Commercial and fan subtitling of the pilot episode of the TV series Fargo (2014): descriptive and comparative analysis

Abstract

This article carries out a comparative study of the commercial and fan subtitling of the same source text, namely “The Crocodile’s Dilemma,” the pilot episode of the TV series Fargo (2014). The aim is to ascertain the commonalities and divergences between these two different types of translation with regard to European Portuguese. It seeks to verify if the usual tendency of commercial subtitling being domesticating and  fan subtitling foreignizing applies in Portugal or if Portugal deviates from this pattern. Naturally, the case study of a single pilot episode cannot permit encompassing conclusions to be drawn, but it can provide a peek into the commercial and fan subtitling phenomena in Portugal in order to get a preliminary idea of how it compares to the rest of the world.
Keywords: commercial subtitling, fan subtitling, domestication, foreignization, comparative study, English-to-Portuguese