This article explores how certain feminine voices are adapted or ‘naturalized’ in audiovisual translation in order to conform to the intended audience’s assumed gender beliefs and values. Using purposefully selected examples from the American series Sex and the City, the author analyses elements pertaining to American feminism and how they are rendered in the French dubbing and subtitles. While the subtitles retain most references, the dubbing reveals a marked tendency to delete, weaken and transform allusions to American feminist culture as well as female achievements in the public sphere and feminist ideology. These findings are discussed in relation to the history, place and representation of women and feminism in France. The case study suggests that integrating a feminist approach in audiovisual translation research could help women’s studies detect the unspoken gender values of the cultures for which audiovisual translation is produced.

Much has been written about the international phenomenon that the Harry Potter series has become and inevitably about the translations that contributed to its success. Eirlys E. Davis’s comparative analysis of some of these translations in particular shows dissimilarities between the strategies adopted in different languages and presents individual translators’ choices as inconsistent.This paper deals almost exclusively with the French translation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and reveals that, in the light of the ideological and cultural reality of the receiving corpus, patterns of translation techniques do appear. This paper looks at the transformative strategies and their effects in the target text, first focusing on the treatment of alien British values. Their transformation and disappearance indicate the need to produce a text morally suitable for its assumed readership: French youngsters. Indeed, it seems that the skopos of the target text – being read by French children – determined the translator’s decisions not only to smooth down extreme British otherness but also to reinforce the fantasy of Harry Potter’s world.Indeed, the French creates an utterly “other” world by strengthening its fantastic and magical aspects while undermining the sense of familiarity and credibility of the community portrayed. The shift from a child’s perspective in the original to an adult’s in the translation leads to numerous omissions of banal and realistic details, weakening the realness of the setting and the protagonists.I give textual and extra-textual examples of these transformative strategies which ultimately reduced Harry Potter à l’école des sorciers to a fairy tale and shaped the way it was perceived and received in France.On a beaucoup écrit sur le phénomène international de la série Harry Potter et inévitablement sur les traductions qui ont contribué à son succès. En particulier, l’analyse comparative de quelques-unes de ces traductions par Eirlys E. Davis montre des dissimilitudes entre les stratégies adoptées dans différentes langues et donne aux choix des traducteurs une apparence d’inconsistance.Cet article se consacre presque exclusivement à la traduction française de Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone et révèle qu’en tenant compte de la réalité idéologique et culturelle du corpus d’arrivée, certaines constantes apparaissent. Cet article explore les stratégies transformatives et leurs effets dans le texte d’arrivée, en se concentrant en premier lieu sur les valeurs étrangères britanniques. Leur transformation et leur disparition indiquent un besoin de produire un texte moralement adéquat pour son lectorat présumé : la jeunesse française. En effet, il semble que le skopos du texte d’arrivée – être lu par des enfants français – ait déterminé les décisions du traducteur de non seulement faire disparaître l’extrême altérité britannique mais aussi de renforcer la nature fantastique du monde de Harry Potter.Le texte français crée ainsi un monde complètement « autre » en exagérant les aspects magiq...

'Cautionary Tales' about feminism's migrations from West to East, and its current, painful but potentially productive, 'homelessness' in both worlds. The collection is a valuable contribution to the field of transnational gender studies, a cooperative project by scholars from Eastern and Central Europe, as well as Western Europe and the USA (some-e.g. the editors-are themselves 'transnational'). A combination of outsiders' and insiders' views, case studies and theory, the volume makes a useful and varied source of readings for scholars and students with an interest in transnational feminism and Eastern European transformation.