From all the AVT translation methods voice-over has been probably least studied and least valued, not only in Western Europe, where it is limited mostly to documentary films, but also in Poland, where it remains the most widely applied method of translation for television and DVD market. The aim of this paper is to re-evaluate some of negative prejudices against voice-over and to point out its advantages in comparison with subtitling and dubbing translation, given that voice-over is free from some specific constraints that are present in the two other translation methods. The analysis, illustrated by selected examples from such s-f TV series like Star Trek, Space 1999 and Firefly, will focus on the necessary in-depth examination of film genre as the key to a successful voice-over translation, and on the possibilities of exploiting the interaction between verbal and non-verbal elements in a given tv genre in order to render the translation “invisible”.

Monika WOŹNIAK is Associate Professor of Polish Language at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Roma "La Sapienza". She has received her Ph.D in Humanities from the Jagiellonian University of Cracow, where she worked for many years as Assistant Professor at the Institute of Romance Philology. She has researched Literary Translation and History of Italian Literature, she is also a literary translator. More recently her research has focused on Children's Literature Translation Studies and on Audiovisual Translation. She has guest-edited the special issue of Przekładaniec. A Journal of Literary Translation devoted to AVT translation (Cracow, 2008).