Exploring the Sensory Dimension of Translated Films: An Analysis of The King’s Speech

Much of the recent cinematic output aims at winning the audience’s appreciation by creating a strong emotional impact, often through the involvement of the five senses. By means of a multimodal analysis and a multidisciplinary approach that draws on film studies, linguistics and stylistics, we investigate here the meaning-making potential of the aural dimension—with a special focus on stuttering—in the dialogues of The King’s Speech (Hooper, 2010) and their translation in the subtitles for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (SDH). The plot of the film is heavily grounded in the representation of heightened emotions, built on the protagonist’s stutter and his arduous attempt at overcoming it. The translation of such an intricate web of emotions becomes particularly difficult if the same emotional meaning is to be conveyed to an audience of hearing impaired people, given the different perceptions this group of viewers have and the limitations of SDH in expressing the subtle nuances of voice. We thus compare the message in the original with the English and Italian subtitles in order to determine how they contribute to the expression of emotions and to characterization.