Chaperos, Rent Boys, and Sex Workers: Translating Attitudes Towards Male Sex Work in the Spanish Dubbing of the US TV Series Looking

This article explores the Castilian Spanish dubbed version of the 2014 US gay-themed series Looking and its treatment of attitudes towards the male sex worker as a figure connected to the discursive construction of homosexuality. Based on the vision that translation represents an activity capable of calling into question predominant target culture meanings and drawing on appraisal theory, I focus on the lexico-grammatical choices made by the translation and dubbing team. These choices, I claim, transform some of the source text’s value orientations towards the male sex worker. More precisely, whereas the source text seems to mitigate a conventionally damaging portrayal of the male sex worker, the target text, in abusing of the slang and offensive chapero, reinstates those attributes towards the male sex worker which the source text seeks partly to reject. The use of chapero may thus reveal a salient stance in the target culture around unaccepted expressions of same-sex sexuality.