Reality television and unnatural dialogues: Trends in the Italian audio-visual translation of factual programming

Since the early 1990s, an exponential increase in the demand for foreign TV content has occurred to fill the ever-growing libraries of new speciality channels (and later digital platforms). This process has boosted demand for the translation and adaptation of reality TV series, thus paving the way in Italy, traditionally a dubbing country, for the rise of a new hybrid form of audio-visual translation (AVT), ‘simil-sync’, deemed more cost-effective than dubbing and more user-friendly than subtitling for the local audience. Factual programming has become one of the most successful components of many themed channels, reshaping both Italian television and the national AVT scenario.