Subtitling bodies, translating pleasures: female eroticism in "A través de mi ventana"

Abstract

This article aims to analyze how the Brazilian Portuguese subtitles of the Spanish film A través de mi ventana (2022) negotiate the construction of female eroticism. The study is grounded in Descriptive Translation Studies, particularly the concept of translational norms (Toury, 1995), gender performativity theory (Butler, 1990), and sociolinguistic approaches to language, with emphasis on variation and social evaluation (Labov, 1972), style and indexicality (Eckert, 2012), and stylistic performance (Coupland, 2007). Considering Audiovisual Translation as a socially situated linguistic practice, the analysis focuses on key scenes in which the protagonist’s desire is explicitly verbalized, examining recurrent translational strategies such as lexical softening, neutralization of orality markers, and discursive condensation. The results indicate that these strategies cannot be explained solely by the technical constraints of subtitling, but rather reflect sociolinguistic norms and expectations of discursive acceptability that regulate the expression of female sexuality in the Brazilian context of reception. It is argued that translation operates as an instance of linguistic and symbolic normalization, contributing to the attenuation of female erotic agency and to the reinscription of desire within more controlled discursive registers.