The Effect of Dialect Translation on Characterization in Brother Bear

Abstract

This thesis studies dialect translation in audiovisual media. It aims to find how dialect affects characterization in the Disney film Brother Bear and its Finnish language version Karhuveljeni Koda, and if and how the characterizations differ between the two language versions. The characters that are studied are the moose side characters Rutt and Tuke. The purpose of this case study is to find out how dialect is translated into a different dialect in dubbed media, because this specific topic has not been widely studied before. The methods used are close reading and comparison. The main results are that the original dialect is Canadian English based on a parody of stereotypical Canadian English, and the translated Finnish approximates Turku dialect. The effect of translated dialects and the similarity of viewers’ receptions of the SL and TL dialects should be studied further.