Oblique agency: mapping the globalised workflows of television dubbing and their impact on practitioners

Lists

Tools

Knox, S. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5094-6203 and Schwind, K. H. (2025) Oblique agency: mapping the globalised workflows of television dubbing and their impact on practitioners. Media and Communication, 13. ISSN 2183-2439 (In Press)

Text - Accepted Version
· Restricted to Repository staff only
· The Copyright of this document has not been checked yet. This may affect its availability.
293kB

It is advisable to refer to the publisher's version if you intend to cite from this work. See Guidance on citing.

To link to this item DOI: 10.17645/mac.9613

Abstract/Summary

This article offers a comprehensive analysis of how increasingly globalised infrastructures, marked by industry expansion, consolidation and the impact of streamers, affect the workflows and practices within local dubbing industries. Informed by extensive, original interviews with managerial and creative dubbing practitioners, and industry fieldwork observations since 2017, the article is located within a post-Bourdieuian framework, exploring what significant change for the field and its habitus has meant for agency. Having identified a persistent lack of engagement with the dubbing of television in existing scholarship across several disciplines, the article considers how dubbing practitioners negotiate a wider industrial push towards more streamlining, standardisation and more attendance to issues concerning equity, diversity and inclusion. Here, the article offers the notion of oblique agency, to capture how creative agency is moved away from local creative practitioners, through more managerial oversight, prescriptive guidance and tools, and feedback cultures shaped by corporate agendas. Simultaneously, some agency is left to these practitioners, most acutely felt in the case of dubbing contemporary television (marked by narrative and tonal complexity), due to a lack of investment and recognition of dubbing as inherently creative. The article takes care to explore the complexities of these dynamics, especially a pronounced heterogeneity of views, including simultaneous criticism and enjoyment by creative practitioners, as well as a considerable gap between their perspectives and those of managerial practitioners. In this way, the article seeks to make a much needed contribution to nuanced engagement with dubbing infrastructures and working practices.

Item Type:	Article
Refereed:	Yes
Divisions:	Arts, Humanities and Social Science > School of Arts and Communication Design > Film, Theatre & Television
ID Code:	120652
Uncontrolled Keywords:	audiovisual translation; creative agency; dubbing; streamers; televisuality; production cultures; practitioner studies
Publisher:	Cogitatio Press

Altmetric

Deposit Details

References

Adamou, C. & Knox, S. (2011). Transforming Television Drama through Dubbing and Subtitling: Sex and the Cities. Critical Studies in Television, 6(1), 1 –21. https://doi.org/10.7227/CST.6.1.3 Amazon Prime Video. (2025). Preferred Vendor Program. https://videocentral.amazon.com/home/help?topicId=GKX9JH79ZPVPEDLP&ref_=avd_sup_GKX9JH79ZPVPEDLP Ascheid, A. (1997). Speaking Tongues: Voice Dubbing in the Cinema as Cultural Ventriloquism. The Velvet Light Trap, 40, 32–41. Barra, L. (2009). The mediation is the message: Italian regionalization of US TV series as co-creational work. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 12(5), 509–525. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367877909337859 Barra, L. (2013). Invisible Mediations. VIEW: Journal of European Television History & Culture, 2(4), 101–111. https://doi.org/10.18146/2213-0969.2013.jethc048 Bondebjerg, I., et al. (2017). Transnational European Television Drama: Production, Genres and Audiences. Palgrave Macmillan. Born, G. (2000). Inside television: television studies and the sociology of culture. Screen 41(4), 404–424. https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/41.4.404 Born, G. (2002). Reflexivity and Ambivalence: Culture, Creativity and Government in the BBC. Cultural Values, 6(1-2), 65–90. https://doi.org/10.1080/1362517022019000 Born, G. (2003). From Reithian Ethic to Managerial Discourse: Accountability and Audit at the BBC. Javnost - The Public 10(3), 63–80. https://doi.org/10.1080/13183222.2003.11008835 Born, G. (2010). The Social and the Aesthetic: For a Post-Bourdieuian Theory of Cultural Production. Cultural Sociology, 4(2), 171–208. https://doi.org/10.1177/1749975510368471 Bosseaux, C. (2015). Dubbing, Film and Performance: Uncanny Encounters. Peter Lang. Bourdieu, P. (1993). The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature. Polity. Bräutigam, T., & Peiler, N. D. (2015). Film im Transferprozess. Deutscher Verlag. Bruun, H. (2016). The Qualitative Interview in Media Production Studies. In C. Paterson, et al. (Eds.), Advancing Media Production Research: Shifting Sites, Methods, and Politics (pp. 131–146). Palgrave. Bruun, H. & Frandsen, K. (2022). Time and timing: A methodological perspective on production analysis. Critical Studies in Television, 17(1), 84-97. https://doi.org/10.1177/1749602021107004 Caldwell, J. T. (1995). Televisuality: Style, Crisis, and Authority in American Television. Rutgers University Press. Caldwell, J. T. (2008). Production Culture: Industrial Reflexivity and Critical Practice in Film and Television. Duke University Press. Caron, C.-I. (2007). Translating Trek: Rewriting an American Icon in a Francophone Context. In H. Newcomb (Ed.), Television: The Critical View (seventh edition, pp. 150–184). Oxford University Press. Chaume, F. (2004). Film Studies and Translation Studies: Two Disciplines at Stake in Audiovisual Translation. Meta: Journal des traducteurs/Translators’ Journal, 49(1), 12-24. https://doi.org/10.7202/009016ar Chaume, F. (2012). Audiovisual Translation: Dubbing. Routledge. Chiaro, D. (2021). Dubbing is the New Black? Exploring the notion of voice. In G. E. Garzone & E. Liverani (Eds.), Tradurre l’oralità: Aspetti pragmatici e culturali, mediAzioni, 31, A121–A140, http://www.mediazioni.sitlec.unibo.it Cornelio-Marí, E. (2022). Watching Dubbed Television: Audiences in Italy and Mexico. Television & New Media, 23(2), 276-292. https://doi.org/10.1177/1527476421989785 Dries, J. (1995). Dubbing and Subtitling: Guidelines for Production and Distribution. European Institute for the Media. Dwyer, T. (2017). Speaking in Subtitles: Revaluing Screen Translation. Edinburgh University Press. Esser, A., Smith, R. I. & Bernal-Merino, M. Á. (Eds.). (2016). Media Across Borders: Localising TV, Film and Video Games. Routledge. Ferrari, C. F. (2010). Since When Is Fran Drescher Jewish?: Dubbing Stereotypes in The Nanny, The Simpsons, and The Sopranos. University of Texas Press. Fodòr, I. (1976). Film dubbing: Phonetic, Semiotic, Esthetic and Psychological Aspects. Buske Verlag. Havens, T. (2006). Global Television Marketplace. BFI. Iosifidis, P., Steemers, J. & Wheeler, M. (2005). European Television Industries. BFI. Knox, S. & Schwind, K. H. (2019). Friends: A Reading of the Sitcom. Palgrave Macmillan. Knox, S. & Schwind, K. H. (forthcoming 2025), Creative processes in film and television dubbing projects: a comparison of Germany and France, in T. Gaustad (Ed.), Project management practices in the creative industries: lessons on autonomy and value creation. Cappellen Damm. Lobato, R. (2019). Netflix Nations: The Geography of Digital Distribution. New York University Press. Luyken, G.-M., et al. (1991). Overcoming Language Barriers in Television: Dubbing and Subtitling for the European Audience. European Institute for the Media. Meyer-Dinkgräfe, D. (2006). Thoughts on dubbing practice in Germany: procedures, aesthetic implications and ways forward. Scope: An Online Journal of Film Studies, 5. https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/scope/documents/2006/june-2006/thoughts-on-dubbing-practice-in-germany.pdf Miller, S. D. (1983). Motion in Musical Texture and Aesthetic Impact. The Journal of Aesthetic Education, 17(1), 59–67. https://doi.org/10.2307/3332224 Miller, T. (2010). National Cinema Abroad: The New International Division of Cultural Labor, from Production to Viewing. in N. Durovicová & K. E. Newman (Eds.), World Cinemas, Transnational Perspectives (pp. 137–159). Routledge. Mills, B. (2008). After the Interview. Cinema Journal, 47(2), 148-154. https://doi.org/10.1353/cj.2008.0009 Mills, B. & Horton, E. (2017). Creativity in the British Television Comedy Industry. Routledge. Mittell, J. (2006). Narrative Complexity in Contemporary American Television. The Velvet Light Trap, 58, 29-40. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/vlt.2006.0032 Netflix. (2025a). NP3 for Audio Localization. https://np3.netflixstudios.com/ Netflix. (2025b). Terminology Tool Overview: Key Names and Phrases (KNP). https://partnerhelp.netflixstudios.com/hc/en-us/articles/5110291703443-Terminology-Tool-Overview-Key-Names-and-Phrases-KNP Nornes, A. M. (2007). Cinema Babel: Translating Global Cinema. University of Minnesota Press. Orrego-Carmona, D. (2024). Placing Human Agency in the AI-powered Media Localisation Industry. Journal of Audiovisual Translation, 7(2), 1–21. https://doi.org/10.47476/jat.v7i2.2024.306 Parks, L. & Kumar, S. (Eds.). (2003). Planet TV: A Global Television Reader. New York University Press. Pye, D. (2007). Movies and Tone. In J. Gibbs & D. Pye (Eds.), Close Up 02 (pp. 1–80). Wallflower Press. Ranzato, I. (2012). Gayspeak and Gay Subjects in Audiovisual Translation: Strategies in Italian Dubbing. Meta, 57(2), 369-384. https://doi.org/10.7202/1013951ar Ríos, D. & Lin, C. (Eds.). (2021). Television Dramas and the Global Village: Storytelling through Race and Gender. Lexington Books. Rodek, H.-G. (2021). ‘Ich bin weiß, aber vielleicht habe ich doch etwas ‘Schwarzes’ in der Stimme’. Welt. https://www.welt.de/kultur/kino/plus228331817/Synchronsprecher-von-Soul-Weisser-Europaeer-mit-schwarzer-Stimme.html Sánchez-Mompeán, S. (2021). Netflix likes it dubbed: Taking on the challenge of dubbing into English. Language & Communication, 80, 180-190. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2021.07.001 Shochat, E. and Stam, R. (1985). The Cinema after Babel: Language, Difference, Power. Screen, 26(3-4), 35-58. https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/26.3-4.35 Troester, Ä. (2002). Translating Hollywood: The Challenge of Dubbing Films Into German. In H. Paul & K. Kanzler (Eds.), Amerikanische Populärkultur in Deutschland: Case Studies in Cultural Transfer Past and Present (pp. 181–198). Universitätsverlag. Wehn, K. (1996). Die deutschen Synchronisation(en) von Magnum, P.I.: Rahmenbedingungen, serienspezifische Übersetzungsprobleme und Unterschiede zwischen Original- und Synchronfassungen. Hallische Medienarbeiten 2. https://download.philfak2.uni-halle.de/download/medienkomm/halma/halma2.pdf Whitman-Linsen, C. (1992). Through the Dubbing Glass: The Synchronization of American Motion Pictures into German, French and Spanish. Peter Lang.

University Staff: Request a correction | Centaur Editors: Update this record

University of Reading

CentAUR: Central Archive at the University of Reading

Accessibility navigation

Oblique agency: mapping the globalised workflows of television dubbing and their impact on practitioners

Abstract/Summary

Page navigation

See also

Footer navigation