Professional and amateur AVT. The Italian dubbing, subtitling and fansubbing of The Handmaid’s Tale

Nowadays, digitalisation has an enormous impact on the way multimedia content is created and conveyed. It affects the intra-, interlingual and intercultural transfer of audiovisual products, which can be enjoyed dubbed, subtitled, voiced over etc. Most importantly, technology has facilitated the spread of phenomena such as fansubbing and fandubbing across the world. Hence, this study seeks to assess the impact of the current fast-changing mediascape on traditional and new AVT modes. To this end, we analyse the first two seasons of the North American TV series The Handmaid’s Tale (Bruce Miller, 2017-) in their Italian dubbed, subtitled and (ItaSA) funsubbed versions. A preliminary investigation of the dubbed and subtitled versions shows that the latter is an intralingual (condensed) version of the former (a.k.a. dubtitles), which is an unusual practice in Italy. Interviews with the dubbing company and the subtitlers attempted to explain the rationale behind this. Furthermore, the textual examination of the different treatment of religious references, text-internal references, and coarse language in the dubbed/subtitled and the fansubbed versions of this series shows the fluidity of professional and amateur AVT, which appear to intersect within today’s ever-changing mediascape.