Perpetuation of Stereotypes in Translation: Performing Gender in the Movie Billy Elliot (2000)

Abstract

[eng] This dissertation aims to analyse the translation from English into Spanish of the movie Billy Elliot (2000) from a gendered perspective, and to discuss whether such translation serves as a tool that perpetuates and disseminates gender stereotypes from the English into the Spanish culture. Using purposefully selected examples of the film, the language used in the original version and in its translation is going to be analysed using Judith Butler’s theories of gender as performative, gender as a social construction and gender trouble as theoretical framework. The study of gender in audiovisual translation (AVT) is a relatively recent process dating from the 2000s. For this reason, it still presents a lot of challenges when it comes to language and gender issues which can be influenced by the role of the translator’s choices and motivations. Such choices may result in manipulation of the source text, and thus it may have an impact on the way in which gender is conveyed in the target text. This paper concludes that differences between the original version and the Spanish translation are minimum demonstrating that translation does, indeed, serve as a tool that perpetuate gender stereotypes from the source to the target culture.