as accents, divide the community of native speakers into different social groups and that they create and maintain boundaries between native and non-native speakers. Language discrimination is recognised by the BBC as a problem in relation to its domestic audience and the Corporation actively attempts to become more inclusive and representative of British society by broadcasting non-standard accents. On the other hand, when representing foreign, and especially post-colonial and non-Western languages and cultures, accent is used to define the boundary between the native English-speaking community and its outside. Accents are used to represent and translate the outside in stereotyping ways that tend towards racialisation and towards actors using generic “Southern African” and “East Asian” accents that bear little resemblance to the actual phonological profile of native speakers of Tswana and Japanese.
Keywords:
- accents,
- BBC,
- audiovisual translation,
- Orientalism,
- postcolonialism
Résumé
Les accents étrangers joués par les acteurs anglophones constituent une caractéristique omniprésente, mais politiquement et théoriquement problématique dans beaucoup de productions audiovisuelles du monde anglophone. Le présent article cherche à étudier le déploiement des accents tswana et japonais dans deux productions de la BBC en tant qu’actes de traduction audiovisuelle (TAV) illustrant une problématique générale de la représentation occidentale des langues et des cultures non-occidentales. L’article soutient que les éléments phonologiques qui sont classifiés comme des accents divisent la communauté des locuteurs natifs en différents groupes sociaux et qu’ils créent et maintiennent des frontières entre locuteurs natifs et locuteurs non natifs. La BBC reconnaît la discrimination linguistique comme un problème par rapport à son public national et l’organisme cherche activement à devenir plus inclusif et plus représentatif de la société britannique par la diffusion des accents non standards. Par contre, lorsque la BBC présente des langues et des cultures étrangères, surtout postcoloniales et non occidentales, l’accent est utilisé pour définir la frontière entre la communauté anglophone native et l’extérieur. Les accents sont utilisés pour représenter et traduire l’extérieur selon des stéréotypes qui tendent vers la racialisation et donc l’adoption, par les acteurs, d’accents génériques dits « de l’Afrique australe » ou « d’Asie orientale » présentant peu de ressemblance avec le profil phonologique réel des locuteurs natifs du tswana ou du japonais.
Mots-clés :
- accents,
- BBC,
- traduction audiovisuelle,
- orientalisme,
- postcolonialisme
Appendices
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