An Icy Force Both Foul and Fair : The Theme of Love Versus Fear in the Dutch Bubbed Version of Disney's Frozen

Abstract

This study compares the songs from the original, English-language version of the 2013 Disney film Frozen to those of the Dutch dubbed version, investigating how the thematic representation of love and fear differ between these versions. To support this inherently qualitative analysis, this study employs the triangle of aspects, an analytical model that identifies certain aspects and variables central to animated musical film dubbing, allowing a quantification of differences between dubbed versions. It is found that the dubbed songs differ most strongly from the original songs in the verbal code, which covers issues such as semantic sense and register, and least in the musical code, which concerns matters of rhyme scheme, rhythm, and singability. The effects of the changes are a slight backgrounding of the theme of love versus fear: whereas the source version presents and explores a clear dichotomy between love and fear, the dubbed version concentrates more on love as the ultimate goal of life, eliminating much of the importance of fear. These results show that quantitative data can be useful in qualitative analyses, presenting an important step in the development of the field of animated musical film dubbing within translation studies.