Research: Italian subtitling solutions for English-language Stand-up Comedy
Giovanni Raffa is a PhD student in Linguistics in University of Rome “La Sapienza”, in a co-tutelle with the University of Silesia in Katowice (Poland). He graduated in 2020 from a MA course in English and Anglo-American Studies (University of Rome La Sapienza) with a dissertation titled “The She Persona: Political Correctness, Harassment and Mental Illness in Language and Audiovisuals” (110 cum laude/110, Laureato Eccellente, Ranzato I., Mariani G.), after earning a BA in Languages, Cultures, Literature, Translation in the same university. During his studies he approached film subtitling and translated feature films, short movies and documentaries for cinema clubs and small, avant-garde festivals (2015-2019). He worked as a University tutor in 2021 (SEAI department, Sapienza University) and as didactic tutor in 2023 (Department of Political Sciences, Sapienza University). Starting from 2021, he is a member of AIA and part of the editorial staff for the journal STATUS QUAESTIONIS. As of 2022, he is a collaborator for the research project "SL@VT" (Margherita Dore). His doctoral project focuses on the Italian subtitling of broadcast stand-up comedy performances on digital catalogues. His research fields include translation theory, audiovisual translation, humour theory and humour translation, subtitling, multimodality and translation of videogames. He has published articles on the translation of broadcast stand-up comedy (2022) and on the influence of stand-up practice on audiovisual texts such as videogames (2024).