Considering screen translation as a transcoding process focused not merely on language transfer but also, and primarily, on cross-cultural transfer (Snell-Hornby 1995), language use and translation processes in films prove to be important vehicles in weaving relations of cultural identity and in conveying these relations to audiences. This is especially the case when it comes to language varieties that are deeply embedded in the sociocultural context of the country/community in which they are spoken (Landau, Munnich & Dosher 2001). As such, this scenario often presents specific culture-bound expressions, regionalisms and slang words whose equivalents in another language are difficult to find.
Starting from these assumptions, this paper will set out to investigate the translation strategies relevant to regional dialect, sociolect and slang to be found in the Italian version of the film Billy Elliot (Stephen Daldry, 2000). Such research is part of a wider research project based on the “Pavia Corpus of Film Dialogue” – a parallel corpus of orthographic and prosodic transcriptions of twelve British and American films and their Italian dubbed versions – and focusing on the linguistic-translational aspects of audiovisual products translated from English into Italian with special attention to the main dimensions of variation in spoken language as they are realized in films.
In establishing a specific sociocultural and linguistic framework within which linguistic processes seem to operate in screen translation, we will analyse the film script as follows: (1) pointing out the problems that arise in transposing substandard linguistic varieties from a source language into a target language, (2) observing whether the English slang and regional expressions find convincing counterparts in the Italian version or are either expunged or toned down through bowdlerisation, thus showing a tendency to assign the Italian dialogues a milder connotation (Pavesi, Malinverno 2000), (3) highlighting those cases where the same recurrent English slang term is translated into different Italian equivalents, according to the context of use, the character who uses it and the expressive meaning that has to be conveyed, thus ascertaining that a certain degree of linguistic realism matches the target audience’s expectations of standards of fluency (Baker 2004) and ensures their emotional participation and involvement (Konijn & Hoorn 2004), (4) noting whether the sociological functions of the slang and colloquialisms found in the original version of the film are maintained also in the Italian version, thus reproducing the relevant sociocultural values which the source script represents and transferring, both linguistically and functionally, elements that are closely linked to the source culture.

References
Baker M. (2004) “The Treatment of Variation in Corpus-based Translation Studies”, in K. Aijmer and H. Hasselgård (eds.) Translation and Corpora, Göteborg University, Sweden, 7-17
Konijn E., J. Hoorn (2004) “Reality-based genre preferences do not direct personal involvement”, Discourse Processes, 38 (2), 219-246
Landau B., E. Munnich, B. Dosher (2001) “Spatial language and spatial representation: a cross-linguistic comparison”, Cognition, 81, 171-207
Pavesi M., A. Malinverno (2000) "Sul turpiloquio nella traduzione filmica", in C. Taylor (ed.), Tradurre il Cinema, Trieste, La Stea, 75-90
Snell-Hornby M. (1995) Translation Studies: An Integrated Approach, Amsterdam-Philadelphia, John Benjamins.

Silvia MONTI is a researcher in English at the University of Pavia (Italy). She graduated with a degree in Foreign Languages and Literatures at the University of Pavia and completed her PhD in Comparative Literatures at the IULM University in Milan (Italy). She is currently teaching English at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy of the University of Pavia as well as two courses of English Culture, Cinema and New Technologies at the Teacher Training University School of Education in Pavia. She works with some publishing houses in the field of linguistics and among her publications are books concerning the didactics of the English language and the use of multimedia and new technologies in the teaching of foreign languages. As far as linguistics is concerned, her research interests relate especially to the varieties of English and their use in present-day language, the translation strategies specifically related to codeswitching in audiovisual productions set in cross-cultural environments characterised by language crossing and transcultural awareness, the linguistic features of Netspeak, the new language emerging from Computer Mediated Communication.