ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the main strategies by which cultures which are distant in time and space are depicted in a selection of Disney animated films produced in the 1990's. Specifically, the language component of such films as 'Aladdin' and 'Hercules' is used to observe the representations of cultural otherness, together with the projection of western stereotypes and American values depicted in them. From the presentation of the corpus of Disney films, their structural features and their communicative purpose, to the analysis of the Italian versions, a number of disciplines have been called into play, all of them deeply concerned with the concept of culture. In the ever-changing processes of worldwide communication, the role of translation becomes all the more vital in defining cultural relationships as well as identities, not in purely linguistic terms but on a wider scale, where verbal language interacts with other codes and is in turn determined by socio-cultural factors.
