In addition, as mentioned before, lines these days allow more than 35 characters, opening the possibility of presenting more text in the same amount of time. As a con- sequence, a reading speed of 15 cps wpm is fairly standard in the industry, with faster reading speeds of 17 cps wpm , and even higher, when subtitling for the DVD market and the Internet. One of the immediate and most visible results of these constraints is that the written subtitles tend to be nearly always a reduced form of the oral speech.
Of course, when the original text is uttered at a slow pace subtitlers will not encounter major hurdles to transfer the information to the target language in its entirety. The problem arises when people on screen speak too quickly for the target viewer to be able to read it in translation. This is why reduction is arguably the core strategy in use by subtitlers and the subject of detailed research Georgakopoulou Partial reduction, or condensation, relies on a more concise rendering of the original, whereas total reduction, or deletion, is achieved with the omission of part of the source message.
To economize text and avoid unnecessary redundancy, subtitles should consider the information transmitted iconically and avoid translating what is explicitly conveyed through the image. In any case, reductions should take into account the rhythm and delivery of the original as over-reducing, typical of novice subtitlers, can lead to a negative perception by the viewers who have direct access to the original soundtrack. Wordy exchanges translated by short subtitles are bound to raise suspicion, as would laconic dialogue channelled into expansive subtitles.
Two other main considerations that inform the way subtitles are produced derive from their fragmented nature, as subtitles always appear in isolation one after the other, and from the fact that viewers do not normally have the possibility of back-tracking to retrieve infor- mation, and even when this is possible, as with DVDs and the Internet, it is not a natural way to watch programmes. To help viewers in their reading and boost subtitling coher- ence and cohesion, a careful segmentation of the information is called for.
One of the golden rules in the profession to ensure that subtitles can be easily understood in the short time that they appear on screen is to structure them in such a way that they are seman- tically and syntactically self-contained.
Both spotting across subtitles and line-breaking within subtitles should be carried out in such a way that words intimately connected by logic, semantics or grammar are clustered together on the same line or subtitle whenever possible. Subtitling is not only an unusual form of translation because of its cohabitation with the original text, but it also stands out as a unique translational type because of its asym- metric endeavour of rendering original speech into written target text.
Broadly speaking, speech can be scripted or spontaneous. The surge and popularity of new audiovisual genres in which impromptu speech is of the essence, nota- bly reality shows, sports events and interviews, make a case for more research.
In addition to their linguistic intricacies, these programmes raise a whole new battery of questions as regards spotting and the translation of written information on screen e. More often than not, this type of linguistic variation is cleaned up in the subtitles. Leaving aside the translational wisdom of such an approach, it certainly raises questions about the power of subtitling in the dis- semination and entrenchment of certain concepts and realities in other cultural commu- nities.
Commercial forces and colonizing practices cannot be excluded from this debate, and what is alien to the receiving culture at a particular moment in time can easily become commonplace after its reiterative presence through translation.
This is the rather habitual manner of dealing with Japanese anime, for instance. In the audiovisual world, the reality is that most programmes are originally in English and even those in other languages end up being translated from English. Different types of subtitles Pre-recorded programmes tend to make use of pop-on or pop-up subtitles, which can appear anywhere on the screen as a block and remain visible for a certain time before they dis- appear to give way to a new subtitle.
Traditionally, real-time subtitling has been done by stenotyp- ing or by a pool of subtitlers working with dual keyboards. As a relative newcomer, respeaking is a subject of growing interest in the academic and professional worlds, with considerable research potential Eugeni ; Romero-Fresco From a linguistic perspective, intralingual subtitles, also known as captions in American English, are done in the same language as the dialogue of the audiovisual programme.
The most established type of intralingual subtitles is known as subtitling for the deaf and the hard-of-hearing SDH and is aimed primarily at audiences with hearing impair- ment. They can be seen as a tool for social integration in as far as they help to guarantee greater access to audiovisual programming for people with sensory disabilities.
For instance, they can change their colour depending on the person who is talking or the emphasis given to certain words within the same subtitle and they can also make use of labels to identify speakers.
Some subtitles are made of three or even four lines and accommodate more than one speaker in the same line. Thanks to greater social awareness, SDH has undergone spectacular growth in recent years on all media, including the web.
In addition to a higher turnover, with some TV stations subtitling per cent of their output and cinemas having special screenings for the hearing impaired, SDH has also crossed linguistic barriers and interlingual subtitling for hearing-impaired audiences is now a reality on some DVDs. Even though this situation belongs to the past, we still lack, for instance, a proper historiography of subtitling that would delve into the aesthetic and communicative dimensions of both intertitles and early subtitles.
For some, subtitling falls short of being translation proper because of the various spatial and temporal limitations that con- strain the end result, and they refer to it as adaptation, an attitude that has stymied academic exchanges in the past. From the point of the view of the trainer and the researcher the opportunities are also enormous. Subtitling has often been studied from a professional perspective, with research focussing mainly on its mechanics, on technical issues such as time and space constraints, spotting or cueing, and so on.
On occasions, studies have concentrated unduly on the linguistic dimension solely Tomaszkiewicz , forgetting not only the semiotic complexity of the audiovisual production but also the fact that technical considera- tions must be part of the equation if a balanced translational account is to be given.
To overcome these shortcomings, authors like Taylor have propounded the use of multi- modal transcription as a methodological tool in the analysis and subtitling of audiovisual texts, a proposal that has been well received by some scholars Desilla Films and other audiovisual productions represent one of the primary means through which commonplaces, stereotypes and manipulated views about social categories blacks, women, homosexuals, religious minorities are conveyed and AVT enables such views to travel to other cultures unfamiliar with the language of the original production.
Get BOOK. Subtitling Norms for Television. In most subtitling countries, those lines at the bottom of the screen are the most read medium of all, for which reason they deserve all the academic attention they can get.
This monograph represents a large-scale attempt to provide such attention, by exploring the norms of subtitling for television. Citation Type. Has PDF. Publication Type. More Filters. Working conditions and collaborative practices in the translation of French film: subtitling banlieue cinema. The subtitlers we Journal of Intercultural Communication Research.
ABSTRACT The current study, as an initial attempt in the Iranian context, aimed at: 1 exploring applied translation strategies in both versions of translations and their justification and 2 … Expand. View 1 excerpt, cites background. This chapter explores how, as part of an ongoing and unsettling process of globalization, the invasion of the English language in the audiovisual media is having a significant impact on the way … Expand.
Bilingual corporate websites - from translation to transcreation? Published version of an article in the journal: Journal of Specialised Translation. From old tricks to Netflix: How local are interlingual subtitling norms for streamed television? Journal of Audiovisual Translation.
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