The mediation is the message Italian regionalization of US TV series as co-creational work ● Luca Barra Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Italy ABSTRACT ● The article focuses on the co-creational labour made by professionals (and non-professionals) who, in a non-Anglo-Saxon country such as Italy, adapt and modify (heavily or slightly) the ‘original’ media products (i.e. TV series) in order to make them accessible to the domestic audience. After a concise introduction on the ‘Italianization’ process, the article proceeds to describe two ways of adapting nationally: the professional translation and dubbing system and the grassroots fansubbing phenomenon. The attention is both on the production routines and on their influence on the meaning of the text. ● KEYWORDS ● dubbing ● fansubbing ● globalization ● media production ● media professionals ● national adaptation ● subtitling ● TV series ● translation studies In my childhood, some elderly English ladies … often gave me books as presents … All were in the language of the donors: whether I could read it, none of them paused to reflect. (T.W. Adorno, 1951/2005: 26) Introduction Media products have become – and, to some extent, have always been – global: the constant diffusion of worldwide corporations and cultural phe- nomena, the ‘reduction’ of the world (or at least of some of its parts) into what Marshall McLuhan called a ‘global village’ and the international ARTICLE INTERNATIONAL journal of CULTURAL studies © The Author(s), 2009. Reprints and permissions: http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav www.sagepublications.com Volume 12(5): 509–525 DOI: 10.1177/1367877909337859 509