Blanca Gonzalez-Valencia

Thesis: Dubbing Ken Loach's Anti-Austerity Narratives in Spanish: I, Daniel Blake as a Case Study

This project aims to analyse how filmic dissident voices resisting the neoliberal narrative in British social cinema are (re)narrated into Spanish. To this end, I will explore the narratives articulated in Ken Loach’s I, Daniel Blake (2016); analyse the Spanish dubbed version of said film; examine the paratextual material used to promote and distribute the Spanish dubbed version; and conduct a series of interviews with agents involved in the dubbing process.

After the 2007 crisis, the anti-austerity narrative gained visibility, and this was reflected in social cinema in different Western countries. With this change in narratives, it becomes imperative to analyse how these narratives are translated. One of the most outspoken critics of the neoliberal system in the United Kingdom over the last forty years has been the film director Ken Loach who in one of his last film I, Daniel Blake (2016) shows the problems within the British benefits system. The presence of regional accents and a variety of sociolects are essential to the film and contribute to the articulation of the anti-austerity narrative. I intend to explore how this narrative has been (re)narrated in the Spanish dubbed version, going beyond the linguistic equivalence and also investigating the choice of voice talent. I believe agents and companies involved in the dubbing process might share responsibility in the (re)narration of this narrative. Also, the inclusion of paratexts seems pertinent to understand how they contribute to the articulation of this narrative and analyse how the director and his work are framed in the press.

This project draws on narrative theory, an approach presented initially in the field of sociology by Margaret Sommers in 1994 and later adopted in other fields such as translation studies where Mona Baker introduced it through her book Translation and Conflict (2006).