The Influence of the Meta-System in Translation. The Dubbing of The Flintstones into Neutral Spanish

Abstract

During the 40’s, it appeared a Spanish linguistic variety, called neutral Spanish, which was used exclusively in the dubbings of films and television series (most of them American). By using this standard linguistic variety, one dubbed soundtrack will cover all the Spanish-speaking market. The cartoon television series The Flintstones, created by Hanna Barbera Productions in the sixties, was dubbed to neutral Spanish. In this work, our objective is to examine the features of the dubbing of The Flintstones´ complete first season and to show that, although the aim of neutral Spanish was to create a standard linguistic variety, every translation is strongly influenced by the meta-system to which it belongs.