Bachelor of Arts student Rory McKenzie undertook the writing of Italian subtitles for The Dark Horse—as part of a Victoria Summer Research Scholarship project. He was supervised by senior lecturer Dr Marco Sonzogni and assisted by PhD student Francesca Benocci.
Rory says writing the subtitles took hundreds of hours of research and nuanced translation, as he worked to retain the local New Zealand flavour of the English and Māori in the film.
“Subtitling is not a duplication of the original dialogue. The title itself for example has several layers of meaning that cannot always be conveyed in another language and culture.”
Rory plans to begin studying towards a Master’s degree at Victoria next year, in which he hopes to focus on the translation of humour within subtitles.
The Director of the New Zealand Centre for Literary Translation, Dr Sonzogni, says it is wonderful to see a student like Rory, who began studying Italian four years ago, progress to a high level of linguistic and cultural competence.
“Subtitling is a challenging form of multimodal and cross-cultural communication, drawing sustained academic attention all over the world.
“Rory will be part of this new research area as he continues to explore the set of scholarly and creative skills required to produce top-quality subtitles in his Master of Arts in Literary Translation Studies at Victoria.
“A project like Rory’s exemplifies two of the things that make Victoria distinctive—sustained engagement and cultivating creative capital.”
A special screening of The Dark Horse was held at Victoria’s Te Herenga Waka Marae in late October.
It was attended by the film’s producer Tom Hern, Italian Ambassador Carmelo Barbarello, Israeli Ambassador Yosef Livne, Victoria’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Māori) Professor Piri Sciascia and about 30 guests.