The issue of “Chineseness” in the Italian Translation of Chinese Films between early 1990s and 2018

The aim of the chapter is to analyse the issue of “Chineseness” in the translation of Chinese films into Italian between the early 1990s and 2018. The corpus is composed of 10 films (from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan) that gained a certain degree of success in Italy, and covers different genres, such as comedy, historical or contemporary drama and wuxia pian 武侠片 (martial arts films). Being the Italian public exposed to dubbed films much more than to subtitled ones, the Italian translation of the films is analysed in the form of dubbing. After a general introduction on the diffusion of Chinese films in Italy, the contribution shall try to answer the following questions: are there to be detected fixed cultural images and stereotypes in the Italian translation of Chinese films? Is there an evolution, in linguistic and cultural terms, in the choices made by Italian translators of Chinese films from the early 1990s to 2018?