The Conqueror’s Ventriloquist: A Qualitative Study of the Audiovisual Translation in the 2012 Restoration of Manuel Conde’s Genghis Khan (1952)

Reodica, M. (2017). The Conqueror’s Ventriloquist: A Qualitative Study of the Audiovisual Translation in the 2012 Restoration of Manuel Conde’s Genghis Khan (1952). (Undergraduate thesis, University of the Philippines, Diliman, Philippines.)

Manuel Conde's Genghis Khan is a culturally and historically significant masterpiece as the first Filipino film to receive international distribution and acclaim across the world, being dubbed into 17 languages and grossing $17 million dollars. (Tiongson, 2008, p. 72) However, due to the poor history of archiving and preservation in the Philippines, it had long been considered lost. In 2012, it was restored by L'Immagine Ritrovata and repatriated to the Philippines with an English audiovisual translation. (San Diego, 2012) This research used Evan-Zohar’s Polysystem Theory and Chaume’s Integrated Textual Analysis of the audiovisual semiotic codes to evaluate the audiovisual translation of the film. The addition of the narrator as a filmic and technological device resulted in shifts in cultural bearings of the film. The study also describes the resulting sense of aesthetic distancing, othering, and domestication from the point of view of the researcher as a bilingual viewer. Overall, the voice-over manifests discrepancies reflect the linguistic inequality between Philippine cinema and Hollywood.

Key words: film studies, Audiovisual Translation, Genghis Khan, linguistic inequality, Manuel Conde, Integrated Textual Analysis, Polysystem Theory, Philippine Cinema, postcolonial theory

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