Voicing 'The Simpsons' from English into French: a story of variable success

Abstract

In this article I compare the use of spoken sociolinguistic and other linguistic variables in the English and French versions of some episodes of the animated cartoon show 'The Simpsons' from the point of view of their deployment, in English and French, to represent social-regional differentiation in the speech of some of the characters in the show, as well as differentiation in character based on voice features. I explain firstly how social identity is mediated through social-regional accents in UK and US English compared to the French of France, examining subsequently how linguistic features carry across from English to French from the point of view of translation 'loss'. I then consider some examples of the use of voice quality in the show, again looking at how successful its exploitation is rendered in translation.