Creating credible and natural-sounding dialogue in dubbing: Can it be taught?

ABSTRACT This paper sets out to bridge the gap between theory and practice by suggesting activities and resources that could be used in the audiovisual translation (AVT) classroom when training students to achieve credible and natural-sounding dialogue in dubbing. Following a competence- and task-based approach, these activities have been implemented by the author when teaching English into Spanish dubbing at master’s level and explore the advantages of using translation technology (e.g. translation memory and corpus management tools) in the AVT classroom. When suggesting activities, the emphasis is also placed on what can be learnt from other disciplines, such as creative writing, and on the links that can be established with other subjects (e.g. translation technology) in order to improve future audiovisual translators’ instrumental competences and understanding of the specific features of original and dubbed audiovisual dialogue.