How the PJ Masks Become “PJ Heroes”: A Contrastive Corpus Study of Gender Portrayal in Dubbed Children’s Animation

Abstract

A quantitative and qualitative corpus analysis of a popular TV series was conducted in this study of dubbing for children. The parallel corpus consists of twelve episodes of the animated series PJ Masks, and its corresponding Dutch (Pyjamahelden [Pyjamas heroes]) and Swedish (Pyjamashjältarna [Pyjamas heroes]) audiovisual translations. The focus of the analyses is the portrayal of the main characters. In light of ongoing criticism of children’s animation regarding a lack of diversity and gender stereotyping, this translation analysis studies potential changes in gender representation with a particular interest in the female main character. First, the character portrayal in all language versions was systematically analysed based on the characters’ utterances. Subsequently, a closer qualitative analysis revealed some interesting translation shifts, particularly, in the Dutch target text. These were contrasted against the Swedish translation to check if this results in subtle or less subtle changes in the depiction of the heroes vis-à-vis the source text. Needless to say, such translation shifts in audiovisual translation for children and their effect on the representation of children in this multimodal “glocal” product are highly relevant amidst the ongoing criticism of gender and diversity issues in children’s television.