Whose language, whose voice, whose message? Different AVT Modes for Documentaries on VRT-Canvas Television, Flanders

Abstract

This article examines how editing and three types of audiovisual translation are combined to produce the VRT-Canvas (Flemish public television) versions of three English language documentaries broadcast in 2002 and 2003. Two BBC documentaries, Chasing Saddam’s Weapons and Road to War deal with the war in Iraq, one PBS documentary Kim’s Nuclear Gamble deals with the strained relations between the United States and North Korea. Whereas each type of AVT (introductory statement, subtitling and narration) has its own particularities, the three text types also appear to have characteristics in common. Some of these relate to the kind of language used in each text type, some to the ideology underlying it. Comparable translational shifts across the different AVT forms appear to reveal a unifying underlying narrative voice, formally determined by language policies that are themselves rooted in socio-cultural traditions, and ideologically determined by the tendency of television programmes to cater for a specific public.