Subtitling

Focusing on two films by Jean-Luc Godard that feature the work of the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, this essay analyzes the rhetorical effects of Godard’s choice to subtitle, translate, or speak over Arabic speech and highlights Godard’s decades-long working relationship with the translator Elias Sanbar, who also translated Darwish’s work from Arabic into French.  It argues that both filmmaker and poet in Notre musique (2004) are engaged in auto-quotation in that Godard is alluding to his earlier films, particularly to Ici et ailleurs (1976), his extensive “rethinking” of his 1970 trip to film the Palestinian intifada, and in that Darwish restates his published commentary from the 1990s in a staged interview with an actress playing an Israeli journalist.  It analyzes as well the political implications of Darwish’s poetry being recited in English translation by Native American actors in Sarajevo’s destroyed library.

ABSTRACT
At the turn of the century, the explosion of over-the-top (OTT) services such as Amazon Prime, HBO Now, Hulu and Netflix, along with the never-ending production of a wide variety of serialized formats, have swiftly raised the demand for AV content localisation across the globe. In the gargantuan void produced by the fast pace of technological and cinematic changes, while Language Service Providers (LSPs) were exploring viable options offered by new technology, amateur subtitlers around the globe were already forging alternative, internet-based localisation workflows, clockwork, perfect mechanisms able to deliver hundreds of fansubs within unprecedented tight turnaround times. This chapter will provide an account of the state of the art of amateur practices around the globe to date.

Talita Guimarães Sales Ribeiro cursou Letras-Tradução Inglês na Universidade de Brasília (UnB) de 2002 a 2006. Sua carreira em tradução começou a partir de um estágio na Embaixada Bri-tânica em Brasília em 2005. Posteriormente, foi contratada para desenvolver atividades de consultoria em tradução e organização de eventos. No mesmo ano, começou a trabalhar para a empre-sa Deluxe Digital Studios, a princípio na revisão de legendas e depois na tradução. Ao completar 10 anos de carreira na área de legendagem, foi sondada por três outras empresas da área e passou a trabalhar para mais duas, a Visual Data e a Point 360. Além de tradutora, Talita é servidora pública concursada desde 2009 na UnB. Nesta universidade, já foi coordenadora de intercâmbio com a América do Norte, Ásia e Oceania na Assessoria Internacional da UnB e, desde 2013, tem trabalhado diretamente na área de revisão de livros para a Editora UnB. Na entrevista concedida Talita Ribeiro nos fornece um panorama sobre seu ofício de tradutora audiovisual ao longo dos seus 13 anos de experiência, respondendo a perguntas sobre aspectos positivos e negativos da legendagem, estilo de tradução, visibilidade do tradutor, relação empresa-tradutor-cliente e processo de legendagem. Entre as respostas fornecidas, destacam-se alguns fatos importantes. A tradutora afirma que limitações técnicas da legendagem, registros linguísticos e condições de produção das legendas impõem certos desafios ao seu trabalho. Pontua ainda que o tradutor pode deixar uma impressão digital nas legendas que produz e, no seu caso, ela se faz visível, entre outros feitos, a partir do uso da norma culta escrita da Língua Portuguesa, o que pode ser interpretado como parte de seu estilo pessoal.

Cuban culture has long been available to English speakers via translation. This study examines the complex ways in which English renderings of Cuban texts from various domains—poetry, science fiction, political and military writing, music, film—have represented, reshaped, or amended original texts. Taking in a broad corpus, it becomes clear that the mental image an Anglophone audience has formed of Cuban culture since 1959 depends heavily on the decisions of translators. At times, a clear ideological agenda drives moves like strengthening the denunciatory tone of a song or excising passages from a political text. At other moments, translators’ indifference to the importance of certain facets of a work, such as a film’s onscreen text or the lyrics sung on a musical performance, impoverishes the English speaker’s experience of the rich weave of self-expression in the original Spanish. In addition to the dynamics at work in the choices translators make at the level of the text itself, this study attends to how paratexts like prefaces, footnotes, liner notes, and promotional copy shape the audience’s experience of the text.

Given the increasing pace of dissemination of cultural content across global borders, subtitling as a cost-effective solution for rendering audiovisual programs is gaining more popularity, even in societies, which have been traditionally using dubbing as the dominant modality for foreign films and television series. Likewise, various types of subtitling practices have developed and are used in Iran both at official and non-official outlets. While official dubbing has failed in some aspect in addressing the growing interest of Iranian viewers of foreign content, a variety of non-professional subtitling has been filling the gap, and subtitling appears to be dominating the audiovisual media market. Despite such developments, the necessities of professional practice of subtitling, including standardized guidelines, codes of ethics and practice, and training, have never been realized in Iran. In the absence of a professional subtitling tradition, this article presents the status quo of non-professional subtitling into Persian and introduces the specific typology of this practice in the Iranian mediascape.

Even though pun translation has been subject to several discussions over many years, studies in pun translation as part of audiovisual translation (AVT) are limited to only the last four decades due the gradual advancements in translation technology. Bearing the growing interest in this rather new field in mind, a cognitive approach towards translation developed by Ernst-August Gutt (1991) has been adopted as the macrostrategy of this study extracted from the MA thesis for the analysis of pun translation from English source texts to Turkish target texts in the American TV show Modern Family (2009). By a relevance theoretical glance at the audiovisual texts, the amount of processing effort spent to produce high cognitive and humorous effects for the achievement of optimally relevant dialogues has been analysed in the translated puns of the first season of the afore-mentioned TV show. As a result, several types of pun have been detected and defined as the homonymous pun has ranked as the most frequently used one. The study also answers the degree of impact of the use of pun translation strategies by Dirk Delabastita (1993) in obtaining optimal relevance in translation. Furthermore, the current translator of this show, nazo82, has been interviewed to understand the role of the translator’s decision in the process of translating puns. The analytical part and the results of the case study have been evaluated on the basis of a mixed method composed of the use of both qualitative and quantitative data. Ultimately, this study claims to contribute to the study of puns under translation studies as it offers an audiovisual perspective. It is also presumed that the use of relevance theoretical approach as a theory based on cognitive explanations holds reliability in the evaluation of the translation of puns and other humorous elements. 

Key words: puns, pun translation strategies, Relevance Theory, audiovisual translation, AVT

Based on data retrieved from different databases and interviews with Chinese film translators, this research reviews the translation's role in Chinese films entering the Western markets, especially the American market. To increase the understanding of Chinese film translation involved in the film industry, the Translation Economics theory was applied in this paper. It is recommended that film translators bear in mind Nida's functional equivalence standard to produce a translation conducive to film profitability.

Anime fandom has been a fairly constant subject in fan scholarship, although only recently have conversations about fan subbing begun to circulate. As useful as those conversations are, none have directly dealt either with the mechanisms of fan subbing, particularly the use of linear notes, as a practice or with how these subs intersect with the flows of subcultural capital. Fan subbing, both as a productive and a consumptive practice, plays a small but influential part in subcultural capital. Engagement with media is a compositional element of such capital in this community.

NOTE:  Videos can be viewed through the original publication on TWC

A Covid-19-járvány miatt az ELTE Audiovizuális fordító és szakfordító szakirányú továbbképzésének is át kellett állnia a távolléti oktatásra. Magyarországon még nincs akkreditált távoktatás audiovizuális oktatásból, sőt, az ELTE képzése is fiatal, mindössze két éve működik. Az új helyzet számos kihívást jelentett, legfőképpen a kifejezetten technológia használatára fókuszáló feliratozástechnika kurzus esetében. A tanulmányban röviden átveszem a feliratozás online oktatásával kapcsolatos szakirodalmat, majd bemutatom, hogy milyen új módszereket kellett bevezetni a kurzus során az átállás miatt, milyen programok és felületek segítették a kurzus sikerességét, és hogy milyen hallgatói és oktatói tapasztalatokkal zárult a félév.

Digitization has revolutionized the industry of home entertainment services, enhancing the audience's viewing experience and offering an abundance of choices within a new intercultural and multilingual reality. This pluralistic environment is a yet uncharted terrain of resources that could be exploited while popular culture and school curricula reach a decisive juncture. Evaluating the potentials of using new media learning tools, developed in line with the expansion of Over-the-top media services, has underpinned the objectives of this research. The analysis of eye movement data depicts the viewing patterns on three versions of the same film extract via Netflix streaming service. The first was screened with standard interlingual subtitling and the other two were viewed via Language Learning with Netflix (LLN) platform, a newly launched tool which allows the simultaneous, dual presentation of both the original dialogue and its translation. This paper aims to explore the proliferation of accessible options among different modes of audiovisual language transfer within an online participatory environment. In the emergent new media culture, the educational potentials of bilingual subtitling can challenge well-established borderlines and habit formations of viewership.

Over the past decade, audiovisual translation has welcomed the swift shift towards experimental reception studies, and interdisciplinary approaches which draw on media psychology theories, such as immersion are becoming the new trend in audiovisual translation. Nonetheless, studies on amateur subtitling reception are recent and scarce, notably in dubbing countries like Iran, where both dubbing and amateur subtitling are co-existing. This paper reports the results of an experiment examining whether a select group of Iranian viewers may report different reception and immersion when watching a professionally subtitled vs. non-professionally subtitled audiovisual material. To this end, around sixty Iranian viewers attended the experiment and reported their reception and immersion through a questionnaire. Overall, the results suggested that amateur subtitling did not negatively affect the viewers' immersion in the program. Viewers' comprehension and some subtitling reception variables (subtitling reading difficulty, duration, and subtitling overall quality) were nevertheless challenged by the amateur subtitles since the participants had a better comprehension and reception when watching the program with professionally produced subtitles. Other findings indicated that (constant) exposure to foreign cinematic programs and (un)familiarity with subtitling had no significant effect on the viewers' reception and immersion.

El subtitulado es un arte en auge y, sin embargo, sigue siendo una técnica restringida a películas poco comerciales en España, donde aún existe una tendencia por el doblaje de películas en otros idiomas. Aún así, las ventajas son obvias: supone una inversión económica menor que el doblaje y hace accesible el cine a grupos con dificultades auditivas, también ofrece una mayor accesibilidad al lenguaje real en otros idiomas y su correspondiente uso educacional y, de hecho, gracias al incremento de programas informáticos de subtitulado gratuitos y a la difusión de cine por cable y satélite, su uso y disfrute está aumentando en nuestro país, aunque no siempre esta proliferación está unida a la calidad deseada. En este artículo nos gustaría indagar en los criterios que el traductor y la traductora deben seguir para subtitular un texto audiovisual y su pautado, es decir, la creación de los tiempos de entrada y salida del subtítulo. Es evidente que el lenguaje que utilizamos para subtitular películas tiene unas características que lo diferencian de otras traducciones y debemos observar: su canal de emisión, la restricción de espacio y tiempo que este conlleva y también que trata de convertirse en un enlace entre el texto acústico con el visual de forma simultánea, teniendo en cuenta que no debe tratar de competir con la imagen de la película sino ser un complemento discursivo que la enriquezca. El lenguaje del subtítulo debe imitar las características típicas del lenguaje oral: la naturalidad, frases inacabadas, titubeos de los actores etc. y, al mismo tiempo, condensar la información en estructuras sintácticas sencillas y frases más bien cortas para que el lector pueda leer en muy poco tiempo lo que escucha de una forma más extensa en otro idioma. Las dificultades que entraña este proceso de traducción derivan de la imposibilidad de recoger toda la información que se dice, pero esta es sin duda una de las tipologías de traducción más atractivas y la que más verazmente acerca el género cinematográfico al público.

Modern American TV-series like Game of Thrones, House of Cards, and The Big Bang Theory have become immensely popular over the past few years, and thanks to streaming-services like HBO and Netflix they are more accessible than ever before. The mobility of on-demand TV enables viewers to watch their favorite content where they want, and when they want. Through affordable price plans and vast archives of content, the streaming-services have revolutionized the way we perceive entertainment. This has caused a significant rise in the demand of online content that need subtitling. However, the digital world has caught up with the TV and the subtitling industry, and thusly machine translation, piecework wages, and limited resources are causing a steady decline in the quality of the subtitles.
By consulting the theoretical frameworks of leading scholars within the field of audiovisual translation studies such as Henrik Gottlieb, Anne Schjoldager, Kirsten Marie Øveraas, and Jan Pedersen, this thesis aims to investigate how new models of quality assessment in subtitling can be employed in the everyday routines of subtitlers to ensure the rise in demands does not cause an ongoing decline in the quality of subtitles, but through awareness and pragmatic trouble shooter tools ensure a stabilization in the quality level of subtitles available to viewers. By introducing a categorized taxonomy of the various subtitling errors found in different TV-series, along with consulting the quality assessment of Jan Pedersen’s FAR model, this thesis aspire to provide new and perhaps seasoned subtitlers with a “no-nonsense guide” to quality subtitling, and perhaps a way for the industry to ensure more stable and remunerative business plans in the future.

The case study selected for analysis in this chapter is the Egyptian comedy film Noom El Talat, subtitled into English and shown on Netflix. For the purpose of this study, a comparative linguistic analysis of the dialogue and the English subtitles has been utilised in order to identify all metaphorical expressions that would likely pose difficulties when subtitled into English. The chapter has addressed an under-researched area in AVT, namely subtitling Arabic metaphorical expressions into English. The study has also revealed that by drawing on image transfer the subtitlers have sometimes mistranslated the original metaphorical expressions by using the same vehicle in the English subtitles. The analysis shows that the subtitler has conducted transcultural appraisal when subtitling Arabic metaphorical expressions into English, supporting Pedersen's claim that subtitlers handle metaphors "differently, depending on whether they are transor monocultural, as indicated by their choice of translation solution".

This paper is going to concentrate on chracteristics of methods of translation, namely dubbing and subtitling. it is also going to show different preferences toward types of translation in European countries. The main part of the papre would be analysis of diferences in English- Polish translation of animated film 'The Jungle Book'.

This dissertation focuses on quantitative shifts in the Polish subtitles produced by the author for the documentary “That Vitamin Movie”. In the first part of the work a theoretical framework is depicted with a special focus on the translation of documentaries and its specificity, especially the main challenges that are posed by the genre. Prior to the subtitling process, a full unconstrained translation was performed, which was expected to play a potentially pivotal role in the calculation of the quantitative shifts that occurred in the translation ipso facto, and not because of the constraints imposed by the mode and the medium. The analysis performed it top-down, from text level to subtitle level. Several examples are scrutinized in order to show that the comparison of the subtitles with the source text cannot objectively and precisely account for the loss of content in the subtitles, especially if only the word count is considered. The numerical analysis was performed in Microsoft Excel where the data for the three text was juxtaposed. Then, using appropriate formulas, both character and word count were gauged, which allowed for the calculation of the quantitative shifts subtitle per subtitle. These were measured against the source text and against the target text. Such detailed analysis led to a rather a comprehensive, global and individual, image of the shifts which were labelled as: reduction, no shift and expansion. Thanks to the option of filtering (by number and by colour), various juxtapositions were performed and analysed.
Keywords: interlingual subtitles, documentary translation, quantitative shifts, target text, character count, word count, reduction rates

Summary of my work on integriti (integriti.wendyfox.de) during the Karl Steinbuch scholarship awarded by MFG Baden-Württemberg (http://stiftung.mfg.de/de): Development and analysis of integrated titles for the short documentary "Joining the Dots" by Pablo Romero-Fresco.

Downloading subtitles is often complicated as most video platforms do not allow to download the transcripts. With a newly web service http://ccSubs.com this is now easily possible. The user just has to provide the link to a video and the ccSubs service let’s it download all subtitles or closed captions in an easy way.

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.

Being able to propose a taxonomy of translation techniques has been a long-standing aspiration of translation theorists. By building on previous proposals, this paper presents the HispaTAV typology of translation techniques (ToT), a new list specifically designed for subtitling trainees. The aim of the proposal is to increase students' awareness of the variety of possible solutions to translate segments of the source text, and to promote creativity, a key factor in the development of translator competence. The proposal has been presented to current translation students, who have provided feedback in terms of its usability for learning purposes.

This study focuses on fashion translation in the framework of audiovisual translation. By analysing the particular case of the translation and subtitling into Spanish of the documentary entitled In Vogue: The Editor’s Eye, produced by the US cable channel HBO and available in its original version with Spanish subtitles in HBO Spain from September 2016. By means of a comparative analysis of the original version –in English– and the Spanish version, translatological problems which are specific to fashion translation will be proven, as we consider fashion translation to be a type of specialised translation.

With http://ccSubs.com - Subtitles & Closed Captions Downloader for Youtube it's very easy to download
subtitles for youtube videos. Subtitles in all supported languages can be downloaded in many different subtitle formats.
It is possible to get the closed captions provided by the video creator, or the automatically translated captions created with speech recognition technology by youtube.

Although there are a large number of books and articles on subtitling concentrating on different aspects of the endeavour, less attention seems to be devoted to the subtitling constraints and the possible strategies to be used in film and television series genres. For example, the subtitling of historical drama TV series, which have become very popular and reach a wide audience across the world, is a rarely studied endeavour. The following article is an effort to present a framework for the subtitlers of historical drama in consideration of the constraints of subtitling, as well as the features of the genre itself. Following an introduction about historical distance in translation, the linguistic, cultural and discoursal elements used in the production of the genre, the constraints of subtitling are exemplified with a comparative analysis of a historical drama and its subtitles into English. Particular attention is devoted to the translation strategies used in rendering registers and temporal and geographical varieties of language and, the strategies used to convey military, imperial, religious culture and social stratification. In conclusion, the study hopes to suggest points of practical use for subtitlers, concerning the subtitling of, what is explained in the study as, pseudo historical distance in historical drama and formulating a subtitling metatext

The purpose of this paper is to describe the so-called fansubs, a different type of subtitling carried out by amateur translators. The first part of this study covers both the people and phases involved in the fansubbing process from beginning to end. The second section focuses on the legality and ethics of fansubs. The third part pays attention to the actual translation of fansubs and their unique features, such as the use of translator’s notes or special karaoke effects. The paper concludes with a reflection on the work done by fansubbers and the possibilities opened by this mainly Internet phenomenon.

This article revolves around fansubbing, a subtitling-based mediation phenomenon whose emergence and consolidation in recent years has gone hand in hand with the globalisation of Japanese animated cinema. The paper begins with an overview of (i) the origins and rationale for the popularity of anime in Japan and beyond; (ii) the first attempts to localise anime into other languages; and (iii) the contribution of fansubbing to the expansion of anime fandom worldwide. The article then proceeds to delve into the organisation of the fansubbing process and outline its most distinctive practices. The final section appraises the potential for propagation of fansubbing practices within a fast-changing cultural landscape, drawing on the theoretical models that media sociology has developed to account for similar developments in the audiovisual marketplace.

Although there are a large number of books and articles on subtitling concentrating on different aspects of the endeavour, less attention seems to be devoted to the subtitling constraints and the possible strategies to be used in film and television series genres. For example, the subtitling of historical drama TV series, which have become very popular and reach a wide audience across the world, is a rarely studied endeavour. The following article is an effort to present a framework for the subtitlers of historical drama in consideration of the constraints of subtitling, as well as the features of the genre itself. Following an introduction about historical distance in translation, the linguistic, cultural and discoursal elements used in the production of the genre, the constraints of subtitling are exemplified with a comparative analysis of a historical drama and its subtitles into English. Particular attention is devoted to the translation strategies used in rendering registers and temporal and geographical varieties of language and, the strategies used to convey military, imperial, religious culture and social stratification. In conclusion, the study hopes to suggest points of practical use for subtitlers, concerning the subtitling of, what is explained in the study as, pseudo historical distance in historical drama and formulating a subtitling metatext

An increasing number of studies in a foreign-language teaching field have reported the effects of using translation or audio-visual translation on foreign language learning. Subtitling has received a particular attention, of several ways of audio-visual translation, because it can offer more traditional translation tasks and help to raise learners’ awareness of cultural issues, while enhancing learners’ motivation. However, in South Korea, subtitling or audio-visual translation from a pedagogical perspective has been under-explored, while much research has been carried out with respect to linguistic or multimodal aspects of audio-visual translation, netizen translation including subtitling, and differences between subtitling and dubbing. Against this backdrop, by introducing a South Korean case, this study discusses the use of subtitling in four English language learning classrooms and investigates 106 university students’ feedback on their subtitling experience through the analyses of questionnaires, interviews, and course evaluation.

From the lucrative blockbusters distributed by Hollywood powerful studios to the brief videos assembled and circulated by ordinary people, contemporary screen culture is populated by a growing variety of audiovisual texts travelling across different languages and cultures. Audiovisual Translation: Theories, Methods, Issues provides a unique focus on the translation of these increasingly influential texts, including their producers and consumers, that now pervade all aspects of our lives. Through a range of examples drawn from different genres, this book moves beyond the linguistic concerns traditionally privileged within audiovisual translation, introducing students and researchers to the artistic, economic, social and political dimensions of this activity.

The book first traces the development and evolution of audiovisual translation, exploring how the homogenizing mediation practices imposed by the industry during the mass media era are being challenged by interventionist forms of translation in the era of the digital culture.

The evolving conceptual network that underpin this area of study, the key translation models driving the theorization of this activity and the most productive methodological approaches to the study of audiovisual translation are then surveyed, critiqued and illustrated in a systematic, easy-to-follow manner. Multimodal theory and self-mediation studies receive particular attention as the most influential theoretical frameworks that will drive audiovisual translation research in years to come. Students and early career scholars are provided with comprehensive guidance to design and undertake audiovisual translation research projects.

Each chapter features chapter summaries, introductory videos, authentic examples, break out boxes, reading suggestions and follow‐up questions for further study. A companion website provides readers with access to additional resources on each of the topics covered in this book.

Audiovisual Translation is the definitive guide to the research models and methodological approaches that are enabling and will continue to drive advances in this fast-developing area of study.

• The book can serve as a textbook for use at MA level but also constitutes a ‘first port‐of‐call’ reference on aspects of theoretical inquiry.
• The book explores new audiovisual translation genres and practices in contemporary networked societies, covering topics and issues not previously discussed in the audiovisual translation literature.
• The book includes a whole chapter offering methodological direction to readers conducting their own research at MA at doctoral level.
• The follow-up questions for discussion in all chapters provide abundant ideas for extended postgraduate essays, various types of dissertation, and (post)doctoral level research projects.

People all over the world, especially young viewers, rely on non-professional subtitles to access audiovisual content. This research investigates the reception of professional and non-professional subtitles among university students with different levels of proficiency in English. Three versions of subtitles were included: the professional DVD subtitles distributed in Spain and two non-professional subtitle versions: one Spanish and the other Latin-American.
An initial survey, which obtained 332 responses, was used to screen the population and test their level of English. For the second stage, which consisted of an eye-tracking experiment and an interview, 52 participants (26 with a low level of English and 26 with a high level of English) had their eyes tracked while they were watching three clips from a popular TV show. Each clip was shown with a different type of professional or non-professional subtitling and participants answered a comprehension questionnaire after each of them.
The findings show that the type of subtitles does not affect the distribution of attention, but the professional subtitles were received with shorter mean fixation durations. The participants’ performance with the professional and the Latin-American non-professional versions were similar and gave better scores than with the Iberian non-professional version.
The eye-tracking measurements show that the level of proficiency in English affects subtitle-reading behavior. The participants with low proficiency had a more standardized behavior and exhibited a high degree of reliance on the subtitles. The highly proficient participants’ behavior has more variation, with some participants depending on the subtitles as much as the other group and other participants with almost no attention to the subtitles. The level of proficiency in the source language and the participants’ perceived effort to read the subtitles were identified to have an effect on their enjoyment of the audiovisual content.
The results from this study show that, from the audience’s perspective, non-professional subtitles can provide results similar to professional subtitles. Additionally, the study shows that the level of proficiency in the source language affects the subtitle-reading behavior and that viewers might have some degree of individual control over subtitle reading.

The current paper aims to analyse the main features and the limitations of the online automatic subtitling platforms. Based on different applications such as: video-to-text transcription programs, machine translation programs, and text segmenters, automatic subtitling involves a complex workflow and is meant to enhance the productivity of the professional subtitler. There are very few studies about the online subtitling platforms, therefore, the analysis we carried on will provide comprehensive empirical data and will contribute to a better knowledge of these innovative systems.