From the book to television and to the whole world. Maya the Bee in basque

Abstract

The aim of this article is to show how the Maya the Bee franchise entered the Basque cultural system and, more specifically, how the audiovisual translation (AVT) into Basque was conducted. Maya the Bee is a character from a book written by the German author Waldemar Bonsels in 1912. Yet, her origins are not that well known, as she made her entrance into the public consciousness more recently through audiovisual media. The first two sections of the article delve both into the origins and the multimedia character of Maya the Bee. The third section of the article focuses on the introduction of the Maya franchise into the Basque cultural system, the fourth section explains the methodology used and the fifth section presents the results of an analysis of the AVT. The analysis focuses on the dubbing of the 3D series (English into Basque) and looks at whether both nature-related terms are simplified and offensive language and wordplay have been retained.