Abstract
The study of vocal emotions poses different methodological problems, especially regarding the style of speech analyzed. If spontaneous speech on the one hand guarantees data authenticity, on the other hand does not allow to control the variables affecting spoken communication. Recited speech allows to control the verbal content of emotional productions and obtain easily comparable data. Dubbed speech represents another feasible alternative. The task of a dubber is to use a different language to vehiculate the same emotional state expressed in the original version, to sound as natural as possible. The present study has twofold objective: firstly it aims to describe the prosodic characteristics of dubbed speech, to evaluate its effectiveness for the cross-linguistic analysis of vocal emotions; secondly it is intended to verify if romance and non-romance languages present similar prosodic patterns in the expression of different emotional states. To reach these goals, sequences taken from the original and the dubbed versions (Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese and German) of “Titanic” have been the object of perceptive tests and a spectro-acoustic analysis. The strategies used by romance and nonromance languages to obtain synchrony and the acoustic correlates of five perceived basic emotions (anger, joy, sadness, fear and surprise) have been identified and discussed in details.