Le sous-titrage et le commentaire au service d’ un mythe.

What is it about?

In this paper I shall attempt to emphasize the semiotic dimension of Greek subtitles and commentary of French TV commercials dealing with personal care products. These are TV commercials that were launched in the Greek market for personal care products (shampoo and bath foam) by the Le petit Marseillais brand. The study concerns both the interlingual and intersemiotic level. I will illustrate that the semiotic choice of subtitling is linked to the positive connotations of Greek society about the French language when it is used in advertising of cosmetics and personal care products. In addition, the subtitles sometimes translate intersemiotically the dialogues in the spots and the image’s content which facilitates the cultural transfer of the value of the mediterraneanness with which the Greeks are quite familiar. The main findings are that the subtitling does not move away from the source language, preserving the same semantic isotopies, and that the intersemiotic translation occurs between the French utterances or the Greek subtitling and the content of the image. Finally, the Greek commentary reproduces the essential information of the deleted French text (voice over), which endows the spots with added value through their media and narrative character.

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