"Ma che brutta figura, general Anthony!”: gli allocutivi nella serie televisiva "Rome” e nelle sua traduzioni polacche e italiane

The essay focuses on complex problematics of the forms of address used in films set in Ancient Rome, using the examples taken from the popular HBO/BBC Series “Rome” (2005-2007). In the first place, it examines the strategies employed to re-create Latin norms of politeness in English-spoken TV production and discusses incompatibilities in the use pronominal, nominal and attributive forms in the two language systems, as well as the means taken up by screenwriters to produce the effect of historical authenticity and accuracy. The essay then proceeds with an examination of dubbed and subtitled Italian translations and voiced-over and subtitled Polish translations of the series. The main goal of this analysis is to establish the strategies of translation, which stem from the constraints imposed by the politness rules in both target languages and from the cultural conventions of portraying the Ancient Rome. Yet another question taken into consideration are the assymmetries related to the AVT techniques within the same language (dubbing and subtitles in Italian, voice-over and subtitles in Polish) and in two different languages (subtitles in Italian and in Polish).