The American 'House of Cards' – A View from a Cultural, Political and Translation-Related Perspective

The present article offers an introduction to the relationship between the entertainment and translation industry, arguing that dubbings and subtitles are by-products of the entertainment industry, directly contributing to the success of the show. It also deals with the translator’s competence, offering examples of translation challenges from the (in)famous American TV show, House of Cards, connected to terms and expressions pertaining to general knowledge of the world and of the United States. The Introduction offers an insight into audiovisual translation and its successful branches and explains binge-watching and binge-translation as well, also including several scholars’ analyses of the TV show. The Methodological Background describes how a collection of term bases came into being starting from the original English script and several Romanian subtitles of the episodes of official (DVD-release and Netflix) and amateur (freely available online) versions. This is followed by thirty examples in two sets, discussing the translation of terms belonging to general knowledge and US geopolitics in particular. The Conclusions section discusses the terms of ‘professional’ and ‘amateur’ translator irrespective of their qualifications, focusing instead on ‘quality assurance’, a rather subjective term. Certain corpus-based findings are also highlighted connected to the possibilities of relying on generalization, explicitation or calque referring to general culture and US politics focusing on the intelligibility of politicotainment, a term recently coined by Riegert.

Improvising Inside a House of Cards: New performance and music-making through a collective networked instrument

This article presents experiences and reflections related to performing improvised, live processed electroacoustic music within a context of networked music performance. The musical interaction is performed through a new collective networked instrument, and we report how the ensemble ‘Magnify the Sound’, consisting of two of the authors of this article, meets the instrument in different networked performance situations, and how this is related to the affordance of the instrument. In our performances the network is inherent to our artistic practice, and we experience a phenomenological and somatic transformation in our roles as musicians, from individual instrumentality to shared instrumentality. The instrument invites new forms of music-making and contributes in fundamental ways to the ensemble’s musical communication and artistic expression. In the present article we outline our methods of working artistically with the networked instrument, and we point at some artistic results. We then discuss how the collective instrument has facilitated new performance and musical practice within the network.

A rapidly expanding house of cards: the silent loss of cell physiology hampers marine biosciences

Perspective: An ongoing loss of expertise on the biochemistry and physiology of marine organisms hampers our understanding of biological mechanisms upon rapidly growing “-omics” approaches reply -ultimately affecting our ability to predict organismal responses to climate change.

La Representación social del periodismo y de la mujer periodista en la serie House of Cards, temporada 1

La exitosa serie de televisión House of Cards retrata la política estadounidense y sus relaciones con los medios informativos. El objetivo de este estudio es indagar la representación social que esta producción audiovisual hace del periodismo y de la mujer periodista especializada en política, a través de las acciones de su personaje principal, el congresista Underwood, y la reportera Zoe Barnes, para determinar si existen sesgos y estereotipos de género en ocho episodios de la temporada 1. Aquí se emplea el enfoque cualitativo, un diseño narrativo y de teoría fundamentada, así como el método del análisis conversacional y el análisis crítico del discurso. Los resultados y conclusiones apuntan a que el periodismo es representado como una profesión sin ética y un instrumento del poder ejecutivo y legislativo, y la mujer periodista como una persona fácilmente manipulable, egocéntrica, que asciende en la escala jerárquica de la prensa por su apariencia física y no por su preparación e inteligencia.

Polydimensional Structure and Psychosocial Functions of the Direct Address in TV Series

Traditionally, in media studies research, the direct address or aside, i.e., a construction in which a speaker communicates a message directly to the audience breaking the continuity of the narrative flow, has been investigated mainly for its dramaturgical function. The present study aims to consider the direct address as a research object of the social psychology of communication to increase our understanding of this technique by going beyond the analysis of its dramaturgical function. In particular, the direct address will be examined through an integrated approach based on argumentative and conversational tools to highlight its less known polydimensional structure, i.e., diegetic and extra-diegetic dimensions and their interactions, and psychosocial functions, i.e., connecting the characters among each other within the show as well as with the audience. This objective will be achieved by analyzing two different direct addresses from the American TV series House of Cards. The analysis showed that the direct address performs its dramaturgical function by impacting both diegetic and extradiegetic levels. In the first case, as considered in previous studies, these plans are activated in parallel, aiming to build what we have defined as the “strategic subjectivity” of the character who employs this technique. Instead, in the second case—which comprises two direct addresses produced by two different characters—this technique involves the creation of what we will call “platforms of intersubjectivity.” In this occurrence, the dramaturgical action establishes a “bridge” between the diegetic and extradiegetic plans that act synergistically. In conclusion, the present study shows how an integrated approach based on argumentative and conversational tools of analysis permits to enlarge the traditional media studies perspective, highlighting the less investigated polydimensional structure and analyzing the psychosocial functions of the direct address, here considered as a research object of the social psychology of communication examined in its diegetic and extra-diegetic dimensions. The integration of the pragma-dialectical approach to argumentation with the interlocutory logic theory has brought to light a new modality of use of the direct address that can be termed “intersubjective aside,” a type of aside that can be added to the three already known, i.e., aside ad spectatores, monological aside, and dialogical aside.

Kualifikasi Penguasa Ideal Telaah Filsafat Politik Machievelli Terhadap Tokoh Frank Underwood dalam Serial TV House of Cards

Salah satu serial TV populer di dunia adalah House of Cards. Serial TV bertemakan politik Amerika Serikat ini menarik perhatian banyak pihak karena memperlihatkan secara representatif dan transparan bagaimana politik AS yang sebenarnya terjadi. Melalui tokoh fiksi utama Frank Underwood, pemirsa menyadari bahwa politik bukan suatu yang dapat ditanggapi secara polos sebagaimana tampil dalam layar kaca. Frank Underwood sendiri memiliki persona seorang politisi yang pragmatis, licik, berani, seorang negosiator, orator dan diplomat ulung, tetapi juga sekaligus tak ragu bertindak kejam dan bengis untuk menumpas lawan politik demi mencapai tujuan dan ambisi kekuasaanya. Karakter Underwood ini sejalan dengan pemikiran filsuf dan diplomat besar Florence dan Italia, Niccolo Machiavelli. Dalam tulisan ini, penulis hendak meninjau dan menelaah filsafat politik Machiavelli dalam karya besar Il Principe (Sang Penguasa) terhadap tokoh fiksi serial TV ini, Frank Underwood. Metodologi yang penulis gunakan adalah studi literatur atas karya Machiavelli dan observasi mendalam atas serial TV House of Cards. Penulis menemukan adanya kesejajaran pandangan politik Machiavelli dan praksis politik yang dijalankan Underwood dalam kongres dan pemerintahan Amerika Serikat.