Translating English non-standard tags in Italian dubbing

English Tag Questions (henceforth TQ) are a complex linguistic phenomenon. This complexity derives from the fact that their meaning/function is determined by the interplay of different linguistic levels, namely syntax, pragmatics and phonetics – i.e. intonation. Besides, the formation of tags often undergoes various exceptions while speaking, so that on the basis of some sociological parameters, namely diatopic varieties, social class and cultural background, speakers use non-standard variants of tags, such as innit – mainly identified with London area – or other forms presenting a lack of concordance in number between operator and subject, such as weren’t it?. It has been observed that recent movies are characterised by quite a faithful reproduction of spontaneous face-to-face conversation (Taylor, 1999), since linguistic realism is necessary to attract the audience’s attention (Pavesi, 2005: 30), and as a consequence, many features of orality appear in films – i.e. hesitations, overlapping, fillers, ellipsis and also tag questions. In this paper, I would like to focus on non-standard variants of canonical tags, such as innit – functioning either as a proper TQ or as an invariant tag (Andersen, 2001) – and tags of the type of weren’t it, in some British movies, where much space is devoted to conversation in everyday language, namely Secrets and Lies (1996, M. Leigh), The Full Monty (1997, P. Cattaneo), Bend it like Beckham (2002, G. Chada) and Green Street (2005, L. Alexander). The predominant spoken variety is British English, even if other varieties are present, such as American, Scottish and Northern English spoken in Sheffield. Moreover, language also varies according to the social class to which the characters belong, ranging from the upper to the working class, and the ethnic group of provenance – i.e. see the presence of Indian and black characters. Indeed, generally non-standard tags are used by specific groups of characters, who belong to the working class or to determinate ethnic groups. Therefore, I will analyse non-standard variants on the basis of diastratic and diatopic differences. Since Italian does not display such varied and complex set of forms as English does, it is often very difficult to translate TQs into Italian. For this reason, I will compare the original versions of these movies with their dubbed versions in order to pinpoint how and whether these types of non-standard tags are translated into Italian, whether their indexical function is preserved and which strategies are employed to produce the same effect of non-standard forms.