Dubbed versions of audiovisual products can be seen as a complex inter-textual chain to which various ‘tenants’ of the text give their authorial contribution. Key factors in this rewriting process are the role of the patronage and the attitudes of the translators/adapters, especially when the latter are artists in their own right who feel they have the license and the ability to ‘improve’ the original.
Typical of dubious Italian dubbing are the elimination of contents deemed unsuitable for a certain kind of public and the modification of cultural elements that, in the original, contribute to making the dialogue of a film vivid and realistic. In many instances, the stress is on addition rather than suppression, with the Italian dubbing adding new contents. Arguably, these new versions can be considered examples of extreme adaptations rather than ‘mere’ translations: new texts in which viewers can find extra jokes and to which new lines have been added gratuitously. I would like to contend that this kind of transpositions relate to a tradition of adaptations for the stage, as theatre plays – being events constantly renewed in the hic et nunc, not to be fixed on record – are texts where a certain freedom of adaptation is not only allowed but sought.
Apart from operations of radical re-contextualization of texts that are strictly bound to the original cultural context (like in the TV series The Nanny, where the Jewish American protagonist becomes in the dubbed version an Italian stereotypical descendent); or cases in which the distributor evidently ‘encouraged’ the adapters to opt for a more sexually ‘charged’ atmosphere (see the Italian transformation of Pedro Almodovar’s already risqué film Entre tinieblas), other productions provide a good example of this kind of creative over-translation.
In this paper, I would like to explore to what extent the changes and new witticisms found in Woody Allen's Italian films can be ascribed to the translator or, rather, to the dubbing actor Oreste Lionello, who has been the voice of Allen on Italian screens for many years. Lionello, who died just recently, seemed to view Allen as a real life alter ego and the hypothesis that he was the author of the added jokes is supported by his attitude to Allen in other contexts. This ‘intimacy’ made him, for example, distance himself from Allen’s words during an interview where he was acting as his interpreter and where Allen professed his atheism.
After a brief historical introduction on the roots of Italy’s inclination to manipulation, my contribution will offer an analysis of some of Woody Allen’s films dubbed into Italian over the years, drawing comparisons and detecting relations with other relevant films and TV productions in their Italian versions.

Irene RANZATO is a translator and teacher of English. She has been working in the field of translation for the cinema for many years, working for production, distribution and dubbing companies. She is a contract professor at the Faculty of “Lettere e Filosofia” (Humanities) of "Sapienza" University of Rome, where she teaches Audiovisual Translation (English-Italian) and English literature and theatre in adaptations for the screen. She also teaches Master courses in Specialized Translation (Master di II livello in Traduzione Specializzata) at the same Faculty. She has written various articles on translation and a book on “the other” Tom Stoppard (to be published shortly). The book analyses the work of Stoppard as a screenplay writer, translator and adapter. Irene Ranzato has translated several films into Italian and her translations of books and essays on various subjects have been published by some of the leading Italian publishers and journals. She is currently doing PhD research in Translation Studies (Audiovisual Translation) at the Imperial College (London) under the supervision of Dr. Jorge Díaz Cintas.