Dora Renna

Society is characterized by a constant flow of multimodal products, which increasingly blur the lines between screen and reality, and audiovisual translation allows overcoming geographical and linguistic frontiers between small realities across the planet. However, research has long struggled to adapt its methodologies to effectively analyze such phenomena, and even more to scale its results through larger corpus analyses. Dora Renna proposes a pioneering framework, informed by the latest trends in audiovisual translation and multimodality and fit to achieve the complex task of operatively including multimodality in a rigorous corpus analysis of source and target versions of films characterized by language variation as a key element of character design. While language is at the core of her analysis, its role in the broader audiovisual context is explored thanks to a solid network of relations that shed light on linguistic and translational choices as well as on their implications. Framework and methodology are explained in detail and thoroughly applied to the case study to show how this perspective contributes to move a step forward in corpus-based audiovisual translation studies. The results obtained are unexpected and urge readers to overcome old attitudes towards audiovisual translation and multimodal corpora.

Dora Renna is a postdoctoral fellow at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and an adjunct professor of English at the University of Verona. She has published scientific papers and book chapters for a number of international publications and has extensive experience in English Language teaching for undergraduate and postgraduate students. She is also a member of the editorial board of the indexed journal of English and American studies Iperstoria. Her main research interests are Audiovisual Translation, Multimodality, Corpus Linguistics and Corpus-based Translation Studies, Applied Linguistics, ESP. She has published the co-edited volume “Translating Boundaries. Limits, Constraints, Opportunities. Foreword by Jeremy Munday” with Stefanie Barschdorf (ibidem Press 2018).

"Dora Renna's work contributes significantly to a long-expected turning point in audiovisual translation studies. Her solid framework proves the efficacy of joining corpus-based translation studies, multimodality, and linguistic variation."—Roberto Cagliero, University of Verona

“Dora Renna’s book is the result of in-depth academic research. It successfully meets the ambitious need for filling the gap between multimodality and corpus-based translation studies. Taking into account the originality of the project in terms of both theoretical and methodological approaches to the proposed field of study, I strongly suggest the reading of this challenging and inspirational book.”—Annarita Taronna, University of Bari