Religious References in the Subtitling of Succession into Spanish

Abstract

The way taboos are translated can be controversial as it can depend on the characteristics of the communicative act related to the speakers’ context, culture, age and idiolect. However, we could generalise that some taboos can cause a strong reaction to the audience in the context of audiovisual translation (AVT), and some of them are particularly delicate to address, as is the case of religious references. Subtitlers are responsible for transferring the source text (ST) into a target text (TT) in the form of subtitles. In the case of Spain, whether or not the resulting subtitles are more or less faithful to the original cannot be said to be the result of censorship nowadays. However, phrases such as “Jesus fucking Christ” can pose a challenge to the professional, who must consider the best option to render the full impact of its contextual load. The result, for example, can vary from abiding by the rules of what can be considered politically correct, not being fully faithful to the ST or, by contrast, transferring some offensive or taboo load to the TT in the form of a (non-)religious phrase. On streaming platforms in Spain, these expressions tend to be compensated by other offensive phrases which avoid the direct insult to “God” or “Jesus Christ” (Ávila-Cabrera 2020), thereby resorting to ideological manipulation (Díaz Cintas 2012). The present study analyses the series Succession (Jesse Armstrong 2018–2023), season 3, and its subtitled version into Spanish, broadcast by HBO España (Spain). Based on a Descriptive Translation Studies approach (Toury 2012) and following Ávila-Cabrera’s (2023b) taxonomy of translation techniques, our initial hypothesis is that religious references are usually subtitled in a neutralised or offensive way, the latter excluding the direct reference to the religious figure. This paper aims to show the way that religious references in this TV series have been subtitled into Spanish for the Spanish audience from a linguistic approach, contributing to enriching the literature on AVT and religious phrases as taboo elements.