This project aims to provide the first sustained empirical investigation into translation strategies used in Italian dubbed Animated Musical Comedies (1959–2019). It examines 11 songs selected from relevant animated musical comedies, which have (a) made an emblematic contribution to both the US and Italian creative industries and (b) been released in multiple languages and versions that exemplify how cultures interact in song and translation across time and space: Sleeping Beauty (1959), The Aristocats (1970), Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), The Nightmare before Christmas (1993), The Lion King (1994), Hercules (1997), The Prince of Egypt (1998), Shrek 2 (2004), Frozen (2013), Frozen II (2019). Given the current proliferation of both remakes and brand-new musical animations, often exploiting star talent, understanding how translations/performances create ‘in tune’ cultures makes this research relevant and timely.

My study is shaped around three main research questions: 1. Can dubbed products constitute a valid means of transmission of cultural interactions? 2. Can the same music with different words become a new song in a cultural context other than that of production? 3. In what way(s) can cultures resonate differently across the multi-semiotic communication modalities interconnecting within song? To answer these questions, I developed a holistic approach to multimedia song analysis via transversal use of digital humanities techniques, specifically approaching songs from four different entry points – i.e. contextual, schematic, statistical and time-bound (via digital software Sonic Visualiser). In so doing, I provided detailed sets of both synchronic and diachronic screenshots of cultural interactions through comparative investigations of song dubbed products via a genuinely inter-semiotic analysis framework, able to go beyond the more traditional and exclusively text-based investigation methods.