Entre culturas: a tradução e adaptação linguística no filme "Rio" (2011): um estudo sobre domesticação e estrangeirização

Abstract

This article analyzes the domestication and foreignization strategies applied in the Brazilian Portuguese dubbing of the film Rio (2011), focusing on how dialogue adaptation brings the Brazilian audience closer to the audiovisual work. The study is descriptive and documental, based on Lawrence Venuti’s (1995) theory, which discusses translation practices aimed at making the text more familiar to the target audience (domestication) or preserving the original cultural elements (foreignization). Specific excerpts from the film’s original English version and the dubbed Brazilian Portuguese version were selected to identify and categorize instances of these strategies. The analysis considers idiomatic expressions, cultural references, metaphors, and informal slang present in the dubbing, as well as the preservation of English elements, such as terms and visual texts, which represent foreignization. The results show a predominance of domestication, demonstrating that adaptations seek to align dialogues with the Brazilian cultural repertoire, making them more natural and accessible to the local audience. This approach enhances viewer identification with the narrative, promoting greater emotional engagement and facilitating understanding of the story and characters. Foreignization appears more sparingly, preserving original cultural and linguistic aspects for specific effects, such as humor and maintaining the film’s visual identity. It is concluded that the dubbing of Rio primarily employs domestication to create a closer and more immersive experience for the Brazilian audience, balancing cultural and linguistic adaptations that favor comprehension and identification, while foreignization operates selectively to preserve the authenticity of the original content.