Handbook of Translation Studies, Volume 1 (2010)
© 2010–2012 John Benjamins Publishing Company. Not to be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.
© 2010–2012 John Benjamins Publishing Company. Not to be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.
In the context of today’s multimedia society, audiovisual translation (AVT)
is gaining great visibility and relevance as a means of fostering communication
and dialogue in an increasingly multicultural and multilingual environment. AVT
is the umbrella term used to refer to the translation of programmes in which
the verbal dimension is only one of the many shaping the communication process.
The concurrence of different semiotic layers through the visual (images,
written text, gestures) and audio (music, noise, dialogue) channels makes the
translator’s task particularly challenging in this field. Of the several modes
available to translate audiovisual programmes (Gambier 2003), subtitling is arguably the most commonly used because it is cheap and
fast. Other professional practices are interpreting, voiceover and dubbing.
By way of definition, subtitling consists in rendering in writing the
translation into a TL of the original dialogue exchanges uttered by the
different speakers, as well as of all other verbal information that is
transmitted visually (letters, banners, inserts) or aurally (lyrics, voices
off). Subtitling can be seen as a supplement to the original programme, which,
unlike in dubbing, remains intact in the target culture for all to watch and to
hear. All subtitled programmes are therefore made up of three main components:
the original spoken/written word, the original image and the added subtitles.
Subtitlers are expected to come up with solutions that create the right interaction
among these components and they must take into consideration the fact that
viewers have to read the written text at a given speed whilst also watching the
images at the same time. The constraining nature of the audiovisual environment
has always been brought to the fore when discussing this type of translation,
leading scholars in the past to label it as an example of ‘constrained
translation’ (Titford 1982) or even ‘a necessary evil’ (Marleau 1982).
Generally speaking, subtitles do not contain more than two lines, are
displayed horizontally – usually at the bottom of the screen though in some
countries like Japan they can also be vertical – and appear in synchrony with
the image and dialogue. The synchronisation process is known as spotting,
cueing, timing or originating and it may be carried out by the translators
themselves or by technicians who know the subtitling program.
The time a subtitle stays on screen depends both on the speed at which the
original exchange is delivered and on the viewers’ assumed reading speed.
Tradition had it that the best practice should be based on the so-called ‘6
second rule’ (Díaz Cintas & Remael
2007: 96–99), whereby two full lines of
around 35 characters each can be comfortably read in six seconds. For shorter
periods of time, proportional values are automatically calculated by the
subtitling software, bearing in mind that no subtitle should stay on screen for
less than one second so as to guarantee that the eye of the viewer can register
its presence.
Although these parameters still enjoy some currency in the industry,
particularly on television, the viewers’ increased exposure to reading text on
screen and enormous technical advances in recent decades have brought
considerable changes. The sacred rule of having a maximum of two lines in a
subtitle so as to minimise their impact on the photography is being broken
daily by the emergence of three, four and even five-liners, notably in the
subtitling being done on the internet. The traditional positioning of subtitles
at the bottom of the screen is also being challenged as they are beginning to
be displayed on different parts of the screen.
Likewise, restricting the number of characters per line to 35, 39 or even
43 is not an important factor anymore. Most professional subtitling programs
work now with pixels, allowing for proportional lettering, which means that
subtitlers can write as much text as possible, depending on the font size being
used and the actual space available on screen.
Perhaps surprisingly, viewers’ reading patterns and abilities have not been
thoroughly investigated in subtitling, and there is apparently a general
consensus in the profession that the 6-second rule dictates a rather low
reading speed. With the advent of DVD and mobile technology, the mushrooming of
screens around us, and the proliferation of audiovisual programmes, it seems
fair to accept that today’s viewers are ‘better/faster’ audiovisual readers
than those of previous generations. Besides the lengthening of lines, shorter
exposure times and faster reading speeds are all a consequence of this belief.
It is not uncommon to keep two-liners for a maximum of 5 seconds, and to apply
reading speeds that hover around the 180 words per minute (wpm) or 15 to 17
characters per second (cps), as opposed to the traditional 140 wpm or 12 cps.
As can be expected, all these technical changes have had a knock-on effect on
the way the actual translation is carried out.
Whilst respecting the technical specifications discussed above, subtitles
must provide a semantically adequate account of the SL dialogue. The fact that
viewers do not normally have the possibility of back-tracking to retrieve
information has a great impact in the way subtitles are presented on screen.
Ideally, if they are to be easily understood in the short time available, each
subtitle ought to be semantically self-contained and come across as a coherent,
logical and syntactical unit. To boost readability, both spotting and
line-breaking ought to be carried out in such a way that words intimately
connected by logic, semantics or grammar should be written on the same line or
subtitle whenever possible.
Unless speakers deliver their utterances really slowly, reduction is
arguably the main strategy in use by subtitlers. Reductions can be partial,
where condensation of the original is paramount, and total, when part of the
message is deleted. In both cases, decisions have to adhere to the principle of
relevance and make sure that no information of vital diegetic value is deleted.
Any solutions should take the iconic information into account and avoid
translating what is explicitly conveyed through the image. Although subtitles
cannot translate absolutely everything that is said, they must strive to
capture the essence of what is said. As aptly put by Gottlieb (1998/2001: 247): “In subtitling, the speech act is always in focus; intentions and effects
are more important than isolated lexical elements”.
The transition from oral to written poses certain challenges and raises the
question of whether non-standard speech, like accents and very colloquial
traits, can be effectively rendered in writing. More often than not, this type
of linguistic variation is neutralised in the subtitles. Swearwords and other
taboo expressions are also particularly sensitive to this media migration as
there is the tacit belief that they are more offensive when starkly reproduced
in text than when verbalised, which in turn tends to lead to the indiscriminate
deletion of most effing and blinding in the TL subtitles.
Because of the concurrent presence of the original soundtrack and the
subtitles, and especially when translating from a well-known language like
English or from one linguistically close to the TL, subtitling finds itself in
a particularly vulnerable situation, open to the scrutiny of anyone with the
slightest knowledge of the SL. One strategy used to deal with this is for
subtitles to follow, as far as possible, the syntactic structure of the source
text so as to reinforce the synchronisation and to preserve the same chronology
of events as in the original utterances.
A worrying practice in the industry is the recourse to English as a pivot
language to translate from some languages (Czech or Japanese) into others
(French or German) following an English translation rather than the original
soundtrack. Errors or misunderstandings in the English translation will most
likely be replicated in the other languages, and nuances and interpretations
will also be filtered through English.
The imperative of having to synchronise dialogue and subtitles, the need to
stay within a maximum of two lines per subtitle, and the widespread belief that
the best subtitles are the ones that are not noticed, have been frequently
invoked to explain why subtitlers cannot make use of metatextual devices, such
as footnotes or glosses, to justify their solutions. However, this assumption
seems to be being challenged by new practices, where glosses inside the
subtitles and explanatory notes on top of the screen are freely used (Díaz Cintas 2005).
From a technical perspective subtitles can be open, when they are
delivered together with the image and cannot be turned off, as in the cinema,
or closed, when they are optional and can be added to the programme at
the viewer’s will, as on most DVDs. The process of merging the subtitles with
the images has evolved considerably over the years (Ivarsson & Carroll
1998: 12–19) and today’s main methods are
laser, whereby the subtitles are burnt onto the celluloid, and electronic,
whereby the subtitles are projected onto the film.
Subtitles can appear on screen as a block and off again, known as pop-on
subtitles, scroll horizontally, or roll-up. According to the time
available for preparation, subtitles can be pre-prepared ahead of the
programme’s release, or (semi/real)live if they are produced at the same
time as the programme is being broadcast.
From a linguistic point of view we can distinguish between intralingual
subtitles, also known as captions in American English, where the language of
the subtitles and the programme coincide and interlingual subtitles,
where the spoken/written message of the original programme is translated into a
TL. Bilingual subtitles are part of the latter category and are produced
in geographical areas where two or more languages are spoken, as in Finland
(Finnish and Swedish) or Jordan (Arabic and Hebrew).
The best known type of intralingual subtitles is aimed at audiences with
hearing impairment and is widely known as subtitling for the deaf and the
hard-of-hearing (SDH). They are a step forward in guaranteeing greater
democratic access to audiovisual programming and, in many countries, their
output is regulated by legislation. Although they share many features with
standard subtitling, they also make use of some unique attributes (de Linde & Kay 1999; Neves 2005). On
television, they normally change colour depending on the person who is talking
or the emphasis given to certain words within the same subtitle, whilst on DVD
they resort to labels to identify speakers. It is not unusualy to come across
subtitles of up to three or even four lines, and accommodate more than one
sepaker in the same line. Crucially, not only do they reproduce the speaker’s
dialogue, but they also incorporate paralinguistic information that deaf people
cannot access from the soundtrack, such as the revving of an engine, steps on a
staircase, indications concerning music, laughter, or whispering. Their positioning
is also important and they can be left or right justified so that speakers can
be easily identified or to indicate where a given sound is coming from.
Thanks to greater social awareness, SDH is one of the forms of audiovisual
communication which has undergone spectacular growth in recent years on all
media. In addition to a higher turnover, with some TV stations subtitling 100%
of their output, SDH has also crossed linguistic barriers and interlingual
subtitling for hearing impaired audiences is now a reality on some DVDs.
Subtitling is so dependent on technology that any technical advances have
the potential to encroach both on the subtitling process from the
practitioner’s perspective as well as on the perception that viewers have of
subtitling as a product. In this sense, digitisation and the availability of
free subtitling software on the net have made possible the rise and
consolidation of translation practices like fansubbing, which in turn are
having an incidental effect on how formal conventions are applied. Subtitles
have been traditionally rather humdrum in terms of positioning, font type and
layout. This new way of approaching subtitles as part of a budding
participatory culture is pushing the boundaries of creativity and shaking the
foundations of traditional subtitling. Only time will tell whether these
conventions put forward by the so-called ‘collective intelligence’ (Lévy 1997) are just a mere fleeting fashion or whether they are the prototype for
future subtitling. The impetus provided by 3D technology may well open the door
to more interactivity and cr3aTVty in subtitling.
Recent developments in voice and speech recognition have made possible the
appearance and booming of respeaking as a professional practice to subtitle
programmes that are broadcast (semi/real)live, such as the news or sports. The
wider breadth and scope of genres being distributed audiovisually – corporate
videos, scientific and technical documentaries with a high level of lexical
repetition – makes the incipient use of translation memory systems and
automated translation in subtitling a very promising development.
In terms of research, the didactic potential of subtitling to learn and consolidate
a foreign language has been a particularly active line of enquiry in recent
times (Díaz Cintas 2008). In an attempt to bolster their quantitative findings and gain an insight
into the cognitive efforts presupposed by reading subtitles, some researchers
are resorting to the application of new methodologies and tools, like corpus
studies and eye-tracking.
Since the late 1990s subtitling has been a most inspiring field in which to
conduct research and more recently also for netizens to communicate in
cyberspace. Far from waning, this interest is still aflame and as strong as two
decades ago, if not stronger.
Díaz Cintas, Jorge. 2005.
“Back to the future in subtitling.” In MuTra 2005 – Challenges of
Multidimensional Translation: Conference Proceedings, Heidrun
Gerzymisch-Arbogast and Sandra Nauert (eds). www.euroconferences.info/proceedings/2005_Proceedings/2005_DiazCintas_Jorge.pdf [Accessed 10 May 2010]. TSB
Díaz Cintas, Jorge (ed.).
2008. The Didactics of Audiovisual Translation. Amsterdam &
Philadelphia: John Benjamins. BoP TSB
Díaz Cintas, Jorge &
Remael, Aline. 2007. Audiovisual Translation: Subtitling. Manchester: St
Jerome. TSB
Gambier, Yves. 2003.
“Introduction: Screen transadaptation: Perception and reception.” The
Translator 9 (2): 171–189.
Gottlieb, Henrik. [1998] 2001.
“Subtitling.” In Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, Mona
Baker (ed.), 244–248. London & New York: Routledge.
Lévy, Pierre. 1997. Collective Intelligence. Mankind’s Emerging World in Cyberspace. Transl. by
Robert Bononno. Jackson: Perseus Books.
Neves, Josélia. 2005. Audiovisual
Translation: Subtitling for the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing. London:
Roehampton University. Ph.D. Thesis. http://roehampton.openrepository.com/roehampton/handle/10142/12580 [Accessed 10 May 2010]. TSB
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