Audiovisual Translation: Professions, Performative Practices and New Scenarios across Film, Television and Theatre

Audiovisual Translation: Professions, Performative Practices and New Scenarios across Film, Television and Theatre

23 October 2026 | 9:00 a.m. – 7:30 p.m.
IULM University, Sala dei 146

In the age of artificial intelligence, machine translation, and globally distributed content, the value of the human component in linguistic and cultural mediation emerges with even greater clarity. Behind every film, television series, or theatre production that crosses languages, borders, and semiotic systems are professionals who interpret nuances, recreate emotions, negotiate meanings, and make cultural experiences accessible to audiences with different linguistic, sensory, and cognitive backgrounds. This initiative aims to bring these often invisible yet essential skills into the spotlight, opening the doors of a rapidly evolving field and offering the public an opportunity to meet its key protagonists.

Organised by the Department of Humanities at IULM University as part of its knowledge valorisation activities, the event will open with welcome addresses by Rector Valentina Garavaglia and Head of Department Elena Liverani.

The day offers a unique opportunity to meet leading scholars and prominent figures in film and television adaptation, highlighting how audiovisual translation is not only a form of linguistic and cultural mediation but also a professional pathway and a performative practice in which interpretation, vocal performance, and audience-facing technologies contribute to reshaping the relationship between works, audiences, and contexts of reception.

The morning session will place centre stage the protagonists of an art that is as fundamental as it is often little known. It will be devoted to the world of dubbing and adaptation, with the participation of the Executive Board and the Board of Experts of AIDAC (Associazione Italiana Dialoghisti Adattatori Cinetelevisivi), Italy’s leading professional association for audiovisual translation.

Bridging professional practice and academic research, Serafino Murri and Gianni Galassi will offer reflections on audiovisual translation as a dynamic process of negotiation among words, images, sounds, and interpretations. At the heart of their discussion lies the embodied dimension of communication: that “dance of meaning” intertwining body, voice, and language, which dubbing seeks to recreate by giving audiovisual works a new voice and renewed vitality beyond linguistic boundaries.

This will be followed by a round-table discussion moderated by audiovisual translation scholar Mara Logaldo. Speaking both as professionals and as representatives of the association will be figures who have helped shape the history of the field, including AIDAC Vice-President Toni Biocca and Mary Pellegatta, dialogue writers of numerous international productions, along with Laura Giordani, a pioneer of audiovisual accessibility, dialogue writer, and leading national expert in audio description. Through their experiences, participants will discover how character voices are created, what linguistic and creative skills are required to adapt audiovisual works, and what challenges the sector faces today.

Andrea Bellavita, lecturer in Television History at the University of Insubria and in dialogue localisation at IULM, will also provide the perspective of the television industry and contemporary audiovisual production, illustrating how translation and localisation have become strategic components in the design and distribution of audiovisual content.

In the afternoon, the focus will shift to experimentation and international research in theatre translation, with the presentation of the outcomes of the Creative Europe Tra-NET project. Members of the IULM research unit and their partners from Milan, Berlin, and Avignon will share insights from three years of work devoted to multilingual theatre, spanning live and live-streamed performances, technological innovation, and intercultural dialogue.

The project will be presented by its coordinator, Professor Paola Ranzini of the University of Avignon, together with Mara Logaldo, coordinator of the IULM research unit, and project manager Marzia Morteo.

The project encompasses three complementary perspectives: artistic, translational, and technological. The artistic perspective will be discussed by directors Monika Dobrowlanska (Multicultural City Berlin), Helen Landau (Les Rencontres du Chapeau Rouge, Avignon), Paolo Bignamini, and Annig Raimondi (PACTA. dei Teatri, Milan). The translational perspective, focusing on surtitling and multilingual subtitling, will be explored by Donatella Codonesu, Valentina Citterio, and Mara Logaldo. The technological dimension, addressing multimedia and streaming environments, will be presented by Lorenzo Mosna and Alex De Micheli.

The day will conclude with a screening of the international co-production Tiresias Never Made It to New York, presented in July 2026 at the Avignon Festival. Before the screening, Martina Treu, IULM scholar and expert in classical theatre, will introduce the event and offer a reading of the section “Death by Water” from T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, guiding the audience through a journey across myth, translation, and contemporary rewriting.

The event will close with an open discussion moderated by Eugenio De Caro, lecturer at the LUDES Professional University Institute of Lugano and manager of the European project.

A full day to listen to the voices behind the voices and discover the writing and adaptation work that makes dubbing, audio description, subtitling, and surtitling possible; to learn about fascinating professions; and to understand how audiovisual translation contributes every day to fostering dialogue among languages, cultures, and diverse audiences.

Free admission, subject to seating availability.

Download the poster here:
Download the detailed conference program here

This event is part of the Badge of Honor program for students from all University faculties.

To earn the Badge of Honor, students must attend the morning and afternoon sessions on October 23, from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., according to the following schedule:

• 9:30 a.m.–11:00 a.m. Adaptation of Film and Television Works and Accessibility: The State of the Art
• 11:30 a.m.–12:15 p.m. Interpretation and performative translation of audiovisual works
• 12:15–1:15 p.m. Translating “Complex TV”: Between Global Languages and Audiences
• 2:30–3:15 p.m. “(Trans)National European Theater: Audiovisual Tools and Simultaneous Interpreting for the Internationalization of Theater Production and Consumption”: The Project
• 3:15–4:00 p.m. Perspectives on Artistic Creation
• 4:00–5:00 p.m. Perspectives on Translation: Surtitle and Subtitling
• 5:00–5:30 p.m. Technological Perspectives: Multimedia and Streaming

Attendance will be recorded via the “IULM Lezioni” app 15 minutes after the start and 15 minutes before the end of each of the four half-days as described above.

For degree programs in the School of Interpretation and Translation, participation in the session on October 23 will count as completion of 1 of the 4 (master’s degrees) or 6 (bachelor’s degrees) activities required to earn the Badge of Honor.