Abstract

The study examines how intimacy, threat and aggression is shaped in audiovisual translation (AVT), namely, how norms in the two prevailing AVT modalities, subtitling and dubbing, shape the message in the Greek AVT context. The study selected the third film of the Harry Potter saga, ‘Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban’ (2004), to identify variation in the rendition of the hero’s relational dynamics with other characters. The paper draws on Dayter, Locher and Messerli (2023) who acknowledge three layers of consideration in studying language transfer, namely, (a) mediality, (b) participation framework and (c) relational work. The analysis showed dubbing to intensify intimacy, threat and aggression, probably due to the oral character of the message in dubbing and potentially to the age of the target audience, which may need a more explicit message to be able to follow. A questionnaire addressing Greek respondents added to the validity of the study. The significance of research lies in that the characters’ relational dynamics in the film are influenced by the mediality of communication, the participation type of adult and young audiences, and the relational dynamics between fictional addressees.

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