Commercial and fan subtitling of the pilot episode of the TV series Fargo (2014): descriptive and comparative analysis

Abstract

: This article carries out a comparative study of the commercial and fan subtitling of the same source text, namely “The Crocodile’s Dilemma”,the pilot episode of the TV series Fargo (2014). The aim is to ascertain the commonalities and divergences between these two different types of translation with regard to European Portuguese. It seeks to verify if the usual tendency of commercial subtitling being domesticating and fan subtitling foreignizing applies in Portugal or if Portugal deviates from this pattern. Furthermore, the herein article shall also focus on other translational matters outside the domestication and foreignization aspects, although with a bit less coverage. The attention will also shift toward the tackling of taboo language and omission of verbal information between commercial and fan subtitling, with commercial subtitling being typically associated with censorship and omissions, whilst fan subtitling is usually known for its uncensored all-inclusive version. Naturally, the case study of a single pilot episode cannot permit encompassing conclusionsto be drawn, but it can provide a peek into the commercial and fan subtitling phenomena in Portugal in order to get a preliminary idea of how it compares to the rest of the world.