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<str<strong>on</strong>g>Audiovisual</str<strong>on</strong>g> <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g><str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> <str<strong>on</strong>g>Transfer</str<strong>on</strong>g> <strong>on</strong> ScreenEdited byJorge Díaz Cintas and Gunilla Anderman


<str<strong>on</strong>g>Audiovisual</str<strong>on</strong>g> <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g>


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<str<strong>on</strong>g>Audiovisual</str<strong>on</strong>g> <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g><str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> <str<strong>on</strong>g>Transfer</str<strong>on</strong>g> <strong>on</strong> ScreenEdited byJorge Díaz CintasImperial College L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong>andGunilla Anderman


© Jorge Díaz Cintas and Gunilla Anderman 2009Chapters © their individual authors 2009All rights reserved. No reproducti<strong>on</strong>, copy or transmissi<strong>on</strong> of thispublicati<strong>on</strong> may be made without written permissi<strong>on</strong>.No porti<strong>on</strong> of this publicati<strong>on</strong> may be reproduced, copied or transmittedsave with written permissi<strong>on</strong> or in accordance with the provisi<strong>on</strong>s of theCopyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licencepermitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency,Saffr<strong>on</strong> House, 6-10 Kirby Street, L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong> EC1N 8TS.Any pers<strong>on</strong> who does any unauthorized act in relati<strong>on</strong> to this publicati<strong>on</strong>may be liable to criminal prosecuti<strong>on</strong> and civil claims for damages.The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors ofthis work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.First published 2009 byPALGRAVE MACMILLANPalgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited,registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke,Hampshire RG21 6XS.Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a divisi<strong>on</strong> of St Martin's Press LLC,175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companiesand has companies and representatives throughout the world.Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.ISBN-13: 978–0–230–01996–6 hardbackISBN-10: 0–230–01996–X hardbackThis book is printed <strong>on</strong> paper suitable for recycling and made from fullymanaged and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturingprocesses are expected to c<strong>on</strong>form to the envir<strong>on</strong>mental regulati<strong>on</strong>s of thecountry of origin.A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.Library of C<strong>on</strong>gress Cataloging-in-Publicati<strong>on</strong> Data<str<strong>on</strong>g>Audiovisual</str<strong>on</strong>g> translati<strong>on</strong> : language transfer <strong>on</strong> screen / edited byJorge Díaz Cintas and Gunilla Anderman.p. cm.Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 978–0–230–01996–6 (alk. paper)1. Dubbing of moti<strong>on</strong> pictures. 2. Moti<strong>on</strong> pictures – Titling. I. DíazCintas, Jorge II. Anderman, Gunilla M.TR886.7.A9285 2009778.535—dc22 200802993710 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 118 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09Printed and bound in Great Britain byCPI Ant<strong>on</strong>y Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne


Gunilla AndermanIn MemoriamIt was with great pers<strong>on</strong>al sadness that we learnt of the unexpected death ofProfessor Gunilla Anderman, <strong>on</strong> 21 April 2007. Gunilla had been ill forsome time but chose to keep her illness very private and c<strong>on</strong>tinued doingwhat she loved; writing about and teaching <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> Studies.Gunilla was co-founder of the University of Surrey’s Centre for <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g>Studies (CTS) and remained its Director for over 20 years. She nurtured theCTS from very small beginnings to create the internati<strong>on</strong>ally respected Centrethat we know today. As <strong>on</strong>e-time Chair of the ITI Educati<strong>on</strong> & TrainingCommittee, she was also very keen <strong>on</strong> actively fostering links between theprofessi<strong>on</strong> and academia. Gunilla herself was a distinguished translator ofdrama between Swedish and English, as well as an inspirati<strong>on</strong>al teacher andscholar of internati<strong>on</strong>al repute.We had been working together <strong>on</strong> this volume for some time and know howpleased Gunilla was to see the manuscript submitted to the publishers. Thisvolume is dedicated to her memory.Gunilla was a gifted communicator, full of natural charisma, with aw<strong>on</strong>derful warmth of character and generosity of spirit. She will beremembered with affecti<strong>on</strong> and respect by all who knew her.We all feel privileged to have worked with Gunilla and will miss her dearly.Jorge Díaz CintasGillian JamesMargaret Rogers


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C<strong>on</strong>tentsAcknowledgementsNotes <strong>on</strong> C<strong>on</strong>tributorsixx1 Introducti<strong>on</strong> 1Jorge Díaz Cintas and Gunilla AndermanPart I Subtitling and Surtitling2 Subtitling for the DVD Industry 21Panayota Georgakopoulou3 Subtitling Norms in Greece and Spain 36Stavroula Sokoli4 Amateur Subtitling <strong>on</strong> the Internet 49Łukasz Bogucki5 The Art and Craft of Opera Surtitling 58J<strong>on</strong>athan Burt<strong>on</strong>6 Challenges and Rewards of Libretto Adaptati<strong>on</strong> 71Lucile DesblachePart II Revoicing7 Dubbing versus Subtitling: Old Battleground Revisited 85Jan-Emil Tveit8 The Percepti<strong>on</strong> of Dubbing by Italian Audiences 97Rachele Ant<strong>on</strong>ini and Delia Chiaro9 <str<strong>on</strong>g>Transfer</str<strong>on</strong>g> Norms for Film Adaptati<strong>on</strong>s in theSpanish–German C<strong>on</strong>text 115Susana Cañuelo Sarrión10 Voice-over in <str<strong>on</strong>g>Audiovisual</str<strong>on</strong>g> <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> 130Pilar Orerovii


viii C<strong>on</strong>tents11 Broadcasting Interpreting: A Comparis<strong>on</strong> betweenJapan and the UK 140Tomoyuki ShibaharaPart III Accessibility to the Media12 Interlingual Subtitling for the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing 151Josélia Neves13 Audio Descripti<strong>on</strong> in the Theatre and the VisualArts: Images into Words 170Andrew Holland14 Usability and Website Localisati<strong>on</strong> 186Mario De Bortoli and Jesús Maroto Ortiz-SotomayorPart IV Educati<strong>on</strong> and Training15 Teaching Screen <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g>: The Role of Pragmaticsin Subtitling 197Erik Skuggevik16 Pedagogical Tools for the Training of Subtitlers 214Christopher Taylor17 Teaching Subtitling in a Virtual Envir<strong>on</strong>ment 229Francesca Bartrina18 Subtitling: <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> Learners’ Needs vs. <str<strong>on</strong>g>Audiovisual</str<strong>on</strong>g>Market Needs 240Annamaria CaimiIndex 252


AcknowledgementsThe appearance of this volume owes much to the hard work and patienceof many people. First of all we would like to thank the c<strong>on</strong>tributors forwaiting patiently while we co-ordinated and edited the many essays <strong>on</strong>different aspects of audiovisual translati<strong>on</strong> from all over the world. Ourthanks also go to Jill Lake and Palgrave Macmillan for being supportivefrom incepti<strong>on</strong> through to producti<strong>on</strong>. We are also very happy toacknowledge our debt to Gillian James who has worked with us withdiligence and attentiveness at all stages <strong>on</strong> the manuscript and itspreparati<strong>on</strong>.GUNILLA ANDERMANUniversity of SurreyJORGE DÍAZ CINTASImperial College L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong>ix


Notes <strong>on</strong> C<strong>on</strong>tributorsGunilla Anderman was Professor of <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> Studies at the Centrefor <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> Studies, University of Surrey. She lectured <strong>on</strong> theundergraduate and postgraduate programmes of translati<strong>on</strong> includingthe MA in <str<strong>on</strong>g>Audiovisual</str<strong>on</strong>g> <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g>. A professi<strong>on</strong>al translator of dramawith translati<strong>on</strong>s of the plays staged in the UK, USA and South Africa,she was the author of Europe <strong>on</strong> Stage: <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> and Theatre (2005).Rachele Ant<strong>on</strong>ini is a researcher at the University of Bologna, Italy,where she is c<strong>on</strong>cerned with the percepti<strong>on</strong> of dubbing and subtitledhumour, the teaching of spoken language mediati<strong>on</strong>, and childlanguage. She has been working as a freelance interpreter, translatorand subtitler for the past ten years.Francesca Bartrina has a PhD in Literary Theory and ComparativeLiterature and is a lecturer in <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> Studies at the University of Vic,Spain. Publicati<strong>on</strong>s include Caterina Albert/Víctor Català. La voluptuositatde l’escriptura (2001), Violència de gènere (2002, editor) and articles andchapters <strong>on</strong> <str<strong>on</strong>g>Audiovisual</str<strong>on</strong>g> <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g>, <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> Theory and GenderStudies. She is series editor for the book series Capsa de Pandora fromEumo Editoral.Łukasz Bogucki is Associate Professor and Head of <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> Studiesin the Department of English <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> of Łódź University. He obtainedhis doctorate in 1997 and published A Relevance Framework for C<strong>on</strong>straints<strong>on</strong> Cinema Subtitling in 2004. Łukasz teaches interpreting, translati<strong>on</strong>and supervises MA theses in both fields. He is also the Polish editor ofThe Journal of Specialised <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g>.J<strong>on</strong>athan Burt<strong>on</strong> is a surtitler at the Royal Opera House, CoventGarden, in L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong>, UK. He has written English surtitles for over 90operas, and provides subtitles for operas <strong>on</strong> DVD and the BBC’s CardiffSinger of the World competiti<strong>on</strong>. He has taught Twentieth-centuryMusic History, gives lectures <strong>on</strong> musical and operatic topics, and writesprogramme notes for operas and c<strong>on</strong>certs. He studied Music atCambridge and Birmingham Universities.Annamaria Caimi is Associate Professor of English <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> andLinguistics at Pavia University, Italy. Her research interests include ESPx


Notes <strong>on</strong> C<strong>on</strong>tributors xiteaching methodology, text linguistics, pragmatics, corpus linguisticsand subtitling. Her present research is c<strong>on</strong>cerned with screentranslati<strong>on</strong> and different forms of subtitling in language learning.She is the editor of Cinema: Paradiso delle Lingue. I Sottotitolinell’Apprendimento Linguistico (2002).Susana Cañuelo Sarrión is completing her doctoral work <strong>on</strong>intercultural transfers between Spain and Germany through literatureand film translati<strong>on</strong>. Thanks to a scholarship from DAAD, she has beeninvolved in research in Leipzig, Germany since 2002. She is also workingas a freelance translator and university teacher. Publicati<strong>on</strong>sinclude: Historia universal de la literatura (2002) and translati<strong>on</strong>s ofElfriede Jelineks novels Las amantes (2004) and Obsesión (2005).Delia Chiaro is Professor of English Linguistics at the University ofBologna’s Advanced School in Modern <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g>s for Interpreters andTranslators at Forlì, Italy. She is best known for her work as a scholar inhumour but she is also the author of numerous publicati<strong>on</strong>s <strong>on</strong> dubbingand subtitling as well as <strong>on</strong> translati<strong>on</strong> quality. She has lectured acrossEurope, in the USA and in Asia.Mario De Bortoli joined Euro RSCG 4D in 2000 and has been involvedin the localisati<strong>on</strong> of internati<strong>on</strong>al <strong>on</strong>line and offline cross-culturalcampaigns for clients in a large number of industries. In 1998 he leftVenice for L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong> with a BA in Simultaneous Interpreting and apostgraduate degree in Corporate Communicati<strong>on</strong>. He is also involvedin the organisati<strong>on</strong> of the annual Best Global Website Award, promotingexcellence in localisati<strong>on</strong>.Lucile Desblache is Reader in French and <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> at Roehampt<strong>on</strong>University, L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong>, UK. She holds two doctorates, from Paris VII andClerm<strong>on</strong>t-Ferrand. Her research interests span across translati<strong>on</strong> andcomparative literature. She is the editor of The Journal of Specialised<str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> and has worked as a c<strong>on</strong>sultant and translator for a range ofcompanies including British Rail. Her adaptati<strong>on</strong> of Albert Herring’slibretto into French was performed for Opéra de Chambre de France.Jorge Díaz Cintas is Senior Lecturer in <str<strong>on</strong>g>Audiovisual</str<strong>on</strong>g> <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> atImperial College L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong>. He is the author of several books and articles<strong>on</strong> subtitling and has recently published <str<strong>on</strong>g>Audiovisual</str<strong>on</strong>g> <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g>:Subtitling (2007), co-written with Aline Remael. Since 2002, he has beenthe president of the European Associati<strong>on</strong> for Studies in Screen<str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g>.


xii Notes <strong>on</strong> C<strong>on</strong>tributorsPanayota Georgakopoulou has a PhD in Subtitling from the Universityof Surrey, UK. She has set up subtitling modules and taught specialisedtranslati<strong>on</strong> courses at university level, while at the same time workingin the subtitling industry. She is now the Managing Director of theEuropean Capti<strong>on</strong>ing Institute, a subtitling company specialising inmulti-language subtitling for DVD.Andrew Holland trained as an audio describer in 1993 at the Nati<strong>on</strong>alTheatre, UK and has been part of a team of describers there ever since. In1998 he helped to set up VocalEyes as a professi<strong>on</strong>al service to make touringtheatre accessible to the blind and partially sighted. As current Headof Descripti<strong>on</strong>, he has also helped in the creati<strong>on</strong> of a visually-impairedtour <strong>on</strong> the British Museum ‘Compass’ website, and over the years, hastrained a large number of professi<strong>on</strong>al and volunteer describers. He hasalso had a number of his own plays produced.Jesús Maroto Ortiz-Sotomayor attended the universities of Granada,St. Petersburg, Washingt<strong>on</strong> and L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong>, where he studied <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g>,IT and e-Marketing. Currently he is working <strong>on</strong> a doctorate inInternati<strong>on</strong>al Digital Marketing at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili,Tarrag<strong>on</strong>a, Spain. He has worked for the translati<strong>on</strong> companies STAR,Li<strong>on</strong>bridge and SDL, as well as for the advertising agency Euro RSCG.He is a member of the IoL, TILP and the Intercultural Studies Group.Josélia Neves holds a PhD in Subtitling for the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing from Roehampt<strong>on</strong> University, UK. She teaches <str<strong>on</strong>g>Audiovisual</str<strong>on</strong>g><str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> at the Polytechnic Institute of Leiria and at the Universityof Coimbra, in Portugal. Her main interests lie in teaching AVT and indeveloping acti<strong>on</strong> research projects in the field of accessibility to themedia.Pilar Orero holds an MA in <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> by Universitat Autònoma deBarcel<strong>on</strong>a (UAB), Spain, and a PhD in <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> from UMIST, UK. Shelectures at UAB where she coordinates the Online Masters course in<str<strong>on</strong>g>Audiovisual</str<strong>on</strong>g> <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g>. She is the co-editor of The Translator’s Dialogue(1997) and the editor of Topics in <str<strong>on</strong>g>Audiovisual</str<strong>on</strong>g> <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> (2004). She isthe leader of the networks CEPACC and RIID-LLSS, c<strong>on</strong>sisting of 18Spanish universities devoted to media accessibility research and qualitytraining.Tomoyuki Shibahara obtained his MA in Interpreting and Translatingfrom the University of Bath, UK in 1999. He is a freelance interpreter,translator and lecturer, who, having worked as a broadcasting interpreterfor the BBC World TV in L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong>, is now a part-time lecturer at


Notes <strong>on</strong> C<strong>on</strong>tributors xiiiAoyamagakuin University and Dokkyo University in Tokyo. He alsoprovides broadcasting interpreting for NHK (Japan BroadcastingCorporati<strong>on</strong>) and translati<strong>on</strong> for Discovery Channel.Erik Skuggevik is a lecturer in <str<strong>on</strong>g>Audiovisual</str<strong>on</strong>g> <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> at the Universityof Surrey, UK and also teaches <strong>on</strong> the MA programme in InterculturalCommunicati<strong>on</strong>. He also lectures <strong>on</strong> the University of Westminster’sMA in <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g>. He has subtitled over 500 films and translated books,short stories and carto<strong>on</strong>s. Erik is working <strong>on</strong> his doctorate inIntercultural Theory and <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> at University College, L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong>.Stavroula Sokoli is a tutor in Spanish at the Hellenic Open University,Greece and is a professi<strong>on</strong>al subtitler. She holds a BA in English <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g>and Literature from the Aristotle University of Thessal<strong>on</strong>iki and an MAin the Theory of <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> from the Universitat Autònoma deBarcel<strong>on</strong>a. She is a member of Tradumàtica (<str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> and NewTechnologies).Christopher Taylor is Professor of English <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> and <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> atthe University of Trieste, Italy, where he is Head of the <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> Centre.He has written extensively <strong>on</strong> aspects of translati<strong>on</strong>, and in recent years,has c<strong>on</strong>centrated <strong>on</strong> the analysis of multimodal texts for translati<strong>on</strong>purposes and <strong>on</strong> the language of film (Tradurre il Cinema, 2000). He isalso the author of <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> to <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> (1998).Jan-Emil Tveit is Associate Professor at the Norwegian School ofEc<strong>on</strong>omics and Business Administrati<strong>on</strong> in Bergen. He was the firstDirector of <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> and Subtitling at TV2, Norway’s biggestcommercial televisi<strong>on</strong> company. Jan-Emil has lectured at New YorkUniversity and given presentati<strong>on</strong>s at c<strong>on</strong>ferences in Canada, USA,Spain and Britain. He has written several articles and publishedTranslating for Televisi<strong>on</strong>: A Handbook in Screen <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> (2005).


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1Introducti<strong>on</strong>Jorge Díaz Cintas and Gunilla AndermanThe Wealth and Scope of <str<strong>on</strong>g>Audiovisual</str<strong>on</strong>g> <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g>In the twenty-first century, the media is omnipresent: to inform,arguably sometimes to misinform, to sell, to entertain and to educate. Aquick perusal of traditi<strong>on</strong>al televisi<strong>on</strong> programmes or cinema guideswill testify to the growth and importance of the media and the need foraudiovisual translati<strong>on</strong> (AVT) in most countries. The reas<strong>on</strong>s are manifold:a larger number of televisi<strong>on</strong> channels at all levels, internati<strong>on</strong>al,nati<strong>on</strong>al, regi<strong>on</strong>al and local, means a sharp increase in the quantity andrange of programmes required to meet the needs of broadcastingschedules. With the steady decline of analogue technology, the arrivalof the digital era has also c<strong>on</strong>tributed to the diversificati<strong>on</strong> of offeringsprovided by televisi<strong>on</strong>. In a very short time, corporati<strong>on</strong>s such as theBBC and ITV in the UK have more than doubled their number of channelsand similar developments have also seen a record boom in newtelevisi<strong>on</strong> channels at European level with 277 new channels launchedin Europe since 2004 and in excess of 200 in 2005 (Hamilt<strong>on</strong> andStevens<strong>on</strong>, 2005). As for the cinema, the film industry seems to haveemerged from the lean years when the video appeared to pose a seriousthreat to its c<strong>on</strong>tinued existence, and now the number of cinema-goersagain seems healthy. The flourishing celebrati<strong>on</strong> of film festivals, withhundreds of them taking place in any given year in all corners of theglobe also testifies to this positive outlook. Add to this the advent of theDVD and the fact that the Internet is firmly established in our societyand the picture is virtually complete.There is also the theatre, the opera and other live events wheretranslati<strong>on</strong> may be required in the form of surtitles; and the rapid developmentswe are witnessing in the field of accessibility to the media for1


2 Jorge Díaz Cintas & Gunilla Andermanpeople with sensory impairments. Traditi<strong>on</strong>ally ignored in academicexchanges, subtitling for the deaf and hard-of-hearing (SDH) and audiodescripti<strong>on</strong> for the blind and the partially sighted (AD) are becomingpart of our daily audiovisual landscape and attracting the interest ofmany scholars and practiti<strong>on</strong>ers.Given the many ways in which viewers can access audiovisualmaterial – DVD, televisi<strong>on</strong>, cinema, Internet – it is difficult to quantifywith precisi<strong>on</strong> the percentage of foreign-language programmestranslated and screened in any given country. Statistics available tendto be c<strong>on</strong>cerned with the number of films exported and imported forcinema release <strong>on</strong>ly, forgetting crucially any other films or audiovisualprogrammes (sitcoms, documentaries, TV series, musical c<strong>on</strong>certs, carto<strong>on</strong>s,etc.) that are broadcast by private and public televisi<strong>on</strong> channelsand distributed <strong>on</strong> DVD and the Internet. Taken in isolati<strong>on</strong>, the sparsefigures available are likely to give a somewhat skewed overview of thereal situati<strong>on</strong>. At the expense of European producti<strong>on</strong>s, and accordingto Yvane (1995), an extremely high percentage of audiovisual programmesoriginate in the USA; 90% in Denmark, 90% in France, 90%in Germany, 94% in Greece, 75% in Ireland, 80% in Italy, 92% inLuxembourg, 90% in the Netherlands, 70% in Portugal, 95% in Spain,and 88% in the United Kingdom. Now a decade old, these figures arelikely today to be the same or slightly higher as much has happenedsince the mid-1990s, notably the exp<strong>on</strong>ential growth of televisi<strong>on</strong> stati<strong>on</strong>sat internati<strong>on</strong>al, nati<strong>on</strong>al, regi<strong>on</strong>al and local levels.There has been, however, a trend in the opposite directi<strong>on</strong>. New lowproducti<strong>on</strong> cost audiovisual genres have emerged that, emulating theformat of similar programmes designed in other countries and for otheraudiences, can be produced in the language of other communities withoutthe need for translati<strong>on</strong>. Examples abound and British reality televisi<strong>on</strong>programmes such as Big Brother; quizzes in the vein of Who Wantsto Be a Milli<strong>on</strong>aire and The Weakest Link, soap operas depicting the dailyroutines of next-door neighbours, talk shows and c<strong>on</strong>tests for ‘wannabes’have proved popular in most European countries and bey<strong>on</strong>d. In mostcases, the <strong>on</strong>ly translati<strong>on</strong> required is that of the name of the programme.However, these developments do not necessarily mean thatthe overall need for translati<strong>on</strong> is lower since, as already menti<strong>on</strong>edpreviously, there are many more televisi<strong>on</strong> channels broadcasting manymore hours. All these changes are mainly c<strong>on</strong>cerned with televisi<strong>on</strong>producti<strong>on</strong>s <strong>on</strong>ly and more studies in the transnati<strong>on</strong>al trading ofaudiovisual programmes at all levels are needed in order for an overallpicture to emerge of the real expansi<strong>on</strong> of the field.


Introducti<strong>on</strong> 3Nevertheless, despite the fact that the number of programmes producedin nati<strong>on</strong>al languages would seem to be <strong>on</strong> the increase, the situati<strong>on</strong> incountries where English is not the official language is such that a largevolume of audiovisual programmes still needs to be translated. While traditi<strong>on</strong>allyfeature films, televisi<strong>on</strong> series, carto<strong>on</strong>s, sitcoms, soap operasand documentaries have been ideal candidates for this intercultural journey,the current growth in the need to provide and supply more audiovisualmaterial for new channels has made broadcasters re-examine andbroaden the range of programmes suitable for interlingual transfer.Subjects ranging from cookery, travel, DIY, fashi<strong>on</strong>, interviews, gardeningand awards cerem<strong>on</strong>ies to political speeches, have started to find theirway, via translati<strong>on</strong>, to televisi<strong>on</strong> sets in the living rooms of other countries.To a large extent, these developments help to account for the so-calledrevoluti<strong>on</strong> experienced in the field of audiovisual translati<strong>on</strong> during thelast couple of decades (Díaz Cintas, 2003).The move from analogue to digital technology and the potentialafforded by the digitisati<strong>on</strong> of images has also opened up new avenues,radically changing the essence of the industry. Together with theubiquitous presence of the computer and the Internet, the arrival of theDVD can be hailed as <strong>on</strong>e of the most exciting and revoluti<strong>on</strong>ary developmentsin recent decades. In just a few years, the DVD has become thefavoured mode for distributi<strong>on</strong> and c<strong>on</strong>sumpti<strong>on</strong> of audiovisual programmes.Its increased memory capacity, when compared to the CD; itssuperior image definiti<strong>on</strong> compared to the traditi<strong>on</strong>al VHS tape; and itsgreater flexibility, allowing the viewer to watch the programme <strong>on</strong> theTV set, the computer screen or a portable DVD player, c<strong>on</strong>stitute someof the main features that make it a favourite with producers as well asdistributors and viewers. This has, in turn, resulted in new workingpractices, had an impact <strong>on</strong> the design of dedicated software programs,facilitated the work of scholars researching the field, and altered thec<strong>on</strong>sumer’s view of audiovisual products. The rate at which some ofthese changes in working practice are taking place is perhaps moststriking in the field of subtitling. In a relatively short period of time,the process of subtitling has g<strong>on</strong>e through a substantial transformati<strong>on</strong>;what a decade ago was comm<strong>on</strong> practice is now viewed as out ofdate. Changes are happening at all levels – technological, working routines,audience recepti<strong>on</strong>, emergence of new translati<strong>on</strong> modes andapproaches – all bringing in their wake advantages and disadvantagesthat are fully discussed in this volume.Also increasing in volume is the amount of translati<strong>on</strong> required inthe field of AVT. Films that in ‘dubbing countries’ have traditi<strong>on</strong>ally


4 Jorge Díaz Cintas & Gunilla Andermanbeen dubbed for both cinema and VHS releases as well as televisi<strong>on</strong>broadcasting are now also being subtitled for distributi<strong>on</strong> <strong>on</strong> DVD; andclassic movies that were <strong>on</strong>ly dubbed when first released are nowadaysalso available in subtitled versi<strong>on</strong>s <strong>on</strong> DVD. In additi<strong>on</strong>, the increasedmemory capacity of the DVD has made it possible to include morematerial also in need of translati<strong>on</strong>: known in the industry as ‘VAM’,value added material, producer’s edits, false takes, interviews and otherrelated b<strong>on</strong>us material often takes up more time and space than theactual film itself. TV series, sitcoms and carto<strong>on</strong>s that are normallydubbed when broadcast <strong>on</strong> televisi<strong>on</strong> also end up <strong>on</strong> DVDs with subtitles.The music industry, too, seems to be slowly moving away from theCD to the DVD in order to promote their live c<strong>on</strong>certs or video clipsthat tend to be subtitled. In additi<strong>on</strong>, individual films and otheraudiovisual programmes are now released in different formats such ascinema, televisi<strong>on</strong>, DVD, CD-ROM and Internet, which combined withthe increasing number of media companies operating in the field, hasresulted in many films and programmes being translated more than<strong>on</strong>ce to meet c<strong>on</strong>sumer demand.Since the early days of the cinema, in order to make these audiovisualprogrammes comprehensible to audiences unfamiliar with the languageof the original, different forms of language transfer <strong>on</strong> the screen havebeen required. In the main, there are two basic approaches to the translati<strong>on</strong>of the spoken language of the original programme: to retain it asspoken or to change it into written text. In the first instance the originaldialogue is replaced by a new soundtrack in the target language in aprocess generally known as revoicing. The replacement may be total,whereby we do not hear the original, as in lip sync dubbing and narrati<strong>on</strong>,or partial, when the original soundtrack can still be heard in thebackground, as in voice-over and interpreting. All these modes areavailable to the professi<strong>on</strong> and some of them are more suited to particularaudiovisual genres than others. Lip sync dubbing, for instance, ismainly used in the translati<strong>on</strong> of films and TV series and sitcoms,whereas narrati<strong>on</strong> and voice-over tend to be more used in the case ofdocumentaries, interviews and programmes <strong>on</strong> current affairs.When the decisi<strong>on</strong> has been taken to keep the original soundtrackand to switch from the spoken to the written mode, by adding text tothe screen, the technique is known as subtitling. Quicker and a lotcheaper than dubbing, it has more recently become the favoured translati<strong>on</strong>mode in the media world and comes hand in hand withglobalisati<strong>on</strong>. Despite the historically str<strong>on</strong>g polarisati<strong>on</strong> betweenadvocates and detractors of the two different approaches, nowadays it is


Introducti<strong>on</strong> 5generally accepted that different translati<strong>on</strong> approaches make theirown individual demands while remaining equally acceptable. Thechoice of <strong>on</strong>e method in preference to another will simply depend <strong>on</strong>factors such as habit and custom, financial c<strong>on</strong>straints, programmegenre, distributi<strong>on</strong> format and audience profile – to menti<strong>on</strong> just a few.In this volume the full range of approaches is discussed as applied to anumber of different languages.For several years full access to audiovisual media for minority socialgroups such as the deaf and the blind has been an issue. Recent developmentsand studies show that the needs of these groups are increasinglybeing catered for and this field of expertise now holds an establishedpositi<strong>on</strong> within audiovisual translati<strong>on</strong>. Accessibility is a new key c<strong>on</strong>cept;an umbrella term that encompasses all associated new modes oftranslati<strong>on</strong>.According to statistics (Neves, 2005: 79), between 1% and 5% of thepopulati<strong>on</strong> of any country, are deaf or hearing-impaired. The numberof people in these categories is growing as more people are living intoold age and they account for significant numbers <strong>on</strong> the c<strong>on</strong>tinents ofEurope and North America. According to Hay (1994: 55), around 30% ofall Americans over 65 years of age have some degree of hearing loss. Asfor Europe, figures presented at the 2003 internati<strong>on</strong>al c<strong>on</strong>ferenceAccessibility for All projected that by 2015 there will be over 90 milli<strong>on</strong>adults affected by a hearing loss (Neves, 2005: 79).These figures clearly call for a more c<strong>on</strong>sistent and systematic approachto making it possible for viewers with sensory impairment to gain accessto televisi<strong>on</strong> and other media. Since the mid 1970s, subtitling for thedeaf and hard-of-hearing (SDH), also known as (closed) capti<strong>on</strong>ing inAmerican English, has formed part of the audiovisual landscape inorder to ensure greater democratic access to audiovisual programming.On televisi<strong>on</strong>, these subtitles are broadcast by means of an independentsignal, activated <strong>on</strong>ly by those interested, by accessing pages 888 or 777of teletext in most European countries. In North America they are transmitted<strong>on</strong> what is known as line 21. The oral c<strong>on</strong>tent of the actors’ dialogueis c<strong>on</strong>verted into written speech, which is presented in subtitles ofup to three, or occasi<strong>on</strong>ally four, lines. They generally change colour <strong>on</strong>televisi<strong>on</strong> depending <strong>on</strong> the pers<strong>on</strong> who is talking or the emphasis givento certain words within the same subtitle. Besides the dialogue, they alsoincorporate all paralinguistic informati<strong>on</strong> that c<strong>on</strong>tributes to the developmentof the plot or to the creati<strong>on</strong> of atmosphere, which a deaf pers<strong>on</strong>cannot access from the soundtrack, e.g. a teleph<strong>on</strong>e ringing, laughter,applause, a knock <strong>on</strong> the door, and the like.


6 Jorge Díaz Cintas & Gunilla AndermanVisual impairment is <strong>on</strong>e of the most age-related of disabilities andthe vast majority of blind and partially sighted people are elderly.According to the European Blind Uni<strong>on</strong> (EBU, <strong>on</strong>line) 7.4 milli<strong>on</strong> ofEuropeans – close to 2% of the total populati<strong>on</strong> – have a significantvisual disability. As demographic trends show that the number of elderlypeople is <strong>on</strong> the increase, <strong>on</strong>e can <strong>on</strong>ly expect that the percentageof people with visual impairment will also increase in the near future.In the field of accessibility, a more recent development has been audiodescripti<strong>on</strong> for the blind and the partially sighted (AD), a service whichis rapidly gaining momentum and visibility. It can be defined as anadditi<strong>on</strong>al narrati<strong>on</strong> that fits in the silences between dialogue anddescribes acti<strong>on</strong>, body language, facial expressi<strong>on</strong>s and anything thatwill help people with visual impairment follow what is happening <strong>on</strong>screen or <strong>on</strong> stage. Audio describing televisi<strong>on</strong> programmes, films,plays, sporting events and even an exhibiti<strong>on</strong> of paintings is now technicallyrelatively easy, especially with digital technology (Marriott andVale, 2002).In the field of audio descripti<strong>on</strong>, as well as in SDH, English-speakingcountries such as the UK, the USA, Canada and Australia seem to beleading the rest of the world. However, coinciding with the EuropeanYear of People with Disabilities in 2003 (www.eypd2003.org) variousacti<strong>on</strong>s were taken by the EU at internati<strong>on</strong>al level and by individualEuropean countries at nati<strong>on</strong>al level, to raise awareness and to fosterchanges aimed at improving the lives of people with disabilities. Takingadvantage of the situati<strong>on</strong>, a number of countries in the EuropeanUni<strong>on</strong> took the opportunity to launch initiatives leading to wideningaccessibility to the audiovisual media for all their citizens. In additi<strong>on</strong>to increased general awareness, efforts already undertaken have alsoresulted in acti<strong>on</strong>s such as the passing of legislati<strong>on</strong> making it compulsoryto broadcast a minimum number of hours with SDH and AD, 1 andthe creati<strong>on</strong> of nati<strong>on</strong>al bodies resp<strong>on</strong>sible for m<strong>on</strong>itoring developmentsin the field. 2 A welcome step forward towards further increase inaccessibility is the arrival of digital televisi<strong>on</strong>, a development that isbound to change prevailing noti<strong>on</strong>s and attitudes.Although televisi<strong>on</strong> is likely to remain a favoured medium for subtitlingfor the deaf and hard-of-hearing and for audio descripti<strong>on</strong> for the blindand partially sighted, the future of these two services goes bey<strong>on</strong>d thescope of televisi<strong>on</strong>. SDH and AD are already gaining major importance inthe DVD market and are also in regular use in the cinema. Intralingualsubtitling is being complemented by interlingual subtitling for the deafand hard-of-hearing and new modes of translati<strong>on</strong> are emerging, such as


Introducti<strong>on</strong> 7audio subtitling, in order to make subtitled programmes accessible to theblind in countries where a large percentage of the programmes are commercialisedin a foreign language with subtitles.This flourish of activities in the field of AVT at industrial level hashad a positive knock-<strong>on</strong> effect in the university world where AVT is nowemerging as a thriving academic discipline for teaching and research.For many years, the skills of the trade were acquired in the workplace,away from educati<strong>on</strong>al establishments. Despite the importance of therole of AVT in our daily lives, <strong>on</strong> the whole universities have been slowin curriculum design and the development of new courses. This situati<strong>on</strong>is, however, rapidly changing and there are now many differentspecialist courses in AVT <strong>on</strong> offer at universities worldwide.<str<strong>on</strong>g>Audiovisual</str<strong>on</strong>g> translati<strong>on</strong> also has an important role to play in theclassroom. Material and exercises may be drawn from the area of AVTand used in the process of sec<strong>on</strong>d language acquisiti<strong>on</strong>. Subtitlingcan be a powerful training and teaching tool in the foreign languagelearning class. Hearing the original language while reading the dialoguein c<strong>on</strong>text provides a stimulating envir<strong>on</strong>ment for students toc<strong>on</strong>solidate what they are learning, enrich their vocabulary at thesame time as they become familiar with and absorb the culture of aforeign language in an authentic setting. However, subtitles are also apotent force in language acquisiti<strong>on</strong> outside the classroom. InSingapore it is a significant factor in the life of young Singaporeanswho have been brought up speaking English but in the presence ofolder generati<strong>on</strong>s find themselves watching programmes in Mandarin.Subtitled in English, Chinese drama <strong>on</strong> televisi<strong>on</strong> is of great help infacilitating the understanding of the Mandarin they hear; the importanceof the subtitles to the language acquisiti<strong>on</strong> process is c<strong>on</strong>siderable.And in some parts of Europe subtitled programmes serve as themost important means of acquiring mastery of English. As reportedin Gottlieb (2004: 96), when asked why they wanted to learn how toread, 72 out of 75 first-grade Danish students declared that theywanted to be able to read the subtitles <strong>on</strong> televisi<strong>on</strong>; the ability toread books no l<strong>on</strong>ger appeared to be a major incentive. For the citizensof a nati<strong>on</strong> who reportedly listen to English <strong>on</strong> televisi<strong>on</strong> andvideo for an average of <strong>on</strong>e hour per day, this would hardly come as asurprise (Gottlieb, 1994: 153–7 and Gottlieb, 1997: 151–3). Readingsubtitles in the foreign language while watching a foreign languageprogramme also appears to be beneficial to vocabulary acquisiti<strong>on</strong>, asshown by Belgian studies (Van de Poel and d’Ydewalle, 2001). Furtheradvantageous uses of subtitles include the learning of minority


8 Jorge Díaz Cintas & Gunilla Andermanlanguages through subtitled film sequences (Baldry, 2001 reported inGottlieb, 2004: 88).More recently, audiovisual translati<strong>on</strong> has evolved to the point where,as a discipline, it is now <strong>on</strong>e of the most vibrant and vigorous fieldswithin <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> Studies. With the celebrati<strong>on</strong> of several internati<strong>on</strong>alspecialised c<strong>on</strong>ferences and the publicati<strong>on</strong> of edited volumes andm<strong>on</strong>ographs <strong>on</strong> topics in AVT, research in the field has also gained visibilityin a comparatively short period of time.Although at present, audiovisual translati<strong>on</strong> is experiencing anunprecedented boom of interest and activity at all levels, a number ofproblematic issues remain to be addressed. The changes taking place inthe professi<strong>on</strong> are fast, not always allowing sufficient time for fulladjustment. Old methods tend to compete with new techniques, andc<strong>on</strong>sistency is not always maintained. Subtitle styles tend to vary fromcountry to country, even from company to company. In recent years,calls for a ‘Code of Best Practice in <str<strong>on</strong>g>Audiovisual</str<strong>on</strong>g> <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g>’ have beenrecurrent, but would such a document be workable? Is it necessary oreven feasible for all aspects to be harm<strong>on</strong>ised? If so, should it be d<strong>on</strong>e atlocal, nati<strong>on</strong>al or internati<strong>on</strong>al level?In the audiovisual field, the global dominance of the English languagein many spheres becomes even more of an issue. Producti<strong>on</strong> anddistributi<strong>on</strong> companies, run in most cases with the help of Americancapital, have US interests at their heart. Hollywood, the powerhouse ofthe western film industry, mirrors and exports cultural patterns thathave an immediate impact <strong>on</strong> other languages and cultures. New developmentsin the industry mean that in additi<strong>on</strong> to Los Angeles, L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong>is also becoming a world nerve centre for AVT. Given this situati<strong>on</strong>, canwe really talk of an ‘exchange’ of cultural products? Can the term ‘intercultural’be used to describe this process? Or are we simply faced with a<strong>on</strong>e-dimensi<strong>on</strong>al flow of informati<strong>on</strong> and ideas from the metropolis tothe ‘territories’, as countries are known in the professi<strong>on</strong>’s jarg<strong>on</strong>?Structure of the volume<str<strong>on</strong>g>Audiovisual</str<strong>on</strong>g> <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g>: <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> <str<strong>on</strong>g>Transfer</str<strong>on</strong>g> <strong>on</strong> Screen attempts to provideanswers to some of these questi<strong>on</strong>s. Others, however, will remain opento debate but in an expanding field rapidly generating increasing interestat professi<strong>on</strong>al, educati<strong>on</strong>al and research levels.The seventeen c<strong>on</strong>tributi<strong>on</strong>s to the subject c<strong>on</strong>tained in this volumeoffer a detailed overview of most of the translati<strong>on</strong> modes used in theaudiovisual media. Part I of the book deals with Subtitling and


Introducti<strong>on</strong> 9Surtitling, two techniques that respect the original soundtrack and addthe translati<strong>on</strong> in the form of short written texts. In Subtitling for theDVD Industry, Panayota Georgakopoulou takes a close look at the recentgrowth in the DVD market and the rise of subtitling as a rapidly expandinginternati<strong>on</strong>al industry. Georgakopoulou discusses some of the c<strong>on</strong>straints(and possibilities) inherent in subtitling in general, thenproceeds to examine how these are dealt with in the DVD subtitlingindustry. The focus is <strong>on</strong> subtitling from English into other languages,and all examples used come from the database of the EuropeanCapti<strong>on</strong>ing Institute (ECI), which is a UK subtitling company and <strong>on</strong>eof the world leaders in multilingual DVD subtitling. Georgakopoulou’sc<strong>on</strong>tributi<strong>on</strong> c<strong>on</strong>cludes by analysing the impact that centralisati<strong>on</strong> ishaving <strong>on</strong> the professi<strong>on</strong> and discussing the potential offered by the‘template’, a file c<strong>on</strong>taining the master (sub)titles in English and used asthe basis for translati<strong>on</strong> into all languages required in a given project.In emphasising the value of norms as a heuristic tool in the field of<str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> Studies and their major c<strong>on</strong>tributi<strong>on</strong> to the evoluti<strong>on</strong> ofDescriptive <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> Studies, Stavroula Sokoli proposes bringing inan evaluative element. In Subtitling Norms in Greece and Spain sheexplains that the mere descripti<strong>on</strong> of translati<strong>on</strong> behaviour for its ownsake may not provide useful results, whereas the study of norms isbound to give insight to the intersubjective sense of what is ‘proper’,‘correct’, or ‘appropriate’. Since norms are not directly observable, a possibleapproach to them is through their manifestati<strong>on</strong>s, whether textualor extra-textual. The focus in her c<strong>on</strong>tributi<strong>on</strong> is <strong>on</strong> textual sources ofnorms, that is, regularities in the choices made by subtitlers, as manifestedin the translated films themselves. The texts under study are thesubtitled versi<strong>on</strong>s in Spanish and Greek of the films The English Patient(Anth<strong>on</strong>y Minghella, 1996) and Notting Hill (Roger Michell, 1999). Giventhe paper’s qualitative and descriptive nature, rather than laws or absolutetruths, possible explanati<strong>on</strong>s are proposed and more hypothesesare generated, which in turn become the basis for future research.Sokoli’s proposals can be used not <strong>on</strong>ly to explain and predict the waysubtitles are d<strong>on</strong>e, but also to train future subtitlers.Łukasz Bogucki’s c<strong>on</strong>tributi<strong>on</strong>, Amateur Subtitling <strong>on</strong> the Internet, looksat Polish subtitles of the film The Fellowship of the Ring in order to assessthe criteria for quality assessment and their applicati<strong>on</strong> to audiovisualtranslati<strong>on</strong>. As a voice-over country, Poland has had little subtitlingtraditi<strong>on</strong> to date, and <strong>on</strong>ly feature films are subtitled for their cinemarelease. However, recently a new kind of subtitling has developed.With the help of freeware computer programs and the Internet, amateur


10 Jorge Díaz Cintas & Gunilla Andermansubtitling is undertaken by n<strong>on</strong>-professi<strong>on</strong>als and governed bydramatically different c<strong>on</strong>straints than professi<strong>on</strong>al subtitling. Often,the Source Text (ST) is digitised from a low-quality recording, and theend result – that is the subtitles in the Target <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> (TL) – is c<strong>on</strong>diti<strong>on</strong>edby how much the subtitle producer has heard and understoodfrom the original dialogue. As amply illustrated in Bogucki’s c<strong>on</strong>tributi<strong>on</strong>,this approach is likely to result in a multitude of mistakes andmisinterpretati<strong>on</strong>s.While subtitles are translated texts usually displayed below the image,as <strong>on</strong> a cinema or televisi<strong>on</strong> screen, surtitles are most often displayedabove the stage, in live opera and theatre performances. In his c<strong>on</strong>tributi<strong>on</strong>entitled The Art and Craft of Opera Surtitling, J<strong>on</strong>athan Burt<strong>on</strong> highlightsthe fact that subtitling and surtitling differ substantially in theirrequirements and techniques, and proceeds to discuss surtitling as themost comm<strong>on</strong> approach to the translati<strong>on</strong> of operatic texts. He offers adetailed analysis of the process, without forgetting the problems andpitfalls facing translators in this specialised field.Lucile Desblache’s c<strong>on</strong>tributi<strong>on</strong>, Challenges and Rewards of LibrettoAdaptati<strong>on</strong>, also has music at its core. Translating for the stage meansbeing torn between remaining faithful to the author’s intenti<strong>on</strong>s andproviding a versi<strong>on</strong> of the text which takes into account a range ofother factors. The original message, with its cultural references andc<strong>on</strong>text, must be communicated to the audience, but the transfer ofn<strong>on</strong>-semantic aspects of the ST, as well as some extra-textual aspects, isof vital importance to successful adaptati<strong>on</strong>. These factors must allbe taken into c<strong>on</strong>siderati<strong>on</strong> in libretto adaptati<strong>on</strong>, but in additi<strong>on</strong>, thespecial nature of opera imposes musical restricti<strong>on</strong>s <strong>on</strong> the text, as themusic cannot be changed and dictates, to a certain degree, which wordscan be used. Surtitling has been in existence for over two decades andhas now been adopted by most opera houses. Yet, in certain cases, thedecisi<strong>on</strong> is still made to adapt libretti for live performances. Drawingfrom her own experience of writing the French versi<strong>on</strong> of Albert Herring,a comic chamber opera by Benjamin Britten, the author discusses theproblems encountered in translati<strong>on</strong> work of this kind. Three orders ofdifficulty are identified relating to cultural equivalence, humour andrhyming.Part II, Revoicing, is centred <strong>on</strong> the technique of replacing thesoundtrack of the original audiovisual programme. Seen by many asthe opposing strategy to subtitling, the arguments in favour or againsteach of these two approaches have been comm<strong>on</strong>ly debated in theexisting literature. In Dubbing versus Subtitling: Old Battleground Revisited,


Introducti<strong>on</strong> 11Jan-Emil Tveit attempts to assess the pros and c<strong>on</strong>s of dubbing andsubtitling, and to determine if either of the two is the ‘better’ opti<strong>on</strong>.Included am<strong>on</strong>g the disadvantages of subtitling are loss of informati<strong>on</strong>due to the transiti<strong>on</strong> from spoken to written mode as well as thefrequently occurring failure to c<strong>on</strong>vey the dialectal and sociolectalfeatures of spoken language. In additi<strong>on</strong>, problems resulting fromvisual, spatial and decoding c<strong>on</strong>straints may cause further difficultiesif subtitling is the chosen method. However, c<strong>on</strong>sidering the loss ofauthenticity and trans-nati<strong>on</strong>al voice qualities in dubbing, not to menti<strong>on</strong>the fact that it is more costly and time-c<strong>on</strong>suming, the authorc<strong>on</strong>cludes that, <strong>on</strong> the whole, the subtitling approach to audiovisualtranslati<strong>on</strong> is to be preferred to dubbing.As menti<strong>on</strong>ed above, revoicing can be carried out in two differentways: by completely erasing the voices of the source programme(dubbing) or by juxtaposing a new soundtrack to the original <strong>on</strong>e(voice-over, interpreting, audio descripti<strong>on</strong>). As is well known, Italy iscomm<strong>on</strong>ly labelled a ‘dubbing country’ which, together with Austria,France, Germany and Spain, has adopted a traditi<strong>on</strong> of dubbing ratherthan subtitling, the preferred mode of audiovisual translati<strong>on</strong> in Greece,Portugal, Scandinavia and the UK. However, the situati<strong>on</strong> in dubbingcountries is rapidly changing as a choice between dubbing andsubtitling is increasingly becoming available. In their c<strong>on</strong>tributi<strong>on</strong>c<strong>on</strong>cerned with the level of audience tolerance to dubbing in Italy, ThePercepti<strong>on</strong> of Dubbing by Italian Audiences, Rachele Ant<strong>on</strong>ini and DeliaChiaro discuss the results of a large-scale research project which set outto explore and assess the quality of dubbed televisi<strong>on</strong> programmes.Based <strong>on</strong> a corpus of over three hundred hours of dubbed televisi<strong>on</strong>programmes and by means of web technology, over five thousandItalian viewers were tested <strong>on</strong> their percepti<strong>on</strong> of dubbed Italian. Afterc<strong>on</strong>ducting an ANOVA multivariate analysis of the raw data, an indexwas created, accounting for the percepti<strong>on</strong> of linguistic naturalness indubbed Italian by viewers. After analysing the resp<strong>on</strong>ses of a robustsample of randomly selected viewers, the results seem to point towardsa certain tolerance of what viewers recognise as being unnatural, anacceptance of linguistic features adopted <strong>on</strong> screen which are virtuallyn<strong>on</strong>-existent both in autochth<strong>on</strong>ous Italian ficti<strong>on</strong>al programmes andin established electr<strong>on</strong>ic corpora of naturally occurring Italian.The double transfer of a literary work to the screen and of the resultingfilm into a different culture, generates a series of highly interestingand mutually influential relati<strong>on</strong>ships between two cultures, involvingthree different types of transfer, namely: film adaptati<strong>on</strong>, literary


12 Jorge Díaz Cintas & Gunilla Andermantranslati<strong>on</strong> and audiovisual translati<strong>on</strong>. The aim of Susana CañueloSarrión’s c<strong>on</strong>tributi<strong>on</strong>, <str<strong>on</strong>g>Transfer</str<strong>on</strong>g> Norms for Film Adaptati<strong>on</strong>s in the Spanish–German C<strong>on</strong>text, is two-fold. First she identifies the works from a corpusof Spanish films based <strong>on</strong> literary works and produced between 1975and 2000 which have reached the German market and sets out to analysethem from a Polysystem Theory perspective, taking into accountthe characteristics of German cinematography. Sec<strong>on</strong>d, a number oftransfer norms for film adaptati<strong>on</strong>s is proposed <strong>on</strong> the basis of recurringpatterns detected in adaptati<strong>on</strong>s of literary works in Spain and theirsubsequent distributi<strong>on</strong> and recepti<strong>on</strong> in Germany. In an audiovisualmarket dominated by English-spoken producti<strong>on</strong>s, Cañuelo Sarrión’sc<strong>on</strong>tributi<strong>on</strong> has the virtue of widening the scope of languages involvedto German and Spanish.In Voice-over in <str<strong>on</strong>g>Audiovisual</str<strong>on</strong>g> <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g>, Pilar Orero examines the manydefiniti<strong>on</strong>s and descripti<strong>on</strong>s from the field of <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> Studies for theaudiovisual translati<strong>on</strong> mode known as voice-over, in which twosoundtracks in two different languages are broadcast at the same time.She then describes the technique of translati<strong>on</strong> for voice-over takinginto c<strong>on</strong>siderati<strong>on</strong> a distincti<strong>on</strong> which, suggested by Luyken et al. (1991),has never been properly developed, namely the difference in the processdepending <strong>on</strong> whether the translati<strong>on</strong> takes place during the producti<strong>on</strong>or during the post-producti<strong>on</strong> phases.As an audiovisual translati<strong>on</strong> mode, interpreting has received verylittle attenti<strong>on</strong> by academics or professi<strong>on</strong>als in the past. In BroadcastingInterpreting: A Comparis<strong>on</strong> between Japan and the UK, Tomoyuki Shibaharaaddresses the questi<strong>on</strong> of c<strong>on</strong>formity to different house styles. Thedefiniti<strong>on</strong> of the term ‘broadcasting interpreter’ and its history arediscussed as are the many differences in broadcasting style betweenJapan and the UK. For example, broadcasting interpreting at the BBCJapanese Unit emphasises the quality of Japanese, while accuracy is thetop priority at Japan Broadcasting Corporati<strong>on</strong> (NHK). However, bothbroadcasting organisati<strong>on</strong>s require their interpreters to edit theinformati<strong>on</strong>. Based <strong>on</strong> his own experience, the author describes theinterpreting style, policy and quality c<strong>on</strong>trol systems of the above twoorganisati<strong>on</strong>s. In additi<strong>on</strong>, he provides a comparis<strong>on</strong> of the employmentstyle of both the BBC and NHK as well as an analysis of the prosand c<strong>on</strong>s of working as a full-time member of staff and as a freelanceinterpreter.Part III of the volume c<strong>on</strong>tains c<strong>on</strong>tributi<strong>on</strong>s discussing Accessibilityto the Media. In countries such as the UK and the USA, subtitling as ac<strong>on</strong>cept is usually understood as intralingual (English into English)


Introducti<strong>on</strong> 13subtitling for the deaf and hard-of-hearing (SDH). However, inPortugal, Greece and the Scandinavian countries, for instance, it willbe interlingual (English into Portuguese, Greek or any of theScandinavian languages) open subtitling that comes to mind. In thesecountries, interlingual subtitling for the deaf and hard-of-hearing israrely seen as a specific kind of subtitling. Even though some DVDsnow carry the opti<strong>on</strong> of interlingual SDH, this is still not comm<strong>on</strong>practice, perhaps under the assumpti<strong>on</strong> that standard interlingualsubtitles offer enough informati<strong>on</strong> for all, regardless of the fact thatsome viewers might have a hearing impairment. As discussed byJosélia Neves in Interlingual Subtitling for the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearingthis particular group of viewers has special needs when it comes togaining true access to audiovisual material. In some respects, standardinterlingual subtitles offer more informati<strong>on</strong> than they are able toabsorb; in others, an extra input needs to be added for the full semioticmessage to be c<strong>on</strong>veyed adequately. Looking into the future andtaking advantage of televisi<strong>on</strong> turning digital and interactive, Nevesadvocates the producti<strong>on</strong> of multiple soluti<strong>on</strong>s (dubbing, interlingualsubtitles, intralingual and interlingual SDH, adapted subtitling) foreach audiovisual programme so that they can best suit the specificneeds of different audiences.Audio descripti<strong>on</strong> is the other main technique aimed at wideningaccessibility to the media for viewers with sensory disabilities. After givinga brief introducti<strong>on</strong> to what audio descripti<strong>on</strong> is, Andrew Holland,in Audio Descripti<strong>on</strong> in the Theatre and the Visual Arts: Images into Words,offers an informative account of the role of audio describers, professi<strong>on</strong>alswho act as the eyes of the visually impaired and transfer what theysee into words. They express and bring alive, verbally, what they see atthe same time as the acti<strong>on</strong> takes place, <strong>on</strong> stage or <strong>on</strong> the screen.Focusing <strong>on</strong> audio descripti<strong>on</strong> for the theatre, Holland equates theimportance of the audio describer’s sensitivity with the task of relatingthe plot and acti<strong>on</strong> of a theatre or screen performance. Providing anaudience with the subtext or the unspoken message of a producti<strong>on</strong> isoften as important as c<strong>on</strong>veying facts, if not more so. Audio descripti<strong>on</strong>represents a form of audiovisual translati<strong>on</strong> that is rapidly gainingincreasing attenti<strong>on</strong> as the needs of the visually impaired are beginningto receive the degree of c<strong>on</strong>cern more frequently granted to thehard-of-hearing in the past.The Internet has meant a revoluti<strong>on</strong> in our lives in general, and in thefield of translati<strong>on</strong> and business in particular. In their c<strong>on</strong>tributi<strong>on</strong>,Usability and Website Localisati<strong>on</strong>, Mario de Bortoli and Jesús Maroto


14 Jorge Díaz Cintas & Gunilla AndermanOrtiz-Sotomayor discuss the limited success as well as the problemsencountered by big internati<strong>on</strong>al companies when translating theirEnglish websites into the languages of the main foreign markets.According to the authors, for a site to be well received and successful inthe twenty-first century it has to address the unc<strong>on</strong>scious hiddenaspects of what c<strong>on</strong>stitutes a community. Localisati<strong>on</strong> needs to build inan in-depth knowledge of the local culture which in turn means that amultilingual website cannot be researched and developed in Englishand then simply sent off to be translated; rather, every aspect needs tobe discussed and studied prior to development and subsequent implementati<strong>on</strong>.Addressing these cultural differences requires the earlyattenti<strong>on</strong> of professi<strong>on</strong>als with expertise in a variety of fields. Onlythrough a synthesis of interdisciplinary expertise will there be a guaranteeof the enormous benefits that globalisati<strong>on</strong> can offer to trulyinternati<strong>on</strong>al business.Part IV, Educati<strong>on</strong> and Training, is devoted to the teaching andtraining of future experts and professi<strong>on</strong>als in the field of subtitling. Themost distinctive feature of subtitling is the need for ec<strong>on</strong>omy of translati<strong>on</strong>.There is rarely enough space and time to fit all potentially transferablematerial in an audiovisual programme <strong>on</strong>to the stipulated numberof lines and characters. This is where the subtitler’s sensitivity to plot,character and film narrative becomes crucial in order to determine theinformati<strong>on</strong> to keep in and to leave out. But how can this sensitivity bedefined? And how does it actually work?In his c<strong>on</strong>tributi<strong>on</strong>, Teaching Screen <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g>: The Role of Pragmaticsin Subtitling, Erik Skuggevik looks at the issue of the sensitivity of thesubtitler as linked to several translati<strong>on</strong> strategies, providing studentsand trainees with underused tools to break down the c<strong>on</strong>stituents ofboth the dialogue of the original and the subtitles of the translated programme.Drawing from the Speech Act Theory developed by Grice(1975) and the six functi<strong>on</strong>s of communicati<strong>on</strong> identified by Jakobs<strong>on</strong>(1960), the author proposes an analysis of communicati<strong>on</strong> that enablesus to quantify the c<strong>on</strong>stituents of subtitling more closely.In his search for useful tools for the subtitler, Christopher Taylor drawsfrom the potential offered by the multimodal transcripti<strong>on</strong> as devisedby Thibault and Baldry (2000). In Pedagogical Tools for the Training ofSubtitlers, he discusses how this methodology allows for the minutedescripti<strong>on</strong> of film texts, thereby enabling subtitlers to base their translati<strong>on</strong>choices <strong>on</strong> the meaning already provided by other semioticmodalities c<strong>on</strong>tained in the text such as visual elements, music, colour,and camera positi<strong>on</strong>ing. This process, though time-c<strong>on</strong>suming has


Introducti<strong>on</strong> 15proved to be an extremely valid pedagogical instrument. A sec<strong>on</strong>d stagein this research has led to the creati<strong>on</strong> of transcripti<strong>on</strong>s based <strong>on</strong> phasalanalysis, following the ideas of Gregory (2002). Film texts are dividedinto phases and sub-phases based <strong>on</strong> the identificati<strong>on</strong> of coherent andharm<strong>on</strong>ious sets of semiotic modalities working together to create meaningin recognisable chunks, rather in the manner of written text. Suchtexts are analysed in terms of their phasal c<strong>on</strong>structi<strong>on</strong>, and also interms of the transiti<strong>on</strong>s separating the phases. This further extensi<strong>on</strong> ofthe original tool provides the basis for a thorough analysis of any filmtext, and provides a useful additi<strong>on</strong> to the pedagogy of film translati<strong>on</strong>.As menti<strong>on</strong>ed before, audiovisual translati<strong>on</strong> is closely linked to technologyand any new advances are bound to have a knock-<strong>on</strong> effect <strong>on</strong>the discipline, particularly <strong>on</strong> subtitling. The Internet has been <strong>on</strong>e ofsuch advances. Tutors face new challenges in the global era and perhapsthe most revoluti<strong>on</strong>ary is the proliferati<strong>on</strong> of <strong>on</strong>line multimedia coursesin higher educati<strong>on</strong>. As discussed in Francesca Bartrina’s c<strong>on</strong>tributi<strong>on</strong>,Teaching Subtitling in a Virtual Envir<strong>on</strong>ment, tutors need to transfer teachingskills from the face-to-face classroom to the virtual envir<strong>on</strong>ment.This in turn gives rise to new trends in teaching methods and callsfor the acquisiti<strong>on</strong> of new skills in the use of Informati<strong>on</strong> andCommunicati<strong>on</strong> Technology. More specifically, in the case of <strong>on</strong>linesubtitling courses, it means that instructors need to stay abreast ofinnovati<strong>on</strong>s in digital subtitling technology. Bartrina’s c<strong>on</strong>tributi<strong>on</strong>deals with the challenge posed by virtual courses to the teaching ofsubtitling and with the way skills of future professi<strong>on</strong>als may bedeveloped by <strong>on</strong>line learning.The final c<strong>on</strong>tributi<strong>on</strong> in this volume, by Annamaria Caimi,Subtitling: <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> Learners’ Needs vs. <str<strong>on</strong>g>Audiovisual</str<strong>on</strong>g> Market Needs,highlights the importance of subtitling in language learning and suggestspossible c<strong>on</strong>vergences between linguistic, educati<strong>on</strong>al and ec<strong>on</strong>omicgoals. Such an approach requires meeting different expectati<strong>on</strong>sand interests, which can be accomplished by encouraging the distributi<strong>on</strong>of audiovisual programmes with subtitles, in order to introduceforeign languages through entertainment. The educati<strong>on</strong>al objectives,which c<strong>on</strong>sider subtitling as a linguistic product, are quality-oriented,whereas the ec<strong>on</strong>omic objectives, whose main c<strong>on</strong>cern is the distributi<strong>on</strong>of subtitled audiovisual programmes, are quantity-oriented. Inorder to satisfy both needs, the author tackles the issue from threedifferent perspectives: (1) the linguistic perspective, which focuses <strong>on</strong>the accuracy and appropriateness of language transfer through theapplicati<strong>on</strong> of principles of translati<strong>on</strong> theory; (2) the foreign language


16 Jorge Díaz Cintas & Gunilla Andermanteacher’s perspective, whose priority is to single out the most naturalmethods and techniques to facilitate foreign language acquisiti<strong>on</strong>;(3) the audiovisual marketer perspective, whose task is to meet therequirements of c<strong>on</strong>sumers in order to reach and maintain full demandfor the product.It is hoped that these seventeen studies will together c<strong>on</strong>stitute arounded visi<strong>on</strong> of the many different ways in which audiovisualprogrammes cross linguistic barriers and fr<strong>on</strong>tiers and, in particular, ofthe importance of audiovisual translati<strong>on</strong> at the present time.Notes1. Many countries, for example, Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, the UK andUSA, have established targets to provide SDH for 100% of their televisi<strong>on</strong>programmes (Remael, 2007). As for AD and sign language interpreting, thetargets are lower, at between 10% and 20% (Orero, 2007).2. The creati<strong>on</strong> of the Centro Español de Subtitulado y Audiodescripción (CESyA) isa good example of the type of initiatives taken by some countries. More informati<strong>on</strong><strong>on</strong> this centre can be found <strong>on</strong> www.cesya.es.ReferencesBaldry, A. (2001) Promoting Computerised Subtitling: A Multimodal Approachto the Learning of Minority <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g>s. Unpublished manuscript. Universityof Pavia.Díaz Cintas, J. (2003) ‘<str<strong>on</strong>g>Audiovisual</str<strong>on</strong>g> translati<strong>on</strong> in the third millennium’. InG. Anderman and M. Rogers (eds) <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> Today. Trends and Perspectives(pp. 192–204). Cleved<strong>on</strong>: Multilingual Matters.EBU (<strong>on</strong>line) The Future of Access to Televisi<strong>on</strong> for Blind and Partially Sighted Peoplein Europe. Paris: European Blind Uni<strong>on</strong>. www.euroblind.org/fichiersGB/access-TV.html#introGottlieb, H. (1994) Tekstning – synkr<strong>on</strong> billedmedieoversættelse. Copenhagen:University of Copenhagen.Gottlieb, H. (1997) Subtitles, <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> and Idioms. Copenhagen: University ofCopenhagen.Gottlieb, H. (2004) ‘<str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g>-political implicati<strong>on</strong>s of subtitling’. In P. Orero(ed.) Topics in <str<strong>on</strong>g>Audiovisual</str<strong>on</strong>g> <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> (pp. 83–100). Philadelphia andAmsterdam: John Benjamins.Gregory, M. (2002) ‘Phasal analysis within communicati<strong>on</strong> linguistics: twoc<strong>on</strong>trastive discourses’. In P. Fries et al. (eds) Relati<strong>on</strong>s and Functi<strong>on</strong>s within andaround <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> (pp. 316–45). L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong>: C<strong>on</strong>tinuum.Grice, H.P. (1975) ‘Logic and c<strong>on</strong>versati<strong>on</strong>’. In L. Cole and J.L. Morgan (eds)Syntax and Semantics (pp. 41–58). New York: Academic Press.Hamilt<strong>on</strong>, F. and Stevens<strong>on</strong>, D. (2005) ‘Sex and shopping drive new televisi<strong>on</strong> channellaunches as Europe sees a record boom in new TV channels’. Screen Digest, 13September. www.screendigest.com/press/releases/FHAN-6G7BXGpressRelease.pdf


Introducti<strong>on</strong> 17Hay, J. (1994) Hearing Loss: Questi<strong>on</strong>s You Have ... Answers You Need. Pennsylvania:People’s Medical Society.Jakobs<strong>on</strong>, R. (1960) ‘Closing statement: linguistics and poetics’. In R. DeGeorgeand F. DeGeorge (eds) (1972) The Structuralists: From Marx to Levi-Strauss(pp. 85–122). New York: Anchor Books.Luyken, G.M., Herbst, T., Langham-Brown, J., Reid, H. and Spinhof, H. (1991)Overcoming <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> Barriers in Televisi<strong>on</strong>: Dubbing and Subtitling for theEuropean Audience. Manchester: European Institute for the Media.Marriott, J. and Vale, D. (2002) Get the Picture: Making Televisi<strong>on</strong> Accessible to Blindand Partially Sighted People. L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong>: Royal Nati<strong>on</strong>al Institute of the Blind,Campaign report 19.Neves, J. (2005) <str<strong>on</strong>g>Audiovisual</str<strong>on</strong>g> <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g>: Subtitling for the Deaf andHard-of-Hearing. L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong>: Roehampt<strong>on</strong> University. PhD Thesis. http://rrp.roehampt<strong>on</strong>.ac.uk/artstheses/1Orero, P. (2007) ‘Sampling audio descripti<strong>on</strong> in Europe’. In J. Díaz Cintas, P. Oreroand A. Remael (eds) Media for All: Subtitling for the Deaf, Audio Descripti<strong>on</strong> andSign <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> (pp. 111–25). Amsterdam: Rodopi.Remael, A. (2007) ‘Sampling subtitling for the deaf and the hard-of-hearing inEurope’. In J. Díaz Cintas, P. Orero and A. Remael (eds) Media for All: Subtitlingfor the Deaf, Audio Descripti<strong>on</strong>, and Sign <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> (pp. 23–52). Amsterdam:Rodopi.Thibault, P. and Baldry, A. (2000) ‘The multimodal transcripti<strong>on</strong> of a televisi<strong>on</strong>advertisement: theory and practice’. In A. Baldry (ed.) Multimodality andMultimediality in the Distance Learning Age (pp. 311–85). Campobasso: PalladinoEditore.Van de Poel, M. and d’Ydewalle, G. (2001) ‘Incidental foreign-languageacquisiti<strong>on</strong> by children watching subtitled televisi<strong>on</strong> programs’. InY. Gambier and H. Gottlieb (eds) (Multi)Media <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g>. C<strong>on</strong>cepts, Practicesand Research (pp. 259–273). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Yvane, J. (1995) ‘Babel: un soutien actif aux transferts linguistiques’. Translatio,Nouvelles de la FIT-FIT Newsletter XIV (3–4): 451–60.


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Part ISubtitling and Surtitling


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2Subtitling for the DVD IndustryPanayota GeorgakopoulouWe all know what subtitles are. Luyken et al. (1991: 31) definethem as:... c<strong>on</strong>densed written translati<strong>on</strong>s of original dialogue which appearas lines of text, usually positi<strong>on</strong>ed towards the foot of the screen.Subtitles appear and disappear to coincide in time with the corresp<strong>on</strong>dingporti<strong>on</strong> of the original dialogue and are almost alwaysadded to the screen image at a later date as a post-producti<strong>on</strong>activity.Interlingual subtitling is a type of language transfer in which thetranslati<strong>on</strong>, that is the subtitles, do not replace the original SourceText (ST), but rather, both are present in synchr<strong>on</strong>y in the subtitledversi<strong>on</strong>. Subtitles are said to be most successful when not noticed bythe viewer. For this to be achieved, they need to comply with certainlevels of readability and be as c<strong>on</strong>cise as necessary in order not todistract the viewer’s attenti<strong>on</strong> from the programme. So, what are thetechniques used to make subtitles unobtrusive? And what is the subtitler’srole? The answers to these questi<strong>on</strong>s can be found if we take acloser look at the technical, textual and linguistic c<strong>on</strong>straints ofsubtitling.Technical c<strong>on</strong>straintsThe technical spatial and temporal c<strong>on</strong>straints of audiovisual programmesrelate directly to the format of subtitles.21


22 Panayota Georgakopoulou● Space. In the limited space allowed for a subtitle there is no room forl<strong>on</strong>g explanati<strong>on</strong>s. Two lines of text are usually the norm, and thenumber of characters per line depends <strong>on</strong> a number of factors,including the subtitling workstati<strong>on</strong> used. Since readability ofthe text is of paramount importance, it has been suggested thatan ideal subtitle is a sentence l<strong>on</strong>g, with the clauses of whichit c<strong>on</strong>sists placed <strong>on</strong> separate lines (Díaz Cintas and Remael,2007:172–80).● Time. The length of a subtitle is directly related to its <strong>on</strong>-air time.Accurate in and out timing is very important and the text in the subtitlesshould always be in balance with the appropriate reading timesetting. No matter how perfect a subtitle is in terms of format andc<strong>on</strong>tent, it will always fail to be successful if viewers do not haveenough time to read it. A lower word per minute (wpm) or characterper minute (cpm) setting is applied, for example, when subtitlingchildren’s programmes, as children cannot reach adult readingspeeds. 1● Presentati<strong>on</strong>. Subtitles can take up to 20% of screen space. Importantfactors for their legibility are the size of the characters, their positi<strong>on</strong><strong>on</strong> screen, as well as the technology used for the projecti<strong>on</strong> of subtitlesin the cinema (DTS or Dolby), TV broadcast, DVD emulati<strong>on</strong>, etc.,as it affects their definiti<strong>on</strong>. In our digital age, most of these problemshave been solved. In DVD subtitling, for instance, the choice of anyf<strong>on</strong>t and f<strong>on</strong>t size supported by Windows is possible, unlike teletextsubtitling for televisi<strong>on</strong>, where this is not the case. These technicalc<strong>on</strong>straints determine subtitlers’ work practice and their linguisticchoices.Textual c<strong>on</strong>straintsIn subtitling, language transfer operates across two modes, fromspeech to writing, from the soundtrack to the written subtitles. Thisshift of mode creates a number of processing and cohesi<strong>on</strong> issues thatmake it difficult to maintain the filmic illusi<strong>on</strong> in the targetproduct.Oral–aural processingSince in subtitling both source and target texts are presentsimultaneously (see Gottlieb, 1994: 265 for details <strong>on</strong> the four channelsthat compose the audiovisual text), the viewer of a subtitled


Subtitling for the DVD Industry 23programme has at least two different types of informati<strong>on</strong> <strong>on</strong> whichto c<strong>on</strong>centrate: the acti<strong>on</strong> <strong>on</strong> the screen, and the translati<strong>on</strong> of thedialogue, that is the subtitles. This adds to the verbal informati<strong>on</strong>that might appear in the original programme in the form of insertsand which the viewers have to process through the visual channel,making it more difficult for them to relax and enjoy the programme.The situati<strong>on</strong> becomes more difficult when the timing of the subtitlesis not satisfactorily d<strong>on</strong>e. When a subtitle is c<strong>on</strong>tinued over a shotchange, for example, the viewer may think that it is a new subtitleand re-read it, losing precious viewing time. Also, the temporal successi<strong>on</strong>of subtitles is quite different from the linear successi<strong>on</strong> ofsentences in a book; it does not allow the eye to move backwards orforwards to clarify misunderstandings, recapitulate the basic factsor see what will happen next. This can be d<strong>on</strong>e, however, whenwatching a film or a programme <strong>on</strong> video or DVD by using therewind functi<strong>on</strong>.As a result, in order for the subtitled text to be successful, it needsto preserve the ‘sequence of speech acts [ ... ] in such a way as to relay thedynamics of communicati<strong>on</strong>’ (Mas<strong>on</strong>, 1989: 15). A few rough rulesare usually observed by subtitlers to help minimise the potentiallynegative effects of these extra processing demands made by theviewer:(a) When the visual dimensi<strong>on</strong> is crucial for the comprehensi<strong>on</strong> of aparticular scene, subtitlers should offer <strong>on</strong>ly the most basic linguisticinformati<strong>on</strong>, leaving the eyes of the viewers free to follow theimages and the acti<strong>on</strong>.(b) C<strong>on</strong>versely, when important informati<strong>on</strong> is not in the images but inthe soundtrack, subtitlers should produce the fullest subtitles possible,to ensure that the viewers are not left behind.(c) The presentati<strong>on</strong> of the subtitles, the way in which the words ofeach subtitle are arranged <strong>on</strong> the screen, and <strong>on</strong> each subtitle line,can help enhance readability.This last point relates to the role of grammar and word order in subtitling.The simpler and more comm<strong>on</strong>ly used the syntactic structureof a subtitle, the least effort needed to decipher its meaning. Forexample, in all the subtitled versi<strong>on</strong>s of the following text fromHitchcock’s Psycho, the main and subordinate clauses of the sentenceare placed in separate subtitle lines and the syntax is simplified


24 Panayota Georgakopoulouthrough a re-arrangement of the original phrase as shown in theEnglish subtitle:Example 1Original dialogue01.19.21.04 – 01.19.24.22One thing people never ought to be when they’rebuying used cars is in a hurry.English subtitlePeople never ought to be in a hurrywhen buying used cars.Italian subtitleN<strong>on</strong> si dovrebbe mai andare di frettaquando si compra una macchina.French subtitleOn ne devrait pas être presséquand <strong>on</strong> achète une voiture d’occasi<strong>on</strong>.German subtitleBeim Gebrauchtwagenkaufsollte man es nie eilig haben.Even appropriate line breaks within a single subtitle can facilitatecomprehensi<strong>on</strong> and increase reading speed if segmentati<strong>on</strong> is d<strong>on</strong>e int<strong>on</strong>oun or verb phrases, rather than smaller units of a sentence or clause.In the example below from Weird Science it is possible, within the timeallowed, to read the text of both subtitles, which are identical from asemantic point of view. However, of the two soluti<strong>on</strong>s in Example 2, thesubtitle format in Opti<strong>on</strong> 2 is easier to read as the text is broken up afterthe noun phrase ‘your parents’.Example 2Original dialogue01.03.53.01 – 01.03.57.11I d<strong>on</strong>’t understand. How come your parents trust you all of a sudden?Opti<strong>on</strong> 1 Opti<strong>on</strong> 2I d<strong>on</strong>’t understand why yourparents trust you all of a sudden.I d<strong>on</strong>’t understand why your parentstrust you all of a sudden.Finally, in this example from the audio-commentary of Hitchcock’sVertigo, we can see how l<strong>on</strong>g sentences are split up into shorter <strong>on</strong>es in


Subtitling for the DVD Industry 25an obvious attempt to increase reading speed. As in this case,c<strong>on</strong>juncti<strong>on</strong>s usually provide a natural split for subtitle breaks.Example 3Original dialogueEnglish subtitlesOpti<strong>on</strong> 1 Opti<strong>on</strong> 2I met with him, talked to him, I’ve told 01.26.31.07 – 01.26.34.08him the whole story and he started the Met with him, told him the whole storypainting and <strong>on</strong>e day he said he must and he started the painting.meet Vera Miles to keep <strong>on</strong> going.01.26.35.06 – 01.26.38.23One day he said he must meet Vera Milesto keep <strong>on</strong> going.Textuality issuesBecause of the limited space generally available for subtitles, certain elementsof the soundtrack have to be omitted, and the obvious soluti<strong>on</strong> isto do away with redundant elements of speech. Redundancy helps participantsin a c<strong>on</strong>versati<strong>on</strong> grasp its intended meaning more easily andits eliminati<strong>on</strong> from film dialogue may, therefore, weaken cohesi<strong>on</strong> inthe subtitled text. The questi<strong>on</strong> then is to what extent the predictabilityof discourse is affected by the systematic deleti<strong>on</strong> of redundant featuresand the impact this may have <strong>on</strong> the viewers’ understanding of thenarrative. There is, however, a str<strong>on</strong>g link between the dialogue of afilm and the c<strong>on</strong>text in which it takes place. Apart from linguisticredundancy in audiovisual programmes, there is also situati<strong>on</strong>al redundancythat usually works in favour of the translator.The visual informati<strong>on</strong> often helps viewers process the subtitles, andto a certain extent this compensates for the limited verbal informati<strong>on</strong>they c<strong>on</strong>tain. For example, aspects of interpers<strong>on</strong>al communicati<strong>on</strong>may be found in int<strong>on</strong>ati<strong>on</strong>, rhythm and the facial and kinesic movementsthat accompany the dialogue which are, to an extent, universal(Nir, 1984: 90). When, in Braveheart, Mel Gibs<strong>on</strong> cries out ‘Hold! Hold!Hold! Now!’ at the moment when the British cavalry is about to attackthe fr<strong>on</strong>tline of the Scottish army, the viewers can easily understandwhat is happening, even without a translati<strong>on</strong>. This is also known asthe ‘feedback effect’ of films (Nedergaard-Larsen, 1993: 214).


26 Panayota GeorgakopoulouChange in modeThe shift of mode from speech to writing presents the subtitler withyet more challenges. Characteristics of sp<strong>on</strong>taneous speech, such asslips of the t<strong>on</strong>gue, pauses, false starts, unfinished sentences, ungrammaticalc<strong>on</strong>structi<strong>on</strong>s, etc., are difficult to reproduce in writing. Thesame goes for dialectal, idiolectal and pr<strong>on</strong>unciati<strong>on</strong> featuresthat c<strong>on</strong>tribute to the moulding of screen characters. The use of apseudo-ph<strong>on</strong>etic transcripti<strong>on</strong> to reproduce a regi<strong>on</strong>al or social dialectin the subtitles, for instance, would not be helpful as it wouldhinder the readability of the text by adding to the reading time of thesubtitle, and also hinder the comprehensi<strong>on</strong> of the message by obscuringthe style.What then is the subtitler to do? Certain spoken features may need tobe rendered in the subtitles if their functi<strong>on</strong> is to promote the plot. Butrather than reproducing mistakes in an uneducated character’s speech,a subtitler can make use of appropriate, usually simpler, vocabulary inorder to indicate educati<strong>on</strong>, regi<strong>on</strong>al dialect or social class of the character.Or the decisi<strong>on</strong> may be taken not to reproduce the stuttering in acharacter’s speech since viewers have resource to this informati<strong>on</strong>already from the feedback effect of the soundtrack. For the subtitler, itis a matter of deciding in each case what priority needs to be given tocertain features of each sequence of speech.Linguistic c<strong>on</strong>straintsThe space and time c<strong>on</strong>straints inherent in the subtitling processusually enhance traditi<strong>on</strong>al translati<strong>on</strong> challenges, such as grammarand word order, as well as problems related to cross-cultural shifts.With an average 30% to 40% expansi<strong>on</strong> rate when translating fromEnglish into most other European languages, reducti<strong>on</strong> is obviouslythe most important strategy in subtitling. But what, then, are theelements of speech that are comm<strong>on</strong>ly omitted or edited in subtitles?According to Kovač ič (1991: 409), there is a three-level hierarchy ofdiscourse elements in subtitling:● The indispensable elements (that must be translated).● The partly dispensable elements (that can be c<strong>on</strong>densed).● The dispensable elements (that can be omitted).The indispensable elements are all the plot-carrying elements of a film;they carry the experiential meaning without which the viewers would


Subtitling for the DVD Industry 27not be able to follow the acti<strong>on</strong>. In the two examples below of the Dutchand German subtitles of Hitchcock’s Vertigo, <strong>on</strong>ly the plot-carryingelements have been translated.Example 4Original dialogue01.07.37.13 01.07.41.23 – Durati<strong>on</strong>: 4.10He had no problem getting Harry Cohn to agree a loan-out.Dutch subtitleHij wist Harry Cohnover te halen tot een ruil.English back-translati<strong>on</strong>He got Harry Cohnto agree a loan-out.Example 5Original dialogue01.08.12.06 01.08.17.03 – Durati<strong>on</strong>: 4.22Samuel Taylor was the <strong>on</strong>e who introduced the character of Midge.German subtitleSamuel Taylorführte die Figur der Midge ein.English back-translati<strong>on</strong>Samuel Taylorintroduced the character of Midge.There are also a number of linguistic elements that many subtitlers inthe professi<strong>on</strong> would omit even if the spatio-temporal c<strong>on</strong>straints ofsubtitling did not apply, such as:(a) Repetiti<strong>on</strong>s.(b) Names in appellative c<strong>on</strong>structi<strong>on</strong>s.(c) False starts and ungrammatical c<strong>on</strong>structi<strong>on</strong>s.(d) Internati<strong>on</strong>ally known words, such as ‘yes’, ‘no’, ‘OK’.(e) Expressi<strong>on</strong>s followed by gestures to denote salutati<strong>on</strong>, politeness,affirmati<strong>on</strong>, negati<strong>on</strong>, surprise, teleph<strong>on</strong>e resp<strong>on</strong>ses, etc.(f) Exclamati<strong>on</strong>s, such as ‘oh’, ‘ah’, ‘wow’ and the like.(g) Instances of phatic communi<strong>on</strong> and ‘padding’, often empty ofsemantic load, their presence being mostly functi<strong>on</strong>al speechembellishment aimed at maintaining the desired speech-flow.Am<strong>on</strong>g these, we can find expressi<strong>on</strong>s such as ‘you know’, ‘well’,


28 Panayota Georgakopoulou‘naturally’, ‘of course’, ‘understandably’; prepositi<strong>on</strong>al phrases (‘inview of the fact that’); rhetorical flourishes; and phrases used forsound effect (‘ways and means’).Many of these linguistic elements are comm<strong>on</strong>ly deleted because theycan be retrieved from the soundtrack (b, c, d, and f). Were they to betranscribed or translated, we would have a case of duplicati<strong>on</strong>, as thesame informati<strong>on</strong> would be found both in the subtitles and in thesoundtrack. English words such as ‘yes’, ‘no’ and ‘OK’ are known virtuallythroughout the world. This has partly to do with the global positi<strong>on</strong>of the English language today and its prominence in the mediaindustry. The degree to which certain words or expressi<strong>on</strong>s can be easilyrecognised by target viewers also has to do with how closely the twolanguages involved are related, usually English and the particular targetlanguage into which a programme is subtitled.Elements such as repetiti<strong>on</strong>s, padding expressi<strong>on</strong>s or even ungrammaticalc<strong>on</strong>structi<strong>on</strong>s may at times be opti<strong>on</strong>ally c<strong>on</strong>densed rather thanomitted, as they may c<strong>on</strong>tribute to the textuality of the programme andthe character development of the actors. In the following example, wefind repetitive items in the sec<strong>on</strong>d part of this dialogue from WeirdScience. The three questi<strong>on</strong>s ‘Didn’t throw up?’, ‘No?’, and ‘Nothing?’could easily be omitted from the subtitles, as the meaning is still obviousfrom the translati<strong>on</strong> of <strong>on</strong>ly the last of the questi<strong>on</strong>s, ‘You didn’t seeanything?’. The purpose of the repetiti<strong>on</strong>, however, is to show the character’sexasperati<strong>on</strong> and sense of urgency in getting an answer. Thus,some repetiti<strong>on</strong> is still built into the subtitles in the form of ‘No?’ or‘Nothing?’, the two most c<strong>on</strong>cise of the three phrases, as limited time isavailable. In the subtitles aimed at deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers, yetfurther repetiti<strong>on</strong> is built in through the additi<strong>on</strong> of the phrase ‘I didn’tthrow up?’ and modificati<strong>on</strong> of the timings appropriately.Example 6Original dialogue01.27.07.22 – 01.27.12.06 Durati<strong>on</strong>: 4.14All right, in your dream, did I get up in the middleof the night and yak in your sink?01.27.13.05 – 01.27.15.17 Durati<strong>on</strong>: 2.12Didn’t throw up? No? Nothing? You didn’t see anything?C<strong>on</strong>tinued


Subtitling for the DVD Industry 29Example 6 C<strong>on</strong>tinuedDanish subtitlesI din drøm, stod jeg så op midt omnatten og knækkede mig i vasken?Nej? Så du ikke noget?Greek subtitles' u, ;‘; ;Spanish subtitlesEn tu sueño, ¿me levantépor la noche a vomitar en el lavabo?¿Nada? ¿No viste nada?English back-translati<strong>on</strong>German subtitlesStand ich in deinem Traum mitten in derNacht auf und kotzte ins Waschbecken?Nein? Du hast nichts gesehen?Hungarian subtitlesFelkeltem az álmodban, hogybelerókázzak a mosdóba?Semmi?Nem láttál semmit?Russian subtitles òâîåì ñíå ÿ âñòàâàë ïîñðåäè íî÷è,÷òîáû ïîáëåâàòü â ðàêîâèíó?Íåò? Òû íè÷åãî íå âèäåë?English SDH subtitlesIn your dream, did I get up in the middleof the night and yak in your sink?In your dream, did I get up in the middleof the night and yak in your sink?No?/Nothing?You didn’t see anything?I didn’t throw up? No?You didn’t see anything?Some observati<strong>on</strong>s <strong>on</strong> translati<strong>on</strong> strategiesThere are numerous c<strong>on</strong>straints in subtitling, and there is no systematicrecipe to be followed, no prêt-à-porter soluti<strong>on</strong>s. To decide <strong>on</strong> the besttranslati<strong>on</strong> strategy, a thorough analysis of each translati<strong>on</strong> issue has tobe made based <strong>on</strong>:● Functi<strong>on</strong> (relevance to the plot).● C<strong>on</strong>notati<strong>on</strong> (implied informati<strong>on</strong>, if applicable).● Target audience’s assumed knowledge of the language and culture ofthe source language programme.● Feedback effect.● Media related c<strong>on</strong>straints.


30 Panayota GeorgakopoulouReducti<strong>on</strong>, which is the most important and frequently used strategy insubtitling, is generally applied <strong>on</strong> the basis of the three functi<strong>on</strong>s oflanguage as suggested by Halliday (1973). Whereas experiential meaningneeds to be translated, aspects of interpers<strong>on</strong>al and textual meaningcan be omitted, especially when these may be retrieved directlyfrom the picture or the soundtrack. The task of the subtitler involvesc<strong>on</strong>stant decisi<strong>on</strong>-making to ensure that the audiovisual programme isnot bereft of its style, pers<strong>on</strong>ality, clarity, and that the rhythm and itsdramatic progressi<strong>on</strong> not hindered. The final aim is to retain and reflectin the subtitles the equilibrium between the image, sound and text ofthe original.DVD subtitlingWith the appearance of DVDs <strong>on</strong> the market, developments in thesubtitling industry during the last part of the twentieth century haveposed a challenge, creating the demand for multilingual subtitling in alarge number of languages with very tight turnaround times. Theresp<strong>on</strong>se from the market has come in the form of centralisati<strong>on</strong>,whereby large subtitling companies offer services for all languagesrequired, minimising the costs of Hollywood studios since there is nol<strong>on</strong>ger the need to send master copies all over the world. But how doescentralisati<strong>on</strong> work? And what are the advantages and problems?The templateIn the past, the two main problems that subtitling companies had toaddress were:(a) The cost of subtitle producti<strong>on</strong>: in order to make their servicesattractive to large Hollywood producti<strong>on</strong> companies, prices neededto be c<strong>on</strong>trolled.(b) The management of subtitle files: numerous files are involved andtheir management had to be made easier in order to speed up theprocess and minimise the number of mistakes that might be made.The soluti<strong>on</strong> to both these problems has come in the form of universaltemplate subtitle files in English (also referred to in the professi<strong>on</strong> as thegenesis file or the transfile), to be used as the basis for translati<strong>on</strong> intoall languages. In other words, the subtitling process has been split intotwo distinct tasks. The timing of a film or audiovisual programme is


Subtitling for the DVD Industry 31made by English native speakers who produce a unique timed subtitlefile in English, that is, a file where all the in and out times have beendecided. This file is then used as the basis for translati<strong>on</strong> into otherlanguages as required, with the translati<strong>on</strong> carried out by native speakersof these languages.The advantages of this new working method are obvious. The costsinvolved in the timing of a film are reduced to producing <strong>on</strong>e subtitlefile <strong>on</strong>ly, rather than a different <strong>on</strong>e for each of the languages required.To put it in financial terms, what the template has introduced into thesubtitling industry is an ec<strong>on</strong>omy of scale, whereby the greater thenumber of languages involved in a project, the larger the cost-savings tobe made.From a linguistic point of view, certain problems can also be eliminated.When spotting and subtitling are carried out directly by a nativespeaker living in the target country and whose native language is notEnglish, mis-hearings of the language of the original soundtrack,which is usually English, tend to be more frequent. When the mothert<strong>on</strong>gue of the subtitler is not English, there can be potential problemsin understanding the source language, especially slang and colloquialisms,which require an affinity with the spoken language that can <strong>on</strong>lyreally be acquired by living in the country where the language isspoken. But if the subtitler used is <strong>on</strong>e who has been living in anEnglish-speaking country for some time, with near-native fluency ofEnglish, s/he might run the risk of not being 100% up-to-date with thechanges in his/her own native t<strong>on</strong>gue, languages being living organismsin c<strong>on</strong>stant change. The use of a template file makes it possible,therefore, to gain the best of both worlds: English native speakers areused to produce the original file in English, and the native speakers ofthe languages required in each project are then used to translate intotheir own mother t<strong>on</strong>gues.Above all, the recruitment needs for subtitling companies cateringfor many languages can now be dealt with instantly as the pool offreelancers – in all the languages with which a company works – hassimilarly been expanded. It is no l<strong>on</strong>ger necessary to recruit subtitlersin all the languages required who were also able to do the technicaltask of spotting, a rare type of professi<strong>on</strong>al that, for some languages,may be hard to find. Translators with no subtitling training can begiven a chance. As the issue of timing and cueing is removed from theequati<strong>on</strong>, translators without subtitling experience may be giventraining in recognising mistakes and good practice in subtitling andin developing respect for its principles. Timing issues that emerge


32 Panayota Georgakopouloucan be reported and dealt with by the project managers, leaving thetranslators to c<strong>on</strong>centrate <strong>on</strong> the translati<strong>on</strong> of the dialogue.As all the subtitle files required for any given project or film are based<strong>on</strong> a single template in English, the resulting target files in all languageshave now become identical in terms of timings and subtitle number.This facilitates their management and the number of checks they haveto undergo before they are ready for DVD emulati<strong>on</strong>. And this last partof the process does not require specific linguistic skills, other thanknowledge of English, from the pers<strong>on</strong> performing checks, yet anothercost-saving factor.The problems of centralisati<strong>on</strong>When catering for worldwide subtitling needs and styles, the complexitiesof subtitling described above multiply. Decisi<strong>on</strong>s relating to issues suchas when to use italics in the subtitles or whether to give priority tohoriz<strong>on</strong>tal versus vertical subtitling (as in Japanese) are country-specific.The questi<strong>on</strong> has been raised as to how these different c<strong>on</strong>venti<strong>on</strong>s canpossibly be tackled within a single subtitle file that has to c<strong>on</strong>form toeach country’s c<strong>on</strong>venti<strong>on</strong>s, while ensuring that the end-result is readilyacceptable in the countries where the finished product (that is the DVD)is to be sold.These requirements clearly have to be kept in mind when creatinga template file, making the effort required <strong>on</strong> the part of the subtitlergreater. But the main principle that underlies the subtitling of a templatefile is much the same as the subtitling of a film or any otheraudiovisual programme into any language, there is <strong>on</strong>e c<strong>on</strong>stant thatnever changes, which is the source file. The main difference betweensubtitling and other forms of translati<strong>on</strong> is the fact that the translatedversi<strong>on</strong> of the text does not replace the original: in the subtitledversi<strong>on</strong> both are present c<strong>on</strong>currently. In other words, what for subtitlersis <strong>on</strong>e of the major translati<strong>on</strong> challenges in their work – theoriginal always remains present al<strong>on</strong>gside their translati<strong>on</strong>, limitingtheir choices and putting their soluti<strong>on</strong>s as the focus of criticism ofaudiences worldwide – can now be used as an advantage. It is truethat over the years different countries have developed their own subtitlingstyles, a fact probably more true of, for example, Scandinaviancountries with their l<strong>on</strong>gstanding traditi<strong>on</strong> in subtitling, in c<strong>on</strong>trastto primarily dubbing countries, such as Italy or Spain, where subtitlingis more of a novelty. But as regards the first part of the process,that is the timing of a subtitle file, the choices are limited, as the


Subtitling for the DVD Industry 33actors <strong>on</strong> the screen will always open their mouths to utter a phraseat a certain point in a film or programme and close it at anotherpoint, and the timings of any subtitle file would need to reflect this.This may explain why the process of templating is not new toScandinavian countries, where it was used l<strong>on</strong>g before the appearanceof DVD, with companies creating subtitle files for VHS releasesfor all Scandinavian countries out of a single office (Georgakopoulou,2003: 24).If template files are to be used successfully in the professi<strong>on</strong>, greatereffort needs to go into their creati<strong>on</strong>, and more informati<strong>on</strong> included.At the European Capti<strong>on</strong>ing Institute, a template file always c<strong>on</strong>tainsinformati<strong>on</strong> such as:(a) <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> notes for unfamiliar or culturally-bound expressi<strong>on</strong>s,meant to help n<strong>on</strong>-English native speakers produce a more accuratetranslati<strong>on</strong>. Cases of ir<strong>on</strong>y, wordplay and related aspects are alsobrought to the attenti<strong>on</strong> of subtitlers.(b) Notes as to the points of the film or programme in which burnt-intext appears, that is written inserts <strong>on</strong> screen, in order to cater forinformati<strong>on</strong> that, in certain languages, may or may not need to betranslated. These notes help assure accurate positi<strong>on</strong>ing of the subtitles<strong>on</strong> screen, ensuring that the burnt-in text <strong>on</strong> the image is notobscured by the subtitles.(c) Further notes as to the choice of f<strong>on</strong>t, the use of italics, the treatmentof s<strong>on</strong>gs, the treatment of titles, etc., in each language file,depending <strong>on</strong> the c<strong>on</strong>venti<strong>on</strong>s of each language and/or the demandsof the client.On the whole, the creati<strong>on</strong> of a template file is far more complicatedthan the creati<strong>on</strong> of any other subtitle file and the process involves aneven greater amount of work because of the number of ancillary filesproduced. However, the rules and lists of notes necessary for the creati<strong>on</strong>of template files are also the means whereby, at a later stage of thesubsequent language files, the process of checking is facilitated toensure that they all adhere to the c<strong>on</strong>venti<strong>on</strong>s necessary for acceptancein the target country and clients’ specificati<strong>on</strong>s.C<strong>on</strong>clusi<strong>on</strong>The advantages of template files and the flexibility that they offer tosubtitling vendors cannot be overestimated; they form the basis of the


34 Panayota GeorgakopoulouDVD subtitling industry. As this is a relatively young industry, it goeswithout saying that the underlying rules and additi<strong>on</strong>al c<strong>on</strong>straints forcreating template files make this subject wide open to further research<strong>on</strong> a global scale in order to refine current practices and produce evenbetter quality subtitle files. Such research would inevitably require practiti<strong>on</strong>ersfrom all over the world to play a central role in order to ensurethat the language files produced will c<strong>on</strong>form to the appropriatesubtitling style of each country.A prominent Greek subtitler, with over 40 years’ experience in thefield, told me in an interview that a good subtitler can edit anything,even a book, down to <strong>on</strong>e subtitle. In line with my true passi<strong>on</strong> for thejob as subtitler, and echoing the statement that ‘[t]he attempt to achieveperfect subtitling has some affinity to the search for the Holy Grail’(Baker et al., 1984: 6), I cannot resist the temptati<strong>on</strong> of editing downthis chapter into a single subtitle:The template IS the Holy Grailof the DVD subtitling industry today.(Durati<strong>on</strong>: 04.15)Note1. Adult reading speed is calculated at ECI at 750 characters per minute, orapproximately 180 words per minute for n<strong>on</strong> double-byte languages, whereaschildren’s reading speed is set at c<strong>on</strong>siderably less and hovers between 120and 140 words per minute.ReferencesBaker, R.G., Lambourne, A.D. and Rowst<strong>on</strong>, G. (1984) Handbook for Televisi<strong>on</strong>Subtitles. England: IBA.Díaz Cintas, J. and Remael, A. (2007) <str<strong>on</strong>g>Audiovisual</str<strong>on</strong>g> <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g>: Subtitling. Manchester:St Jerome.Georgakopoulou, P. (2003) Redundancy Levels in Subtitling. DVD Subtitling: ACompromise of Trends. Guildford: University of Surrey. PhD Dissertati<strong>on</strong>.Gottlieb, H. (1994) ‘Subtitling: People translating people’. In C. Dollerup andA. Lindegaard (eds) Teaching <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> and Interpreting 2: Insights, Aims, Visi<strong>on</strong>s(pp. 261–74). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Halliday, M.A.K. (1973) Explorati<strong>on</strong>s in the Functi<strong>on</strong>s of <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g>. L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong>: EdwardArnold.Kovač ič , I. (1991) ‘Subtitling and c<strong>on</strong>temporary linguistic theories’. In M. Jovanovič(ed.) <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g>, A Creative Professi<strong>on</strong>: Proceedings XIIth World C<strong>on</strong>gress of FIT –Belgrade 1990 (pp. 407–17). Beograd: Prevodilac.


Subtitling for the DVD Industry 35Luyken, G. M., Herbst, T. Langham-Brown, J., Reid, H. and Spinhof, H. (1991)Overcoming <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> Barriers in Televisi<strong>on</strong>: Dubbing and Subtitling for the EuropeanAudience. Manchester: European Institute for the Media.Mas<strong>on</strong>, I. (1989) ‘Speaker meaning and reader meaning: Preserving coherence inscreen translating’. In R. Kölmer and J. Payne (eds) Babel: The Cultural andLinguistic Barriers Between Nati<strong>on</strong>s (pp. 13–24). Aberdeen: Aberdeen UniversityPress.Nedergaard-Larsen, B. (1993) ‘Culture-bound problems in subtitling’. Perspectives:Studies in Translatology 2: 207–41.Nir, R. (1984) ‘Linguistic and sociolinguistic problems in the translati<strong>on</strong> ofimported TV films in Israel’. The Internati<strong>on</strong>al Journal of the Sociology of <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g>48: 81–97.


3Subtitling Norms inGreece and SpainStavroula SokoliIntroducti<strong>on</strong>By simply watching subtitled films in Greece, traditi<strong>on</strong>ally c<strong>on</strong>sidered asubtitling country, and Spain, a dubbing country, certain differences inthis professi<strong>on</strong>al practice of audiovisual translati<strong>on</strong> may easily beobserved. In this chapter the aim is two–fold:first to look into the factorsthat guide translators’ decisi<strong>on</strong>s in the process of subtitling in these twocountries, by finding indicati<strong>on</strong>s of norms; sec<strong>on</strong>d, closely related to thefirst, is to explore the relati<strong>on</strong>ship between the subtitles and the otherelements of the audiovisual text. The main premises are that the use ofdescriptive tools can overcome the limitati<strong>on</strong>s posed by prescriptiveapproaches and that there are regularities in the practice of subtitling.Norm theory has c<strong>on</strong>tributed in a major way to the evoluti<strong>on</strong> ofDescriptive <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> Studies by introducing an evaluative element.Indeed, the mere descripti<strong>on</strong> of translati<strong>on</strong> behaviour for its own sakemay not provide useful results, whereas the study of norms is bound togive insight into the intersubjective sense of what is ‘proper’, ‘correct’,or ‘appropriate’, in other words, the c<strong>on</strong>tent of norms (Hermans, 1999:82). According to Toury (1995: 54), translators have to acquire a certainset of norms which will lead them towards adopting a suitable behaviourand help them manoeuvre am<strong>on</strong>g all the factors which may c<strong>on</strong>strainit. In the case of subtitling, these factors c<strong>on</strong>cern mainly timeand space c<strong>on</strong>straints, which, until recently, have attracted primaryattenti<strong>on</strong> in the discussi<strong>on</strong>s about subtitling and AVT. Here it is arguedthat a shift from a discussi<strong>on</strong> of the c<strong>on</strong>straints themselves to the factorsthat guide the translators in their work may prove useful.Since norms are not directly observable, a possible approach is a studyof their manifestati<strong>on</strong>, whether textual or extra-textual – two major36


Subtitling Norms in Greece and Spain 37sources of rec<strong>on</strong>structi<strong>on</strong> of translati<strong>on</strong>al norms suggested by Toury(1995). The focus here is <strong>on</strong> textual sources of norms, that is, regularitiesin the choices made by subtitlers, as manifested in translated films. Inadditi<strong>on</strong>, the findings will be compared to the <strong>on</strong>es encountered inextra-textual sources.The theoretical starting point of the discussi<strong>on</strong> is based <strong>on</strong> thecategorisati<strong>on</strong>s of norms made by Toury (1995) – initial, preliminaryand operati<strong>on</strong>al (subdivided into matricial and textual) norms – and byChesterman (1997) – expectancy and professi<strong>on</strong>al norms (subdividedinto the accountability, the communicati<strong>on</strong> and the relati<strong>on</strong> norms).The reas<strong>on</strong> for the choice of both categorisati<strong>on</strong>s is that they cover thesame areas but from a different perspective.In this chapter the focus is <strong>on</strong> matricial and relati<strong>on</strong> norms. Theformer affect the textual segmentati<strong>on</strong> of the linguistic material andits distributi<strong>on</strong>, or, expressed in the terminology of the practice ofsubtitling, the spotting of the original script, that is its divisi<strong>on</strong> into‘chunks’ to be translated, and the cueing of the subtitles, that is thedesignati<strong>on</strong> of their in and out times. Relati<strong>on</strong> norms <strong>on</strong> the otherhand stipulate that an appropriate relati<strong>on</strong> of relevant similarity shouldbe established and maintained between the source and the target text,where ‘equivalence’ or ‘optimal similarity’ is <strong>on</strong>ly <strong>on</strong>e of the possiblekinds of relati<strong>on</strong>. Other parameters covered include the additi<strong>on</strong> oromissi<strong>on</strong> of informati<strong>on</strong>, as well as the relati<strong>on</strong> to accompanying channels,for example, synchr<strong>on</strong>isati<strong>on</strong> between speech and the emergenceof subtitles <strong>on</strong> screen.Another aspect to be discussed c<strong>on</strong>cerns expectancy norms. AdaptingChesterman’s (1997) definiti<strong>on</strong> to the case of subtitling, they reflect theexpectati<strong>on</strong>s that viewers of subtitled audiovisual programmes have withregard to what the subtitled product should be like. They are formed bythe prevalent subtitling traditi<strong>on</strong> in the target culture and by the previousviewing of subtitled films. In this sense, it can be argued that theexpectati<strong>on</strong> norms in Spain and Greece are bound to differ, since the firstcountry is characterised by a traditi<strong>on</strong> in dubbing and not subtitling.The nature of audiovisual textsBefore proceeding to an analysis of the texts, it may be useful to examinethe nature of the audiovisual text, and the features that distinguish itfrom other kinds of text. 1 Characterised by its recepti<strong>on</strong> through twochannels, the acoustic and the visual, its other distinctive feature is theimportance of the n<strong>on</strong>verbal element. As pointed out by Zabalbeascoa


38 Stavroula Sokoli(1997) all texts c<strong>on</strong>tain some n<strong>on</strong>verbal elements, since the messagecannot be delivered without some sort of physical support. In a film,however, the n<strong>on</strong>verbal elements, acoustic in the form of noises andmusic, or visual such as images, appear to a much greater extent than inwritten texts.Still, not all texts c<strong>on</strong>taining these characteristics are underdiscussi<strong>on</strong> here, and more parameters have to be c<strong>on</strong>sidered in orderfor any study to be defined with precisi<strong>on</strong>. One of these parameters isthe medium: audiovisual texts appear <strong>on</strong> a screen whether big orsmall. The fact that nowadays films can be viewed not <strong>on</strong>ly at thecinema or <strong>on</strong> a televisi<strong>on</strong> set but also <strong>on</strong> a computer screen, calls foranother delimiting parameter which will define audiovisual texts asopposed to hypertexts, received through the same medium. Theimages in a hypertext, such as a web page, can be static or moving,whereas the audiovisual text always includes moving images. The differencebetween the two kinds of text when they include movingimages is that the latter c<strong>on</strong>tains a predetermined successi<strong>on</strong> ofn<strong>on</strong>-repetitive images in absolute synchr<strong>on</strong>isati<strong>on</strong> with the verbalelements. Another differentiating factor is interactivity: in the case ofhypertexts the receivers decide the sequence of the elements, accordingto their needs, whereas the audiovisual text cannot be altered. The<strong>on</strong>ly possibility of interventi<strong>on</strong> <strong>on</strong> the part of the receiver is the caseof a videotape or a DVD where the viewer can backtrack or ‘move’within the film. The features that distinguish the audiovisual text canbe recapitulated as follows:● Recepti<strong>on</strong> through two channels: acoustic and visual.● Significant presence of n<strong>on</strong>verbal elements.● Synchr<strong>on</strong>isati<strong>on</strong> between verbal and n<strong>on</strong>verbal elements.● Appearance <strong>on</strong> screen – reproducable material.● Predetermined successi<strong>on</strong> of moving images – recorded material.These features c<strong>on</strong>diti<strong>on</strong> the translati<strong>on</strong> of the audiovisual text, and, asa result, their c<strong>on</strong>siderati<strong>on</strong> is fundamental for its study.The combinati<strong>on</strong> of the acoustic and the visual channels, togetherwith the verbal and the n<strong>on</strong>verbal elements, result in four basicelements of the audiovisual text: the acoustic verbal (dialogue), theacoustic n<strong>on</strong>verbal (score, sounds), the visual n<strong>on</strong>verbal (image) and thevisual verbal element (subtitles). 2 In this light, and for the purposes ofthe present analysis, the set of subtitles is viewed as forming part of thetranslated text, not as c<strong>on</strong>stituting a translati<strong>on</strong> product by itself. In


Subtitling Norms in Greece and Spain 39VerbalAcoustic(dialogue)N<strong>on</strong>verbalAcoustic(music, sounds)VisualVerbal(subtitles)VisualN<strong>on</strong>verbal(image)Figure 3.1 Spatial and temporal relati<strong>on</strong>ships between the basic elements of thesubtitled audiovisual textother words, the original, untranslated film is c<strong>on</strong>sidered to be thesource text and the subtitled film the target text.The spatio-temporal relati<strong>on</strong>ships between the four above-menti<strong>on</strong>edelements may be seen in the Figure 3.1, where the solid arrows representexisting relati<strong>on</strong>ships in an audiovisual text and the dashed arrowsrepresent the relati<strong>on</strong>ships established by the subtitler. 3In the source text, the temporal relati<strong>on</strong>ship that exists between theimages, the sounds and the dialogue is characterised by an inherentsynchr<strong>on</strong>isati<strong>on</strong>. Logically, the same quality is bound to be requiredbetween the subtitles and the rest of the elements of the target text;subtitles will be expected to appear more or less when a character beginsto speak and to disappear when s/he stops.In search of normsThe texts under study comprise the subtitled versi<strong>on</strong>s in Spanish andGreek of the films The English Patient, 4 the 162-minute film directed byAnth<strong>on</strong>y Minghella in 1996, and Notting Hill, 5 the 124-minute comedydirected by Roger Michell in 1999. A first quantitative and comparativeanalysis between the two sets of subtitles shows a significant differencein the number of subtitles, as shown in Table 3.1.Even though the above are the <strong>on</strong>ly films analysed in this chapter,there is further evidence regarding the higher number of subtitles in theSpanish versi<strong>on</strong>s compared to the Greek versi<strong>on</strong>s, as can be seen in theanalysis of the movies The Perfect Storm, 6 the 129-minute adventure film


40 Stavroula SokoliTable 3.1 Comparis<strong>on</strong> between the numbers of subtitles in the filmsThe English Patient and Notting HillGreek sub/sSpanish sub/sAdditi<strong>on</strong>al sub/sin SpanishThe English 955 1358 42.1%PatientNotting Hill 1052 1754 66.7%Table 3.2 Comparis<strong>on</strong> between the numbers of subtitles in ThePerfect Storm and Manhattan Murder MysteryGreek sub/sSpanishsub/sAdditi<strong>on</strong>alsub/s in SpanishThe Perfect Storm 915 1396 52.5 %Manhattan Murder 1449 1944 34.1 %Mysterydirected by Wolfgang Petersen in 2000, and Manhattan Murder Mystery, 7the 104 minute comedy directed by Woody Allen in 1993. This differencein number of subtitles can be attributed to two factors:a. Difference in dialogue omissi<strong>on</strong>: where there is omissi<strong>on</strong> in thetranslati<strong>on</strong> of the acoustic verbal element in Greek there are subtitlesin Spanish.b. Difference in distributi<strong>on</strong>: <strong>on</strong>e Greek subtitle c<strong>on</strong>sisting of two linescorresp<strong>on</strong>ds to two Spanish subtitles c<strong>on</strong>sisting of <strong>on</strong>e line each.The questi<strong>on</strong> to be answered at this point is: why are there 403‘additi<strong>on</strong>al’ subtitles in the Spanish versi<strong>on</strong> of The English Patient and702 in Notting Hill? In the first film, 48.9% (197 subtitles) of this differenceis due to the first factor menti<strong>on</strong>ed above, that is, these subtitlesare present in Spanish but omitted in Greek. As for the remaining 51.1%of the difference (206 subtitles), it is caused by the sec<strong>on</strong>d factor, that is,by the fact that two Spanish <strong>on</strong>e-liners corresp<strong>on</strong>d to <strong>on</strong>e Greek twoliner.Accordingly, in Notting Hill, 64.9% (456 subtitles) of the differenceis attributed to the first factor and the rest 35.1% (246 subtitles) to thesec<strong>on</strong>d factor.Indeed, the analysis of the number of subtitles c<strong>on</strong>sisting of <strong>on</strong>e ortwo lines shows that there is a preference for two-liners in the Greekand for <strong>on</strong>e-liners in the Spanish versi<strong>on</strong>s, as shown in Figure 3.2.


Subtitling Norms in Greece and Spain 41The English PatientNotting HillGreek subtitles33%32%Spanish subtitles67%37%68%41%<strong>on</strong>e-linerstwo-liners63%59%Figure 3.2 Percentage of subtitles c<strong>on</strong>sisting of <strong>on</strong>e-liners and two-linersThe next step in the analysis is to find out the factors that determinethe choices related to the distributi<strong>on</strong> and the omissi<strong>on</strong> of subtitles ineach language. Let us look at a couple of examples where a two-liner inGreek corresp<strong>on</strong>ds to two <strong>on</strong>e-liners in Spanish. The first <strong>on</strong>e is fromThe English Patient:Example 1Caravaggio: Apparently, we’re neighbours. My house istwo blocks from yours in M<strong>on</strong>treal.SpanishSomos vecinos. Vivimos ...a 2 manzanas de M<strong>on</strong>treal.Greek . .It can be observed that in the Spanish versi<strong>on</strong>, a sec<strong>on</strong>d subtitle isintroduced, even though both lines could fit in <strong>on</strong>e subtitle. Assumingthat this choice is not random, what seems to determine the specificdecisi<strong>on</strong> by the subtitler is the existence of a cut, that is, a suddenchange from <strong>on</strong>e image (a close-up of Hanna) to another (showing bothHanna and Caravaggio). This norm operating in Spanish can also befound in extra-textual sources, more specifically in articles written bySpanish professi<strong>on</strong>als like Castro Roig (2001: 280) who states that‘whenever there is a cut, there must be a new subtitle’ (my translati<strong>on</strong>),


42 Stavroula Sokolia normative statement that is repeated by Leboreiro Enríquez and PozaYagüe (2001).This is also the case in the example below from Notting Hill, where thesec<strong>on</strong>d speaker follows almost immediately after the first <strong>on</strong>e. In Greekthere is <strong>on</strong>e subtitle c<strong>on</strong>sisting of two lines, whereas the Spanish subtitlerhas chosen to create two separate subtitles in order to respect the visualn<strong>on</strong>verbal element, that is, the shot change:Example 2Will: Right, that’s it. Sorry.Anna: No, there’s really no point.SpanishVale, se acabó.No, no vale la pena.Greek- .- ‘. In many cases, the difference in lexical distributi<strong>on</strong> is determined bythe influence (or absence of influence) of the acoustic n<strong>on</strong>verbalelements, namely pauses in the characters’ speech. This can be seen inthe following example from Notting Hill where the dialogue ischaracterised not <strong>on</strong>ly by many pauses in speech, but also by a highnumber of false starts:Example 3Anna: Tempting, but ... no. Thank you.Tentador, ...Spanish... pero ...... no.Greek ... ...‘, .Gracias.In the above example, we can see that there are four Spanish subtitleswhen the Greek subtitler has decided to use <strong>on</strong>ly <strong>on</strong>e. The distributi<strong>on</strong>of subtitles in Spanish seems to be determined by the pauses in Anna’sspeech, whereas in Greek it appears to be the direct c<strong>on</strong>sequence of thenorm which stipulates that, where possible, each subtitle must have acomplete meaning in itself. The extra-textual source for this normc<strong>on</strong>sists of a questi<strong>on</strong>naire directed to Greek professi<strong>on</strong>al subtitlers(Sokoli, 2000). One of the outcomes of the analysis of the questi<strong>on</strong>naires


Subtitling Norms in Greece and Spain 43indicates that completeness of meaning in each subtitle is c<strong>on</strong>sidered<strong>on</strong>e of the main characteristics of good subtitling. A technique oftenused in order to indicate the existence of pauses is the use of triple dots,as in the above example.An observati<strong>on</strong> that has to be made c<strong>on</strong>cerning the Spanish versi<strong>on</strong>sis that there are quite a few examples where there is both a pause anda cut and the subtitler has to choose between cueing the subtitleaccording to <strong>on</strong>e of the two. It has been found that in all these cases,priority is given to the norm which requires synchr<strong>on</strong>isati<strong>on</strong> with theacoustic element; in other words, the cueing in of the subtitle will bed<strong>on</strong>e when the next part of the utterance begins and not when thereis a cut.The next step in the analysis is to examine the difference in the choiceof omissi<strong>on</strong>s, more specifically, the cases where an acoustic verbalelement has an equivalent subtitle in the Spanish but no subtitle in theGreek versi<strong>on</strong>. The following example is from Notting Hill:Example 4Anna: Hi.William: Hello.Anna: You disappeared.William: Yeah ... yeah. I had to leave. I didn’t want to disturb you.Hola.-Hola. -SpanishDesapareciste. .GreekSí, sí. -Tuve que irme,no quería molestar.‘ . ' .In the Greek versi<strong>on</strong>, even though there are no time or space c<strong>on</strong>straints,the greeting between the two characters and the almost inaudible‘yeah ... yeah’ are omitted in the subtitles. These choices do not seemto be random and the norm which possibly governs them can be foundin the results of the previously menti<strong>on</strong>ed questi<strong>on</strong>naire: a high percentageof the Greek subtitlers involved stated that they omit utterancesthat they c<strong>on</strong>sider either easily recognisable by the Greekaudience, (such as ‘OK’, ‘hello’, ‘yes’, ‘no’, etc., names, repetiti<strong>on</strong>s), ornot relevant to the plot, (hospital or airport announcements,


44 Stavroula Sokolis<strong>on</strong>gs, etc.). Moreover, it was pointed out that, despite the absence oftime or space c<strong>on</strong>straints, such utterances are often omitted in orderfor the viewers to have time to enjoy the image. These are utteranceswhich can be recovered by other elements of the audiovisual text:● The acoustic verbal (recognisable utterances, names, etc.).● The acoustic n<strong>on</strong>verbal (phatic elements, exclamati<strong>on</strong>s, etc.).● The visual verbal (repetiti<strong>on</strong> found in other subtitles, etc.).● The visual n<strong>on</strong>verbal (objects in the image, etc.).● A combinati<strong>on</strong> of all or some of the above elements.It is clearly difficult, if not impossible, to mark a clear-cut distincti<strong>on</strong>between the elements of the audiovisual text, since these are closelyinterrelated. The argument here is that the omitted utterances aremainly and not <strong>on</strong>ly recoverable from these elements. Another examplecomes from The English Patient:Example 5Katharine: Stop! Here! Over here! Stop! Madox!Almasy: Madox! Madox!¡Estamos aquí!!¡Aquí! -Spanish¡Pare! !Greek¡Madox! -¡Madox! -¡Madox! -In the Spanish versi<strong>on</strong>, there seems to be a norm stipulating that theremust be as few omissi<strong>on</strong>s as possible, which is also extra-textually corroboratedby Díaz Cintas (1997: 281). In an analysis of the subtitledversi<strong>on</strong> of Manhattan Murder Mystery in Spanish he finds that there is atendency for what he calls sobretraducción [over-translati<strong>on</strong>]. Accordingto this scholar, the specific phenomen<strong>on</strong> is explained by ‘the intenti<strong>on</strong>that the viewer can have the feeling of not being cheated, and of havingall the informati<strong>on</strong> c<strong>on</strong>tained in the original versi<strong>on</strong>’ (my translati<strong>on</strong>).He provides examples similar to the <strong>on</strong>es above – such as Sí, sí,¿Helen?, ¡Jack! – and c<strong>on</strong>siders these subtitles unnecessary for thecomprehensi<strong>on</strong> of the plot since they are of a purely phatic or vocative


Subtitling Norms in Greece and Spain 45Table 3.3 The 13 possible relati<strong>on</strong>ships (Allen, 1983)Relati<strong>on</strong> Symbol Symbol for inverse Pictorial examplex before y xxxx yyyyx equal y xxxxyyyyx meets y m mi xxxxyyyyx overlaps y o oi xxxxyyyyx during y d di xxxxyyyyyyyyx starts y s si xxxxyyyyyyx finishes y f fi xxxxyyyyyynature. Moreover, according to the answers given by Spanish subtitlersto the questi<strong>on</strong>naire discussed above, the spectator must not be left tofeel that there is any missing informati<strong>on</strong>, and c<strong>on</strong>sequently a subtitlemust appear every time an utterance is heard.In order to study the relati<strong>on</strong> between the acoustic and the visualverbal elements, I have borrowed a relevant categorisati<strong>on</strong> from the disciplineof Artificial Intelligence, relating to the basic possible relati<strong>on</strong>shipsbetween two intervals. According to Allen (1983) there are 13 suchrelati<strong>on</strong>ships, as indicated in Table 3.3.Let us now see which are the most frequent temporal relati<strong>on</strong>shipsbetween the utterances heard and the subtitles. In the Greek versi<strong>on</strong>s ofthe films under analysis it has been found that the subtitles appearsome decisec<strong>on</strong>ds (<strong>on</strong>e-tenths of sec<strong>on</strong>d) after the start of the utterance.In the Spanish versi<strong>on</strong>s, <strong>on</strong> the other hand, the subtitles appear exactlywhen the utterance begins and finish either when the utterance finishesor some decisec<strong>on</strong>ds after it has finished. If Allen’s categorisati<strong>on</strong> isused, where x represents the durati<strong>on</strong> of the utterance and y the durati<strong>on</strong>of the subtitle, we have the following most frequent temporal relati<strong>on</strong>sbetween the two:● Greek: ‘x overlaps y’ (o)● Spanish: ‘x equal y’ () and ‘x starts y’ (s)As far as the Spanish versi<strong>on</strong>s are c<strong>on</strong>cerned, the choice for the cueingof the subtitles seems to be governed by the requirement for


46 Stavroula Sokolisynchr<strong>on</strong>isati<strong>on</strong>. Naturally, even though it is almost always possible tocue the subtitle in at the beginning of the utterance, the same does nothold for the cueing out, because the specific durati<strong>on</strong> might not beenough for the subtitle to be read. This may explain why both relati<strong>on</strong>shipsare frequent in Spanish.A similar assumpti<strong>on</strong> of the norm cannot be made for the Greekversi<strong>on</strong>s. This is because I have not encountered any extra-textualsources verifying the existence of a norm requiring that subtitles mustbe inserted some frames after the utterance has begun, despite the factthat the specific relati<strong>on</strong>ship is the <strong>on</strong>e most frequently met. Theregularity of this relati<strong>on</strong>ship could be attributed to certain technicallimitati<strong>on</strong>s that existed in the past, such as the necessity for manualinserti<strong>on</strong> of subtitles (Sokoli, 2000). Despite the fact that these technicallimitati<strong>on</strong>s have now been overcome, the lack of a norm requiringabsolute synchr<strong>on</strong>isati<strong>on</strong> seems to have led to a c<strong>on</strong>firmati<strong>on</strong> of thispractice. Thus, it could possibly be included am<strong>on</strong>g the cases thatChesterman (1993: 4) describes as ‘behavioural regularities [which] areaccepted (in a given community) as being models or standards ofdesired behaviour’.C<strong>on</strong>clusi<strong>on</strong>The above quantitative and qualitative analysis shows that there areindicati<strong>on</strong>s of the presence of norms in the subtitling practices inGreece, as well as Spain. In particular, there are indicati<strong>on</strong>s of the operati<strong>on</strong>of the following norms:● Matricial norms: in Spain, the distributi<strong>on</strong> of subtitles is determinedby the acoustic n<strong>on</strong>verbal (pauses) and the visual n<strong>on</strong>verbal(cuts) elements. When there is a c<strong>on</strong>flict between the requirementsfor synchr<strong>on</strong>isati<strong>on</strong> with the acoustic and the synchr<strong>on</strong>isati<strong>on</strong> withthe visual element, synchr<strong>on</strong>isati<strong>on</strong> with the acoustic element prevails.In Greece, the distributi<strong>on</strong> of subtitles is determined by therequirement for completeness of meaning within the same subtitleand the preference for subtitles c<strong>on</strong>sisting of two lines rather than<strong>on</strong>e.● Relati<strong>on</strong> norms: in Spain, the choice dictating omissi<strong>on</strong> is determinedby the requirement of ‘equality’ between the acoustic verbaland the visual verbal element. As a result, the omitted utterances areas few as possible. Moreover, there is an effort to avoid disproporti<strong>on</strong>between the durati<strong>on</strong> of the dialogue and the subtitles. In


Subtitling Norms in Greece and Spain 47Greece, the choice for omissi<strong>on</strong> is determined by the utterance’srecoverability from the other elements of the audiovisual text.Recoverable elements are often omitted even in the absence of timeand space c<strong>on</strong>straints.Again, it has to be stressed that these are <strong>on</strong>ly indicati<strong>on</strong>s of the presenceof norms and that more films have to be analysed in order for them tobe verified. Future research could include the comparis<strong>on</strong> of each set ofsubtitles with the original dialogue, with the aim to find the degree oflanguage compressi<strong>on</strong>, since the <strong>on</strong>ly comparis<strong>on</strong> made in the presentstudy has been between the two subtitled versi<strong>on</strong>s of each film.Moreover, other films to be studied could bel<strong>on</strong>g to different genres (forexample acti<strong>on</strong> films, documentaries) or have stricter time and spacec<strong>on</strong>straints (for example films with fast dialogue), with the aim toexplore the way the above norms are adapted. Another possible line ofresearch involves investigati<strong>on</strong> of the recepti<strong>on</strong> of subtitled audiovisualprogrammes. For example, a subtitled film translated according to theSpanish norms could be shown to a Greek audience, or vice versa, andtheir resp<strong>on</strong>se could be examined in order for expectancy norms to bediscovered.Given the qualitative and descriptive nature of the present discussi<strong>on</strong>in the absence of laws or absolute truths, possible explanati<strong>on</strong>shave been proposed and more hypotheses have been put forward,which in turn may serve as a basis for future research. The resultscould be used not <strong>on</strong>ly for the explanati<strong>on</strong> and predicti<strong>on</strong> of the waysubtitles are manifested, but also in a programme of training forsubtitlers.Notes1. The definiti<strong>on</strong> of text used here is the <strong>on</strong>e established by de Beaugrande andDressler (1981), according to which a text has to meet seven standards oftextuality: cohesi<strong>on</strong>, coherence, intenti<strong>on</strong>ality, acceptability, informativity,situati<strong>on</strong>ality and intertextuality. Hence, texts are not <strong>on</strong>ly written utterances,in spite of the c<strong>on</strong>notati<strong>on</strong> this word has in everyday language. Thisdefiniti<strong>on</strong> also accounts for spoken utterances, as well as for televisi<strong>on</strong> andcinema programmes, our present object of study.2. Delabastita (1990: 101–2) refers to these as ‘four types of film sign: verbalsigns transmitted acoustically (dialogue), n<strong>on</strong>verbal signs transmitted acoustically(background noise, music), verbal signs transmitted visually (credits,letters, documents shown <strong>on</strong> the screen), n<strong>on</strong>verbal signs transmittedvisually’.3. The term ‘subtitler’, as used here, does not necessarily refer to <strong>on</strong>e pers<strong>on</strong> butmay represent the team of people involved in the subtitling process.


48 Stavroula SokoliDepending <strong>on</strong> the practice, the same pers<strong>on</strong> is resp<strong>on</strong>sible sometimes for allthe steps, whereas in other cases, the spotting and the translati<strong>on</strong> are d<strong>on</strong>e bydifferent people (see Georgakopoulou, this volume).4. The set of Greek subtitles broadcast <strong>on</strong> TV is the same as the <strong>on</strong>e appearingin the VHS versi<strong>on</strong> (no informati<strong>on</strong> was available about the cinema or DVDversi<strong>on</strong>). As for the Spanish versi<strong>on</strong>, <strong>on</strong>ly the VHS was available.5. In Greece, this film had the same set of subtitles for TV, VHS and DVD (noinformati<strong>on</strong> was available about the cinema versi<strong>on</strong>). In Spain, interestinglyenough, there are four different sets of subtitles for each medium and the <strong>on</strong>eused for this analysis is the TV versi<strong>on</strong>.6. The TV versi<strong>on</strong> has been used for both languages.7. The VHS versi<strong>on</strong> has been used for both languages. See Díaz Cintas (1997) formore details about the subtitling of this film into Spanish.ReferencesAllen, J. (1983) ‘Maintaining knowledge about temporal intervals’. Communicati<strong>on</strong>sof the ACM 26(11): 832–43.de Beaugrande, R. and Dressler, W. (1981) Introducti<strong>on</strong> to Text Linguistics. L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong>:L<strong>on</strong>gman.Castro Roig, X. (2001) ‘El traductor de películas’. In M. Duro (ed.) La traducciónpara el doblaje y la subtitulación (pp. 267–98). Madrid: Cátedra.Chesterman, A. (1993) ‘From “is” to “ought”: Laws, norms and strategies in<str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> Studies’. Target 5(1): 1–20.Chesterman, A. (1997) Memes of <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g>. The Spread of Ideas in <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g>Theory. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Delabastita, D. (1990) ‘<str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> and the mass media’. In S. Bassnett andA. Lefevere (eds) <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g>, History and Culture (pp. 97–109). L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong>: Pinter.Díaz Cintas, J. (1997) El subtitulado en tanto que modalidad de traducciónfílmica dentro del marco teórico de los Estudios sobre Traducción (Misteriosoasesinato en Manhattan, Woody Allen, 1993). Valencia: Universidad deValencia. PhD Thesis.Hermans, T. (1999) <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> in Systems: Descriptive and Systemic ApproachesExplained. Manchester: St Jerome.Leboreiro Enríquez, F. and Poza Yagüe, J. (2001) ‘Subtitular: toda una ciencia ...y todo un arte’. In M. Duro (ed.) La traducción para el doblaje y la subtitulación(pp. 315–23). Madrid: Cátedra.Sokoli, S. (2000) Research Issues in <str<strong>on</strong>g>Audiovisual</str<strong>on</strong>g> <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g>: Aspects of Subtitlingin Greece. Barcel<strong>on</strong>a: Universitat Autònoma de Barcel<strong>on</strong>a. MA Dissertati<strong>on</strong>.Toury, G. (1995) Descriptive <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> Studies and Bey<strong>on</strong>d. Amsterdam andPhiladelphia: John Benjamins.Zabalbeascoa, P. (1997) ‘Dubbing and the n<strong>on</strong>verbal dimensi<strong>on</strong> of translati<strong>on</strong>’.In F. Poyatos (ed.) N<strong>on</strong>verbal Communicati<strong>on</strong> and <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> (pp. 327–42).Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.


4Amateur Subtitling <strong>on</strong>the InternetŁukasz BoguckiIntroducti<strong>on</strong>The traditi<strong>on</strong>al understanding of the audiovisual translati<strong>on</strong> modeknown as subtitling is that it is intended primarily for cinema andtelevisi<strong>on</strong> use, with the help of a visual comp<strong>on</strong>ent in the form of a(video) recording and the final programme script of the original, exceptperhaps for instantaneous, live subtitles (Kilborn, 1993). The ubiquityof the Internet, however, has given rise to a new kind of AVT which Irefer to here as ‘amateur subtitling’. Amateur subtitling is not unrelatedto fansubs (www.fansubs.net/fsw/general), subtitles of various Japaneseanime producti<strong>on</strong>s made unofficially by fans for n<strong>on</strong>-Japanese viewers.Despite their dubious legal status, fansubs have been in existence sincethe late 1980s (O’Hagan, 2003). The rati<strong>on</strong>ale behind the decisi<strong>on</strong> toundertake the translati<strong>on</strong> in the form of fansubs and amateur subtitlingis largely the same: to make a c<strong>on</strong>tributi<strong>on</strong> in an area of particular interestand to popularise it in other countries, making it accessible to abroader range of viewers/readers, who bel<strong>on</strong>g to different linguisticcommunities.Amateur subtitle producers, a term used here in place of ‘translator’ or‘subtitler’ as the product under discussi<strong>on</strong> does not qualify as fullyfledgedsubtitling, typically work with a recording of the original, butthey have no access to the post-producti<strong>on</strong> script. They rarely work withclassics, as the intenti<strong>on</strong> behind their work is to make local viewersfamiliar with recent film producti<strong>on</strong>s. The quality of their product isthus c<strong>on</strong>diti<strong>on</strong>ed by how much they understand of the original.Comprehensi<strong>on</strong> is essential in any kind of translati<strong>on</strong>, yet understandingthe original for amateur subtitling purposes differs from the kind ofsource text analysis performed in ‘paper’ translati<strong>on</strong>. The comm<strong>on</strong>49


50 Łukasz Boguckiground is that the original can be listened to as many times as thesubtitle producer deems necessary, but certain fragments may be unclear,made unintelligible by background noises, or otherwise irretrievable asin, for example, interpreting.Amateur subtitlers have at their disposal a range of freeware or sharewarecomputer programs to create subtitles (e.g. Sub Stati<strong>on</strong> Alpha,www.topdownloads.net/software/view.php?id=9740) and to superimposethem <strong>on</strong> the film (e.g. Virtual Dub, www.virtualdub.org). Insertingsubtitles in the film or programme is very easy even for relatively inexperiencedusers. In amateur subtitling there is no strict limit as to thenumber of lines per subtitle, but experienced subtitle producers realisethat human percepti<strong>on</strong> is not boundless; as cinema-viewers themselves,they subc<strong>on</strong>sciously tend to apply the c<strong>on</strong>venti<strong>on</strong>al limit of two linesper subtitle. Three-line subtitles are used in rare cases where the pace ofthe dialogue is so fast that two-liners would have to be displayed veryquickly <strong>on</strong>e after the other. Nor are there any strict restricti<strong>on</strong>s asregards the number of characters per line. 1 There are programs that trimthe number of characters per line to a certain limit, but we have yet tosee a standard emerge. 2 As f<strong>on</strong>t size is a user-defined variable, l<strong>on</strong>gersubtitles sometimes occupy too much screen space if large f<strong>on</strong>ts areselected. As a result, subtitle producers will adjust their work to the individualrequirements of a given computer applicati<strong>on</strong>. Amateur subtitlingis also subject to technical c<strong>on</strong>straints, but it has to be stressed that thelimitati<strong>on</strong>s at work as regards unprofessi<strong>on</strong>al amateur subtitling areunlike the <strong>on</strong>es that traditi<strong>on</strong>ally apply to professi<strong>on</strong>al subtitling (seeKaramitroglou, 1998 for a descripti<strong>on</strong> of subtitling standards). There isfar more freedom and, as a c<strong>on</strong>sequence, technical c<strong>on</strong>straints do notnormally impinge <strong>on</strong> the resulting product to the extent that strategiesof curtailment such as decimati<strong>on</strong>, c<strong>on</strong>densati<strong>on</strong>, etc. (Gottlieb, 1992;Bogucki, 2004) have to be resorted to. The problem with amateursubtitling lies not so much in squeezing the gist of what the originalcharacters say into 30 or so characters per line to enable the audience toappreciate the filmic message without too much effort; the problem, itseems, lies mostly in the quality of the source material and the competenceand expertise of the translator.Text files with amateur subtitles for many recent cinema releases arerelatively easy to find <strong>on</strong> the Internet. 3 The examples in this secti<strong>on</strong>come from an amateur translati<strong>on</strong> made by Mirosław Jaworski, withpermissi<strong>on</strong> from the subtitle producer. The film under discussi<strong>on</strong> isPeter Jacks<strong>on</strong>’s The Fellowship of the Ring (2001). Jaworski made greatefforts to become the first amateur to subtitle this particular release.


Amateur Subtitling <strong>on</strong> the Internet 51He posted his translati<strong>on</strong> in the form of a text file <strong>on</strong> the WWW aboutsix weeks before the film was actually shown in cinemas in Poland,and approximately at the same time as it was released in the USA. Not<strong>on</strong>ly was he pressed for time not to be outd<strong>on</strong>e, but also his ‘sourcetext’ (the inverted commas being very much in place here) was whathe had managed to take down from a camcorder recording of the originalcinema release. As a result, he had to cope with very poor qualityand the translati<strong>on</strong> required the meticulous effort of listening to theoriginal scores of times. He was left to his own devices, as mostamateur subtitle producers are, and had to rely <strong>on</strong> his own languagecompetence.Let us now look at some illustrative excerpts to see how comprehensi<strong>on</strong>problems can impinge negatively <strong>on</strong> translati<strong>on</strong> quality.Error analysisAs we shall see presently, the term ‘error analysis’, avoided wherever itcan be helped in literature (quality assessment, after all, is not merelyabout error-hunting), can be used to discuss amateur subtitling quality.(A) ST: You know Bilbo – he’s got the whole place in an uproar.TT: -Znasz Bilba, całe miejsce zamienił w altane̜ .[You know Bilbo. He’s turned the whole place into an arbour.]The visual image in this instance is a rural, peaceful landscape.(B) ST: All I did was give your uncle a little nudge out of the door.TT: Wszystko, co zrobiłem, to dałem twojemu wujowi pare̜ porad udrzwi.[All I did was give your uncle some advice at the door.]The problematic words in these two examples are ‘uproar’ and ‘nudge’.Since, from the point of view of English learners, and Jaworski is a c<strong>on</strong>fessedself-learner, these terms are normally learned at later stages oflinguistic development, they may have been new to the subtitle producer.Had he had the opportunity of seeing them in writing, he wouldno doubt have looked them up and may have come up with a moreaccurate versi<strong>on</strong>. Let us look at another example:(C) ST: The Shadow does not hold sway yet.TT: Cień nie ustabilizował sie̜ jeszcze.[The Shadow has not set in yet.]


52 Łukasz BoguckiThe expressi<strong>on</strong> ‘to hold sway’ may be said to have similar features to‘nudge’ or ‘uproar’ in that it is likely to be unfamiliar to a speaker ofEnglish as a sec<strong>on</strong>d language with a limited lexic<strong>on</strong>; these words d<strong>on</strong>ot typically occur in textbooks for beginners or intermediate studentsof English. However, in this case it can actually be seen rather thanheard, as the original sentence appears as an <strong>on</strong>-screen insert in Elvish,and the example quoted above is the translati<strong>on</strong> into English thatappears as a subtitle. In all probability, the subtitle producer looked upthe unfamiliar word in a dicti<strong>on</strong>ary and was able to offer an accuratetranslati<strong>on</strong>.Another type of error results from inadequate linguistic competencecoupled with the specificity of cross-medium translati<strong>on</strong>, that is,having to go from the spoken of the original to the written of thetranslati<strong>on</strong>:(D)ST: ... friends of old.TT: ... przyjaciele Starych.[ ... friends of (the) Old.]This short excerpt comes from the Council of Elr<strong>on</strong>d where noblerepresentatives of different races meet to discuss a serious issue. Theoriginal is merely a polite form of address suggesting that the charactershave known each other for some time. The Polish translati<strong>on</strong> may beimplying that the speaker is addressing the friends of the old race ofElves. The mistake might never have been made but for the change inmedium from spoken to written. If the subtitle producer had seen thedialogue in writing, he would have noticed the lower case where he wasexpecting a capital letter, and would have thought twice about theappropriateness of his renditi<strong>on</strong>. Similarly:(E) ST: ... festering, stinking marshlands as far as the eye can see.TT: -Obrzydliwe, ś mierdza̜ce ... Tam, doka̜d sie̜ ga Oko![ ... disgusting, stinking ... Where the Eye reaches!]‘The Eye’ is used throughout the film as a met<strong>on</strong>ym for Saur<strong>on</strong>, theGreat Enemy. It would make sense in the c<strong>on</strong>text to interpret this fragmentas ‘as far as the Eye can see’, as Saur<strong>on</strong> could scan the territoryaround his tower, looking for enemies. Again, had the subtitle producerhad access to the written script, he might not have made themistake.


Amateur Subtitling <strong>on</strong> the Internet 53In (F) the producer may have heard <strong>on</strong>ly the key word (‘arrangements’)and produced a subtitle where the message is not entirely off the mark,but the versi<strong>on</strong> nevertheless remains little more than a lexical additi<strong>on</strong>in terms of translati<strong>on</strong>.(F) ST: All the arrangements are made.TT: Tylko kilka umówi<strong>on</strong>ych spotkań.[Just a few appointments.]In natural speech the beginnings of sentences are often unstressed,sometimes hardly heard. In the following example, had the subtitleproducer heard the subject of the sentence and not, apparently, mistaken‘he’s’ for ‘it’s’, the subtitle might have been nearer the mark. As itis, the meaning is completely changed:(G) ST: (He’s) very f<strong>on</strong>d of you.TT: To bardzo naiwne z twojej str<strong>on</strong>y.[It’s very silly of you.]Interestingly, Jaworski may have been aware of this kind of ellipsis. Inthe example below, he clearly appears to have thought Gandalf said ‘afew’ rather than ‘few’, and the reas<strong>on</strong> why he heard the latter may havebeen due to the fact that in natural speech short words can easily bemissed:(H) ST: (- I can’t read it.) - There are few who can.TT: Sa̜ tacy którzy umieja̜.[There are some who can.]On more than <strong>on</strong>e occasi<strong>on</strong>, the subtitle producer must have misheardthe original, due to a combinati<strong>on</strong> of inadequate language skills andpoor recording quality. As a result, his translati<strong>on</strong>s are often wide ofthe mark:(I) ST: You will keep an eye <strong>on</strong> Frodo, w<strong>on</strong>’t you?Two eyes. As often as I can spare them.TT: Be̜ dziesz miał oko na Froda?Nawet pare̜ . Tak cze̜ sto jak tylko be̜ de̜ je mógł wyczarować.[( ... ) as often as I can c<strong>on</strong>jure them up.]


54 Łukasz BoguckiHere Jaworski must have misheard the verb ‘spare’ thinking it was ‘spell’,and given that the sender of the message is a wizard, interpreted ‘spell’as wyczarować [c<strong>on</strong>jure up]. The same situati<strong>on</strong> can be found in thethree examples below:(J) ST: Your love of the Halflings’ leaf has clearly slowed your mind.TT: Twoje uwielbienie życia hobbitów spowolniło twój umysł.[Your love of the Halflings’ lifestyle has slowed your mind – ‘leaf’understood as ‘life’.](K) ST: The friendship of Saruman is not lightly thrown aside.TT: Przyjaź ń Sarumana nie jest już po naszej str<strong>on</strong>ie.[The friendship of Saruman is no l<strong>on</strong>ger <strong>on</strong> our side – ‘aside’ for‘side’.](L) ST: One ill turn deserves another. It is over! (understood as ‘thering returns to serve another’.)TT: Kiedy Pierś cień powróci by służyć innemu, wszystko be̜ dziesk<strong>on</strong>́cz<strong>on</strong>e![When the Ring returns to serve another, everything will be over!]Below is another interesting error. During the c<strong>on</strong>versati<strong>on</strong> that takesplace between Gandalf and Saruman, the subtitle producer may havemisheard the name uttered (‘Saur<strong>on</strong>’) thinking the wizard was addressinghis interlocutor:(M)ST: But we still have time, time enough to counter Saur<strong>on</strong> if we actquickly.TT: Mamy jeszcze czas, Sarumanie, jeżeli be̜ dziemy działać szybko.[We still have time, Saruman, if we act quickly.]This also shows that amateur subtitle producers may be unfamiliar withsubtitling standards developed for professi<strong>on</strong>al translati<strong>on</strong> purposes(Karamitroglou, 1998). When time and space limitati<strong>on</strong>s are stringent,if a character addresses another <strong>on</strong>e by name in the original dialogue(and both are seen <strong>on</strong> screen), the subtitler leaves out the name, as thec<strong>on</strong>text makes it clear who is being addressed. Had Jaworski known thisrule of thumb, he would probably have ignored the name (we are assuminghere that he thought it was ‘Saruman’, not ‘Saur<strong>on</strong>’).However, unwarranted reliance <strong>on</strong> visual stimuli or excessivec<strong>on</strong>text-dependence may result in translati<strong>on</strong>s which are impossible to


Amateur Subtitling <strong>on</strong> the Internet 55understand. In the following example, Galadriel, Queen of the Elves,greets Frodo at her abode with the following words:(N) ST: Welcome, Frodo of Shire – <strong>on</strong>e who has seen The Eye.Before she menti<strong>on</strong>s ‘The Eye’, which in the c<strong>on</strong>text refers to Saur<strong>on</strong>,the Great Enemy depicted throughout the film as an evil eye, the camerashows her own eyes in close-up. This visual c<strong>on</strong>text may have misledthe translator:TT: Witaj Frodo z Shire’u ... Co widzisz w moich oczach?[Welcome Frodo of Shire ... What do you see in my eyes?]On another occasi<strong>on</strong>, two characters are talking about Gandalf, the fellowship’sleader, who has fallen to his death in the mines of Moria:(O) ST: For me the grief is still too near.TT: Nie powinniś my go jeszcze opłakiwać.[We shouldn’t mourn him yet.]The subtitle producer might have opted for another translati<strong>on</strong> had henot been over-influenced by the book. In Part Two (which Jaworskicould not have seen <strong>on</strong> screen at the time of the TT producti<strong>on</strong>, butmight had read in book form) Gandalf returns; it turns out that he hassurvived his misadventure. This is what the translati<strong>on</strong> implies but infact it is inappropriate, as the original makes no such implicati<strong>on</strong>. Theintended message of the original is merely that Gandalf’s fall is still afresh memory for the fellowship.On balance, it can be deduced that the process of n<strong>on</strong>-professi<strong>on</strong>alamateur subtitling by some<strong>on</strong>e with a limited knowledge of the sourcelanguage, tends to result in err<strong>on</strong>eous, infelicitous or, at best, chancedecisi<strong>on</strong>s due to the following factors:● Inability to identify less comm<strong>on</strong>ly used words that fall outside thedomain of basic vocabulary (examples A and B).● Failure to comprehend complete utterances; taking translati<strong>on</strong>al decisi<strong>on</strong>s<strong>on</strong> the basis of minimally heard and understood informati<strong>on</strong>(example F).● Misinterpreting ellipsis (examples G and H).● Misunderstanding single lexemes (examples I, J, K) and l<strong>on</strong>gerstretches of c<strong>on</strong>nected speech (example L).● Excessive reliance <strong>on</strong> c<strong>on</strong>text (examples N and O).


56 Łukasz BoguckiC<strong>on</strong>clusi<strong>on</strong>As illustrated by this discussi<strong>on</strong> the quality of the translati<strong>on</strong> of filmsdiffers greatly between amateur and professi<strong>on</strong>al subtitling. While inboth cases the outcome, to a substantial extent, is c<strong>on</strong>diti<strong>on</strong>ed by otherelements of the filmic message, the differences are too significant toattempt to apply whatever c<strong>on</strong>clusi<strong>on</strong>s seem valid for <strong>on</strong>e type to theother, especially as the product of amateur subtitling tends to be marredby translati<strong>on</strong>al error due to the translator’s lack of linguistic competencein the SL, incomplete source texts, or both.Is there then a future for this type of <strong>home</strong>-made subtitling? As freewarecomputer programs are widely available, technically speaking any<strong>on</strong>eowning a PC and having access to the Internet and a copy of a filmcan make their own subtitles and post them <strong>on</strong> the web. But why shouldthey do so in the first place? In the case of the translati<strong>on</strong> discussed here,the rati<strong>on</strong>ale behind the decisi<strong>on</strong> to translate the film was two-fold: tomake a name by being sec<strong>on</strong>d to n<strong>on</strong>e to subtitle a release as popular asThe Lord of the Rings, and to enable the Internet community to watch(illegally copied) films in a language other than English. Leaving asidethe – otherwise important – questi<strong>on</strong> of the legal aspect, the subject isdiscussed here with an eye to the future; if Internet subtitlers were to getaccess to official scripts rather than what they manage to take downfrom poor quality recordings, and if the subtitled films were to be madelegally and officially available (possibly for a fee), the resulting data couldbe compared and c<strong>on</strong>trasted with professi<strong>on</strong>al cinema producti<strong>on</strong>s. Itmight then be interesting to research the linguistic implicati<strong>on</strong>s of inhouseregulati<strong>on</strong>s issued by film and translati<strong>on</strong> companies vis-à-vis thetechnical restricti<strong>on</strong>s of computer video players.Do amateur subtitlers pose a threat for professi<strong>on</strong>al subtitlers? Thisquesti<strong>on</strong> cannot be fully addressed until we have a working answer tothe questi<strong>on</strong> of whether movies available <strong>on</strong> the Internet can competeagainst the big screen and DVDs. It seems, however, that there willalways be a market for both cinema producti<strong>on</strong>s and digitally recordedcopies of films for <strong>home</strong> use. Hence, it would seem justified to assumethat cinema/DVD professi<strong>on</strong>al subtitling will c<strong>on</strong>tinue to exist al<strong>on</strong>gside‘<strong>home</strong>-made’ capti<strong>on</strong>s. The latter, however, will have to becomemore professi<strong>on</strong>al in every respect. If amateur subtitling ceases to be‘amateur’, in other words if the source text is not taken down from apoor quality recording but made available to the subtitle producer priorto producing the subtitles, the resulting target text can be subject totranslati<strong>on</strong> quality assessment and compared to professi<strong>on</strong>al cinema


Amateur Subtitling <strong>on</strong> the Internet 57subtitling. Then – and <strong>on</strong>ly then – can it be studied by academics andscholars. If, however, amateur subtitling c<strong>on</strong>tinues to be d<strong>on</strong>e <strong>on</strong> thebasis of incomplete informati<strong>on</strong>, it will necessarily also be imperfectand not available to academic study due to its high degree of unpredictability.As a result, this c<strong>on</strong>tributi<strong>on</strong> is merely a prolegomen<strong>on</strong> to a morethorough study of amateur subtitling, which can <strong>on</strong>ly be undertaken ifamateur capti<strong>on</strong>s are produced under c<strong>on</strong>diti<strong>on</strong>s comparable with thoseof professi<strong>on</strong>al subtitling.Notes1. Some computer programs (movie players capable of showing subtitles andamateur subtitling software) limit the number of characters per line of subtitle,but as the limit can be 60,000 or more characters, for the purpose of thisdiscussi<strong>on</strong> it can safely be ignored, as it does not impinge <strong>on</strong> the translati<strong>on</strong>process, no quantitative c<strong>on</strong>straints being applicable.2. Mirosław Jaworski, pers<strong>on</strong>al communicati<strong>on</strong>.3. For Polish subtitles, see www.napisy.prv.pl. Films cited in my examples areThe Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Peter Jacks<strong>on</strong>, New Zealand/United States, Warner Bros 2001, and Władca Pierś cieni: Druż yna Pierś cienia,Warner Bros Polska, 2002, Polish subtitles by Elżbieta Gała̜zka-Salam<strong>on</strong>.ReferencesBogucki, Ł. (2004) A Relevance Framework for C<strong>on</strong>straints <strong>on</strong> Cinema Subtitling.Łódź : Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego.Gottlieb, H. (1992) ‘Subtitling – a new university discipline’. In C. Dollerup andA. Loddegaard (eds) Teaching <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> and Interpreting (pp. 161–70).Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Karamitroglou, F. (1998) ‘A proposed set of subtitling standards in Europe’.<str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> Journal 2 (2). http://accurapid.com/journal/04stndrd.htmKilborn, R. (1993) ‘Speak my language: Current attitudes to televisi<strong>on</strong> subtitlingand dubbing’. Media, Culture & Society 15(4): 641–60.O’Hagan, M. (2003) ‘Middle Earth poses challenges to Japanese subtitling’.LISA Newsletter XII. www.lisa.org/archive_domain/newsletters/2003/1.5/ohagan.html


5The Art and Craft ofOpera SurtitlingJ<strong>on</strong>athan Burt<strong>on</strong>Introducti<strong>on</strong>While subtitles are translated text displayed below the image, as <strong>on</strong> acinema or televisi<strong>on</strong> screen, surtitles are displayed above the stage, inlive opera or theatre performances (some opera companies refer to theseas ‘supertitles’). Subtitling and surtitling involve differing requirementsand techniques. In this chapter both approaches to the translati<strong>on</strong> ofoperatic texts will be discussed.History of subtitling and surtitling for operaSubtitles for opera <strong>on</strong> film have been around almost as l<strong>on</strong>g as cinemaitself, since the early years of the twentieth century (Ivarss<strong>on</strong>, 2002).On televisi<strong>on</strong>, the first subtitles for opera in the early 1970s c<strong>on</strong>sisted ofa series of capti<strong>on</strong> boards placed in fr<strong>on</strong>t of a camera and superimposed<strong>on</strong> the televisi<strong>on</strong> picture. This cumbersome arrangement was supersededby experiments with automated electric typewriters, and eventuallyby the familiar electr<strong>on</strong>ic systems in use today, including teletext,which was used <strong>on</strong> the short-lived LaserDisc format. For video and DVD,titles can be cued to timecode with an accuracy of a single frame (1/25of a sec<strong>on</strong>d), and software can provide useful informati<strong>on</strong>, such aswhether a title is flashed up too quickly to be read at a specified readingspeed; this is important in opera, as the pace of sung text can be muchfaster, or slower, than the speed of normal c<strong>on</strong>versati<strong>on</strong>.The history of surtitles is not well documented. Reputedly, the firstlive titles in an opera house were in H<strong>on</strong>g K<strong>on</strong>g in the early 1980s butdid not fit the definiti<strong>on</strong> of either sub- or surtitles, as they were inChinese and therefore displayed vertically at the side of the stage.58


Art and Craft of Opera Surtitling 59English surtitles were first used in Canada in about 1984. In Britain,they appeared experimentally at the Royal Opera House (ROH), CoventGarden, in 1986, and were so<strong>on</strong> taken up by other organisati<strong>on</strong>s such asthe Welsh Nati<strong>on</strong>al Opera, Glyndebourne Festival Opera, ScottishOpera and various touring companies, Opera North in Leeds being arecent c<strong>on</strong>vert. English Nati<strong>on</strong>al Opera resisted the use of surtitles formany years but decided to introduce them during the 2005–6 seas<strong>on</strong> inan attempt to bring opera to the widest audience. 1Hardware and software for surtitlesVarious systems for surtitling are currently in use, with no widely orinternati<strong>on</strong>ally agreed ‘standard’ system; each type of surtitling packagehas advantages and disadvantages. Titles can be projected <strong>on</strong> a screen,either from slides or electr<strong>on</strong>ically via a digital projector, or with presentati<strong>on</strong>software such as PowerPoint. There are various types of LEDscreens, that is, a matrix of illuminated dots, some of which have refinementssuch as variable brightness, fading, and colour opti<strong>on</strong>s. Mostrecently there are ‘seatback’ screens, like those found in airliners, whichdisplay the titles <strong>on</strong> a small screen below eye-level <strong>on</strong> the back of the seatin fr<strong>on</strong>t of the user. These were pi<strong>on</strong>eered at the Metropolitan Opera inNew York, and are now used in Vienna, Barcel<strong>on</strong>a and several other operahouses around the world. They have the advantages of multi-languagepossibility, directi<strong>on</strong>ality so that the titles can be visible <strong>on</strong>ly to the individualuser, and, perhaps most importantly, the opti<strong>on</strong> to be switched offif the audience member does not wish to have titles at all.The Royal Opera House in L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong> has used a variety of systems, startingwith Kodak carousels each c<strong>on</strong>taining a limited number of 35mmslides. Some of the disadvantages of this system are that the slides areprepared in advance by an outside supplier, so re-editing of the text isimpossible, and that even with three projectors and three carousels, <strong>on</strong>lya limited number of titles can be used in each act of an opera, before thecarousels have to be changed. Another setback is that with such a cumbersomesystem, the possibility of something going wr<strong>on</strong>g in performanceis c<strong>on</strong>siderable. This system was superseded by a FOCON LEDmatrix screen, which meant a vast improvement in simplicity and reliabilityof use, flexibility of editing, and the capacity for an unlimitednumber of titles, though f<strong>on</strong>t style and text layout are restricted. FOCONscreens are no l<strong>on</strong>ger manufactured, but they are still widely used, particularlyby touring companies. The Royal Opera House now uses a custom-tailoreddigital system (Diam<strong>on</strong>d Credit ROH, by Courtyard


60 J<strong>on</strong>athan Burt<strong>on</strong>Electr<strong>on</strong>ics Limited), that allows the projecti<strong>on</strong> of electr<strong>on</strong>ically-generatedtitles via a digital video projector <strong>on</strong> to a suspended screen above theproscenium. This is backed up by a limited number of seatback screens,relaying the titles to areas at the back and sides of the auditorium whichdo not have a view of the main surtitle screen.Texts are prepared and edited <strong>on</strong> PCs in the Surtitle Office elsewherein the building, and then downloaded via the company’s internal ITnetwork to the computer in the surtitle operators’ box, situated behinda window at the back of the balc<strong>on</strong>y. During the performance thesurtitle operator cues the titles from a marked-up musical score. Theoutput signal is relayed to the digital projector, high up at the back ofthe amphitheatre, and via a separate computerised system to theseatback screens. The Diam<strong>on</strong>d Credit software has great flexibility inthe programming of parameters such as luminance and speed of fade(in and out) for each title, and individual letter spacing (kerning) forlegibility – an important c<strong>on</strong>siderati<strong>on</strong> when the projected letters are30 cm high. However, at present, there is no facility for coloured textand the system can <strong>on</strong>ly show white lettering <strong>on</strong> a dark screen. There isof course no multi-language capability and <strong>on</strong>ly <strong>on</strong>e language can beprojected. If the seatback installati<strong>on</strong> were extended to cover all theseats in the auditorium, this would become a possibility, althoughthe logistical problems would be great.Why surtitles?In the early days of surtitling, there was much debate as to whethersurtitles were necessary or desirable. Opera critics and stage directorstended to be opposed to them, with audiences mostly in favour. Thatbattle has now largely been w<strong>on</strong>, with <strong>on</strong>ly a few critics and directorsresolutely against the idea. In the eighteenth century – before electriclighting with dimmers – the more well-heeled members of the operaaudience would have invested in a printed libretto with translati<strong>on</strong>,which they would follow during the performance with the house lightsup; this is perhaps the nearest equivalent to modern surtitling. An earlyargument in favour of some form of translati<strong>on</strong> as an aid to comprehensi<strong>on</strong>was amusingly set out by Joseph Addis<strong>on</strong>, writing in The Spectatoraround 1712 (quoted in Marek, 1957: 567–9):It is my design in this paper to deliver down to posterity a faithfulaccount of the Italian Opera, and of the gradual progress which it hasmade up<strong>on</strong> the English stage: For there is no questi<strong>on</strong> but our


Art and Craft of Opera Surtitling 61great-grandchildren will be very curious to know the reas<strong>on</strong> whytheir forefathers used to sit together like an audience of foreigners intheir own country, and to hear whole plays acted before them in at<strong>on</strong>gue which they did not understand [ ... ]. We no l<strong>on</strong>ger understandthe language of our own stage; insomuch that I have oftenbeen afraid, when I have seen our Italian performers chattering inthe vehemence of acti<strong>on</strong>, that they have been calling us names, andabusing us am<strong>on</strong>g themselves; but I hope, since we do put such anentire c<strong>on</strong>fidence in them, they will not talk against us before ourfaces, though they may do it with the same safety as if it were behindour backs. In the meantime I cannot forbear thinking how naturallyan historian, who writes two or three hundred years hence, and doesnot know the taste of his wise forefathers, will make the followingreflecti<strong>on</strong>, ‘In the beginning of the eighteenth century, the Italiant<strong>on</strong>gue was so well understood in England, that operas were acted <strong>on</strong>the public stage in that language’.Our approach to watching opera has changed in recent decades and weare no l<strong>on</strong>ger c<strong>on</strong>tent just to appreciate the lovely sound of the voicesand let the opera wash over us. We are now a text-dominated society,and audiences expect to know in detail what words are being sung, asthey would for the dialogue in a subtitled foreign film. No l<strong>on</strong>ger do wesit in the dark for hours at a time, listening to whole acts of Wagner orRichard Strauss with <strong>on</strong>ly the dimmest idea of what is actually going<strong>on</strong>. Surtitles are now largely a necessity and there are likely to be complaintsif they are not provided. The approach of opera directors haschanged too. With surtitles, directors know that we will be aware of themeaning of what is being sung, and they will no l<strong>on</strong>ger be tempted tofill the stage with superfluous acti<strong>on</strong> or comic elements just to keep ourattenti<strong>on</strong> from wandering.David Pountney, former Director of Producti<strong>on</strong>s at English Nati<strong>on</strong>alOpera, <strong>on</strong>e notable director still opposed to surtitling, has famouslycompared surtitles to ‘a prophylactic between the opera and the audience’.But what are the alternatives? We cannot now sit in the dark andtry to follow a printed libretto. Critics hope that we will do our <strong>home</strong>work,and study the opera text in advance before coming to the theatre;but it would hardly be possible to remember all the words in detail ateach point in the acti<strong>on</strong>. One alternative is to sing the opera intranslati<strong>on</strong>, in the language of the audience, a viable policy followed atEnglish Nati<strong>on</strong>al Opera and until recently at least in many German andItalian opera houses. However, it raises many problems, specifically the


62 J<strong>on</strong>athan Burt<strong>on</strong>difficulty of arriving at a singing translati<strong>on</strong> which follows the composer’smusical line and is comfortable to sing with, for instance, appropriatevowels <strong>on</strong> high notes, while remaining an accurate rendering of theoriginal text. These questi<strong>on</strong>s are fascinating, but bey<strong>on</strong>d the scope ofthis chapter.One point of c<strong>on</strong>tenti<strong>on</strong> is whether or not to surtitle an opera in thelanguage in which it is being sung. The Royal Opera as a matter ofcompany policy, now provides English surtitles for operas sung inEnglish, for the benefit of members of the audience who rely <strong>on</strong> surtitlesbecause of hearing problems, or for whom English is a foreign language;but there is still some oppositi<strong>on</strong> to this, particularly from singers anddirectors, who feel that it is an insult to the singers and their clarity ofdicti<strong>on</strong>. In the case of Britten’s The Turn of the Screw, performed at theROH in 2002, Deborah Warner, the director, requested that Englishsurtitles should not be used at the first few performances. On theopening night there were 47 complaints from the audience about thelack of surtitles, but n<strong>on</strong>e at all when these were subsequently reinstated.C<strong>on</strong>versely, some composers and directors specifically ask forEnglish surtitles and two examples are Harris<strong>on</strong> Birtwistle for his operaGawain and John Adams for El Niño, both performed at the ROH in2000. Even for older works in English, such as Handel’s Semele, it maybe a good idea to provide surtitles, since the poetic, archaic andsometimes c<strong>on</strong>voluted language of the libretto may be difficult todisentangle by ear but comprehensible when laid out <strong>on</strong> the screen.The aim of surtitlesThe aim of surtitles is to c<strong>on</strong>vey the meaning of what is being sung, notnecessarily the manner in which it is being sung. Interjecti<strong>on</strong>s such as‘Oh!’, ‘Ah!’ or ‘Ye Gods!’, and musical repetiti<strong>on</strong>s of words and phrases,need not be included. Flowery or poetic turns of phrase may besimplified. Punctuati<strong>on</strong> can be kept simple or omitted, in particularexclamati<strong>on</strong> marks; we can see the singers ‘emoting’ <strong>on</strong> stage, so thetitles do not have to do it for us. For example, a fictitious line of Italianoperatic text might be literally translated as: 2Ah! How this poor heart is bursting within my bosom!For surtitles, a simplified rendering is preferable:My heart is breaking


Art and Craft of Opera Surtitling 63It may be necessary to clarify the plot, for example tactfully adding acharacter’s name if it is not clear who is referred to. Sometimes it mayhelp to expand details of the acti<strong>on</strong> that may not be clear to a watchingaudience such as ‘I am putting pois<strong>on</strong> into this jug of water’. However,the surtitler must remember that the audience has come to see theopera, not the surtitles and the titles should be discreet and not distracting.Titles may be omitted where the acti<strong>on</strong> is self-explanatory:Beloved Alfredo! Oh joy! – My Violetta! Oh joy!Take this letter which I am giving youWhat happened next? – Listen and I shall explain to you – Speakthen, I am listening ... (etc.)There is nothing worse than sitting through an entire scene of an operaand realising at the end that <strong>on</strong>e does not know what the singers lookedlike, as <strong>on</strong>e has been too busy reading the titles. This problem is difficultto avoid in ‘wordy’ operas with a great deal of text and little repetiti<strong>on</strong>,for example Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde and Parsifal, Richard Strauss’sDie Frau ohne Schatten and Capriccio. The subtitler’s aim should be transparency,or even invisibility. As with a subtitled film, the ideal criticalreacti<strong>on</strong> should be al<strong>on</strong>g the following lines: ‘Did you go to the operalast night? What did you think of the surtitles?’ – ‘Surtitles? I didn’tnotice there were any’.Many opera libretti are based <strong>on</strong> existing plays or novels, so it mayhelp to c<strong>on</strong>sult the original source works – Beaumarchais, Pushkin,Shakespeare, Schiller – though there may be little of the original left.For instance, Ambroise Thomas’s opera Hamlet does c<strong>on</strong>tain the lineÊtre ou ne pas être? but almost nothing else from Shakespeare’s text.Sometimes the motivati<strong>on</strong>s or relati<strong>on</strong>ships of the characters may beclearer in the source work than in the libretto as set by the composer,thus aiding the surtitler’s task.It is also vital to obtain the correct versi<strong>on</strong> of the musical score in usefor a particular producti<strong>on</strong>. Many operas exist in more than <strong>on</strong>eoriginal versi<strong>on</strong>, or in c<strong>on</strong>flicting modern editi<strong>on</strong>s; Bizet’s Carmen isnotorious in this respect. Sometimes a director or c<strong>on</strong>ductor mayexhume an unfamiliar versi<strong>on</strong>, or an extra aria, even for a well-knownMozart or Verdi opera. There may be variant readings in differentversi<strong>on</strong>s of the score, in which the alterati<strong>on</strong> of even a single word maychange the sense of a line; or some directors may have taken thingsinto their own hands, and changed the sung text where it c<strong>on</strong>flictswith the producti<strong>on</strong> ‘c<strong>on</strong>cept’.


64 J<strong>on</strong>athan Burt<strong>on</strong>Each opera company evolves its own ‘house style’ for surtitles, butthere is general agreement <strong>on</strong> some points.a. Each capti<strong>on</strong> c<strong>on</strong>tains either <strong>on</strong>e or two lines of text, to a maximumof about 40 characters per line as any more would be too much informati<strong>on</strong>for the viewer to take in. The text will normally be centred,and in an unobtrusive f<strong>on</strong>t such as Arial or Helvetica.b. Dashes are used if two speakers appear <strong>on</strong> the same capti<strong>on</strong>, eithersinging simultaneously, in duet, or in rapid dialogue:– Dear Figaro, look at my hat– Yes, my darling, it’s lovelyHowever, care must be taken not to ‘give away’ dramatic punch-linestoo early by putting two lines <strong>on</strong> the same capti<strong>on</strong>, for example,‘Who am I?’ [pause ...] ‘You are my l<strong>on</strong>g-lost s<strong>on</strong>’. In opera there maybe trios, quartets or larger ensembles and given that surtitle systemscan <strong>on</strong>ly display a maximum of two lines of text, some judiciousselecti<strong>on</strong> is necessary.c. Italics signify that the voice is offstage, or that the text is a letteror a ‘s<strong>on</strong>g’, sometimes a difficult c<strong>on</strong>cept in opera, when everythingis sung. Italics may also be used in normal fashi<strong>on</strong>, foremphasis.d. Quotati<strong>on</strong> marks signify reported speech. The c<strong>on</strong>venti<strong>on</strong> at TheRoyal Opera is to place quotes in double quotati<strong>on</strong> marks and italics,for clarity:She said “I am his mother”e. Brackets or parentheses signify an ‘aside’, i.e. a line that is notintended to be heard by other characters <strong>on</strong> stage:(I mustn’t let him see me hiding here)f. Left and right: some systems allow the possibility of splitting titles<strong>on</strong> either side of the screen, which will help to indicate whichcharacter is singing in a large ensemble. This is effective <strong>on</strong>ly withshort lines of text, and can be distracting. It is therefore more suitableto comedy than to serious opera. Left/right titles may besuccessive:He thinks I cannotsee himShe thinksI cannot see her


Art and Craft of Opera Surtitling 65or even simultaneous, although in this case they must be used withdue care so as not to c<strong>on</strong>fuse the audience:I’m hidingin this alcoveFigaro isspying <strong>on</strong> mePacing and linguistic flavourFor live surtitles in the theatre, the pacing should be kept slow and simple,to avoid distracting the audience. If a text is much repeated, thetitle can be left up for a l<strong>on</strong>g period if necessary. Fast exchanges shouldbe combined, simplified, or omitted for if they are too quick to cue,they will be too quick to read.For the subtitling of a live televisi<strong>on</strong> broadcast, the pacing can befaster. It will be necessary to c<strong>on</strong>sult the TV director’s camera script andedit the titles to fit the shots he or she has chosen, avoiding if possiblegoing over a cut. Close-ups may give the opportunity to title lines whichwould be impossible to catch at the slower pace of surtitling. Generally,a title should not be held <strong>on</strong> the TV screen for l<strong>on</strong>ger than it takes toread, provided that the effect does not jar musically, and a maximum ofabout 10 sec<strong>on</strong>ds is acceptable. For video and DVD, ‘fine’ editing is possible,so that tiny details of text may perhaps be titled, although anythingless than <strong>on</strong>e and a half sec<strong>on</strong>ds is probably too short to read.As already noted, opera libretti tend towards the flowery, archaic andpoetic in their vocabulary and grammatical formulati<strong>on</strong>s. This is particularlya problem in the operas of Richard Wagner, with their l<strong>on</strong>gand c<strong>on</strong>voluted German sentence structures. The titler should try toreduce subordinate clauses to simple sentences, and simplify grammarand vocabulary, keeping to clear, modern vernacular unless there areexcepti<strong>on</strong>al circumstances. Slang, expletives and colourful languageshould be treated with care; for example, nineteenth-century Italianopera is notoriously well endowed with words for ‘bad man’ or ‘transgressor’(empio, traditore, infido, barbaro, misero, cattivo, rio, mostro,sciagurato ... ), for which English is hard pressed for equivalents. It is betterto play safe and just use ‘he’, rather than alarm or puzzle the spectatorwith variati<strong>on</strong>s <strong>on</strong> ‘wretch’, ‘villain’ or even ‘bastard’.Problems of translati<strong>on</strong>: two tiny examplesDespite all these c<strong>on</strong>siderati<strong>on</strong>s, the actual translati<strong>on</strong> of the text shouldaim to be as accurate as possible, but this may not be so easy. To take a


66 J<strong>on</strong>athan Burt<strong>on</strong>famous example from Puccini’s La Bohème, Rodolfo’s aria in Act I,addressed to his next-door neighbour, Mimì:Che gelida manina! Se la lasci riscaldar.Cercar che giova? Al buio no si trova.Any<strong>on</strong>e who has seen the opera will know roughly what he is saying:‘Your hand’s cold, let me warm it up. It’s no use looking for your key inthe dark’. And any English opera-goer of the last hundred years will knowthe familiar sung translati<strong>on</strong> in English: ‘Your tiny hand is frozen’. Butwhat exactly do these Italian words mean? Che is ‘what’; gelida is notprecisely ‘cold’ (which would be fredda), or ‘frozen’ (gelata), but ‘icy’ or‘freezing’ (the archaic English word ‘gelid’ could hardly be used in asubtitle!); and manina is not simply ‘hand’ (la mano) but a diminutive,‘little hand’. Interestingly, Rodolfo does not say ‘your little hand’ – la tuamanina – as this would have committed him to using the intimate tuform to a girl he has just met. In fact they have been addressing eachother with verbs in the familiar sec<strong>on</strong>d pers<strong>on</strong> singular ever since shecame in, while carefully avoiding actually using the pr<strong>on</strong>ouns tu or te.Therefore an accurate translati<strong>on</strong> would be something like ‘What an icylittle hand’, or even ‘Your tiny hand is frozen’, which turns out to be notso far off the mark after all. She is suffering from tuberculosis, <strong>on</strong>e of thesymptoms of which is coldness of the extremities due to poor circulati<strong>on</strong>;but we cannot have explanatory footnotes in surtitling. So we can seethat even with a familiar text we cannot take a single word for granted.After Rodolfo has told Mimì all about himself, she replies:Mi chiamano Mimì,ma il mio nome è Lucia ...‘They call me Mimì, but my name is ... ’ – what? Lucia? But we are translatinginto English: shouldn’t she be Lucy? And we are in a Parisian garret, sosurely she should have a French name: Lucile? If we look at the originalnovel <strong>on</strong> which Puccini’s librettists, Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica,based their text, Henri Murger’s Scènes de la vie de Bohème (1947), we discoverthat she is indeed called Lucile – except that the librettists havealtered the story, and the girl with the cold hands is not Lucile but Francine,since Giacosa and Illica combined features of various characters in Murger’stale to arrive at the operatic Mimì. Even more c<strong>on</strong>fusingly, if we researchthe life of Murger himself, we will discover that he had a predilecti<strong>on</strong> fora successi<strong>on</strong> of pale, doomed tubercular girls, each of whom he would


Art and Craft of Opera Surtitling 67nickname ‘Mimì’. As it happens, the translati<strong>on</strong> of the name ‘Lucia’ is nota serious problem, since it is never referred to in the opera again; but whatdo we do about the other characters? Should Rodolfo be ‘Rodolphe’, as inthe novel? Or ‘Rudolph’, as our translati<strong>on</strong> is in English? The standardc<strong>on</strong>venti<strong>on</strong>, or compromise, is to stick to the versi<strong>on</strong> of the names as theyappear in the opera, illogical as this may sometimes seem: thus ‘Lucia’ and‘Rodolfo’. The same problem arises in many other operas, for exampleVerdi’s La traviata – also with a Parisian setting – in which the hero andheroine are Italianised as Alfredo and Violetta rather than Alfred andViolette or, in English, Alfred and Violet – a most unromantic-soundingcouple. In Dumas’ original autobiographical novel and play (1986), theyare not in fact called Violette and Alfred but Marguerite and Armand;names that have been reinstated in some opera producti<strong>on</strong>s as well as afamous ballet. One could even go back to the true story behind Dumas’re-telling and be tempted to call them Alexandre Dumas and MarieDuplessis, although this may be stretching a point.PitfallsA problem with live surtitles is that an audience of perhaps two thousandopera-goers will be quick to laugh at anything they find amusing, whetherintenti<strong>on</strong>al or not. Solitary TV or video/DVD viewers similarly should notbe distracted by inappropriate reacti<strong>on</strong>s. One must guard against ‘howlers’.For example, in Rossini’s Guglielmo Tell (William Tell), the line La gioia eglivedria d’Elvezia intera that was initially translated as:How happy he would have beento see Switzerland unitedwas pointed out as suggesting a football team (‘Switzerland United’),and had to be hastily changed to ‘a united Switzerland’.Another notorious case is provided by the surtitles for Puccini’s Toscaat an American opera house. When the jealous Tosca is asking Cavaradossito change the colour of the eyes in a portrait he is painting, Ma fa gliocchi neri, the request is usually tactfully translated as ‘But make the eyesdark’. On this occasi<strong>on</strong>, however, it was rendered too literally as ‘Giveher black eyes’, to the great amusement of the audience.When jokes occur in the original text and therefore are intenti<strong>on</strong>al,the cueing of the surtitles must be timed so that the audience does notlaugh too so<strong>on</strong>; nothing upsets singers more than a laugh which comesbefore they have sung the relevant punch-line. The surtitler may attempt


68 J<strong>on</strong>athan Burt<strong>on</strong>to split the line into two titles, to delay the laugh. This, however, mightdistract the audience’s attenti<strong>on</strong>, resulting in the stage acti<strong>on</strong> beingmissed altogether.The additi<strong>on</strong> of jokes not found in the original is not advisable, althoughmost titlers are at times severely tempted. The ideal is a joke which is suggestedby the libretto and as a result does not c<strong>on</strong>tradict the spirit of theoriginal. A classic example is found in Rossini’s comedy La Cenerentola.Dictating a decree, D<strong>on</strong> Magnifico turns to his eager scribes with thewords ‘No, put it in capitals’. So, the next surtitle obligingly appears as:I, DON MAGNIFICO, DUKE,BARON, ETC., ETC., HEREBY DECREE ...which never fails to raise a huge laugh, although it is implied in thelibretto.The need for further researchSome operas have exotic or obscure settings which require a certainamount of historical research in order to establish the correct spellingof unfamiliar names and places, or even to determine what exactly isgoing <strong>on</strong>; the titler needs to understand the text to be translated, or theaudience certainly will not. A classic example is Adriana Lecouvreur, anopera by the late nineteenth-century Italian composer Francesco Cilèa,which has a libretto derived from a French play originally written forSarah Bernhardt. The characters are based <strong>on</strong> historical figures: theactress Adrienne Lecouvreur, and her lover, a Polish nobleman namedMaurice, Count of Sax<strong>on</strong>y (or Maurice Saxe), who appears in the operaas Maurizio, C<strong>on</strong>te di Sass<strong>on</strong>ia. At <strong>on</strong>e point in the opera, Maurizio isasked to recount his exploits in Curlandia and ‘the attack <strong>on</strong> Mitau’. Inpre-Internet days many hours spent sitting in libraries delving inencyclopaedias finally revealed that Courland, Curlandia, is present-dayLithuania, whose ancient capital was indeed not Vilnius but Mitau. Theoriginal Italian text begins as follows:Il russo Mèncikoffriceve l’ordine di cormi in trappolanel mio palagio ... Era un esercitoc<strong>on</strong>tro un manipolo, un c<strong>on</strong>tro quindici ...Ma, come a Bèndera Carlo duodecimo,nemici o soci c<strong>on</strong>tar n<strong>on</strong> so ...


Art and Craft of Opera Surtitling 69Already, in the four allusi<strong>on</strong>s we have a sheaf of problems: who wasMèncikoff, and how is he spelt in English? Is un esercito c<strong>on</strong>tro un manipolosome kind of proverbial saying? Who was Carlo duodecimo and wherewas Benderà, and what was he doing there? Charles XII turns out to bea Swedish king [1682–1718], held captive in exile at Bender or Bendereyin Bessarabian Turkey in 1708. He defeated not <strong>on</strong>ly a Russian army butalso Augustus II of Poland and Sax<strong>on</strong>y, so Maurizio, the ‘Count ofSax<strong>on</strong>y’, would have known what he was talking about. Is nemici o socic<strong>on</strong>tra n<strong>on</strong> so another famous historical quotati<strong>on</strong>? And so it goes <strong>on</strong>.The final subtitle renditi<strong>on</strong> of Maurizio’s recitati<strong>on</strong> goes as follows:The Russian, Menshikov,was ordered to trap me in my palaceIt was an army against a handful,fifteen to <strong>on</strong>eBut like Charles XII at Benderey,I could count neither friends nor enemies ...All these problems are very minor, and should not be evident to theaudience. However, failure to deal with them may result in inaccuraciesor ‘howlers’ in the titles.C<strong>on</strong>clusi<strong>on</strong>The subtitling of opera <strong>on</strong> televisi<strong>on</strong>, video and DVD, and latterly thesurtitling of live opera in the theatre, are disciplines which have comeinto being <strong>on</strong>ly in the last few decades and they have developed rapidlyboth in sophisticati<strong>on</strong> of hardware and software, and in subtlety ofapplicati<strong>on</strong>. A correct and sensitive approach to the translating of operatictexts will involve c<strong>on</strong>siderati<strong>on</strong>s and problems not found in otherforms of translati<strong>on</strong>. Finding successful soluti<strong>on</strong>s can be hard work,but can also be satisfying. The titling of opera is not <strong>on</strong>ly a craft, butalso an art.Notes1. More informati<strong>on</strong> is available <strong>on</strong>: www.eno.org/src/eno_introduce_surtitles.pdf2. All surtitle translati<strong>on</strong>s quoted are either fictitious examples, for the purposesof illustrati<strong>on</strong>, or are from titles by the author.


70 J<strong>on</strong>athan Burt<strong>on</strong>ReferencesDumas, A. fils (1986 [1848]) La Dame aux Camélias, D. Coward, (trans.)Oxford: OUP.Ivarss<strong>on</strong>, J. (2002) A Short Technical History of Subtitles in Europe. www.transedit.st/history.htmMarek, G.R. (ed.) (1957) The World Treasury of Grand Opera: Its Triumphs, Trialsand Great Pers<strong>on</strong>alities. New York: Harper & Brothers.Murger, H. (1947 [1847–49]) Scènes de la vie de Bohème. Paris: SEPE.


6Challenges and Rewardsof Libretto Adaptati<strong>on</strong>Lucile DesblacheIntroducti<strong>on</strong>During the interval of <strong>on</strong>e of his recitals the Irish tenor John McCormackwas told that W. B. Yeats was attending his performance. The singer waskeen to meet the poet, but the latter was disappointed with last–minutechanges in the programme, where popular ballads replaced some of themore highbrow art s<strong>on</strong>gs originally announced and is reported to havesaid quite abruptly that he did not enjoy the c<strong>on</strong>cert. Desperately tryingto win the poet over, John Mc McCormack fumbled: 1But what about my dicti<strong>on</strong>? People usually comment <strong>on</strong> the clarityof my words.’‘Ah!’ is reported to have said Yeats, disappointed not to have heardpoems set to music, ‘the clarity of the words, the damnable clarity ofthe words!In this chapter, I am first going to discuss libretti in general, historicallyand linguistically. This is followed by a case study in which I was pers<strong>on</strong>allyinvolved as a translator; the transfer from English to French ofBenjamin Britten’s and Eric Crozier’s Albert Herring.Libretti – past and presentIn opera, far from complaining about the clarity of the words, thepublic has <strong>on</strong>ly been able to relax and understand the plot since surtitlingwas adopted by opera houses in the late 1980s. Before then, <strong>on</strong>lythose who were familiar with the repertoire or took time to read thestory ahead of the performance could understand what was happening71


72 Lucile Desblache<strong>on</strong> stage (see Burt<strong>on</strong>, this volume). As far as c<strong>on</strong>tent is c<strong>on</strong>cerned, thererarely seems to be a happy medium in opera. Texts tend to be eitherover-simplistic or repetitive or based <strong>on</strong> fiendishly complicatedhistorical plots. In either case, jealous barit<strong>on</strong>es generally scheme themurder of amorous tenors while (not always seemingly) feeble sopranosdie of unrequited love singing top Cs.In operatic music and art s<strong>on</strong>gs, attitudes to languages have alwaysbeen different from those in other performance art forms. In straighttheatre, <strong>on</strong>e of the priorities of the translator is to c<strong>on</strong>vey the specificitiesof the source culture to the target audience. As a quintessentialproduct of the Renaissance, opera, at least originally, was fuelled by adesire to c<strong>on</strong>vey a universal message, bey<strong>on</strong>d local or nati<strong>on</strong>al significance.Although this trend is not always followed in c<strong>on</strong>temporarycompositi<strong>on</strong>s, reinterpretati<strong>on</strong> of myths has remained widespreadthroughout the last century. Italian was adopted as the universalmusical language at the start, in the seventeenth century. French operawas so<strong>on</strong> also established as a school (paradoxically, initially by anItalian, Jean-Baptiste Lully, then by a German, Giacomo Meyerbeer)and composers often wrote operas in collaborati<strong>on</strong> with Italian orFrench librettists to be performed for audiences, usually aristocraticaudiences, whose native t<strong>on</strong>gue was not Italian: Glück, Handel andMozart, the founders of modern opera, all composed using texts notwritten in their native t<strong>on</strong>gue.Opera and art s<strong>on</strong>gs, as artistic expressi<strong>on</strong>s of high culture, werewritten for an educated audience who expected to hear Italian, Frenchand, to a lesser degree, German. Handel’s Vauxhall audiences werehanded out English translati<strong>on</strong>s of the Italian libretto performed, butnevertheless, expected operas in a foreign language as an unquesti<strong>on</strong>abletraditi<strong>on</strong>. Several versi<strong>on</strong>s of operas, such as Glück’s Orfeo, werecomposed to please audiences – and patr<strong>on</strong>s – of different nati<strong>on</strong>alities.This not <strong>on</strong>ly resulted in linguistic transfer but also in substantialmusical or producti<strong>on</strong> modificati<strong>on</strong>s. Yet, while opera was intended forthe aristocracy, it appeared <strong>on</strong>ly in French, Italian and German.Intercultural awareness spoke the language of the rich and powerful.The situati<strong>on</strong> changed in the nineteenth century. The main operaticand s<strong>on</strong>g repertoire was mostly adapted to the language of the countryin which they were performed from the mid-nineteenth to the midtwentiethcenturies. This was due to an expansi<strong>on</strong> in popularity ofopera and comic opera as well as a growth of compositi<strong>on</strong>s in a widerange of languages. Major operas were composed in Russian, Czech,Hungarian, Norwegian and other ‘minor’ languages. A two-tier level


Challenges and Rewards of Libretto Adaptati<strong>on</strong> 73of opera performance emerged, of which traces are still visible today,particularly in Britain, where Sadler’s Wells Opera, which evolved intothe English Nati<strong>on</strong>al Opera, has a traditi<strong>on</strong> of opera performance inEnglish established in 1931. World-class opera houses, such as the NewYork Metropolitan Opera always performed works in their originallanguage, whereas provincial and less prestigious houses adaptedoriginal pieces. While world-class theatres and opera festivals relied<strong>on</strong> internati<strong>on</strong>al audiences, smaller houses, in a spirit of popularisati<strong>on</strong>,adapted operas to entice a local public. Resentment from the musicintelligentsia about such transfers was not uncomm<strong>on</strong>. Many musicianshave defended the positi<strong>on</strong> of orchestral and instrumental music as apure signifier, as they feel that music expresses a message other thansemantic. While operatic and vocal music played with the dual use ofsignified and signifier, words could transcend their semantic meaningin a musical or poetic c<strong>on</strong>text and be pure sound, removed from theirlinguistic sense. In 1919, Gustav Kobbé, the American opera historian,was already writing:Any speaker before an English-speaking audience can always elicitprol<strong>on</strong>ged applause by maintaining that in English-speaking countries,opera should be sung in English. But, in point of fact, and evendisregarding the atrocities that masquerade as translati<strong>on</strong>s of operainto English, opera should be sung in the language in which it iswritten. For language unc<strong>on</strong>sciously affects, I might even say determines,the structure of the melody. (Kobbé, 1933: 2 [1st edn 1919])The advent of surtitling, with its relatively unobtrusive ways of c<strong>on</strong>veyingthe semantic message of operatic works, made it possible to watchand hear operas in their original language while c<strong>on</strong>veying the libretto’smessage. In most cases, this method of transfer works extremely welland surtitles allow the audience to understand the gist of the plot. In thecase of light opera though, direct transfers may still be preferred.In music terminology, comic opera refers to lyrical works which integratespoken dialogue. However, it can also be used for works written ina lighter vein and this is how I refer to it here. Tragic opera, opera seria,is often based <strong>on</strong> mythology to some degree known to the audience(Orpheus, Bluebeard, Faust, D<strong>on</strong> Giovanni), or structured <strong>on</strong> a narrativemade obvious by the acti<strong>on</strong> taking place <strong>on</strong> stage (Carmen, MadamButterfly, Tosca). Complex historical plots, which at times would obscureintelligibility, can now be summarised very efficiently with surtitles,and often are, even in the case of operas performed in the native t<strong>on</strong>gue


74 Lucile Desblacheof the audience, as opera singers are notoriously difficult to understand.In light opera, words may be dependent <strong>on</strong> acti<strong>on</strong>, their meaning maybe enhanced by the producti<strong>on</strong>, but they can also express humourthrough puns and purely semantic means. Besides, they have oftenbeen composed with a more intimate setting in mind than grand operaand require full c<strong>on</strong>tact with the audience.The statement made by Kobbé nearly a century ago that words are not<strong>on</strong>ly semantically indispensable to the understanding of an opera but alsovital to its musical texture and structure, still stands. Yet in light opera,the need to have direct c<strong>on</strong>tact with an audience through words is alsovital. Summarising text, as must be d<strong>on</strong>e in surtitling, and c<strong>on</strong>veying themessage through an intermediary screen may damage the immediacy ofcommunicati<strong>on</strong> needed in humour, where timing is supremely importantand semantic subtleties are not always transferable. Light opera does nothave the high status of grand opera, is usually not c<strong>on</strong>ceived <strong>on</strong> the samescale (using a smaller number of musicians and singers) and perhaps alsofor these reas<strong>on</strong>s, is often more acceptably transferred into another language.For example, in some ways, the idea of setting a performance ofAida in English is old- fashi<strong>on</strong>ed whereas an adaptati<strong>on</strong> of a French operettasuch as Orpheus in the Underworld, especially if peppered with c<strong>on</strong>temporaryreferences and completely reset in an British c<strong>on</strong>text can be veryattractive to the public. This corresp<strong>on</strong>ds to the traditi<strong>on</strong> of using mythologyand history as a setting for opere serie’s topics from the past, whilstcomic operas and operettas are c<strong>on</strong>ceived in a c<strong>on</strong>temporary c<strong>on</strong>text.Benjamin Britten’s and EricCrozier’s Albert HerringThe reas<strong>on</strong>s why comic opera is less highly regarded than grand operafall bey<strong>on</strong>d the scope of this discussi<strong>on</strong>, but from a translator’s point ofview, lighter music is more challenging, because of the type of musicalforms favoured (many recitatives where each note corresp<strong>on</strong>ds to a syllable,fewer lengthy arias, where l<strong>on</strong>g passages can be sung <strong>on</strong> <strong>on</strong>evowel, hence the term ‘vocalise’) and because of the frequent presenceof humour. As with any score, restricti<strong>on</strong>s are imposed <strong>on</strong> the text bythe music. Str<strong>on</strong>g beats always corresp<strong>on</strong>d to stressed syllables in aword, and for a transfer into a language like French, which has nostresses, this poses many problems and requires varied strategies. To acertain degree, the music dictates which words should be used. In lightmusic the purpose of the translati<strong>on</strong> is slightly different in that the plotis often deliberately ridiculous: the informative functi<strong>on</strong> of the text is


Challenges and Rewards of Libretto Adaptati<strong>on</strong> 75therefore played down to the profit of appellative and persuasive functi<strong>on</strong>s.Textual parody is very frequent (for example, there are manyinstances of legal discourse being sent up in comic opera, from Mozartto D<strong>on</strong>izetti). Register and int<strong>on</strong>ati<strong>on</strong> are also vital elements. Composersemphasise certain words through musical means, be they repeated ornot, and it is important not to miss their prominence.Libretto translators usually work from a vocal score, showing pianoand vocal parts. They may also have access to the orchestral score andto a published libretto. A libretto is extremely useful, as some additi<strong>on</strong>alinformati<strong>on</strong> (foreword, stage directi<strong>on</strong>s, capitalisati<strong>on</strong> of words foremphasis) may be included. It also shows clearly the text forms used,line rhymes and breaks and any structural aspect of the text which maybe easily overlooked when c<strong>on</strong>sidered in its musical c<strong>on</strong>text. In the caseof Albert Herring, all three forms of publicati<strong>on</strong> were available to me. Thelibretto proved very useful, as rhyming is used with subtlety and mighthave been missed if not laid out as verse. The example below, an excerptfrom Lady Billows’ first aria, is a good illustrati<strong>on</strong> of how originalrhymes and structures may be overlooked when looking exclusively at amusical score, as they are not textually emphasised (Crozier, 1981: 9):Is this the town where IHave lived and toiled?A Sodom and GomorrahRipe to be despoiled?O spawning ground of horror!Shame to Loxford: - styThe female sex has soiled!Eric Crozier started to work with Benjamin Britten as a stage producerand Albert Herring was the first libretto he wrote for Britten. The wholeopera was composed between October 1946 and February 1947 ‘tolaunch the first independent seas<strong>on</strong> of the English Opera Group, insummer 1947’ (Crozier, 1947d: 5). Britten’s and Crozier’s collaborati<strong>on</strong>was very close and Britten even asked Crozier to stay with him for a fewweeks, so that they could work together, sometimes at the same desk(quoted in Newman, 1947):One of the secrets of writing a good opera is the working together ofpoet and composer. [ ... T]he musician will have many ideas that maystimulate and influence the poet. Similarly when the libretto is writtenand the composer is working <strong>on</strong> the music, possible alterati<strong>on</strong>s


76 Lucile Desblachemay be suggested by the flow of the music and the libretto alteredaccordingly [ ... ] The composer and poet should at all stages be workingin the closest c<strong>on</strong>tact.Britten’s intimate relati<strong>on</strong>ship with the singer Peter Pears also madehim very aware of issues regarding text and ‘singability’ in opera ands<strong>on</strong>gs. It may also have intensified his need to write for the voice and toset words to music. His collaborati<strong>on</strong> with Peter Pears was in factcriticised at the time, as Peter Gamm<strong>on</strong>d’s humorous remark shows: ‘Hewrote two kinds of works: vocal, which all sound as if they were writtenfor Peter Pears to sing (and were), and n<strong>on</strong> vocal, which all sound as ifthey were written for Peter Pears to sing (and may have been, but he wasbusy at the time)’ (quoted in Surrans, 1988: 40).The collaborati<strong>on</strong> with Crozier was very successful and after the completi<strong>on</strong>of Albert Herring, the librettist notes in a letter to his wife-to-be:‘The opera is all finished except for rewrites. [ ... ] We celebrated with aglass of Genever [ ... ] and Ben said, would I devote the rest of my life towriting libretti for him?’ (Crozier, 1947b). This collaborati<strong>on</strong> was not asfruitful as it promised to be, but the two artists did work together <strong>on</strong>several pieces, operatic and sacred.Albert Herring is an adaptati<strong>on</strong> of a de Maupassant short story, Le Rosierde Madame Huss<strong>on</strong>, originally written in 1887. Crozier (1981: iii) explainsin the foreword to the sec<strong>on</strong>d editi<strong>on</strong> of the libretto how the story waschosen:[W]e settled <strong>on</strong> Guy de Maupassant’s brilliant short story Le Rosier deMadame Huss<strong>on</strong> [ ... ]. We transferred the scene of the story to Suffolk,and centered it up<strong>on</strong> a small market-town familiar to both of us. Thisbrought immediate changes in the treatment of the French story andits characters. Working from our knowledge of English people <strong>on</strong><strong>on</strong>e hand and from the qualities of particular singers <strong>on</strong> the other,we made our first sketch for a lyrical comedy with twelve characters,in five scenes and three acts.As translator, I was therefore finding myself in the unusual situati<strong>on</strong> ofhaving to operate a cultural transfer into a French c<strong>on</strong>text, since theopera was going to be performed for a French audience, but having tokeep the English essence that Britten and Crozier had imparted to thework, even though the original story was French. Many original allusi<strong>on</strong>sto English social behaviour were necessarily going to be lost. Thepurpose of translating the libretto was mainly to allow this gentle satire


Challenges and Rewards of Libretto Adaptati<strong>on</strong> 77to be understood, in order to allow the French audience to laugh as wellas enjoy the music. The questi<strong>on</strong> of the (in)visibility of the translator isparticularly acute in such work, as this professi<strong>on</strong>al must be as unobtrusiveas the original librettist was to the music. In Crozier’s words(1947d: 9), the librettist’s ‘highest ambiti<strong>on</strong> is to serve the composer’sintenti<strong>on</strong> sincerely, neatly and well’. The validity of the c<strong>on</strong>cept of theinvisible translator has l<strong>on</strong>g been put in questi<strong>on</strong> (Venuti, 1995), butwith libretto transfer, <strong>on</strong>e has to be not <strong>on</strong>ly faithful to the original textbut also to the music. The translator of such a work may not be requiredto be invisible, particularly in light genres where s/he may be expectedto provide a c<strong>on</strong>temporary versi<strong>on</strong> of the libretto, but s/he certainly has towrite words that not <strong>on</strong>ly serve their purpose in communicating a message,but also serve the music. I was very privileged to have met and developeda relati<strong>on</strong>ship with Crozier such that I was able to discuss any issue Ifelt uncomfortable with. This is a rare privilege indeed. Clarificati<strong>on</strong> <strong>on</strong>some minor points of the original libretto was very useful. But his generaladvice was not to be too close to the source text. The first editi<strong>on</strong> of thescore was originally published bilingually in English and German.Crozier’s advice (1947c) to the German translator was the same:I am especially pleased that you would like to make the Germantranslati<strong>on</strong>. [ ... ] Of course, I needn’t tell you that from my point ofview as a librettist, I should wish you to have an entirely free handand to adapt the text into a German equivalent – it can’t be translatedin any literal way. 2The opera is set in 1902 in East Suffolk and relates the coming of age ofa simple young working-class boy, Albert Herring, who is dominated byhis mother. As they cannot find a pure enough May Queen to be elected,the well-to-do society of Loxford, an imaginary town remarkably similarto Aldeburgh, decides to crown a May King. Albert is chosen butagainst all expectati<strong>on</strong>s rebels and walks off after the cerem<strong>on</strong>y to leadan independent life.I was faced with many problems, three in particular are noteworthy:cultural equivalence, humour and rhyming. The first two issues wereoften linked, although not always. Although I read the well-known deMaupassant story again before embarking up<strong>on</strong> the translati<strong>on</strong>, it wasmore interesting than useful. Albert Herring had become an Englishstory and had to remain <strong>on</strong>e. Another main issue was the general t<strong>on</strong>eand register of the piece. The opera was a satire, but stressing the humourtoo heavily would destroy the spirit of the piece. It was also difficult to


78 Lucile Desblachec<strong>on</strong>vey the obsessi<strong>on</strong> of the English with their social system while keepingthe lightness of the piece. One of Crozier’s letters (1947a) to NancyEvans points out very clearly that the light vein of the opera must bepreserved:A l<strong>on</strong>g letter from Carl Ebert 3 t<strong>on</strong>ight – quite stupid – talking aboutAct 1 of Albert and how the producti<strong>on</strong> must express the ‘socialcriticism’ of the comedy and the ‘mendacious prudery’ of the characters.O God ... ! All so off the point ... Now I must write a l<strong>on</strong>g letterback in words of <strong>on</strong>e syllable, explaining that this isn’t an Expressi<strong>on</strong>istor Trotskyist attack <strong>on</strong> the upper classes of a decadent England, but asimple lyrical comedy.Finally, there was the problem of rhyming. Crozier (1964) took a veryclear stand about rhyming:One difficulty that faces any<strong>on</strong>e who writes a comic opera inEnglish is the questi<strong>on</strong> of rhyme. Some form of rhyming is almostindispensable:The comm<strong>on</strong> cormorant or shagLays eggs inside a paper bag.Take away the rhyme, substitute ‘box’ for ‘bag’ and the whole effectis destroyed. Yet this device has been so fully and finally exploited byW. S. Gilbert in the Savoy Operas that exact rhyming (especially ifthe rhymes are double or triple <strong>on</strong>es) is liable to sound as obsoletenowadays as the Victorian pun. I tried to avoid this danger in mylibretto by using a form of near-rhyming.Near-rhyming is not used as readily in French as in English, but thesquare model of French rhyming used in opérettes and other lightworks was hardly suited to the music of Benjamin Britten, with itsmany disjointed effects and syncopati<strong>on</strong>s. Besides, it was desirable tomirror the diversity of strategies used by Crozier. A c<strong>on</strong>sistent decisi<strong>on</strong>would have to be made, which would allow a c<strong>on</strong>trast between freeprose, free rhyming and strict rhyming, as this c<strong>on</strong>trast is essential tothe original work.Cultural and linguistic soluti<strong>on</strong>sTo illustrate soluti<strong>on</strong>s chosen as regards cultural equivalence, humourand rhyming, some examples have been selected, from the vocal score


Challenges and Rewards of Libretto Adaptati<strong>on</strong> 79(Britten, 1948a). In Albert Herring, cultural references are mostly linked tosocial representati<strong>on</strong>s (allusi<strong>on</strong> to social class issues, ways of celebratingevents). The problem of cultural transfer was not so much that of findingan exact equivalent, since the translator is not tied to finding a literalsemantic counterpart. The difficulty, given the music c<strong>on</strong>straints, c<strong>on</strong>sistedin finding an equally English c<strong>on</strong>cept which a French audiencewould understand. The example chosen here is taken from the beginningof Act II. The schoolteacher, Miss Wordsworth, has organised thechildren to sing a festive s<strong>on</strong>g in h<strong>on</strong>our of Albert’s crowning. As theygather for a last rehearsal, the children cannot c<strong>on</strong>tain their excitement,faced with the food display laid out for the cerem<strong>on</strong>y. An enumerati<strong>on</strong> ofdifferent English dishes and sweets, interspersed with the schoolteacher’slast recommendati<strong>on</strong>s follows. Delicacies include jelly, pink blancmange,seedy cake with icing <strong>on</strong>, treacle tart, sausagey rolls (sic) and trifle. Mostof these had to be transferred with French equivalents as few Englishsweets and dishes are well known in France. Musically, this passage isvery fast, mirroring the excitement of the children. Short and snappywords have to be used as the musical quality of the language is asimportant as the equivalent meaning. Party food names chosen for theirsnappiness were therefore chosen: tartes, b<strong>on</strong>b<strong>on</strong>s, biscuits, petits foursfitted in well musically, even if the English reference was lost.Cultural dimensi<strong>on</strong>s are always more challenging to the translatorwhen they are linked to humour. In the case of Albert Herring, theoriginal English text could sometimes be kept. I decided to leaveuntouched the exchange of ‘Good mornings’ taking place at the beginningof the opera; it helps to assert the c<strong>on</strong>venti<strong>on</strong>al relati<strong>on</strong>ships of aprovincial town and the Englishness of the opera. Equally, all nameswere pr<strong>on</strong>ounced with an English accent in the French versi<strong>on</strong>. Yet,both satire and Englishness are not always so easily c<strong>on</strong>veyed to aFrench audience. In her c<strong>on</strong>gratulatory speech to Albert, Lady Billows,Albert’s patr<strong>on</strong>, uses more and more clichés and set phrases and hervocalisati<strong>on</strong>s become quite incoherent. The parody of a stiff upper lipand c<strong>on</strong>venti<strong>on</strong>al speech is created through the build up of standardEnglish phrases which are funny through the semi-incoherence of theiraccumulati<strong>on</strong>. They could not all be transferred into French as it wasimportant to keep to set phrases. Some expressi<strong>on</strong>s such as ‘Brit<strong>on</strong>s,Rule the deep’ could be transferred adequately (Anglais, Régn<strong>on</strong>s sur lesflots), but c<strong>on</strong>cise phrases such as ‘King and country’, transferred asH<strong>on</strong>neur et patrie, lost some of their flavour.The problem of rhyming and near-rhyming was also a recurrent issuein this comic opera. In many ways, this was the most difficult problem


80 Lucile Desblacheto solve. In very structured musical pieces which mirror establishedforms (threnody, hymns), rhyming was relatively easy to transfer. Yet,near-rhyming was used in many passages which were written in recitativeform, needed to keep a flexible musical line and to c<strong>on</strong>vey semanticideas. In some cases, rhyming/near-rhyming could not be achievedbecause of these restricti<strong>on</strong>s: writing a text which gave a clear messageand which flowed with the music were the two priorities. For example,in the first act of the opera, each member of the ‘May Queen committee’suggests a possible young girl to be elected. Singers are very exposedat this stage, as the priority is to communicate the text to the audience.Through the speech and the music they express their social character,their pers<strong>on</strong>ality as well as the basic message that has been composed inverse to be sung. In spite of many attempts to keep all these elements, Isometimes decided not to use verse in French, as the fluidity of the textwould suffer, particularly in the less structured musical passages. I havethus rendered the vicar’s suggesti<strong>on</strong>s as follows:The first suggesti<strong>on</strong> <strong>on</strong> my listIs a charming local girlWho takes Communi<strong>on</strong>And never missedA Sunday – Jennifer SearlLa première sur ma listeEst une charmante jeune fille.Elle communie etVient toujours à l’office:Jennifer Searl.C<strong>on</strong>clusi<strong>on</strong>In her discussi<strong>on</strong> of Reiss’s definiti<strong>on</strong> of audio-medial and multimedialtexts, Snell-Hornby (1997: 280) questi<strong>on</strong>s the general principle accordingto which text-types dictate the translati<strong>on</strong> method used:As a general principle, this [the fact that text-types determine thetranslati<strong>on</strong> method] may be debatable, as most texts are in fact hybridforms, multidimensi<strong>on</strong>al structures with a blend of sometimes seeminglyc<strong>on</strong>flicting features, but in the case of the audio-medial text, itis certainly arguable that the translati<strong>on</strong> strategy should depend <strong>on</strong>possibilities of expressi<strong>on</strong> inherent in the human voice. This candevelop into an issue where the principles of rhetoric and speakabilityc<strong>on</strong>flict with culture-specific expectati<strong>on</strong>s and language-specifictext type c<strong>on</strong>venti<strong>on</strong>s.Although Snell-Hornby does not address the specific problem of librettotransfer, she emphasises here both the key elements in libretti which


Challenges and Rewards of Libretto Adaptati<strong>on</strong> 81determine their translati<strong>on</strong>: their hybrid, textual nature and the absolutepriority needed to make them singable.So many transfer problems are inherent in libretto adaptati<strong>on</strong> thatsome translators find it a more frustrating than rewarding experience.Indeed, some of the worst translati<strong>on</strong>s published have been texts linkedto music and we have all laughed at some dated nineteenth-centurytranslati<strong>on</strong>s of art s<strong>on</strong>gs. In this sense, the screen translati<strong>on</strong> offeredthrough surtitling may be more satisfactory. Yet, in such works as AlbertHerring, based <strong>on</strong> humour and direct communicati<strong>on</strong> with an audience,and which are generally performed in small theatres where sungwords can be understood much more easily than in average operahouses, direct c<strong>on</strong>tact with the text is, in my view, preferable. It isalways difficult to make a judgement of <strong>on</strong>e’s work, and many of myown soluti<strong>on</strong>s were not fully to my satisfacti<strong>on</strong>. Nevertheless, it isultimately very gratifying to know that you are collaborating with afirst-class musician and to hear your audience laugh. It was also anunsurpassable experience to meet and get to know Eric Crozier and hiswife Nancy Evans, who were so generous in sharing their experienceand providing encouragement. I would like this c<strong>on</strong>tributi<strong>on</strong> to be atribute to them.Notes1. This anecdote was reported to me by an opera singer.2. In the end, the opera was not translated by Hans Oppenheim, to whom thisletter was addressed, but by Fritz Schröder.3. Carl Ebert was the artistic director of the Glyndebourne opera at that time.ReferencesBritten, B. (1948a) Albert Herring. Vocal score. L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong>: Boosey and Hawkes.Britten, B. (1948b) Albert Herring. Orchestral score. L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong>: Boosey andHawkes.Crozier, E. (1947a) Unpublished letter of Eric Crozier to Nancy Evans,10th February.Crozier, E. (1947b) Unpublished letter of Eric Crozier to Nancy Evans,12th February.Crozier, E. (1947c) Unpublished letter to Hans Oppenheim, 21st June.Crozier, E. (1947d) Foreword to the Libretto Albert Herring. L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong>: Boosey andHawkes.Crozier, E. (1964) Foreword to the Decca recording of Albert Herring. L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong>:Decca.Crozier, E. (1981) Albert Herring, Libretto (2nd edn). L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong>: Boosey andHawkes.


82 Lucile DesblacheKobbé, G. (1933 [1919]) Complete Opera Book. L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong> and New York: Putnam’sand S<strong>on</strong>s.Newman, E. (1947) Albert Herring. The Sunday Times, 6th July.Snell-Hornby, M. (1997) ‘Written to be spoken: The audio-medial text intranslati<strong>on</strong>’. In A. Trosborg (ed.) Text Typology and <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> (pp. 277–90).Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Surrans, A. (ed.) (1988) 100 compositeurs de A à Z, Jeux de massacre. Paris: Editi<strong>on</strong>sBernard Coutaz.Venuti, L. (1995) The Translator’s Invisibility. A History of <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g>. L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong> andNew York: Routledge.


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7Dubbing versus Subtitling:Old Battleground RevisitedJan-Emil TveitIntroducti<strong>on</strong>Early in the twentieth century the new film medium transcended allnati<strong>on</strong>al and cultural borders, but with the arrival of the talkies, thefilm industry faced a translati<strong>on</strong> problem since <strong>on</strong>ly a small percentageof the world’s populati<strong>on</strong> understood English. As a result, there was agrowing need to find appropriate screen translati<strong>on</strong> approaches.In Europe, France became a forerunner experimenting with bothdubbing and subtitling. It did not take l<strong>on</strong>g, however, to find out thatboth approaches had their disadvantages: it was even claimed thattranslating a film ruined it. To solve the problem a third approach wastried out in the form of multiple versi<strong>on</strong>s, which meant that films wereshot in several languages instead of <strong>on</strong>e. But the different versi<strong>on</strong>s werenot <strong>on</strong> an equal footing, and it did not take l<strong>on</strong>g before it became obviousthat the TL-versi<strong>on</strong>s were suffering. A main problem was that theirlinguistic quality was not up to par.As time went by, however, French audiences grew increasinglydissatisfied with subtitling and dubbing gained c<strong>on</strong>siderable territory.Al<strong>on</strong>g with other countries like Italy, Spain and Germany, France graduallydeveloped into a dubbing str<strong>on</strong>ghold, while the Scandinaviancountries and the Netherlands, <strong>on</strong> the other hand, opted for subtitling.During the first few years, this was largely a questi<strong>on</strong> of m<strong>on</strong>ey. Butmuch has changed since the arrival of the talkies and the advent oftelevisi<strong>on</strong>. Which <strong>on</strong>e of these two translati<strong>on</strong> soluti<strong>on</strong>s is the bestopti<strong>on</strong> for today? In order to answer this questi<strong>on</strong>, I will compare thetwo approaches paying special attenti<strong>on</strong> to their c<strong>on</strong>straining factors.85


86 Jan-Emil TveitC<strong>on</strong>straining factors of subtitlingWhereas it may be argued that subtitling is the <strong>on</strong>ly intelligent soluti<strong>on</strong>(Reid, 1978), it has also been claimed that this approach is <strong>on</strong>ly thelesser of two evils (Marleau, 1982). And there is no doubt that subtitlinghas its c<strong>on</strong>straints.An important aspect of the subtitling process is the filtering of potentialloss of informati<strong>on</strong>: for the purposes of expressing nuances the writtenword cannot possibly compete with speech. Hence a large numberof lexical items tend to be required in order to match what is c<strong>on</strong>veyedby stress, rhythm and int<strong>on</strong>ati<strong>on</strong>. Normally, however, the subtitler doesnot have room for wordy formulati<strong>on</strong>s or complex structures: in orderto enhance readability, brevity is the essence. And if the subtitles are toremain <strong>on</strong> the screen l<strong>on</strong>g enough for audiences to read them, c<strong>on</strong>tracti<strong>on</strong>is a must, which in turn can result in a regrettable loss of lexicalmeaning. Often it is not easy to decide what to leave out. Althoughthere are redundant linguistic features in speech, sometimes even slightomissi<strong>on</strong>s may bring about significant changes in meaning.It is difficult to generalise when it comes to reading speed and rate ofstandardised presentati<strong>on</strong>. According to Luyken et al. (1991), the readingspeed of adult viewers hovers around 150 to 180 words per minute.This is, however, subject to extensive variati<strong>on</strong> and depends <strong>on</strong> thecomplexity of the linguistic and factual informati<strong>on</strong> that the subtitlesc<strong>on</strong>tain. If lexical density is high, accessibility to the informati<strong>on</strong> tendsto be low, which calls for added subtitle exposure time.Furthermore, readability is said to be affected by film genre. This ishow Minchint<strong>on</strong> (1993: 14–15) comments <strong>on</strong> love stories: ‘Viewers neednot read many of the titles; they know the story, they guess the dialogue,they blink down at the subtitles for informati<strong>on</strong>, they photographthem rather than read them’. Crime stories, according toMinchint<strong>on</strong>, may give translators and viewers a harder time: if theacti<strong>on</strong> is to be understood the subtitles have to be read.A further point made by Minchint<strong>on</strong> c<strong>on</strong>cerns reading speed thatmay be affected by the viewers’ attitude to the subject matter of films orprogrammes. He suggests that if viewers find a story exciting they areable to read the subtitles faster. On the other hand, it may be arguedthat the more interesting audiences find a film, the less inclined theyare to spend the time reading.As far as televisi<strong>on</strong> subtitling is c<strong>on</strong>cerned, c<strong>on</strong>densati<strong>on</strong> levels varybetween countries. If we compare the Scandinavian countries, stricterrules have traditi<strong>on</strong>ally applied in Sweden than in Norway and Denmark.


Dubbing vs Subtitling 87In Sweden the durati<strong>on</strong> of a full double-line subtitle is supposed to be6–7 sec<strong>on</strong>ds, compared to 5 sec<strong>on</strong>ds in Denmark. The positi<strong>on</strong> of theNorwegian Broadcasting Corporati<strong>on</strong> (NRK) is that a full double-linesubtitle should remain <strong>on</strong> the screen for at least 6 sec<strong>on</strong>ds.Except for some research carried out in Sweden a couple of decadesago, the definiti<strong>on</strong> of readability is determined more by comm<strong>on</strong> sensethan <strong>on</strong> research results. By way of obtaining what I felt was necessaryempirical evidence, I decided to test whether the exposure time ofNorwegian subtitles could be cut down without significantly reducingreadability and comprehensi<strong>on</strong>. My samples were drawn from pupils/students at nine Norwegian lower and upper sec<strong>on</strong>dary schools. Therewere 508 resp<strong>on</strong>dents of between 13 and 20 years of age, and theresp<strong>on</strong>se rate turned out to be as high as 95%. The samples would appearto be sufficiently random to c<strong>on</strong>stitute a representative cross-secti<strong>on</strong> ofNorwegians bel<strong>on</strong>ging to these age groups (Tveit, 2005).My results showed that the retenti<strong>on</strong> of textual informati<strong>on</strong> was <strong>on</strong>lymarginally reduced when the exposure time of each subtitle was cut by1 sec<strong>on</strong>d. Hence readability was not dramatically affected when thedurati<strong>on</strong> of a full double-line subtitle decreased from 6 to 5 sec<strong>on</strong>ds.When the exposure time was cut by a further sec<strong>on</strong>d, however, thesituati<strong>on</strong> changed significantly, most resp<strong>on</strong>dents losing out <strong>on</strong> ac<strong>on</strong>siderable amount of informati<strong>on</strong>.Cohesive devices are often c<strong>on</strong>sidered omittable. But although theymay not have obvious semantic functi<strong>on</strong>s, these still play an importantrole in making relati<strong>on</strong>ships and events explicit. A text that does notc<strong>on</strong>tain words of this kind may be difficult to access, and omittingcohesive devices in order to boost readability can therefore prove counterproductive.It may, indeed, reduce readability.Admittedly, Gottlieb (1997) has a point when he emphasises the factthat subtitling is additive by nature, that is verbal material is added tothe original programme and nothing is removed from it. The usefulnessof this additi<strong>on</strong>, however, depends <strong>on</strong> the viewers’ comprehensi<strong>on</strong> ofthe original dialogue. It is true that t<strong>on</strong>e of voice, stress and int<strong>on</strong>ati<strong>on</strong>may c<strong>on</strong>tribute to c<strong>on</strong>veying informati<strong>on</strong> across language barriers, butif source and target languages are poles apart in terms of lexis, the valueof keeping the original soundtrack may be rather limited. Very fewScandinavian viewers benefit much from dialogue in Russian or Greekbeing retained in order to further understanding of lexical meaning.They may benefit greatly, however, if the dialogue is in a languagesimilar to their own, and therefore, comprehensi<strong>on</strong> is markedly facilitatedfor Norwegian televisi<strong>on</strong> audiences when Swedish interviewees


88 Jan-Emil Tveitappear in, for instance, news bulletins as, in additi<strong>on</strong> to being subtitledinto Norwegian, they c<strong>on</strong>tinue to speak in Swedish.Although my research indicates that it is possible to reduce exposuretime by a sec<strong>on</strong>d, it is difficult to generalise in terms of reading speedand rates of presentati<strong>on</strong> of informati<strong>on</strong>. As menti<strong>on</strong>ed, the complexityof the linguistic and factual informati<strong>on</strong> has to be taken intoaccount.Traditi<strong>on</strong>ally, a distincti<strong>on</strong> has been made between televisi<strong>on</strong> andvideo <strong>on</strong> the <strong>on</strong>e hand and cinema <strong>on</strong> the other. It has been assumedthat identical subtitles are easier to read <strong>on</strong> the cinema than <strong>on</strong> thetelevisi<strong>on</strong> screen. The reas<strong>on</strong> for this has never been satisfactorilyinvestigated, but it is assumed to be related to the size of the screen,the f<strong>on</strong>t used for the letters, and the better image resoluti<strong>on</strong> of thecinema.Spoken versus written languageAnother c<strong>on</strong>straining factor of subtitling results from the spoken wordc<strong>on</strong>taining dialectal and sociolectal features which are extremely difficultto account for in writing. Whereas spoken language tends to c<strong>on</strong>tainunfinished sentences al<strong>on</strong>g with redundant speech and interrupti<strong>on</strong>s,writing has a higher lexical density and a greater ec<strong>on</strong>omy of expressi<strong>on</strong>.In additi<strong>on</strong>, written translati<strong>on</strong>s of spoken language often display a tendencytoward nominalisati<strong>on</strong>, whereby verbal elements are turned int<strong>on</strong>ouns. Hence it is difficult to retain the flavour of the spoken mode insubtitles. When it comes to keeping the register and appropriateness ofthe SL-versi<strong>on</strong> dubbing can undoubtedly be at an advantage.Previously it was rather comm<strong>on</strong> for informal stylistic features ofspeech to be replaced by more formal and inappropriate language insubtitles, but in this respect a marked improvement can be observedin recent years. It could well be that the orientati<strong>on</strong> away from atraditi<strong>on</strong>al ‘bookish’ approach is related to the increasing number ofAmerican producti<strong>on</strong>s that are shown <strong>on</strong> televisi<strong>on</strong> in Norway. Thisreflects a trend away from a formal register of language in Americanculture. Sitcoms like Friends, Frasier, Seinfeld and Ally McBeal are farfrom easy to handle for screen translators and seem to have c<strong>on</strong>tributedto making subtitlers more aware of the need to handle register at boththe lexical and syntactic level. The translati<strong>on</strong> of such programmesinto other languages requires a high degree of communicativecompetence.


Dubbing vs Subtitling 89Traditi<strong>on</strong>ally, Norwegian televisi<strong>on</strong> has handled four-letter wordswith c<strong>on</strong>spicuous cauti<strong>on</strong>. Since the advent of televisi<strong>on</strong>, taboo wordshave been used increasingly in foreign language programmes that theNorwegian Broadcasting Corporati<strong>on</strong> has bought from abroad, but theyhave not always been translated into equally str<strong>on</strong>g language. This hasto do with the assumpti<strong>on</strong> that the effect of swear words is reinforcedwhen they are printed. Not uniformly accepted in a country like Norwaywith its deep-rooted puritan traditi<strong>on</strong>s, it now seems strange that ittook such a l<strong>on</strong>g time for Norwegian translators to challenge theassumpti<strong>on</strong> that the printed swear word is str<strong>on</strong>ger than the spoken<strong>on</strong>e. If anything, it ought to be the other way around; a printed representati<strong>on</strong>is probably <strong>on</strong>ly a weaker versi<strong>on</strong> of a word pr<strong>on</strong>ounced withstress and intensity. Literature is full of four-letter words and it seemshardly likely that their force or effect would be reduced in films based<strong>on</strong> the books.As for the handling of four-letter words in translati<strong>on</strong>, the most difficulttask I have encountered was the translati<strong>on</strong> of a Channel Fourproducti<strong>on</strong> portraying Graham Taylor who had been sacked as Englandmanager following the failure to qualify for the 1994 World Cup insoccer. The programme provided me with a number of challenges, notleast because of its c<strong>on</strong>tinuous c<strong>on</strong>text-dependent changes of styleand register. It ranged from the elevated and analytical language ofChannel Four reporters to Graham Taylor giving his players a dressingdown for being unable to produce their best results. The most difficultpart to transfer to Norwegian was Taylor’s verbal behaviourduring matches. As the ball did not roll England’s way that seas<strong>on</strong>,four-letter words were fired in rapid successi<strong>on</strong>. Pretty much in linewith Norwegian subtitling traditi<strong>on</strong> and what I had been trained todo, I tried my best to t<strong>on</strong>e down the expressive force of the four-letterwords, in additi<strong>on</strong> to leaving many of them out. But <strong>on</strong> the day thatthe programme was to be broadcast, Norwegian morning newspapersfocused <strong>on</strong> the recepti<strong>on</strong> the programme had got in the UK, whereGraham Taylor’s str<strong>on</strong>g language had created a stir. As a result, I felt Ihad to change a number of my translati<strong>on</strong> soluti<strong>on</strong>s, the neutralisati<strong>on</strong>strategy having turned out to be inappropriate. Fortunately, I stillhad a couple of hours to bring the register of the target versi<strong>on</strong> in linewith the rather colourful original. When the programme was aired inthe late evening, the subtitled Norwegian versi<strong>on</strong> c<strong>on</strong>tained a ratherhigh number of four-letter words; there were no viewer reacti<strong>on</strong>s inthe days and weeks to follow.


90 Jan-Emil TveitVisual, spatial and decoding restraintsIn additi<strong>on</strong> to linguistic restraints there is the visual factor. Trying theirbest to read everything that has been translated, viewers are oftenunable to c<strong>on</strong>centrate adequately <strong>on</strong> other important visual informati<strong>on</strong>and sometimes also <strong>on</strong> oral informati<strong>on</strong>. This is regrettable sinceaudiovisual programmes combine words and images, and the translati<strong>on</strong>should observe the interrelati<strong>on</strong> between the way a plot is told andthe manner in which it is shown. Subtitles should synchr<strong>on</strong>ise not <strong>on</strong>lywith speech, but also with image.Twenty years ago, cinema and televisi<strong>on</strong> films were cut less fast thanthey tend to be now. This is undoubtedly an important reas<strong>on</strong> why thehistory of subtitling does not c<strong>on</strong>tain much discussi<strong>on</strong> of editing andcamera manipulati<strong>on</strong> techniques. Visual aspects are now more an issue,which reflects the rapid development of the last couple of decades incamera manipulati<strong>on</strong>, sequence c<strong>on</strong>structi<strong>on</strong> and programme editing.This is not <strong>on</strong>ly due to the number of cameras involved and the waythey are used, but also to what takes place when the filming of a programmeis complete, when the different secti<strong>on</strong>s, with their shots,scenes and sequences, are assembled and edited.It is increasingly important for the subtitles to be integrated with thefilm and to fall in with the rhythm of the visual informati<strong>on</strong> <strong>on</strong> thescreen. This is far from easy to achieve when the editing of the film isgaining momentum and the flow of the shots is adjusted to the demandsof the narrative and the impact <strong>on</strong> the audience. With respect to spatialc<strong>on</strong>straints, in the Nordic countries, <strong>on</strong>e- and two-line subtitles areused. The length of the line varies, but normally does not exceed 38characters. The main limiting factors are the size of the televisi<strong>on</strong> screenand the size of the f<strong>on</strong>t.When the subtitles follow each other in rapid successi<strong>on</strong>, reading <strong>on</strong>etwo-liner appears to be less strenuous than reading two <strong>on</strong>e-liners c<strong>on</strong>tainingthe same amount of informati<strong>on</strong>. Although precise timing hasusually been defined in terms of subtitle–speech synchr<strong>on</strong>isati<strong>on</strong>,research carried out by Baker (1982) in Great Britain indicates that subtitlesoverrunning shot changes cause perceptual c<strong>on</strong>fusi<strong>on</strong>. Interestingas these results may appear, they do not seem to have had too muchof an impact <strong>on</strong> subtitling territory in the Netherlands and theScandinavian countries and the great majority of Norwegian screentranslators still favour two-line subtitles.Sometimes, however, two lines occupy too much space and interferesubstantially with the visual informati<strong>on</strong> and compositi<strong>on</strong> of the


Dubbing vs Subtitling 91picture. A case in point is the animati<strong>on</strong> series South Park, where thebodies and faces of the characters fill up most of the screen. This seriescan be difficult to handle for subtitlers. Also in news bulletins, facesoften dominate the screen as the camera focuses <strong>on</strong> the so-called ‘talkinghead’ but since there is limited activity in the picture, the viewersare able to c<strong>on</strong>centrate <strong>on</strong> the translati<strong>on</strong>.News, current affairs and documentary programmes frequently c<strong>on</strong>taincapti<strong>on</strong>s or inserts. These are texts added to the film after shooting.They may be names of people taking part, or names of places visited orshown. As capti<strong>on</strong>s often appear at the bottom of the screen, there isthe risk that they may collide with the subtitles, a situati<strong>on</strong> that shouldobviously be avoided.Decoding may present translators with a difficult task due to the presenceof ambiguities. Normally a translator has the means of following upunclear linguistic or factual points; for the subtitler, however, this is notnecessarily the case. One reas<strong>on</strong> may be the lack of a manuscript or dialoguelist, often the situati<strong>on</strong> when interviews are made in news programmes.However, as the reporter tends to know enough about thec<strong>on</strong>text, the subtitler may be helped with potential decoding problems.Frequently the subtitler does not have the time to obtain adequateknowledge of the c<strong>on</strong>text. In additi<strong>on</strong>, the huge number of varieties ofEnglish – and the fact that the interviewees’ command of the languagemay be far from satisfactory – often make translati<strong>on</strong> a rather difficultprocess. A mistake may occur after the translator has spent c<strong>on</strong>siderabletime trying to decode a difficult word. But sometimes we simply misinterpretwhat somebody is saying without realising it until we are c<strong>on</strong>fr<strong>on</strong>tedwith our mistake at a later stage. The following mistake bel<strong>on</strong>gsto the latter category. It was made by Swedish televisi<strong>on</strong> in a translati<strong>on</strong>of Bill Clint<strong>on</strong>’s 1996 re-electi<strong>on</strong> campaign. The words of the presidentwere: ‘We’ve created nine and a half milli<strong>on</strong> jobs, more than half ofthem high-wage jobs’. The translator, who does not appear to have hadaccess to a manuscript, produced the following translati<strong>on</strong>:Vi har skapat 9 ½ milj.arbetsplatser,mer ãn hälften inom motorvägsarbete.[We have created nine and a half milli<strong>on</strong> jobs,more than half of them highway jobs.]Mishearing ph<strong>on</strong>emes is a comm<strong>on</strong> type of decoding mistake, and seemsto be what occurred here. The translator must have been c<strong>on</strong>vinced thats/he heard ‘highway jobs’ (motorvägsarbete) and not ‘high-wage jobs’. In


92 Jan-Emil Tveitthis particular case there is no doubt that decoding was extremelydifficult. The two c<strong>on</strong>structi<strong>on</strong>s c<strong>on</strong>tained very similar sounds.Nevertheless, comm<strong>on</strong> sense combined with adequate knowledge of USsociety and politics would probably have saved the translator from droppingthis brick. After all, it would have been rather extraordinary if halfof all new jobs had been created in the field of road c<strong>on</strong>structi<strong>on</strong> – evenin the <strong>home</strong>land of Henry Ford.Stringent deadlines in combinati<strong>on</strong> with decoding problems oftenpresent screen translators with difficulties and lead to misunderstandings,errors and inaccuracies. They represent c<strong>on</strong>siderable decoding c<strong>on</strong>straintsand are bound to have a negative impact <strong>on</strong> the quality of the translati<strong>on</strong>.And when the audience has access to the Source <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> dialogue, ahigh degree of translati<strong>on</strong> accuracy is required.The c<strong>on</strong>straints of dubbing andlip synchr<strong>on</strong>isati<strong>on</strong>When we experience state-of-the-art lip synchr<strong>on</strong>isati<strong>on</strong>, it is not difficultto understand why this method is the favoured screen translati<strong>on</strong>approach in large parts of the world. However, the c<strong>on</strong>straining factorsof this approach are very obvious.One important c<strong>on</strong>siderati<strong>on</strong> is the loss of authenticity. An essentialpart of a character’s pers<strong>on</strong>ality is their voice, which is closely linked tofacial expressi<strong>on</strong>s, gestures and body language. Authenticity is undeniablysacrificed when a character is deprived of their voice and insteadthe audience hears the voice of somebody else. At the Cannes FilmFestival in 2003, I interviewed 25 people working in the film industryabout their screen translati<strong>on</strong> preferences. All but two said they favouredsubtitling. When asked why, most of them answered that they regardedsubtitling as the most intelligent and authentic opti<strong>on</strong>. For actors toexperience what their c<strong>on</strong>tributi<strong>on</strong> has been turned into in differentTarget <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> versi<strong>on</strong>s must be somewhat startling, and it may seema bit strange that directors do not put their foot down more often thanthey do, for example, in cases where dubbing has been favoured andsubtitling would have been the preferred opti<strong>on</strong>.When such linguistic transplantati<strong>on</strong> takes place, it is not <strong>on</strong>ly authenticitythat is sacrificed but, in additi<strong>on</strong>, credibility, which may be particularlyproblematic in news and current-affairs programmes when voice-overis used. Reporters seem to be increasingly preoccupied with the dramaticeffect subtitled interviews are reputed to have. This probably has to dowith the transnati<strong>on</strong>al qualities of the human voice. Even if we do not


Dubbing vs Subtitling 93understand the words of a foreign language, the voice itself may c<strong>on</strong>vey agreat deal of informati<strong>on</strong>. Although int<strong>on</strong>ati<strong>on</strong> patterns often vary fromlanguage to language, universal features such as the expressi<strong>on</strong> of pain,grief and joy should not be ignored: linked to pitch, stress, rhythm andvolume, they c<strong>on</strong>tribute c<strong>on</strong>siderably to c<strong>on</strong>veying informati<strong>on</strong> not <strong>on</strong>lyabout the speakers, but also about the c<strong>on</strong>text of which they form a part.Voices reflect the mood and atmosphere of a situati<strong>on</strong>, whether it is ata major sports event, the scene of an accident or the c<strong>on</strong>venti<strong>on</strong> of apolitical party. The effect of a persuasive speech during a presidential orparliamentary electi<strong>on</strong> campaign is probably significantly reduced in avoice-over. Since many politicians capitalise <strong>on</strong> their voices, sound is animportant part of their public image. The Northern Ireland politicianGerry Adams is a good example of the significance of the impact of apolitical voice. For a l<strong>on</strong>g period of time the British people did not havethe opportunity to hear his voice <strong>on</strong> radio or televisi<strong>on</strong>. Whenever Adamsmade a statement, it could <strong>on</strong>ly be broadcast when somebody else readhis words, revealing the importance the British authorities attached tothe voice of the charismatic politician. It also underlines the significanceof letting the audience have access to the original soundtrack.There is little doubt in my mind that subtitling has an importanteducati<strong>on</strong>al value. Visitors to the Scandinavian countries are oftenimpressed by the standard of English of the people they meet, most ofwhom have never lived in an English-speaking country. Rather thanreflecting the superior result of differing language teaching standards,it may in fact be the inherent pedagogical value of having access to theoriginal English language soundtrack that has brought this to bear. In1987 I undertook a study that had as its objective to m<strong>on</strong>itor the needs,preferences and percepti<strong>on</strong>s of the linguistic standard of 4,200 studentsof English from the following nine European countries: Norway,Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Germany, France, Italy, Austria and theNetherlands (Tveit, 1987). An interesting result of the study was thatlistening comprehensi<strong>on</strong> was perceived as significantly more difficultby students from ‘dubbing countries’ than by students from ‘subtitlingcountries’, the former category showing a much str<strong>on</strong>ger need for anincreased knowledge of vocabulary when communicating in English.Dubbing is both expensive and time-c<strong>on</strong>sumingA further factor to be c<strong>on</strong>sidered is cost; dubbing is a lot more expensivethan subtitling. The fact that figures vary c<strong>on</strong>siderably might be linkedto the relati<strong>on</strong>ship between supply and demand. Since trained actors


94 Jan-Emil Tveithave traditi<strong>on</strong>ally been in short supply in small countries like Norway,the cost of using their services has been high, which has c<strong>on</strong>tributed tomaking subtitling a much cheaper alternative. Although the differencein cost has started to even out, dubbing remains 5 to 10 times moreexpensive. It might therefore seem odd that an increasing number offoreign films and televisi<strong>on</strong> producti<strong>on</strong>s are dubbed for the Scandinavianmarkets. A case in point would be the family film (children under 7 arenot admitted) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Tim Burt<strong>on</strong>, 2005). Itwas dubbed into Norwegian, something that would hardly have happeneda few years ago. Other producti<strong>on</strong>s that have been dubbed for theScandinavian audiences in recent years are the animati<strong>on</strong> films Shrek(Andrew Adams<strong>on</strong> and Vicky Jens<strong>on</strong>, 2001) and The Polar Express (RobertZemeckis, 2004). In France, cinema audiences have been able to choosebetween dubbed and subtitled versi<strong>on</strong>s of major producti<strong>on</strong>s for anumber of years. Although it is still <strong>on</strong>ly the thin end of the wedge, asimilar development can now be seen in Scandinavia.What is it then that makes dubbing a viable alternative when it is soexpensive? The argument seems to be that costs do not matter too muchif revenues are big enough. If lip synchr<strong>on</strong>isati<strong>on</strong> can attract biggeraudiences, increased translati<strong>on</strong> costs would not present too much of aproblem. The televisi<strong>on</strong> business is increasingly preoccupied with ratings.If a network is able to get an edge <strong>on</strong> its competitors, costs are notlikely to hold it back.In 1997, an interesting screen translati<strong>on</strong> experiment <strong>on</strong> subtitlingtook place in Scandinavia. TV 2, Norway’s biggest commercial televisi<strong>on</strong>channel, decided to test viewer reacti<strong>on</strong>s to lip synchr<strong>on</strong>isati<strong>on</strong>and the first three episodes of The Gregory Hines’ Show were dubbed intoNorwegian. Some of the country’s most renowned actors were hired,and the show was given prime viewing time <strong>on</strong> Friday evenings. Afterthree weeks the viewers were asked for their verdict. The result showedthat 85% of the viewers wanted to see subtitled versi<strong>on</strong>s of the remainingepisodes, a somewhat baffling reacti<strong>on</strong>, c<strong>on</strong>sidering The GregoryHines Show is a family programme, aired at a time when parents tend towatch televisi<strong>on</strong> together with their children, many of whom have notyet learned to read.Film afici<strong>on</strong>ados looked at the result as proof of subtitling being thebest soluti<strong>on</strong> – and far superior to dubbing. But there is clearly a lotmore to it than that, and traditi<strong>on</strong> is a key word. One should not forgetthat preferences depend <strong>on</strong> what viewers are accustomed to – andNorwegians are used to subtitling. In a country lacking the traditi<strong>on</strong>, ittakes time to develop state-of-the-art dubbing. As for TV 2, the result of


Dubbing vs Subtitling 95their market research seemed to c<strong>on</strong>vince the powers that be thatdubbed versi<strong>on</strong>s did not attract big enough audiences.Normally the dubbing process takes c<strong>on</strong>siderable time. In the case ofnews bulletins, it is obviously not possible to invite actors to play theparts of interviewees. Instead, the big US and European networks makeuse of voice-over. It is a reas<strong>on</strong>ably speedy process, but it tends to distractviewers who tend to c<strong>on</strong>centrate <strong>on</strong> the initial voice to the extentthat they lose out <strong>on</strong> parts of the voice-over.In most cases, the subtitling of news reports can be d<strong>on</strong>e swiftly, andoften takes place minutes before the news bulletin starts. The subtitlingof films and series can also be d<strong>on</strong>e surprisingly quickly, as illustratedby the following example dating back to the 1990s. A couple of hoursafter US televisi<strong>on</strong> audiences had been treated to the soluti<strong>on</strong> to themurder mystery, the final episode of Murder One was <strong>on</strong> its way toEurope. It arrived in Norway 11 hours before the ending to Steve Bocho’sdrama was to be shown <strong>on</strong> Norwegian televisi<strong>on</strong>. Nine hours later thetarget versi<strong>on</strong> had been brought to completi<strong>on</strong> and the programme wasready for transmissi<strong>on</strong>. In dubbing countries such as Germany andSpain, the linguistic adaptati<strong>on</strong> process would probably have takenweeks rather than hours, involving a large number of people. For a start,the dialogue list has to be translated. Then the chosen actors have to begiven the time to study and rehearse their parts. The recording sessi<strong>on</strong>salso tend to take time. From this it would seem evident that as far asmeeting stringent deadlines is c<strong>on</strong>cerned the usefulness of this screentranslati<strong>on</strong> approach is rather limited.C<strong>on</strong>clusi<strong>on</strong>Based <strong>on</strong> the premises outlined above, my c<strong>on</strong>clusi<strong>on</strong> is that subtitlingis normally a better approach to screen translati<strong>on</strong> than is dubbing.This does not follow logically from counting the number of c<strong>on</strong>strainingfactors of the two approaches, but has to do with the fact that someof the c<strong>on</strong>straining factors are easier to get around or compensate forthan others. In my opini<strong>on</strong> the loss of authenticity in dubbing, sinceimportant aspects of a character’s pers<strong>on</strong>ality are revealed through theuse of their voice, is the biggest problem of all.There are, however, cases where the voice does not form an integralpart of a character, it simply bel<strong>on</strong>gs to the off-screen commentator.This tends to be the case in documentary programmes, which normallylend themselves more easily to revoicing than subtitling. Here, if thelatter method is chosen, it may lead to extensive loss of informati<strong>on</strong>.


96 Jan-Emil TveitProgrammes that are cut extremely fast and have rapid speech ratesshould not necessarily be subtitled. If readability requirements are to bemet, the sheer levels of c<strong>on</strong>densati<strong>on</strong> needed result in too great a loss ofinformati<strong>on</strong>. In spite of all its disadvantages, in such cases dubbing maybe the lesser of two evils. Moreover, films and programmes aimed atsmall children have to be dubbed for the simple reas<strong>on</strong> that the targetaudiences have not yet learned to read.ReferencesBaker, R. (1982) M<strong>on</strong>itoring Eye-movements while Watching Subtitled Televisi<strong>on</strong>Programmes. L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong>: Independent Broadcasting Authority.Gottlieb, H. (1997) Subtitles, <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> & Idioms. Copenhagen: University ofCopenhagen. PhD Thesis.Luyken, G. M., Herbst, T., Langham-Brown, J., Reid, H. and Spinhof, H. (1991)Overcoming <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> Barriers in Televisi<strong>on</strong>: Dubbing and Subtitling for the EuropeanAudience. Manchester: European Institute for the Media.Marleau, L. (1982) ‘Les sous-titres ... un mal nécessaire’. Meta 27(3): 271–85.Minchint<strong>on</strong>, J. (1993) Sub-Titling. Hertfordshire, England. Manuscript.Reid, H. (1978) ‘Sub-titling: the intelligent soluti<strong>on</strong>’. In P.A. Horguelin (ed.)Translating: A Professi<strong>on</strong>. Proceedings of the VII World C<strong>on</strong>gress of the Internati<strong>on</strong>alFederati<strong>on</strong> of Translators (pp. 420–8). Ottawa: Council of Translators andInterpreters of Ottawa.Tveit, J.-E. (1987) Orientati<strong>on</strong> Towards the Learner. Stavanger: Stavanger lærerhøgskole.Tveit, J.-E. (2005) Translating for Televisi<strong>on</strong>. A Handbook in Screen <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g>.Bergen: JK Publishing.


8The Percepti<strong>on</strong> of Dubbing byItalian AudiencesRachele Ant<strong>on</strong>ini and Delia ChiaroScreen translati<strong>on</strong>s, and especially those for the small screen, arec<strong>on</strong>sumed by milli<strong>on</strong>s of people in Europe, and of course all over then<strong>on</strong>-English speaking world, at every moment of the day. 1 In thisrespect, Italy is representative of the many nati<strong>on</strong>s which require evergrowingamounts of interlingual mediati<strong>on</strong> for both big and smallscreen. As is well known, Italy is comm<strong>on</strong>ly labelled a ‘dubbingcountry’ which, together with Austria, France, Germany and Spain,has adopted a traditi<strong>on</strong> of dubbing rather than subtitling, the preferredmode of screen translati<strong>on</strong> in Greece, Portugal, Scandinaviaand the UK. However, the situati<strong>on</strong> in dubbing countries is rapidlychanging as a choice between dubbing and subtitling is now available<strong>on</strong> satellite stati<strong>on</strong>s and, owing to the fact that subtitling is the morecost-effective choice of the two, for the colossal DVD market. 2 However,despite the fact that many younger people who are more proficient inEnglish than their parents may well prefer subtitling to be more widelyavailable, dubbing is bound to remain the chief form of linguisticmediati<strong>on</strong> for some years. Perhaps it is worthwhile remembering thatattitudes and preferences are largely an issue of habit and thus apers<strong>on</strong> who has been used to almost a lifetime of dubbing is unlikelyto be persuaded to change to a different mode of screen translati<strong>on</strong>:‘viewers are creatures of habit’ (Ivarss<strong>on</strong>, 1992: 66) and preferencesdepend <strong>on</strong> ‘what the audience is used to rather than rati<strong>on</strong>alarguments’ (ibid.: 20).The Eurobarometer survey c<strong>on</strong>ducted in 2001 <strong>on</strong> the language skillsof European citizens and their attitudes towards language learning supportsIvarss<strong>on</strong>’s claims. In fact, 60% of resp<strong>on</strong>dents declared that theyprefer to see foreign films and programmes dubbed into their own language.In Italy, more than 70% of resp<strong>on</strong>dents expressed support for97


98 Rachele Ant<strong>on</strong>ini & Delia Chiaro100%90%80%70%60%50%40%30%20%10%0%Ficti<strong>on</strong>FilmsFicti<strong>on</strong>FilmsFicti<strong>on</strong>FilmsFicti<strong>on</strong>FilmsFicti<strong>on</strong>FilmsGermanySpain France UK ItalyN<strong>on</strong>-US ImportsUS and US Co-producti<strong>on</strong>Figure 8.1 Volume of ficti<strong>on</strong>/films broadcast <strong>on</strong> televisi<strong>on</strong> channels in the fiveprincipal European markets, 2001Source: European <str<strong>on</strong>g>Audiovisual</str<strong>on</strong>g> Observatory; Press Release 28 January 2003.dubbing as their preferred form of audiovisual translati<strong>on</strong> (AVT) whilecountries comprising the other block c<strong>on</strong>firmed their str<strong>on</strong>g supportfor subtitled products.Televisi<strong>on</strong> programmes which undergo the process of dubbing in Italyc<strong>on</strong>sist of all imported genres of ficti<strong>on</strong>al products from films and TVseries to sitcoms and soap operas for a total of over 40 hours airing <strong>on</strong>weekdays and, as illustrated in Figure 8.1, most products are translatedfrom American English.Now of course, while the UK is the chief importer of American programmes,unlike n<strong>on</strong>-English speaking countries, these productsrequire no linguistic negotiati<strong>on</strong> and are thus cheaper by default as theyare purchased ‘ready-for-use’. In the other countries reported inFigure 8.1 the same imports require time and investment before theyare ready for broadcasting.With globalisati<strong>on</strong> dictating that films should be premièredsimultaneously <strong>on</strong> both sides of the Atlantic, many operators workingin Italy’s dubbing sector who are feeling the strain of such a great workload,poor wages and working c<strong>on</strong>diti<strong>on</strong>s have begun to take issue with


Percepti<strong>on</strong> of Dubbing by Italian Audiences 99their employers. In fact, in February 2004, operators working in theItalian dubbing sector took industrial acti<strong>on</strong> in protest at the fact thatthey do not possess the fundamental rights of any worker in a democraticcountry, namely a nati<strong>on</strong>al c<strong>on</strong>tract. From dubbing translators toactors, workers withdrew their labour thus threatening the substantialrevenues expected at box offices and from TV advertising. In a totallyanarchic market, a film which <strong>on</strong>ce required three weeks to dub fromstart to finish, in the new millennium necessitates the same task to becompleted in five days or else it runs the risk of being sent to a smallmake-do ‘do it yourself’ company willing to comply with a lower feeand a quick and dirty translati<strong>on</strong>. And what of quality? According toT<strong>on</strong>i Biocca, a representative of AIDAC, Italy’s associati<strong>on</strong> of dubbingtranslators, executives at RAI and MEDIASET are frequently heard tosay della qualità n<strong>on</strong> importa a nessuno [who cares about quality] (quotedin Gallozzi, 2004).Needless to say, the key functi<strong>on</strong> of translati<strong>on</strong> is to allow people tobe privy to texts in languages with which they are not familiar, yet theemphasis of research in audiovisual translati<strong>on</strong>, and translati<strong>on</strong> studiesin general, has been <strong>on</strong> actual texts, the translati<strong>on</strong>s themselves andtheir translators rather than <strong>on</strong> readers and viewers. In other words, thepeople who essentially make use of these translati<strong>on</strong>s seem to have beenlargely ignored by researchers. The literature <strong>on</strong> the processes involvedin the work of a screen translator is generally based <strong>on</strong> studies of adescriptive and prescriptive nature (Gambier, 1998; Gambier andGottlieb, 2001). Case studies c<strong>on</strong>cerned with dubbed texts are abundantand are normally based <strong>on</strong> c<strong>on</strong>trastive analyses of audiovisual texts intheir original form and their dubbed versi<strong>on</strong>(s), and it can safely be saidthat the ins and outs of the various compromises involved in the processof dubbing have been explored in a variety of language combinati<strong>on</strong>sby several scholars (Baccolini et al., 1994; Heiss and Bollettieri Bosinelli,1996; Bollettieri Bosinelli et al., 2000).However, while uncovering and analysing all the possible translatingtechniques and choices applied to AVT and the point of view andthe experience of the translator, such approaches tell us nothing at allabout end-users’ percepti<strong>on</strong> of AVT and its quality. In fact, mediatranslati<strong>on</strong> is an area in which quality c<strong>on</strong>trol becomes extremely difficultdue to the complexity of several semiotic systems functi<strong>on</strong>ingsimultaneously. Yet, although interest in this issue is growing botham<strong>on</strong>gst practiti<strong>on</strong>ers and academics, regrettably, it would appear thatattenti<strong>on</strong> stops short at interest. Rare excepti<strong>on</strong>s to this state of affairsare represented by the study <strong>on</strong> recepti<strong>on</strong> of screen translati<strong>on</strong>s in


100 Rachele Ant<strong>on</strong>ini & Delia ChiaroGreece (Karamitroglou, 2000), work <strong>on</strong> recepti<strong>on</strong> of dubbing in Spain(Fuentes Luque, 2001), and percepti<strong>on</strong> of subtitled humour in Italy(Ant<strong>on</strong>ini et al., 2003).The present investigati<strong>on</strong> is an attempt to overturn the traditi<strong>on</strong>alstandpoint of research and look at AVT from the point of view of itsrecipients rather than the translator or the text in an attempt to identifytheir attitudes, opini<strong>on</strong>s and above all the percepti<strong>on</strong> of what theywatch. Interlingual translati<strong>on</strong>s are textually unique in that they existas a versi<strong>on</strong> of a pre-existing duplicate in another language. By thesame score, it can be safely assumed that recipients of translati<strong>on</strong>s, thatis to say, the c<strong>on</strong>sumers of these translati<strong>on</strong>s, are mainly those who arenot au fait with the Source <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> and that such viewers perhapswould rather not perceive translati<strong>on</strong>s as translati<strong>on</strong>s. Presumablymost recipients would like to hear a smooth, easily digestible text intheir mother t<strong>on</strong>gue and, in the case of AVT, although what appears <strong>on</strong>the screen may be unfamiliar, what is perceived through the ears (inthe case of dubbing) should be identifiable and free of turbulence ofany sort. This research sets out to explore exactly what audiencesperceive when they watch and hear a dubbed product. Thus, byexamining the reacti<strong>on</strong> of Italian audiences to dubbed programmes,the research shifts its emphasis from the text and translator to therecipient in an attempt to explore new ground.This preamble c<strong>on</strong>tains an underlying implicati<strong>on</strong>. Surely smooth,Italian-sounding TV products, the c<strong>on</strong>tents of which are easily comprehensibleto the average viewer, correlate with good quality products interms of linguistic mediati<strong>on</strong>? Due to the total inter-dependence of severalsemiotic systems functi<strong>on</strong>ing simultaneously, the verbal elements inAVT are str<strong>on</strong>gly compromised, thus what we have labelled lingua-culturaldrops in voltage may well be inevitable. Lingua-cultural drops in voltage referto viewer percepti<strong>on</strong> of lingua-cultural uneasiness or turbulence, such as acultural reference which is not completely understood, an unnaturalsoundingutterance, an odd-sounding idiom or a joke which falls flat.Lingua-cultural short circuits or worse still, lingua-cultural power cuts (andthe metaphor is, hopefully, quite clear) which suggest significant faults oreven a total breakdown in which communicati<strong>on</strong> fails, are outside thescope of this research. On the other hand, audience misc<strong>on</strong>cepti<strong>on</strong>s,however slight, are exactly within the bounds of this study.Several translati<strong>on</strong>al choices in Italian AVT c<strong>on</strong>tain a number ofcompromises that either filter through to audiences unnoticed, orelse are instinctively accepted. Many such translati<strong>on</strong>al choices maywell have been norm-driven, however, there is no valid reas<strong>on</strong> why a


Percepti<strong>on</strong> of Dubbing by Italian Audiences 101norm should not be adjusted if necessary. Thus, in devising theexperimental design, the research questi<strong>on</strong>s we asked ourselves werethe following:● Are viewers aware that many mediated linguistic forms which occurin dubbed products are unusual in naturally occurring Italian?● Do viewers who are aware of lingua-cultural drops in voltage find themacceptable?● Who exactly perceives what when watching a linguistically mediatedtext by means of dubbing, in terms of age, gender, educati<strong>on</strong>, etc.?● If a programme is successful, do such drops in voltage matteranyway?The focal point of these research questi<strong>on</strong>s are viewers and theirpercepti<strong>on</strong> of what they see and hear, rather than our own percepti<strong>on</strong>as researchers. However, for reas<strong>on</strong>s of space, the results pertaining tolanguage-specific features al<strong>on</strong>e will be presented in this chapter.The experimental design of the projectThe experimental design of this project was based <strong>on</strong> a web questi<strong>on</strong>naireand a corpus made up of 300 hours of Italian-dubbed ficti<strong>on</strong>alprogrammes. Resp<strong>on</strong>dents involved in the study were asked to visit awebsite, log in, watch four short video clips from the corpus and answer<strong>on</strong>e questi<strong>on</strong> regarding each clip. Web technology provided the meansto carry out the investigati<strong>on</strong> <strong>on</strong> a large scale rapidly, cheaply andaccurately. Resp<strong>on</strong>ses were stored directly in an ACCESS database andsubsequently elaborated statistically. What follows is a brief explanati<strong>on</strong>of the creati<strong>on</strong> of both corpus and questi<strong>on</strong>naire.The corpusOver 300 hours of dubbed televisi<strong>on</strong> programmes were recorded over aperiod of eight weeks during February and April 2002. A total of 30 programmeswere selected and recorded in order to form a representativesample of the choice of dubbed products that Italian viewers had at theirdisposal <strong>on</strong> the three state-owned channels (Raiuno, Raidue, Raitre), <strong>on</strong>the three privately owned channels (Canale5, Rete4, Italia1), and a privatechannel (La7) which first began broadcasting just before recordingsfor the corpus commenced in January 2002. Dubbed ficti<strong>on</strong>al programmeswere recorded <strong>on</strong> a daily basis between 8am and midnight.Feature films and TV films were deliberately excluded from the corpus. 3


102 Rachele Ant<strong>on</strong>ini & Delia ChiaroDuring this period, approximately 133 hours of dubbed programmeswere aired each week during the 8am to 12pm time span. Interestingly,the Mediaset group (Canale5, Rete4, Italia1) accounted for 60% of thetotal amount of broadcast TV programmes. Thus, together with thedubbed programmes aired by the other privately-owned channel, La7,we obtain a total percentage of 76% (79 hours), while the state ownedRAI group share <strong>on</strong>ly averaged a little less than 33 hours (24% of thetotal amount).The selecti<strong>on</strong> of the programmes included in the corpus took explicitcriteria into c<strong>on</strong>siderati<strong>on</strong>. Care was taken to include all TV genreswhich undergo the process of dubbing (series, serials, sitcoms, soapoperas, telenovelas and carto<strong>on</strong>s). Furthermore, time spans and targetaudiences were also identified and recordings reflected all possibleviewing times i.e. mornings when soaps and telenovelas targeted athousewives are aired; afterno<strong>on</strong>s which comprise mainly soaps, carto<strong>on</strong>sand series aimed at teenagers; prime time evening TV which airstelenovelas and series/serials for a more general audience. The corpusthus included examples of programmes aimed at all specific audiencesand age-groups as well as programmes from all Source <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g>s airedin dubbed versi<strong>on</strong>s during the two m<strong>on</strong>th recording period i.e. US,UK, Canadian and Australian English; Standard German, AustrianGerman, Brazilian Portuguese, and various Latin American varietiesof Spanish.Editing the corpusAll examples of highly specific cultural references and instances of whatwere c<strong>on</strong>sidered to be examples of Italian dubbese (Alfieri, 1994; D’Amico,1996; Pavesi, 1994 and 1996) c<strong>on</strong>tained in the corpus were identified.Scores of examples were reduced to what were c<strong>on</strong>sidered the best interms of technical clarity and subsequently packaged into 170 clips (.mpgfiles averaging between 8 to 15 sec<strong>on</strong>ds in length). These clips were thengrouped according to four categories of cultural and/or linguistic drops involtage, classified as follows:(1) Culture-specific references (e.g. references to food and drink; weightsand measures; place names; instituti<strong>on</strong>s, etc.).(2) ‘Lingua-cultural drops in translati<strong>on</strong>al voltage’ (e.g. rhymes; s<strong>on</strong>gs;proverbs; puns, etc.).(3) <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g>-specific features.(4) Purely visual cultural specificity.


Percepti<strong>on</strong> of Dubbing by Italian Audiences 103Finally, a short introducti<strong>on</strong> was prepared for each clip in html. Theaim of these short texts was to c<strong>on</strong>textualise each clip.Selecting language-specific featuresAs this chapter is c<strong>on</strong>cerned particularly with viewers’ percepti<strong>on</strong> oflanguage-specific features, what follows is an account of themethodology adopted for the part of the questi<strong>on</strong>naire which dealtexpressly with these features. When choosing clips from the completerecorded corpus which were representative of ‘turbulent’ languagespecificfeatures (Category 3) and that adhered to norms that werehighly discernible to translators and researchers, the final choice fell<strong>on</strong> a number of elements. These included the norms for the followingfeatures:(1) Terms of address. Unlike the other Source <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g>s in the corpus,English does not express politeness, courtesy and familiarity via itssec<strong>on</strong>d pers<strong>on</strong> pr<strong>on</strong>oun like Italian, which markedly c<strong>on</strong>notes familiarityand/or social distance. C<strong>on</strong>sequently such difficulty necessitatesfirm translati<strong>on</strong>al strategies regarding not <strong>on</strong>ly pers<strong>on</strong>alpr<strong>on</strong>oun forms, but also the substituti<strong>on</strong> of a large range of terms ofendearment, titles, names, etc. (Pavesi, 1994).(2) Taboo language. Swear words were explicitly selected from the corpusowing to the fact that Italian tends both to under-translate suchwords and insert fewer than occur in the original (Pavesi andMalinverno, 2000).(3) Words left spoken in the original language.(4) Written scripts left in the original language: signs, letters, notes,newspapers, etc.(5) Exclamati<strong>on</strong>s.(6) Affirmatives. The English affirmatives ‘yes’, ‘yeah’ and German jacreate problems of lip synchr<strong>on</strong>isati<strong>on</strong> if left translated with thecustomary Italian word for asserting sì and are thus normally translatedwith the term già.The questi<strong>on</strong>naireA questi<strong>on</strong>naire-style test, in which questi<strong>on</strong>s were based <strong>on</strong> a randomselecti<strong>on</strong> of the video clips, was devised and divided into six secti<strong>on</strong>s:the first four each c<strong>on</strong>taining <strong>on</strong>e questi<strong>on</strong> referring to <strong>on</strong>e clip fromeach of the four categories under investigati<strong>on</strong>, and the last two comprisinggeneral questi<strong>on</strong>s <strong>on</strong> dubbing and subtitling and socio-demographic


104 Rachele Ant<strong>on</strong>ini & Delia Chiaroclassificati<strong>on</strong> questi<strong>on</strong>s respectively. One single questi<strong>on</strong> was devised foreach category of clip in which resp<strong>on</strong>dents were asked to:● Rate their understanding of the first clip c<strong>on</strong>cerning culture-specificreferences – Category 1.● Rate their understanding of the sec<strong>on</strong>d clip regarding lingua-culturaldrops in voltage – Category 2.● For clips c<strong>on</strong>cerning language-specific features, rate the likelihood ofsuch language arising in naturally occurring Italian – Category 3.● Rate their understanding of the situati<strong>on</strong> for the clips c<strong>on</strong>cerningpurely visual cultural specificity – Category 4.Thus each resp<strong>on</strong>dent answered four questi<strong>on</strong>s regarding four videoclips. All questi<strong>on</strong>s were of the closed type. In fact, resp<strong>on</strong>dents wererequired to assess each video clip according to a 1–10 point graphic ratingscale by simply dragging an arrow and dropping it at the exact point<strong>on</strong> the scale which most closely corresp<strong>on</strong>ded to their evaluati<strong>on</strong>.Having d<strong>on</strong>e that, resp<strong>on</strong>dents also had the opportunity of explainingwhat they had understood in their own words. This extra qualitativeinformati<strong>on</strong> proved to be quite precious in interpreting the resultsof the investigati<strong>on</strong>.Both the questi<strong>on</strong>naire and the clips with their introductory textswere placed <strong>on</strong> a website which was developed using ASP and Javascript programming languages. 4 The site was programmed in such away that each resp<strong>on</strong>dent who agreed to complete the questi<strong>on</strong>nairewas automatically given four clips with their matching questi<strong>on</strong> fromthe categories (listed <strong>on</strong> page 103). Although the four questi<strong>on</strong>s werealways identical, the questi<strong>on</strong>naire was programmed in such a way as toensure that no resp<strong>on</strong>dents would receive the same combinati<strong>on</strong> ofclips. In fact, questi<strong>on</strong>s and clips were automatically selected at randomfrom four separate electr<strong>on</strong>ic folders. Thus, whenever a visitor enteredthe site and agreed to take part in the investigati<strong>on</strong> by completing thequesti<strong>on</strong>naire, programming was such that:(1) They were presented with a short introducti<strong>on</strong> which c<strong>on</strong>textualisedeach clip they were about to watch.(2) They watched four clips picked at random by the program.(3) They were invited to rate their appreciati<strong>on</strong> of the clips <strong>on</strong> a 10-pointgraphic rating scale aimed at assessing their self-reportedunderstanding of the c<strong>on</strong>tent of the clip.


Percepti<strong>on</strong> of Dubbing by Italian Audiences 105(4) They were asked to explain in their own words (in an electr<strong>on</strong>icnotepad) what they had understood from each clip.With regards to the questi<strong>on</strong> <strong>on</strong> language-specific features, Category 3,resp<strong>on</strong>dents randomly received a clip regarding any <strong>on</strong>e of the six featuresdescribed above (terms of address, exclamati<strong>on</strong>s, etc.).Elaborating raw data regardinglanguage-specific featuresWhat follows are the results regarding the sample’s percepti<strong>on</strong> of language-specificfeatures. The raw data was elaborated statistically withSPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences). 5 In order to measurethe Percepti<strong>on</strong> of Likelihood of Occurrence (GPLO) of the items in naturallyoccurring Italian, the resp<strong>on</strong>dents’ scores were first analysed ingeneral and subsequently in more detail after collapsing the scores intoa dichotomic variable coded as follows:(1) Scores from 0 to 5 Generally perceived as more towards unlikely tooccur.(2) Scores from 5.01 to 10 generally perceived as more towards likelyto occur.Administering the questi<strong>on</strong>naireThe questi<strong>on</strong>naire was promoted <strong>on</strong> <strong>on</strong>e of the largest and most popularItalian web providers: Virgilio. An advertisement announcing thequesti<strong>on</strong>naire and inviting surfers to participate was placed as a popunder6 which appeared <strong>on</strong> the provider’s <strong>home</strong> page and also <strong>on</strong> pagesdedicated to cinema, TV, music and books.Between 16th January and 29th February 2004 over 3,000 peoplevisited the website and 2,478 submitted a questi<strong>on</strong>naire. From thesesubmissi<strong>on</strong>s, a total of 195 questi<strong>on</strong>naires were c<strong>on</strong>sidered to be completeand hence valid for data elaborati<strong>on</strong>. The reas<strong>on</strong> why so manyquesti<strong>on</strong>naires were c<strong>on</strong>sidered invalid was due to the fact that manypeople did not complete them with their socio-demographic details. Infact, blocks eliciting attitude towards dubbing and socio-demographicinformati<strong>on</strong> were positi<strong>on</strong>ed last <strong>on</strong> the questi<strong>on</strong>naire and presumablymany resp<strong>on</strong>dents simply watched the clips, answered the questi<strong>on</strong>sand then logged off without giving any pers<strong>on</strong>al informati<strong>on</strong>. Ofcourse, this partial informati<strong>on</strong> was useless for the purposes of dataelaborati<strong>on</strong>.


106 Rachele Ant<strong>on</strong>ini & Delia ChiaroResultsThe sampleThe final block of the questi<strong>on</strong>naire required resp<strong>on</strong>dents to givesocio-demographic informati<strong>on</strong> about themselves and their lifestyles.Resp<strong>on</strong>dents were mostly male; 123 males compared to 72 females.This proporti<strong>on</strong> is predictable if we accept the comm<strong>on</strong>place that thetypical user of the Internet in Italy is indeed male; 63.1% males comparedto 36.9% females. On the other hand, the majority of questi<strong>on</strong>naireswere actually completed during office hours, thus reflecting theItalian working reality that more men than women are employed outsidethe <strong>home</strong>. This too reflects CNEL and EURISKO data which showsthat 39.8% of employed Italians use the Internet at the workplace. 7Furthermore, over half the sample were under the age of 30, with 106 ofthe resp<strong>on</strong>dents aged below 50. Now, although this data reflects whatwe know about Internet use and c<strong>on</strong>firms the researchers’ forecastsregarding the kind of people who were expected to resp<strong>on</strong>d, the samplealso includes 23 senior citizens. So, even if the sample is skewed in termsof Internet users <strong>on</strong>ly, the number of resp<strong>on</strong>dents is high enough to befairly balanced in terms of age.As far as social background is c<strong>on</strong>cerned, most resp<strong>on</strong>dents were educatedat least to sec<strong>on</strong>dary school level and above and represented awide variety of occupati<strong>on</strong>s. Finally, the vast majority of resp<strong>on</strong>dentswere familiar with English, having learnt it either at school or college,or else were self-taught. 150 resp<strong>on</strong>dents also claimed to know at least<strong>on</strong>e other of the languages from which the clips in our corpus weretranslated. Forty resp<strong>on</strong>dents had visited the USA.The people in the sample maintained that they watched an average of4.6 hours of TV a day and that they had a preference for films, sitcoms,sci-fi and carto<strong>on</strong>s. In terms of quality of Italian dubbing, 34.9% of thesample c<strong>on</strong>sidered dubbed products to be good, 30.8% judged them tobe satisfactory and 11.8% excellent. 15.9% of the sample found theirquality to be mediocre and 6.7% c<strong>on</strong>sidered them to be poor.Furthermore, 40.5% of resp<strong>on</strong>dents favoured having a choice betweendubbing and subtitling, a choice which nowadays is <strong>on</strong>ly available inItaly <strong>on</strong> pay TV and some programmes broadcast by satellite channels.The general percepti<strong>on</strong> of language-specific featuresLikelihood versus unlikelihoodThe distributi<strong>on</strong> of the general score of all the features taken together isquite normal around the central point of the proposed scale of


Percepti<strong>on</strong> of Dubbing by Italian Audiences 107measurement (0–10) with a mean of 5.19 and a standard deviati<strong>on</strong> of2.69. After having collapsed this variable into a dichotomic <strong>on</strong>e, resultsshow that 43% of the sample perceive the language features in questi<strong>on</strong>‘more towards unlikely to occur’ in natural Italian while 56.9% c<strong>on</strong>sideredthem to be ‘more towards likely to occur’. Crossing this variablewith socio-demographic data, it was found that the former view isstr<strong>on</strong>gly correlated with age and educati<strong>on</strong> as can be observed inTables 8.1 and 8.2. Resp<strong>on</strong>dents above the age of 50 appear to be moreoriented towards unlikelihood and the same pattern was observed forthe more highly educated members of the sample.That older people found the language more ‘unlikely’ (69.6%) thanyounger members of the sample may well be due to the fact that theyare less likely to have underg<strong>on</strong>e the process of internati<strong>on</strong>alisati<strong>on</strong>(see Table 8.1). In other words, younger people are more likely to haveTable 8.1 Crosstabulati<strong>on</strong> of Age and GPLOGPLOAGE Unlikely Likely TotalBelow 30 Count 42 64 106% within Age 39.6% 60.4% 100%Between 30 and 50 Count 26 40 66% within Age 39.4% 60.6% 100%Above 50 Count 16 7 23% within Age 69.6% 30.4% 100%Total Count 84 111 195% within Age 43.1% 56.9% 100%Table 8.2 Crosstabulati<strong>on</strong> of Educati<strong>on</strong> and GPLOGPLOEDUCATION Unlikely Likely TotalN<strong>on</strong> university educated Count 55 89 144% with in 38.2% 61.8% 100%Educati<strong>on</strong>University educated Count 29 22 51% with in 56.9% 43.1% 100%Educati<strong>on</strong>Total Count 84 111 195% with inEducati<strong>on</strong>43.1% 56.9% 100%


108 Rachele Ant<strong>on</strong>ini & Delia Chiarobeen influenced by having grown up in a more globalised c<strong>on</strong>text, surroundedby the lyrics of internati<strong>on</strong>al music and the slogans of globaladvertising. Furthermore, they are likely to have learnt at least <strong>on</strong>e foreignlanguage at school. Thus, having been more exposed to foreignlinguistic forms, younger people are likely to be linguistically awareand may well be able to recognise foreign forms seeping through intoItalian forms.The fact that the more educated members of the sample find Italiandubbese is self-evident if we presume that educati<strong>on</strong> correlates withmore linguistic competence and awareness.Percepti<strong>on</strong> of specific language featuresElaborati<strong>on</strong> of data revealed that four of the features had a mean whichwas greater than 5 (già, exclamati<strong>on</strong>s, bad language and utterances leftin the original language) and two features had a mean which was lessthan 5 (terms of address and written scripts left in the original language).These findings appear to indicate that the former cluster of itemsare judged as leaning more towards likeliness of occurrence, while thelatter two of the features are judged as leaning more towards unlikelinessof occurrence (Figure 8.2).Number of cases1034 35 41 34 25348Mean scores645.47 5.374.995.454.595.1720GiàOriginallanguageTerms ofaddressBad language N<strong>on</strong>translatedwrittenExclamati<strong>on</strong>sFigure 8.2 Comparis<strong>on</strong> of mean scores and standard deviati<strong>on</strong>s* of viewerpercepti<strong>on</strong> of lingua specific translati<strong>on</strong>al uneasiness* The vertical line inserted within each bar represents the standard deviati<strong>on</strong>.


Percepti<strong>on</strong> of Dubbing by Italian Audiences 109The features c<strong>on</strong>sidered more unlikely to occur are:Untranslated written scripts: These features obtained the lowest meanscore of all those examined, averaging 4.59. Predictably, signs, letters,newspapers etc. in a foreign language were not seen as much of a likelyoccurrence in everyday Italian life. This informati<strong>on</strong> is not alwaystranslated into Italian and comments in the notepads revealed a verylow understanding of instances of writing in the clips. The problem isthat some inserts c<strong>on</strong>tain vital informati<strong>on</strong> which is denied to viewersunfamiliar with the Source <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g>. Thus, with regard to audiences’rights to be able to be fully privy to a TV product, those who do notknow foreign languages appear to be somewhat short-changed.Terms of address: The translati<strong>on</strong>al norms for adjusting English screentexts for Italian, a language which c<strong>on</strong>notes social rules regarding distanceand familiarity through the use of the pr<strong>on</strong>ouns tu and Lei arecomplex and haphazard (Pavesi, 1994). For example, Italian dubbesefrequently adopts the use of Lei (polite form) with a pers<strong>on</strong>’s first name,thus jarring both socially and linguistically. Questi<strong>on</strong>s <strong>on</strong> clips exemplifyingmismatches in social distance between interlocutors and termsof address achieved a mean score of 4.99 in terms of likelihood of arisingin naturally occurring Italian. So, they were perceived as being <strong>on</strong>the borderline between likeliness and unlikeliness of occurrence.However, the qualitative data supplied by resp<strong>on</strong>dents in the notepadsprovided significant input. For example, several resp<strong>on</strong>dents commented<strong>on</strong> the unusual occurrences of the terms amico [friend] which isthe norm for translating the US ‘guy’; Signore [Sir]; figliuolo [s<strong>on</strong>] andeven cara suocera [dear mother in law]. Thus, the scores reveal thatresp<strong>on</strong>dents seemed perfectly aware of the fact that amico, Signore andfigliuolo are not used in naturally occurring Italian.The features c<strong>on</strong>sidered more likely to occur are:Exclamati<strong>on</strong>s: Resp<strong>on</strong>dents were questi<strong>on</strong>ed <strong>on</strong> their percepti<strong>on</strong> oflikeliness of occurrence in Italian of three English exclamati<strong>on</strong>s whichremain untranslated in dubbed programmes: ‘wow’, ‘hey’, and ‘oh oh’(in the sense of ‘Oh no, something’s wr<strong>on</strong>g’). No incidence of the expressi<strong>on</strong>swere found in <strong>home</strong>-made ficti<strong>on</strong>al TV programmes, although theterm ‘wow’ does indeed occur in instituti<strong>on</strong>alised TV talk such as talkshows, reality TV, advertisements and so <strong>on</strong>. Furthermore, the LIP(Lingua Italiana Parlata) corpus gave us zero occurrences of ‘wow’ and‘oh oh’ and <strong>on</strong>ly five c<strong>on</strong>cordances for ‘hey’ (spelt ehi), two of whichoccurred in n<strong>on</strong>-standard Italian (Neapolitan dialect). Resp<strong>on</strong>dents


110 Rachele Ant<strong>on</strong>ini & Delia Chiarogave exclamati<strong>on</strong>s a mean score of 5.17 thus deeming them moderatelylikely to occur in natural Italian. As far as the exclamati<strong>on</strong> ‘wow’ is c<strong>on</strong>cerned,several older resp<strong>on</strong>dents informed us that although it was notpart of their own linguistic repertoire, it was certainly used by theirchildren.Untranslated spoken forms: These forms achieved a mean score of 5.37.Terms which remained untranslated (‘c<strong>on</strong>dom’, ‘take away’) appear tohave been generally understood by recipients. Several commented <strong>on</strong>the use of the term ‘c<strong>on</strong>dom’, claiming that they understood it even ifit was not an Italian word and thus did not find the term unusual in anyway. On the other hand acr<strong>on</strong>yms created a certain amount of perplexityam<strong>on</strong>gst resp<strong>on</strong>dents. For example, a clip from the sitcom Willy theFresh Prince of Bel Air featured Will Smith asking for a BLT sandwich.Despite plenty of clues from the c<strong>on</strong>text no resp<strong>on</strong>dents understoodthat the acr<strong>on</strong>ym refers to ‘Bac<strong>on</strong>, Lettuce and Tomato’.Taboo language: The sum of the score of resp<strong>on</strong>dents’ percepti<strong>on</strong> oftaboo words translated from English resulted in a mean of 5.45. In acertain sense the score is extremely generous if we c<strong>on</strong>sider that n<strong>on</strong>e ofthe translated taboo words actually exist either in everyday Italian or‘screen’ Italian; this is because the Italian norm is firstly, mainly to t<strong>on</strong>edown the force of swear words and vulgarities and sec<strong>on</strong>dly, to adoptinvented c<strong>on</strong>venti<strong>on</strong>s (Pavesi and Malinverno, 2000). For example, thestock translati<strong>on</strong> for the insult ‘fucking bastard’ would be the literal fottutobastardo, a form of abuse which is not part of naturally occurringItalian usage. However, although resp<strong>on</strong>dents gave a somewhat lukewarmresp<strong>on</strong>se, comments in the notepad clearly leant towards theunusualness of translati<strong>on</strong>al choices.Già: This feature gained the highest score with a mean of 5.47. In otherwords it was fairly well accepted as a naturally occurring form. In Italiandubbese, già, an adverb normally used to mean ‘already’, substitutes forUK English ‘yes’, US English ‘yeah’ and German ja. For obvious reas<strong>on</strong>sof lip synchr<strong>on</strong>isati<strong>on</strong> the use of sì, pr<strong>on</strong>ounced with spread lips, wouldbe out of the questi<strong>on</strong> as a substitute for the pr<strong>on</strong>unciati<strong>on</strong> of unrounded,jaw lowered ‘yeah’ and ja. Thus, già has become the c<strong>on</strong>venti<strong>on</strong>al substituti<strong>on</strong>.Such is the force of this norm that già appears to be just asfrequent in programmes dubbed from Hispanic languages in which‘yes’ is sí. In an examinati<strong>on</strong> of a parallel corpus of <strong>home</strong>-made Italianprogrammes, già is used almost exclusively as an intra-sentential adverbmeaning ‘already’ and is rarely used independently. A query <strong>on</strong> the LIPcorpus resulted in 641 c<strong>on</strong>cordances with <strong>on</strong>ly five occurrences of già


Percepti<strong>on</strong> of Dubbing by Italian Audiences 111used al<strong>on</strong>e in asserti<strong>on</strong> of the previous utterance. Furthermore, theword never stands al<strong>on</strong>e, in all five instances it is either preceded by e asin e già or ah as in ah già. It would appear from our dubbed corpus thatit is just in Italian dubbese that già stands al<strong>on</strong>e. In additi<strong>on</strong>, unquantifiableobservati<strong>on</strong> reveals that the form may be slowly seeping throughto the language of <strong>home</strong>-produced Italian TV ficti<strong>on</strong>. In fact, whilegoing into print the authors noticed an increasing occurrence of independentlyused già in affirming functi<strong>on</strong> in several Italian-producedseries, serials and soaps (Orgoglio a mini-series screened <strong>on</strong> RAI1 and Unposto al sole an Italian soap opera). 8C<strong>on</strong>clusi<strong>on</strong>The two features which resp<strong>on</strong>dents thought were most likely to occurin naturally occurring Italian were già and taboo words. Althoughthese scores were interpreted as an acceptance of likelihood of occurrencein naturally occurring Italian, at the same time they are hardlyawe-inspiring. In fact, the scores in all four more ‘positive’ categoriesare rather middle-of-the-road. Had the scores been lower, then translati<strong>on</strong>scould be discarded as being unnatural and c<strong>on</strong>sequently of poorquality. C<strong>on</strong>versely, if scores had been higher they would have pointedtowards excellence. However, as scores stand they point towards averageacceptance. This automatically raises the questi<strong>on</strong>: does this implyaverage quality? However, it was decided to precede the terms ‘likelihood’and ‘unlikelihood’ with the phrase ‘more towards’ whichmodulates the strength of perceived likelihood or unlikelihood ofoccurrence. Furthermore, the qualitative data revealed a marked awarenessof the fact that what resp<strong>on</strong>dents were watching was ‘televisi<strong>on</strong>language’ and thus acceptable as such even if it was somewhat removedfrom the reality of everyday speech.Although n<strong>on</strong>e of the features were actually rejected, in other wordsresp<strong>on</strong>dents generally gave all elements a pass mark in terms of likelihoodof occurrence, they were hardly c<strong>on</strong>vinced of their Italianness.If Italian dubbese is to be regarded in terms of excellence, thenoperators are slightly off target. However, if numeric data is checkedagainst qualitative data, what emerges is that a significant number ofviewers who are perfectly aware of the fact that, for example, già is ac<strong>on</strong>venti<strong>on</strong>, are willing to accept it <strong>on</strong> screen but admit to not using itthemselves.Our data reveal that the Italian dubbing industry appears to beproducing a nati<strong>on</strong> of viewers who are suffering from a syndrome of


112 Rachele Ant<strong>on</strong>ini & Delia Chiarolinguistic bipolarity. On the <strong>on</strong>e hand they are aware that TV dubbeseis unlike real Italian, <strong>on</strong> the other hand they are willing to accept it butas l<strong>on</strong>g as it remains <strong>on</strong> screen. Resp<strong>on</strong>dents allege that they do not usethese forms yet there may well be a mismatch between what theythink they do and what they actually do. However, the fact that theynotice their children using expressi<strong>on</strong>s like ‘wow’ coupled with anawareness that they do not and would not use the form themselves is aclear signal of some kind of language awareness.Finally, operators in the Italian dubbing industry should pay heed tothese results and c<strong>on</strong>sider investing in human resources who are able tomediate between cultures in such a way as to render Italian dubbesemore similar to naturally occurring Italian. If this were possible, thefuture repetiti<strong>on</strong> of such an experiment could then budge scores slightlyupwards so as to seriously point towards excellence in the l<strong>on</strong>g run.Notes1. The Andersen report prepared <strong>on</strong> behalf of the European Commissi<strong>on</strong>Directorate-General for Educati<strong>on</strong> and Culture entitled Outlook for theDevelopment of Technologies and Markets for the European Audio-Visual Sector upto 2010 (June 2002), provides a detailed nati<strong>on</strong>-by-nati<strong>on</strong> analysis of trendsin European viewing habits.2. The Univideo Executive Summary (June 2003), elaborated by SIMMACOManagement C<strong>on</strong>sulting, provides data regarding purchasing trends in boththe Italian and the European DVD sector as a whole. Data clearly show thatthe DVD player and disc market is the fastest growing, and c<strong>on</strong>sequently themost commercially significant, in the European <strong>home</strong> entertainment sector(www.univideo.org/dossier/studi.asp).3. A decisi<strong>on</strong> to exclude products for the big screen was quite deliberate andmainly due to the fact that, at least in Italy, while technically speaking dubbingprocesses are similar for both types of programmes, for many featurefilms more time is dedicated to the whole process and often special actors areinvolved (Benincà, 1999). Indeed some directors are extremely c<strong>on</strong>cernedwith the translati<strong>on</strong>al process (Stanley Kubrick and Woody Allen) while otherproducers go as far as choosing well-known voices (Buena Vista). Althoughmost films are not dubbed with such care and given the fact that more Italianswatch TV than go to the movies anyway, the researchers deemed that otherproducts were more typical of what Italians actually watched. Furthermore,it seemed that the stressful work involved in dubbing scores of episodes ofeveryday TV products would by default produce poorer material in qualitativeterms, yet it is what most Italians watch most of the time.4. The authors wish to thank Piero C<strong>on</strong>fic<strong>on</strong>i, webmaster at the University ofBologna’s Department of Interdisciplinary Studies in <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g>, <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g>sand Culture (SITLEC), for creating the interactive website and programmingthe database (www.sitlec.unibo.it/dubbingquality).


Percepti<strong>on</strong> of Dubbing by Italian Audiences 1135. Special thanks go to Giuseppe Nocella for supervising the experimentaldesign and data analysis.6. A pop-under is a window that appears when surfers exit sites they have justvisited. Unlike a pop-up, which appears as so<strong>on</strong> as surfers visit a site, thusrunning the risk of irritating users by interfering with what they are doing, apop-under can <strong>on</strong>ly be seen <strong>on</strong>ce surfers have aband<strong>on</strong>ed the site they havejust visited. A pop-under, in fact, remains hidden behind the site in use, andis thus less intrusive than a pop-up.7. CNEL is the C<strong>on</strong>siglio Nazi<strong>on</strong>ale dell’Ec<strong>on</strong>omia del Lavoro (Nati<strong>on</strong>al Council forEc<strong>on</strong>omy and Work) and EURISKO stands for European Research <strong>on</strong>C<strong>on</strong>sumpti<strong>on</strong>, Communicati<strong>on</strong> and Social Transformati<strong>on</strong>.8. Interestingly, the authors noticed a shift from già standing al<strong>on</strong>e in episodesfrom the US series Felicity included in the corpus and instances of eh già innew episodes broadcast in June 2004. Furthermore, in August 2004 a popularweekly crossword magazine, La settimana enigmistica, featured the followingclue: a three-lettered syn<strong>on</strong>ym for ‘yes’.ReferencesAlfieri, G. (1994) ‘Lingua di c<strong>on</strong>sumo e lingua di riuso’. In L. Seriani andP. Trif<strong>on</strong>e (eds) Storia della lingua italiana. Vol. II, Scritto e parlato (pp. 161–235).Torino: Einaudi.Ant<strong>on</strong>ini, R., Bucaria, C. and Senzani, A. (2003) ‘It’s a priest thing, you wouldn’tunderstand: Father Ted goes to Italy’. Antares VI: 26–30.Baccolini, R., Bollettieri Bosinelli, R.M. and Gavioli, L. (eds) (1994) Il doppiaggio.Trasposizi<strong>on</strong>i linguistiche e culturali. Bologna: CLUEB.Benincà, S. (1999) ‘Il doppiaggio: uno studio quali-quantitativo’. Quaderni delDoppiaggio II (pp. 53–148). Finale Ligure: Comune di Finale Ligure.Bollettieri Bosinelli, R.M., Heiss, C., Soffritti, M. and Bernardini, S. (eds) (2000)La traduzi<strong>on</strong>e multimediale. Quale traduzi<strong>on</strong>e per quale testo? Bologna: CLUEB.D’Amico, M. (1996) ‘Dacci un taglio, bastardo! Il doppiaggio dei film in Italia’. InE. Di Fortunato and M. Paolinelli (eds) Barriere linguistiche e circolazi<strong>on</strong>e delleopere audiovisive: la questi<strong>on</strong>e doppiaggio (pp. 209–16). Roma: AIDAC.Fuentes Luque, A. (2001) ‘Estudio empírico sobre la recepción del humoraudiovisual’. In L. Lorenzo García and A.M. Pereira Rodríguez (eds) Traducciónsubordinada (II). El subtitulado (pp. 85–110). Vigo: Universidade de Vigo.Gallozzi, G. (2004) ‘Il silenzio dei doppiatori’. L’Unità, 18th February.Gambier, Y. (ed.) (1998) Translating for the Media. Papers from the internati<strong>on</strong>alc<strong>on</strong>ference ‘<str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g>s and the Media’. Turku: University of Turku.Gambier, Y. and Gottlieb, H. (eds) (2001) (Multi)Media <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g>. Amsterdamand Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Heiss, C. and Bollettieri Bosinelli, R.M. (eds) (1996) La traduzi<strong>on</strong>e multimediale peril cinema, la televisi<strong>on</strong>e e la scena. Bologna: CLUEB.Ivarss<strong>on</strong>, J. (1992) Subtitling for the Media. Stockholm: TransEdit.Karamitroglou, F. (2000) Towards a Methodology for the Investigati<strong>on</strong> of Norms in<str<strong>on</strong>g>Audiovisual</str<strong>on</strong>g> <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g>. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Pavesi, M. (1994) ‘Osservazi<strong>on</strong>i sulla (socio)linguistica del doppiaggio’. InR. Baccolini, R.M. Bollettieri Bosinelli and L. Gavioli (eds) Il doppiaggio.Trasposizi<strong>on</strong>i linguistiche e culturali (pp. 51–60). Bologna: CLUEB.


114 Rachele Ant<strong>on</strong>ini & Delia ChiaroPavesi, M. (1996) ‘L’allocuzi<strong>on</strong>e nel doppiaggio dall’inglese all’italiano’. InC. Heiss and R.M. Bollettieri Bosinelli (eds) La traduzi<strong>on</strong>e multimediale per ilcinema, la televisi<strong>on</strong>e e la scena (pp. 117–30). Bologna: CLUEB.Pavesi, M. and Malinverno, A.L. (2000) ‘Usi del turpiloquio nella traduzi<strong>on</strong>efilmica’. In C. Taylor (ed.) Tradurre il cinema (pp. 75–90). Trieste: University ofTrieste.


9<str<strong>on</strong>g>Transfer</str<strong>on</strong>g> Norms forFilm Adaptati<strong>on</strong>s in theSpanish–German C<strong>on</strong>textSusana Cañuelo SarriónIntroducti<strong>on</strong>This chapter summarises some findings <strong>on</strong> the relati<strong>on</strong>ships betweencinema, literature and translati<strong>on</strong> in the Spanish-German c<strong>on</strong>text. 1Firstly, I will show how the combinati<strong>on</strong> of three transfer forms – filmadaptati<strong>on</strong>, literary translati<strong>on</strong> and audiovisual translati<strong>on</strong> – can besystematically disentangled by using Polysystem Theory as an epistemologicalframework (Even-Zohar, 1990). Sec<strong>on</strong>dly, I will present a corpusof Spanish film adaptati<strong>on</strong>s and analyse its recepti<strong>on</strong> in Germany byapplying a working model, that I call systematisati<strong>on</strong>, which takes intoaccount several selecti<strong>on</strong> factors. Finally, I will examine the extent towhich the data allow for the detecti<strong>on</strong> of transfer norms.The systematisati<strong>on</strong> modelThe systematisati<strong>on</strong> model I propose in these pages has been designedto illustrate and explain all possible combinati<strong>on</strong>s of the three forms oftransfer that take place when a literary work is filmed and both thebook and the resulting film are translated into another language.Figure 9.1 illustrates the pattern of relati<strong>on</strong>ships.Figure 9.1 c<strong>on</strong>tains six elements: three literary works and three films.They are located in six systems (three literary systems and three cinematographicsystems), which should be defined in each case depending<strong>on</strong> the works and cultures involved. This diagram not <strong>on</strong>ly takesinto account the possible relati<strong>on</strong>s established between a given pair oflanguages, but also c<strong>on</strong>siders the possibility of using an intermediate115


116 Susana Cañuelo SarriónS 1S XS KLT 1LT XLT YS YS ZS QF XF ZF YFigure 9.1S: SystemLT: Literary TextF: Filmor pivot language to carry out the audiovisual or literary translati<strong>on</strong>.The transfer processes are represented by arrows. The broken arrowsrepresent the literary translati<strong>on</strong> processes, the solid arrows representthe audiovisual translati<strong>on</strong> processes, and the dotted arrows representthe adaptati<strong>on</strong> processes from literary work to screen. There are alsomixed arrows (dash-and-dot), which indicate that the intersemiotictransfer has been combined with a linguistic <strong>on</strong>e, that is, the filmadaptati<strong>on</strong> has been accompanied by a linguistic translati<strong>on</strong>.The process always begins in the literary system in which the filmadaptati<strong>on</strong> has been d<strong>on</strong>e (LT 1 ). The next steps vary from case to caseand language to language; therefore, instead of using numbers, theother systems are marked with variables (x, y, k). From this diagram wecan derive five possible basic combinati<strong>on</strong>s, from which other sec<strong>on</strong>daryalternatives can be also derived:Combinati<strong>on</strong> I: literary translati<strong>on</strong> before film adaptati<strong>on</strong>.Combinati<strong>on</strong> II: film adaptati<strong>on</strong> before literary translati<strong>on</strong>.Combinati<strong>on</strong> III: film adaptati<strong>on</strong> starting from a translati<strong>on</strong>.Combinati<strong>on</strong> IV: intermediate literary translati<strong>on</strong>.Combinati<strong>on</strong> V: intermediate audiovisual translati<strong>on</strong>.The diagrams corresp<strong>on</strong>ding to these five combinati<strong>on</strong>s are included asFigures 9.9–9.13 in the Appendix to this chapter. Some examples are


<str<strong>on</strong>g>Transfer</str<strong>on</strong>g> Norms for Film in Spanish–German C<strong>on</strong>text 117discussed in the secti<strong>on</strong> below entitled Combinati<strong>on</strong>s where I presentthe most comm<strong>on</strong> combinati<strong>on</strong>s, followed by the Spanish film adaptati<strong>on</strong>sthat have made it to Germany. These examples help to illustratehow each combinati<strong>on</strong> should be interpreted.Spanish producti<strong>on</strong> of film adaptati<strong>on</strong>sThe corpus of film adaptati<strong>on</strong>s c<strong>on</strong>sists of all those Spanish featurefilms produced between 1975 and 2000 that are based up<strong>on</strong> Spanishliterary works. The term ‘film’ refers to <strong>on</strong>ly those ficti<strong>on</strong>al full-lengthfilms produced for the cinema. I do not include in this c<strong>on</strong>cept shortfilms, documentaries or TV-movies. ‘Spanish’ should be understood asrelating to Spain, not to all Spanish-speaking countries. The corpusincludes 311 film adaptati<strong>on</strong>s.Figure 9.2 shows the relati<strong>on</strong>ship between Spanish general filmproducti<strong>on</strong> and the producti<strong>on</strong> of film adaptati<strong>on</strong>s. Whereas general filmproducti<strong>on</strong> has experienced many upheavals, the producti<strong>on</strong> of filmadaptati<strong>on</strong>s has remained comparatively stable. On average, literaryadaptati<strong>on</strong>s represent 22% of the total film producti<strong>on</strong> in Spain, but <strong>on</strong>ly15% if we c<strong>on</strong>sider exclusively the adaptati<strong>on</strong>s of Spanish literary works.One initial obstacle encountered in this study is the absence of anycentral instituti<strong>on</strong> from where to gather data <strong>on</strong> the transfer ofSpanish films to Germany. There is no public instituti<strong>on</strong>, company, orcorporati<strong>on</strong> (neither in Spain nor in Germany) that systematically collectsdata <strong>on</strong> the recepti<strong>on</strong> of Spanish films in Germany. Several160140120100806040200Figure 9.21975197619771978197919801981Total of Spanish Films198219831984198519861987198819891990199119921993199419951996199719981999Spanish Film Adaptati<strong>on</strong>s from Spanish Literary Works


118 Susana Cañuelo SarriónFestivals25%Cinema21%DVD1%Video17%TV36%Figure 9.31412121086420Figure 9.4019751976197702011978197919807211981198219832621984198519861987sources, including the Spanish ICAA (Instituto de Cinematografía yde las Artes Visuales) and the German SPIO (Spitzenorganisati<strong>on</strong> derFilmwirtschaft), have given me informati<strong>on</strong>, but n<strong>on</strong>e of the listsprovided is exhaustive. However, I have gathered sufficient data <strong>on</strong> thepresence of Spanish films in Germany, mainly thanks to the Lexik<strong>on</strong>des internati<strong>on</strong>alen Films (2000), which provides interesting informati<strong>on</strong>and helps to trace provisi<strong>on</strong>al transfer norms.According to the Lexik<strong>on</strong> des internati<strong>on</strong>alen Films and its <strong>on</strong>linedatabase (www.filmev<strong>on</strong>a-z.de), 410 Spanish feature films reached theGerman film industry during the period 1975–2000. However, thisfigure <strong>on</strong>ly refers to works distributed in commercial cinemas, televisi<strong>on</strong>,video, and DVD. Other films were also shown at film festivals andSpanish weeks, where approximately 150 Spanish films were screened.Since 61 of the films were distributed in Germany in commercial waysand at festivals, the total number of Spanish films that reached the13861988198919901991825633199219931994199519961997961998199920009


<str<strong>on</strong>g>Transfer</str<strong>on</strong>g> Norms for Film in Spanish–German C<strong>on</strong>text 119German market between 1975 and 2000 can be set at 499. Figure 9.3shows the different ways in which they were distributed.The film adaptati<strong>on</strong>s of this corpus represent a small percentage –15% – of the 499 Spanish films seen in Germany. They number 77 andtheir distributi<strong>on</strong> by year is shown in Figure 9.4.There does not seem to be an obvious pattern of regularity inthe annual recepti<strong>on</strong> of Spanish adaptati<strong>on</strong>s in Germany, and perhapsthe most interesting factor is the c<strong>on</strong>stant ups and downs suffered in thenumber of imports.In c<strong>on</strong>trast to the distributi<strong>on</strong> of general films in Germany, mostSpanish literary film adaptati<strong>on</strong>s did not enter the country by TV butthrough festivals, where 43% of the producti<strong>on</strong>s were seen. 34% ofthem were shown <strong>on</strong> televisi<strong>on</strong>, 13% in cinemas and the remaining10% were sold <strong>on</strong> VHS and DVD, as can be seen in Figure 9.5.Festivals43%Cinema13%DVD1%Video9%TV34%Figure 9.5<str<strong>on</strong>g>Audiovisual</str<strong>on</strong>g> translati<strong>on</strong> in GermanyGermany is traditi<strong>on</strong>ally a dubbing country, which means that filmsdistributed through commercial channels are mostly dubbed. After theSec<strong>on</strong>d World War, cinema was used by the Allies to denazify the occupiedterritory and numerous American, French, British and Soviet filmswere imported. This activity led to the creati<strong>on</strong> of four large dubbingcentres in the country: France dubbed its films in Munich, Great Britainin Hamburg, the United States in West Berlin and the Soviet Uni<strong>on</strong> inEast Berlin. Nowadays, the German dubbing industry is firmly establishedand is c<strong>on</strong>sidered <strong>on</strong>e of the best in the world. The most importantdubbing studios c<strong>on</strong>tinue to be located in Munich, Hamburg and Berlin.Films exhibited at festivals, <strong>on</strong> the other hand, are mostly subtitled.Sometimes in German but in most cases in English, since subtitles in


120 Susana Cañuelo Sarriónthis language facilitate the distributi<strong>on</strong> of the film all over the worldand is frequently a requirement of the submissi<strong>on</strong> instructi<strong>on</strong>s of manyfestivals.Combinati<strong>on</strong>sOut of the 311 film adaptati<strong>on</strong>s of the original corpus, <strong>on</strong>ly 77 (25%)have been distributed in Germany. Of those 77, there are 39 whose corresp<strong>on</strong>dingliterary work has not been translated into German and cannottherefore be assigned to any combinati<strong>on</strong> of the models discussed here. Ishould point out that the systematisati<strong>on</strong> <strong>on</strong>ly c<strong>on</strong>siders combinati<strong>on</strong>s inwhich the three transfer processes are present, that is, film adaptati<strong>on</strong>,audiovisual translati<strong>on</strong> and literary translati<strong>on</strong>. So, there are <strong>on</strong>ly 38films which can be taken into c<strong>on</strong>siderati<strong>on</strong> and classified as follows:Combinati<strong>on</strong> I 13Combinati<strong>on</strong> II 22Combinati<strong>on</strong> III 3Total 38A total of 13 film adaptati<strong>on</strong>s have followed Combinati<strong>on</strong> I, wherethe translati<strong>on</strong> of the literary work is prior to the film adaptati<strong>on</strong>. Aliterary text in Spanish is translated into German, <strong>on</strong>ce or more times.Later, the work is turned into a film in the Spanish cinematographicsystem. Finally, the film is either dubbed or subtitled into German anddistributed in Germany. New translati<strong>on</strong>s of the literary work can alsobe d<strong>on</strong>e after the release of the film adaptati<strong>on</strong>. Figure 9.6 shows thecombinati<strong>on</strong> corresp<strong>on</strong>ding to the film La casa de Bernarda Alba (MarioCamus, 1987). Other examples are: Pascual Duarte (Ricardo Franco,1976), Bodas de sangre (Carlos Saura, 1981), La colmena (Mario Camus,1982) and El perro del hortelano (Pilar Miró, 1996).In this group, we find, am<strong>on</strong>g others, four adaptati<strong>on</strong>s of worksoriginally written by Federico García Lorca, two by Camilo José Cela,and <strong>on</strong>e by Ramón Del Valle-Inclán, Miguel de Cervantes, Félix Lope deVega and Vicente Blasco Ibáñez. One of the main c<strong>on</strong>siderati<strong>on</strong>s is thatthey are some of the most celebrated and well known Spanish authors,and the works that have been adapted to the screen were written in pastcenturies or in the first half of the twentieth century. Therefore, it is notsurprising that literary translati<strong>on</strong>s existed prior to the release of thefilm adaptati<strong>on</strong>s and that, in most cases, new literary translati<strong>on</strong>s havebeen published after the distributi<strong>on</strong> of the films.


<str<strong>on</strong>g>Transfer</str<strong>on</strong>g> Norms for Film in Spanish–German C<strong>on</strong>text 121La casa de Bernarda AlbaFederico García Lorca,1936S 114Bernarda Albas HausE. Beck, 1950, 1968, 1978F.R.Fries, 1987Bernarda Albas HausE. Beck, 1992H.M. Enzensberger, 1999S 22S 33S 4La casa de BernardaAlbaMario Camus, 1987Bernarda Albas HausDubG, 1991 (TV: West3)Figure 9.6“El Sur”, in El SurAdelaida GarcíaMorales, 19831El Sur,Víctor Erice, 1983S 1S 4Der Süden,3 A. Sorg-Schumacher &I. Bergmaier, 1989, 1992(2nd ed.)S 22El Sur (Der Süden),SubG, 1984 (SpanishCinema Week inDortmund) DubG,1985 (Cinema)S 3Figure 9.7


122 Susana Cañuelo SarriónTwenty-two film adaptati<strong>on</strong>s have followed Combinati<strong>on</strong> II. First,a Spanish literary text is adapted to the screen in the Spanishcinematographic system. Subsequently, the feature film is subtitled ordubbed into German, and a translati<strong>on</strong> of the literary text is later d<strong>on</strong>e inGerman. In this case, no translati<strong>on</strong> of the literary work existed prior tothe film adaptati<strong>on</strong>. Examples include: Los santos inocentes (Mario Camus,1984), Tiempo de silencio (Vicente Aranda, 1986), Las edades de Lulú (JoséJuan Bigas Luna, 1990), ¡Ay, Carmela! (Carlos Saura, 1990), El maestro deesgrima (Pedro Olea, 1992), and Historias del Kr<strong>on</strong>en (M<strong>on</strong>txo Armendáriz,1995). In most cases, Combinati<strong>on</strong> II encompasses film adaptati<strong>on</strong>s madeshortly after the publicati<strong>on</strong> of the literary work in Spain, which explainswhy there are no prior literary translati<strong>on</strong>s in German. Figure 9.7 showsthe combinati<strong>on</strong> corresp<strong>on</strong>ding to El sur (Víctor Erice, 1983).Only three of the translated movies followed Combinati<strong>on</strong> III: I Picari(Los alegres pícaros, Mario M<strong>on</strong>icelli, 1988), Uncovered (La tabla de Flandes,Jim McBride, 1994) and The Ninth Gate (La novena puerta, RomanPolanski, 1999). These are all Spanish co-producti<strong>on</strong>s based <strong>on</strong> Spanishliterary works, but filmed in Italian (the first <strong>on</strong>e) and English (the othertwo). It is difficult to ascertain which was the text that the screenwriterused to work <strong>on</strong> the adaptati<strong>on</strong>. However, c<strong>on</strong>sidering theirnati<strong>on</strong>alities, it is most likely that they used the translati<strong>on</strong>s of theliterary works rather than the originals in Spanish. As for the audiovisualtranslati<strong>on</strong>, it is also likely that all the producti<strong>on</strong>s have beenEl Club Dumas,Arturo Pérez Reverte,1993S 12The Dumas Club,S. Soto, 1996, 1998S 351Der Club DumasC. Schmitt, 1995, 1997Die neun PfortenC. Schmitt, 2000S 23The Ninth GateRoman Polanski,1999La novena puertaDubS/SubS, 1999S 44Die neun Pforten,DubG, 1999 (Cine)DubG, 2000 (Video)DubG/SubG, 2000(DVD)S 5S1: Spanish literary systemS2: German literary systemS3: British literary systemS4: Spanish cinematographic systemS5: German cinematographic systemDubS: Dubbed into SpanishSubS: Subtitled into SpanishDubG: Dubbed into GermanSubG: Subtitled into GermanFigure 9.8


<str<strong>on</strong>g>Transfer</str<strong>on</strong>g> Norms for Film in Spanish–German C<strong>on</strong>text 123translated from the Italian and English versi<strong>on</strong>s of the film. Figure 9.8shows the combinati<strong>on</strong> corresp<strong>on</strong>ding to The Ninth Gate. It is interestingto notice that the title of the sec<strong>on</strong>d literary translati<strong>on</strong>, madeafter the release of the film, has been changed in order to match thetitle of the film, although the translator remains the same.Literary genresAs may be expected, there is a clear predominance of the narrativegenre – both in the original Spanish corpus (77%) and in the corpus offilms translated into German (78%) – since commercial films are heavilyreliant <strong>on</strong> narrative. This suggests that this genre is the easiest bothto be adapted to the cinema and possibly to be translated into otherlanguages. By c<strong>on</strong>trast, of all the Spanish adaptati<strong>on</strong>s distributed inGermany <strong>on</strong>ly <strong>on</strong>e is based <strong>on</strong> a work of poetry (A un dios desc<strong>on</strong>ocido,Jaime Chávarri, 1977).Film genresAs for the film genres, the majority of adaptati<strong>on</strong>s made in Spain aredramas (53%), followed by comedies (27%), thrillers (12%), andadventure/acti<strong>on</strong> films (4%). A very similar ranking represents theadaptati<strong>on</strong>s that have made it to Germany: 58% are dramas, 16%comedies, 18% thrillers, and 5% acti<strong>on</strong> films. Worth noticing is theslight decrease in the number of comedies transferred into German,since normally humour does not travel well abroad. If we c<strong>on</strong>sider thetotal of Spanish films shown in Germany, the number of comedies isalso lower, whereas thrillers fare c<strong>on</strong>siderably better.Literary authorsIn the case of the original authors of the literary works, there seems tobe no evidence whatsoever of a direct relati<strong>on</strong> between the number ofadapted works into Spanish films and the number of film adaptati<strong>on</strong>sthat have been translated into German. For example, six of FernandoVizcaíno Casas’s literary works have been adapted for the screen inSpain, but n<strong>on</strong>e of the films has been ever distributed in Germany. AndMiguel Delibes, who is the Spanish writer with most adaptati<strong>on</strong>s in theoriginal corpus (9), has <strong>on</strong>ly seen <strong>on</strong>e of the films distributed inGermany. It seems plausible that films based <strong>on</strong> literary authors whoare well known in Germany are also better represented in German


124 Susana Cañuelo Sarrióncinematography. Indeed, this is the case with writers like FedericoGarcía Lorca, Alberto Vázquez Figueroa and Arturo Pérez Reverte, whoseworks are very popular am<strong>on</strong>g German readers. Thus, of the five Spanishfilm adaptati<strong>on</strong>s made from works by García Lorca, four have beenreleased in Germany. In the case of Vázquez Figueroa, out of six filmsbased <strong>on</strong> his novels, four have made it to Germany and Pérez Revertehas had five works adapted to the screen, of which four have beenreleased in Germany.Film directorsWhen we look at the different film directors, there is no clear relati<strong>on</strong>between the number of adaptati<strong>on</strong>s made in Spain and the number ofadaptati<strong>on</strong>s that have been exported to Germany. For instance, FranciscoBetriú and Vicente Escrivá have both directed five adaptati<strong>on</strong>s each, butn<strong>on</strong>e of them has reached the German market. Similarly, Rafael Gil andPedro Lazaga have d<strong>on</strong>e eight and six adaptati<strong>on</strong>s respectively, andn<strong>on</strong>e of them has been seen in Germany. Vicente Aranda is the directorwith the li<strong>on</strong>’s share in the corpus, but <strong>on</strong>ly four of his ten adaptati<strong>on</strong>shave been translated into German. Mario Camus, with eight adaptati<strong>on</strong>sin the Spanish corpus, is <strong>on</strong>ly represented with four am<strong>on</strong>g theadaptati<strong>on</strong>s released in Germany.Imanol Uribe, Gerardo Herrero, Rafael Romero Marchent and PilarMiró, <strong>on</strong> the c<strong>on</strong>trary, are the directors who have a higher proporti<strong>on</strong>alrepresentati<strong>on</strong> both in the Spanish corpus and am<strong>on</strong>g the adaptati<strong>on</strong>sexported to Germany (5–3, 4–3, 5–3 and 4–3 respectively). AlthoughCarlos Saura is not the director with the highest number of adaptati<strong>on</strong>sin the Spanish corpus (<strong>on</strong>ly three), all of his works have been shown inGermany. That is hardly surprisingly, since Saura is <strong>on</strong>e of the mostfamous Spanish directors in Germany, mainly thanks to his musical trilogywith the dancer Ant<strong>on</strong>io Gades (Bodas de sangre, 1981; Carmen, 1983;El amor brujo, 1986). Saura is the director with most films (23) distributedin Germany in the period 1975–2000. He is followed by another of themost internati<strong>on</strong>al Spanish directors, Pedro Almodóvar, of whom twelveproducti<strong>on</strong>s have made it to Germany in the same period.C<strong>on</strong>clusi<strong>on</strong>In the transfer of Spanish film adaptati<strong>on</strong>s from Spain to Germanythere are some recurrent patterns that invite us to think about theexistence of transfer norms; norms that come to the surface when we


<str<strong>on</strong>g>Transfer</str<strong>on</strong>g> Norms for Film in Spanish–German C<strong>on</strong>text 125c<strong>on</strong>sider the three transfer processes discussed above: film adaptati<strong>on</strong>,literary translati<strong>on</strong> and audiovisual translati<strong>on</strong>.Some norms are operative in the combinati<strong>on</strong>s followed by the filmadaptati<strong>on</strong>s <strong>on</strong> their way to the German market. Of the five potentialpatterns outlined, most films followed the first two combinati<strong>on</strong>s (I andII), whereas combinati<strong>on</strong>s IV and V were not present at all. These normscan be called ‘combinatory norms’ and tell us about the steps followedin the process of transfer from <strong>on</strong>e culture to another and about thelanguages involved. These norms do not seem to fit under the categoryof ‘preliminary norms’, defined by Toury (1995: 56–61) as those thatoperate before the translati<strong>on</strong>al process of transfer itself takes place. Ifwe agree that the selecti<strong>on</strong> of films does not happen by chance, thesenorms reflect rather the existence and nature of a c<strong>on</strong>crete transferstrategy, that is, the selecti<strong>on</strong> of elements of the Source System and thesystemic mechanisms that govern this selecti<strong>on</strong>.Some regularities have been detected in the case of the preferredliterary genres to be adapted to the screen (narrative, with 78%) and thefilm genres more likely to be translated (drama, with 58%). As regardsthe selecti<strong>on</strong> of directors and literary authors, there is no evidence of adirect relati<strong>on</strong> between the number of adapted works in Spanish andthe number of transferred adaptati<strong>on</strong>s into German, but it is noteworthythat some of them are more popular than others: Federico García Lorca,Alberto Vázquez Figueroa, Arturo Pérez Reverte, am<strong>on</strong>g the writers; andCarlos Saura, Imanol Uribe, Pilar Miró, am<strong>on</strong>g the filmmakers. However,further investigati<strong>on</strong> into the mechanisms of export and import in theSpanish-German film c<strong>on</strong>text is needed in order to establish if a transferpolicy really exists at this level.Regarding the recepti<strong>on</strong> of the Spanish films in Germany, no evidenceof recurrent patterns has been found in the yearly distributi<strong>on</strong> of adaptati<strong>on</strong>s,but there seems to be some regularity in the distributi<strong>on</strong> channels(43% festivals, 34% TV) and the audiovisual translati<strong>on</strong> modes implemented(dubbing for cinema, video and TV; subtitling for festivals).Another relevant fact is that Spanish film adaptati<strong>on</strong>s represent a smallpercentage (15%) of the total of Spanish films shown in Germany between1975 and 2000. Nevertheless, in-depth research into the particularities ofdistributi<strong>on</strong> and exhibiti<strong>on</strong> is needed in order to define the positi<strong>on</strong> andfuncti<strong>on</strong> of Spanish film adaptati<strong>on</strong>s in the German system.I have not dealt with operati<strong>on</strong>al norms, which govern all the linguisticdecisi<strong>on</strong>s made during the individual processes of the transfer (Toury,1995: 56–61). A comprehensive analysis of the three processes – that isfilm adaptati<strong>on</strong>, literary translati<strong>on</strong> and audiovisual translati<strong>on</strong> –


126 Susana Cañuelo Sarrióninvolved in the transfer of the 38 Spanish works to Germany is needed.Such an approach will allow the researcher to discover some of theoperati<strong>on</strong>al norms followed and to establish how the ‘combinatorynorms’ may have influenced the different decisi<strong>on</strong>s taken during eachof the individual transfers.Note1. This is fully discussed in my PhD dissertati<strong>on</strong> supervised by Dr Luis Pegenauteat the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcel<strong>on</strong>a. Between 2002 and 2004 theresearch was carried out at the University of Leipzig thanks to a scholarshipfrom the foundati<strong>on</strong>s La Caixa and DAAD (Deutscher AkademischerAustausch Dients). I am grateful to them for the financial support and to theInstitute for Applied Linguistic and <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> Studies in Leipzig, especiallyto Prof. Dr Wotjak for his assistance. Thanks also to Dr Patrick Zabalbeascoaand Dr Aline Remael for their suggesti<strong>on</strong>s.ReferencesEven-Zohar, I. (1990) Polysystem Studies. Special Issue of Poetics Today 11(1). www.tau.ac.il/~itamarez/works/books/ez-pss1990.pdfFilmstatistisches Taschenbuch. Wiesbaden: SPIO, 1976–2000.Filmstatistisches Jahrbuch. (2001) Baden-Baden: Nomos.Lexik<strong>on</strong> des internati<strong>on</strong>alen Films. (2000) Munich: Net World Visi<strong>on</strong>. Online database:www.filmev<strong>on</strong>a-z.deToury, G. (1995) Descriptive <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> Studies and Bey<strong>on</strong>d. Amsterdam andPhiladelphia: John Benjamins.


<str<strong>on</strong>g>Transfer</str<strong>on</strong>g> Norms for Film in Spanish–German C<strong>on</strong>text 127AppendixS 1 S 21LT 1 LT 22S 3 S 43F 1 F 2S: SystemLT: Literary TextF: FilmFigure 9.9 Combinati<strong>on</strong> I: literary translati<strong>on</strong> before film adaptati<strong>on</strong>S 1S 3/42/3LT 1 LT 21S 2 S 3/42/3F 1 F 2S: SystemLT: Literary TextF: FilmFigure 9.10 Combinati<strong>on</strong> II: film adaptati<strong>on</strong> before literary translati<strong>on</strong>


128 Susana Cañuelo SarriónS 1S 2S KLT 11LT 3LT 2S 32S YS QF 2/3F 1F 2/3S: SystemLT: Literary TextF: FilmFigure 9.11 Combinati<strong>on</strong> III: film adaptati<strong>on</strong> starting from a translati<strong>on</strong>S 1S 2S 3LT 1 LT 2LT 3S YS ZS 4F 2/3 F 2/3F 1S: SystemLT: Literary TextF: FilmFigure 9.12 Combinati<strong>on</strong> IV: intermediate literary translati<strong>on</strong>


<str<strong>on</strong>g>Transfer</str<strong>on</strong>g> Norms for Film in Spanish–German C<strong>on</strong>text 129S 1S XS KLT 1LT 2LT 3S YS ZS QF 1F 2F 3S: SystemLT: Literary TextF: FilmFigure 9.13 Combinati<strong>on</strong> V: intermediate audiovisual translati<strong>on</strong>


10Voice-over in <str<strong>on</strong>g>Audiovisual</str<strong>on</strong>g><str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g>Pilar OreroIntroducti<strong>on</strong>Nowadays audiovisual translati<strong>on</strong> (AVT) is a thriving field within<str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> Studies. This is, however, a recent development. Althoughresearch in the audiovisual field dates back to 1932 (Franco and Orero,2005), it remained in the realm of Film or Media Studies and it was<strong>on</strong>ly in the 1980s that it started to be studied from a translati<strong>on</strong>perspective, within the discipline of <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> Studies. This transiti<strong>on</strong>from Film Studies to <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> Studies may account for theblurred terminology in use, the research guidelines and the somewhatunbalanced interest shown in the many modes within AVT.While subtitling and dubbing have been attracting interest in bothresearch and teaching at university level, other techniques such asvoice-over have been left aside or not clearly understood, as pointedout by Grigaravič iūtė and Gottlieb (1999), Franco (2000), and Gambier(2003).Some scholars have analysed this unbalanced situati<strong>on</strong> in the amountof attenti<strong>on</strong> paid to the many communicati<strong>on</strong> forms within AVT.Gambier and Suomela-Salmi (1994: 243) suggested the followingpossible explanati<strong>on</strong>:Up till now, research [in AVT] has mainly been c<strong>on</strong>cerned with thesubtitling and dubbing of fictive stories/ficti<strong>on</strong> films. In the light ofthe huge variety of audio-visual communicati<strong>on</strong>, this may seemsomewhat surprising; in fact, however, it reflects the prevailingorientati<strong>on</strong> in translati<strong>on</strong> theory, which is still highly dominated byliterary translati<strong>on</strong>.130


Voice-over in <str<strong>on</strong>g>Audiovisual</str<strong>on</strong>g> <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> 131One could argue that most research carried out in AVT has c<strong>on</strong>centrated<strong>on</strong> dubbing and subtitling because these are the modes used to translatefictive stories and ficti<strong>on</strong> films, objects of study which tend to befavoured by academics. However, it seems to have been forgotten inmany studies that in some countries like Poland and the Baltic Statesvoice-over is used as the translati<strong>on</strong> mode for films. The traditi<strong>on</strong>alstance in most academic studies has been to associate voice-over withthe translati<strong>on</strong> of documentaries covering topics like nature and travel(Luyken et al., 1991). The general trend has been to c<strong>on</strong>sider it as a techniquesuitable for the translati<strong>on</strong> of n<strong>on</strong>-ficti<strong>on</strong>al genres, an approachthat Franco (2000: 3) regrets:Translating reality must inevitably be a straightforward, n<strong>on</strong>problematicactivity. What such a belief implies is that translatedforeign material within n<strong>on</strong>-ficti<strong>on</strong>al output (e.g. interviews in newsand documentaries and sometimes commentaries as well) c<strong>on</strong>stitutesuninteresting data for the purposes of research. Traditi<strong>on</strong>allyclaimed as objective, deprived of the artifices of literary language orcinematic inventi<strong>on</strong>, factual programmes would and could not representany real challenge to the translator or stimulus to theresearcher; in sum, the translati<strong>on</strong> of ‘real life’ would c<strong>on</strong>stitute aboring field of study.Still, voice-over is normally included when scholars want to providea tax<strong>on</strong>omy of the many – and not universally used – audiovisualtranslati<strong>on</strong> modes. In some cases, voice-over has been classifiedwithin the technique of dubbing by authors such as Luyken et al.(1991: 80), Baker and Braňo (1998: 75), Shuttleworth and Cowie (1997:45), and Franco (2001: 290). No doubt, simplificati<strong>on</strong> and a lack ofunderstanding of the media and its process have made voice-over tobe seen in the same light as dubbing, which is certainly a differentmode, subject to different translati<strong>on</strong> and producti<strong>on</strong> processes. As aresult, it comes as no surprise that reference works <strong>on</strong> AVT have notc<strong>on</strong>sidered voice-over as a discrete entry (Luyken et al., 1991; Dries,1995; Baker and Braňo, 1998; Shuttleworth and Cowie, 1997; Sánchez-Escal<strong>on</strong>illa, 2003).The unresolved terminology employed in the wider discipline of AVT(Orero, 2004: vii) also applies to the field of voice-over. Many definiti<strong>on</strong>sof the term have described voice-over in a misleading or inaccurateform. Thus, it has been referred to as a category of revoicing, lipsynchr<strong>on</strong>isati<strong>on</strong> dubbing, narrati<strong>on</strong> and free commentary (Luyken


132 Pilar Oreroet al., 1991: 71; Baker and Braňo, 1998: 75; O’C<strong>on</strong>nell, 2003: 66); as atype of dubbing, either ‘n<strong>on</strong>-synchr<strong>on</strong>ized dubbing’ (Dries, 1995: 9), orits opposite ‘doublage synchr<strong>on</strong>e’ (Kaufmann, 1995: 438). It has alsobeen described as ‘dubbing-with-voice-over’ (Baranitch, 1995: 309), as atype of interpreting (Pönniö, 1995: 303; Gambier, 1996: 8) and finallyas ‘half-dubbing’ (Hendrickx, 1984).The process of voice-over has also been described as ‘the easiest andmost faithful of the audiovisual translati<strong>on</strong> modes’ (Luyken et al.,1991: 80; Díaz Cintas, 1997: 112). This definiti<strong>on</strong>, however, has nothelped towards further understanding of the technique and bears littleresemblance to the real process of translati<strong>on</strong>. A possible reas<strong>on</strong> forthis reputed easiness and faithfulness of voice-over is its alleged disregardfor synchr<strong>on</strong>isati<strong>on</strong> between source and target texts, pointed outoriginally by Luyken et al. (1991: 80) and later by Lambert andDelabastita (1996: 41), Franco (1998: 236), and Grigaravič iūtė andGottlieb (1999).To date, attempts to define voice-over seem to have focused <strong>on</strong> itsrecepti<strong>on</strong>. That is, voice-over is viewed as the final product we hearwhen watching a programme where a voice in a different language thanthat of the original programme is heard <strong>on</strong> top of the original soundtrack.This new voice is normally recorded some sec<strong>on</strong>ds into the beginningof the original utterance – and sometimes finishes before theactual pers<strong>on</strong> <strong>on</strong> screen – allowing the viewer to hear part of theoriginal, although this practice is not universal.These technical dimensi<strong>on</strong>s menti<strong>on</strong>ed by numerous translati<strong>on</strong>scholars when defining voice-over may have a comm<strong>on</strong> starting pointthat can be traced back to Luyken et al. (1991: 80) who in their seminalbook Overcoming <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> Barriers in Televisi<strong>on</strong> described voiceovernot as a complex and highly specialised translati<strong>on</strong> techniquebut as:The faithful translati<strong>on</strong> of original speech. Approximatelysynchr<strong>on</strong>ous delivery. It is normally used <strong>on</strong>ly in the c<strong>on</strong>text of am<strong>on</strong>ologue such as an interview resp<strong>on</strong>se or series of resp<strong>on</strong>sesfrom a single interviewee. The original sound is either reducedentirely or to a low level of audibility. A comm<strong>on</strong> practice is toallow the original sound to be heard for several sec<strong>on</strong>ds at the<strong>on</strong>set of the speech and to have it subsequently reduced so that thetranslated speech takes over. This c<strong>on</strong>tributes to the sense ofauthenticity in the translati<strong>on</strong> and prevents a degree of mistrustfrom developing. Alternatively, if the translati<strong>on</strong> is recorded as


Voice-over in <str<strong>on</strong>g>Audiovisual</str<strong>on</strong>g> <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> 133part of the original producti<strong>on</strong>, it may follow the original speechexactly.While studying the transfer of commercial videos, Mailhac (1998: 222)points to the possible source of inc<strong>on</strong>sistency that surrounds the termvoice-over:It should be pointed out that the term ‘voice-over’ is used with themeaning it normally has in English where it refers to the voice of anunseen commentator heard during a film, a televisi<strong>on</strong> programme ora video. Therefore, it does not corresp<strong>on</strong>d to what is called ‘un voiceover’ in French, since this refers to situati<strong>on</strong>s in which a voice givinga translati<strong>on</strong> is heard simultaneously <strong>on</strong> top of the original voice (seePönniö, 1995). The French equivalent of ‘voice-over’ would be commentaire.I have heard the term ‘over-voicing’ to describe the superimpositi<strong>on</strong>of a sec<strong>on</strong>d voice in the c<strong>on</strong>text of an interview in acommercial video; ‘half dubbing’ also seems possible to refer to thistype of superimpositi<strong>on</strong> when applied to a feature film dialogue.And Franco (2000: 32) c<strong>on</strong>cludes by stating that:The c<strong>on</strong>fusi<strong>on</strong> seems to have arisen from the fact that terms adoptedby <str<strong>on</strong>g>Audiovisual</str<strong>on</strong>g> <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> Studies, such as ‘voice-over’ and otherscomm<strong>on</strong> to factual translati<strong>on</strong> (e.g. ‘commentary’), have all beenarbitrarily borrowed from its predecessor Film Studies, whosec<strong>on</strong>cepts do not imply any translating activity.A new academic and research approach to voice-over and to AVT ingeneral should take into c<strong>on</strong>siderati<strong>on</strong> Film and Media Studies withoutforgetting traditi<strong>on</strong>al research methodology from the field of<str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> Studies. It should focus <strong>on</strong> the translati<strong>on</strong> process as muchas <strong>on</strong> the recepti<strong>on</strong> of the audiovisual product, and should also determinethe terminology which at present is – to say the least – muddled.In what now follows, I offer a detailed analysis of the two differenttypes of voice-over translati<strong>on</strong> according to the way it is carried outprofessi<strong>on</strong>ally.Voice-over in TV and radioIt is true that voice-over is used both in TV and radio, as for example inthe BBC World Service. In its news or current affairs programmes, what


134 Pilar Orerois said by some<strong>on</strong>e whose mother t<strong>on</strong>gue is not English is translatedand voiced-over into English, in an attempt to c<strong>on</strong>vey the feeling ofauthenticity of the c<strong>on</strong>tents (Luyken et al., 1991: 80), the voice of thespeaker (Pönniö, 1995: 304), and the accent or regi<strong>on</strong>al variati<strong>on</strong>(Fawcett, 1996: 76). 1 As Franco (2001: 290) explains:... the type of delivery we hear in voice-over translati<strong>on</strong> is an importantstrategic way of reassuring viewers that what they are being toldin their own language is what is being said in the original language,although it is known that what they will be listening to is in fact<strong>on</strong>ly a representati<strong>on</strong> of the original discourse.In Spain at least, voice-over is a more comm<strong>on</strong> mode of audiovisualtranslati<strong>on</strong> than subtitling, and the leading translati<strong>on</strong> mode whenpeople speaking other languages appear live <strong>on</strong> TV broadcasts. The programmesrange from news and sports to gossip, and even reality shows,and are broadcast <strong>on</strong> all Spanish TV stati<strong>on</strong>s, local as well as nati<strong>on</strong>al,in Spanish or in any of the other three official languages (Basque,Catalan and Galician); <strong>on</strong> state-owned stati<strong>on</strong>s TV3, 24/3; City TV inCatal<strong>on</strong>ia; TV1 or TV2 in Spain: and <strong>on</strong> privately owned nati<strong>on</strong>al channelssuch as Tele 5 and Antena 3.When voice-over is used for the translati<strong>on</strong> of an audiovisual programme,two voices are usually heard. We hear <strong>on</strong>e voice in the background(the original speech) and the voice of the translati<strong>on</strong>. Whenthere is a speech or sound bite of President Bush or T<strong>on</strong>y Blair, the translati<strong>on</strong>is usually heard through voice-over. In some excepti<strong>on</strong>al casesthree languages can be heard, as is the case when we hear Osama BinLaden speaking, whilst being translated into English and then intoSpanish or Catalan. Cases in which three languages can be heard simultaneouslyare known as pivot translati<strong>on</strong> (Grigaravič iūtė and Gottlieb,1999: 46), a field of study that also merits further research.The compilati<strong>on</strong> of further data <strong>on</strong> the number and type ofprogrammes as well as <strong>on</strong> the times of the broadcasts when voice-overproducti<strong>on</strong> and post-producti<strong>on</strong> are used <strong>on</strong> TV is another muchneeded research project. Material of this nature will help us to c<strong>on</strong>textualiseand to put into perspective voice-over translati<strong>on</strong> versus thetwo more popular forms of subtitling and dubbing. It would alsoprovide informati<strong>on</strong> that could c<strong>on</strong>firm, or reject, the popular associati<strong>on</strong>of voice-over and documentaries. A project of compiling datacould prove to be challenging, given the large number of TV channels


Voice-over in <str<strong>on</strong>g>Audiovisual</str<strong>on</strong>g> <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> 135now <strong>on</strong> offer in Catal<strong>on</strong>ia and Spain. The city of Barcel<strong>on</strong>a al<strong>on</strong>e hasover ten TV stati<strong>on</strong>s which broadcast in Catalan plus all the TVstati<strong>on</strong>s – digital, satellite and terrestrial – which broadcast to mainlandSpain. Still a methodological approach to the compilati<strong>on</strong> ofreliable data would be needed for any rigorous analysis with someserious c<strong>on</strong>clusi<strong>on</strong>s to be undertaken.Translating for voice-over producti<strong>on</strong>Much translati<strong>on</strong> for voice-over is carried out in the post-producti<strong>on</strong>phase, described by Luyken et al. (1991: 80) as ‘narrati<strong>on</strong> or re-voicednarrati<strong>on</strong>’, which so far is the mode most widely studied in academicworks dedicated to AVT. However, there is an important market forTV and radio programmes with translati<strong>on</strong> undertaken as part of theproducti<strong>on</strong> process. This sec<strong>on</strong>d type I refer to as translati<strong>on</strong> forproducti<strong>on</strong>.A post-producti<strong>on</strong> translati<strong>on</strong> is the translati<strong>on</strong> of a programmewhich is a finished product by the time it reaches the translator; it usuallycomes with a complete dialogue list, e.g. the BBC’s The Human Body(2001). In the case of translati<strong>on</strong> for producti<strong>on</strong>, however, the translatorhas to work with rough, unedited material which will undergo severalprocesses before being broadcast. The material to be translated can bemade of interviews or already existing post-producti<strong>on</strong> programmes.When the team of journalists working <strong>on</strong> a programme are planning itsc<strong>on</strong>tents and format, they may decide to use excerpts from some existingforeign programmes – regardless of the format or genre. It can be adocumentary, sports pers<strong>on</strong>ality interviews, sports events (WorldSwimming Champi<strong>on</strong>ship, Formula 1 Racing, European Champi<strong>on</strong>sLeague football matches), or awards cerem<strong>on</strong>ies (Oscars, MTV), all ofwhich can be either live or a repeat.In order to develop these programmes the team of journalists, allworking within the producti<strong>on</strong> department, will either buy a numberof minutes of an already existing and edited programme or interview,or produce their own interview. If the first approach is chosen, theseexcerpts will be incorporated in the main body of the programme,either simply to provide images to illustrate the narrati<strong>on</strong>, or to provideauthentic comments delivered by the actual speakers. For instance, inorder to make a programme <strong>on</strong> the war in Iraq, the journalists maywant to use declarati<strong>on</strong>s or interviews given in English by T<strong>on</strong>y Blair orGeorge W. Bush, bought from a news agency; or they may prefer to use


136 Pilar Orerofootage of a documentary in English such as Lost Treasures from Iraq, 2which they will buy from an internati<strong>on</strong>al TV agency for which they<strong>on</strong>ly have to provide the topic and the company will offer the images.Alternatively, they may want to have an exclusive interview with theUN weap<strong>on</strong>s chief inspector, Hans Blix, or with Bush’s private weap<strong>on</strong>inspector David Kay, who resigned <strong>on</strong> 23rd January 2004 after hisreport announcing that no weap<strong>on</strong>s of mass destructi<strong>on</strong> had beenfound in Iraq. 3The translator will then be sent the bulk of material that has beenbought (some excerpts of Bush and Blair’s comments to translate, a30-minute documentary <strong>on</strong> the Museum of Baghdad, and an in-houseproduced 35-minute interview with Hans Blix or David Kay). On someoccasi<strong>on</strong>s the translator may be asked to go to the TV stati<strong>on</strong> to carryout the translati<strong>on</strong> in situ. If the physical presence of the translator isnot required at the televisi<strong>on</strong> stati<strong>on</strong>, the material will be sent to thetranslator without a dialogue list. While this can be expected from anunedited <strong>home</strong>-produced interview, there is no apparent reas<strong>on</strong> why acommercially broadcast programme will <strong>on</strong>ly come in audiovisual format,with no transcript. By c<strong>on</strong>trast, the absence of a document withthe written dialogue for post-producti<strong>on</strong> translati<strong>on</strong> tends to occur <strong>on</strong>lywhen the producing team buys an excerpt from a broadcast programmefrom an agency instead of purchasing it directly from the TV producer.Whatever the length and durati<strong>on</strong> of the excerpt, it invariably reachesthe translator <strong>on</strong>ly in audiovisual format. In Spain, the inclusi<strong>on</strong> oftranslators in a TV or radio producti<strong>on</strong> team may be due to the tightproducti<strong>on</strong> schedule of TV programmes or to the journalists’ lack offoreign language competence; this is still a major obstacle, perhapslikely to change in the near future, although present university educati<strong>on</strong>programmes in Spain have not been designed to address and rectifythis particular problem. It should also be pointed out that journalistsworking from Spanish for British radio and TV stati<strong>on</strong>s usually encounterthe same problem.Here we have seen some of the characteristic features of producti<strong>on</strong>in c<strong>on</strong>trast to post-producti<strong>on</strong> voice-over. The material is unedited, it isalways urgent, 4 and it rarely comes with the written transcript; henceit c<strong>on</strong>stitutes a challenge to the listening and comprehensi<strong>on</strong> skills ofthe translator (Orero, 2005). It may be added that the translati<strong>on</strong> willbe edited in order to be synchr<strong>on</strong>ous in c<strong>on</strong>tent with the images whichit will accompany. A final point c<strong>on</strong>cerns the translator who neverknows what will eventually be shown in the edited broadcastprogramme.


Voice-over in <str<strong>on</strong>g>Audiovisual</str<strong>on</strong>g> <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> 137C<strong>on</strong>clusi<strong>on</strong>As we have seen in the previous secti<strong>on</strong>, the translati<strong>on</strong> for voice-overproducti<strong>on</strong> is characterised by several c<strong>on</strong>straints:● Time: translati<strong>on</strong>s have to be d<strong>on</strong>e within a very tight schedule.● Translating from the screen: a written text to support the audiovisualmaterial is not usually available to the translator.● Working with unedited, rough material which will be edited afterbeing translated, not by the translator but by another differentprofessi<strong>on</strong>al.In this chapter, I have tried to raise the academic visibility of voice-over ingeneral, and voice-over for producti<strong>on</strong> of TV and radio programmes inparticular, seeing it as an important translati<strong>on</strong> mode in need of muchmore scholarly attenti<strong>on</strong>, if <strong>on</strong>ly to match the popularity it enjoys <strong>on</strong> TV.Notes1. Fawcett (1996) explains how, in recent years, TV stati<strong>on</strong>s in the UK haveincremented the use of voice-over for documentaries replacing the use ofstandard English for the accent ‘appropriate’ for the programme.2. www-oi.uchicago.edu/OI/IRAQ/iraq.html3. ‘US chief Iraq arms expert quits. The head of the team searching for weap<strong>on</strong>sof mass destructi<strong>on</strong> in Iraq, David Kay, has resigned. Mr Kay said he did notbelieve Iraq possessed large stockpiles of chemical or biological weap<strong>on</strong>s’(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3424831.stm).4. While some research <strong>on</strong> translati<strong>on</strong> under time pressure has been undertakenin the field of literary translati<strong>on</strong> (Jensen and Jakobsen, 1998; Jensen,1999) the scope of AVT research remains largely unexplored.ReferencesBaker, M. and Braňo, H. (1998) ‘Dubbing’. In M. Baker (ed.) Routledge Encyclopediaof <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> Studies (pp. 74–6). L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong> and New York: Routledge.Baranitch, V. (1995) ‘General situati<strong>on</strong> with electr<strong>on</strong>ic media in Belarus’.Translatio, Nouvelles de la FIT-FIT Newsletter XIV(3–4): 308–11.Díaz Cintas, J. (1997) El subtitulado en tanto que modalidad de traducciónfílmica dentro del marco teórico de los Estudios sobre Traducción. (Misteriosoasesinato en Manhattan, Woody Allen, 1993). Valencia: Universidad de Valencia.PhD Thesis.Dries, J. (1995) Dubbing and Subtitling: Guidelines for Producti<strong>on</strong> and Distributi<strong>on</strong>.Düsseldorf: European Institute for the Media.Fawcett, P. (1996) ‘Translating film’. In G.T. Harries (ed.) On Translating FrenchLiterature and Film (pp. 65–88). Amsterdam: Rodopi.


138 Pilar OreroFranco, E. (1998) ‘Documentary film translati<strong>on</strong>: A specific practice?’. InA. Chesterman, N. Gallardo San Salvador and Y. Gambier (eds) <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> inC<strong>on</strong>text (pp. 233–42). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Franco, E. (2000) Revoicing the Alien in Documentaries. Cultural Agency,Norms and the <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> of <str<strong>on</strong>g>Audiovisual</str<strong>on</strong>g> Reality. Leuven: KUL. PhD Thesis.Franco, E. (2001) ‘Voiced-over televisi<strong>on</strong> documentaries. Terminological andc<strong>on</strong>ceptual issues for their research’. Target 13(2): 289–304.Franco, J. and Orero, P. (2005) ‘Research <strong>on</strong> audiovisual translati<strong>on</strong>: someobjective c<strong>on</strong>clusi<strong>on</strong>s, or the birth of an academic field’. In J.D. Sanders<strong>on</strong>(ed.) Research <strong>on</strong> <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> for Subtitling in Spain and Italy (pp. 79–92). Alicante:Universidad de Alicante.Gambier, Y. and Suomela-Salmi, E. (1994) ‘Subtitling: a type of transfer’. InF. Eguíluz, R. Merino, V. Olsen, E. Pajares and J.M. Santamaría (eds) Transvasesculturales: Literatura, cine, traducción (pp. 243–52). Vitoria: Universidad del PaísVasco.Gambier, Y. (1996) Les transfers linguistiques dans les médias audiovisuels.Villeneuve d’Ascq (Nord): Presses Universitaires du Septentri<strong>on</strong>.Gambier, Y. (2003) ‘Introducti<strong>on</strong>: screen transadaptati<strong>on</strong>: Percepti<strong>on</strong> and recepti<strong>on</strong>’.The Translator 9(2): 171–89.Grigaravič iūtė, I. and Gotttlieb, H. (1999) ‘Danish voices, Lithuanian voice-over.The mechanics of n<strong>on</strong>-synchr<strong>on</strong>ous translati<strong>on</strong>’. Perspectives: Studies inTranslatology 7(1): 41–80.Hendrickx, P. (1984) ‘Partial dubbing’. Meta 29(2): 217–18.Jensen, A. and Jakobsen, A. (1998) ‘Translating under time pressure: an empiricalinvestigati<strong>on</strong> of problem-solving activity and translati<strong>on</strong> strategies by n<strong>on</strong>professi<strong>on</strong>aland professi<strong>on</strong>al translators’. In A. Chesterman, N. Gallardo SanSalvador and Y. Gambier (eds) (2000) <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> in C<strong>on</strong>text (pp. 105–16).Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Jensen, A. (1999) ‘Time pressure in translati<strong>on</strong>’. In G. Hansen (ed.) Probing theProcess in <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g>: Methods and Results. Copenhagen Studies in <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> 24(pp. 103–19). Copenhagen: Samfundslitteratur.Kaufmann, F. (1995) ‘Formati<strong>on</strong> à la traducti<strong>on</strong> et à l’interprétati<strong>on</strong> pour lesmédias audiovisuels’. Translatio, Nouvelles de la FIT-FIT Newsletter XIV(3–4):431–42.Lambert, J. and Delabastita, D. (1996) ‘La traducti<strong>on</strong> de textes audiovisuels:modes et enjeux culturels’. In Y. Gambier (ed.) Les <str<strong>on</strong>g>Transfer</str<strong>on</strong>g>ts linguistiques dansles médias audiovisuels (pp. 33–58). Villeneuve d’Ascq (Nord): PressesUniversitaires du Septentri<strong>on</strong>.Luyken, G.M., Herbst, T., Langham-Brown, J., Reid, H. and Spinhof, H. (1991)Overcoming <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> Barriers in Televisi<strong>on</strong>: Dubbing and Subtitling for the EuropeanAudience. Manchester: European Institute for the Media.Mailhac, J.-P. (1998) ‘Optimising the linguistic transfer in the case of commercialvideos’. In Y. Gambier (ed.) Translating for the Media (pp. 207–23). Turku:University of Turku.O’C<strong>on</strong>nell, E.M.T. (2003) Minority <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> Dubbing for Children. Screen <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g>from German to Irish. Series XL. Vol. 81. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.Orero, P. (2004) ‘<str<strong>on</strong>g>Audiovisual</str<strong>on</strong>g> translati<strong>on</strong>: a new dynamic umbrella’. In P. Orero(ed.) Topics in <str<strong>on</strong>g>Audiovisual</str<strong>on</strong>g> <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> (pp. vii–xiii). Amsterdam and Philadelphia:John Benjamins.


Voice-over in <str<strong>on</strong>g>Audiovisual</str<strong>on</strong>g> <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> 139Orero, P. (2005) ‘La traducción de entrevistas para voice-over.’ In P. ZabalbeascoaTerran, L. Santamaria Guinot and F. Chaume Varela (eds). La traducciónaudiovisual: Investigación, enseñanza y profesión (pp. 213–22). Granada:Comares.Pönniö, K. (1995) ‘Voice over, narrati<strong>on</strong> et commentaire’. Translatio, Nouvellesde la FIT-FIT Newsletter XIV(3–4): 303–7.Sánchez-Escal<strong>on</strong>illa, A. (ed.) (2003) Dicci<strong>on</strong>ario de creación cinematográfica.Barcel<strong>on</strong>a: Ariel.Shuttleworth, M. and Cowie, M. (1997) Dicti<strong>on</strong>ary of <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> Studies.Manchester: St. Jerome.


11Broadcasting Interpreting:A Comparis<strong>on</strong> betweenJapan and the UKTomoyuki ShibaharaIntroducti<strong>on</strong>Although broadcasting interpreters play a significant role in the newsprogrammes today, little is known about their role and their professi<strong>on</strong>(Mitsufuji, 2002). An analysis of the interpretati<strong>on</strong> style of broadcastinginterpreters could serve as a useful reference for many other interpretersin terms of improving their delivery. Therefore, I believe it is importantto introduce and compare the work of broadcasting interpreters in Japanand the UK. Based <strong>on</strong> my pers<strong>on</strong>al experience, I take a look at the roleof these professi<strong>on</strong>als working for the BBC (British BroadcastingCorporati<strong>on</strong>) and NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporati<strong>on</strong>).In this comparis<strong>on</strong> of broadcasting interpreting styles in both countries,I will attempt to explain the reas<strong>on</strong>s behind some of the differences. Atthe same time, I will try to find out if there is a ‘comm<strong>on</strong> interpretingpolicy’ to be found between the two broadcasting organisati<strong>on</strong>s.Definiti<strong>on</strong> and history of ‘broadcastinginterpreter’ in JapanIn some countries and languages, the word for translator also encompassesthat of the interpreter. However, in Japan, there is a clear-cutdistincti<strong>on</strong> between interpreter and translator, despite the fact that ingeneral c<strong>on</strong>versati<strong>on</strong> the word translator is used syn<strong>on</strong>ymously withinterpreter. The main difference between these two professi<strong>on</strong>als is thatthe translator is the pers<strong>on</strong> who translates written material, and theinterpreter, spoken dialogue, and although my official job title at the140


Broadcasting Interpreting in Japan and the UK 141BBC Japanese Unit was ‘broadcasting translator’, I prefer ‘broadcastinginterpreter’.Japanese people, in general, tend to believe that interpreting issomewhat more difficult than translating. This may be due to the factthat for a l<strong>on</strong>g time the main purpose of foreign language educati<strong>on</strong> inJapan has been to absorb new informati<strong>on</strong> and technology by readingforeign books. As a result, foreign language educati<strong>on</strong> in Japan tends toput more stress <strong>on</strong> reading and writing than <strong>on</strong> listening and speaking.The Japanese feel that it is much easier to be a translator because theyperform tasks which are similar to what they did in school. As they feelthat it is more difficult to listen and to speak in English, it is then c<strong>on</strong>sideredvery hard to be an interpreter. When interpreter is combined withthe word broadcasting, for many Japanese people it takes <strong>on</strong> star status.In actual fact, the term ‘broadcasting interpreter’ refers to a professi<strong>on</strong>alwho performs mainly interpreting for broadcasting, althoughthe job sometimes includes translating as well. It is very comm<strong>on</strong> for‘ordinary’ interpreters to work <strong>on</strong>ly part-time as broadcasting interpreters,because job opportunities are very limited and therefore, few peoplecan make a living by broadcasting interpreting al<strong>on</strong>e. To the best of myknowledge, there are no full-time, in-house positi<strong>on</strong>s in Japan for broadcastinginterpreters and they are employed <strong>on</strong> a freelance basis. The<strong>on</strong>ly excepti<strong>on</strong> is the BBC Japanese Unit, although interpreters thenhave to work in L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong>.Broadcasting interpreters are usually able to watch beforehand thematerial that they are going to interpret. They can either prepare theJapanese translati<strong>on</strong> or, if there is not enough time to do so, make roughnotes that they will use while <strong>on</strong> air. Live coverage such as pressc<strong>on</strong>ferences are interpreted simultaneously.In Japan, broadcasting interpreters made their first appearance <strong>on</strong>public televisi<strong>on</strong> in 1969, when Apollo landed <strong>on</strong> the mo<strong>on</strong>. The eventwas covered live <strong>on</strong> TV, and the Japanese audience listened to the simultaneousinterpretati<strong>on</strong>. Since top-notch interpreters were assigned to dothis job, the performance was very impressive. It resulted in the generalpercepti<strong>on</strong> that broadcasting interpreters are somewhat superior to‘ordinary’ interpreters.During the 1980s, it became a trend am<strong>on</strong>g Japanese TV stati<strong>on</strong>s tomake use of sound-multiplex broadcast systems to revoice foreign news inJapanese. This trend reached a climax when in 1991 the Gulf War brokeout. During this period, TV stati<strong>on</strong>s were forced to increase the number ofbroadcasting interpreters. It had both positive and negative effects. On the<strong>on</strong>e hand, it enabled many young and promising interpreters to acquire


142 Tomoyuki Shibaharaexperience in broadcasting interpreting. On the other hand, and unlikethe case of the Apollo Project, many Japanese viewers are well informedabout war issues and jarg<strong>on</strong>. As a result, broadcasting interpreting came tobe criticised as inaccurate, with many viewers stating that it was very hardto make out what the interpreters were saying.Broadcasting interpreters at theBBC Japanese UnitIn the case of the BBC Japanese Unit, interpreters are employed fulltimeand work in-house. To be more precise, they work as c<strong>on</strong>tractemployees of the BBC’s c<strong>on</strong>tract company. The length of each c<strong>on</strong>tractis <strong>on</strong>e year, renewed annually. It offers financial stability for the interpretersand enables them to have a fixed schedule, which means thatthey do not have to work very late at night or very early in the morningunless they agree to do so. The fact that interpreters work five days aweek for a prol<strong>on</strong>ged period of time is beneficial to them, enablingthem to accumulate and enhance necessary knowledge and skills. Thisis a great advantage in terms of keeping the quality of broadcast high.However, this employment style can be a double-edged sword. Firstly,even if the workload increases, there is no change in salary. For example,when NATO bombed Kosovo in 1999, the interpreters covered the dailyNATO press c<strong>on</strong>ferences live every day for more than two m<strong>on</strong>ths. Thequantity of simultaneous interpretati<strong>on</strong> at least quadrupled during thatperiod. But since press c<strong>on</strong>ferences took place within regular workinghours, there was no extra remunerati<strong>on</strong>. In additi<strong>on</strong>, the pay scale isbased <strong>on</strong> seniority, and there was no merit pay.The work of the BBC Japanese Unit c<strong>on</strong>sists of providing Japanesetranslati<strong>on</strong> for BBC World TV, which transmits mainly news and documentaryprogrammes. The broadcast in Japan started in 1994, and itwas introduced as a successor to BBC World Service radio’s Japaneselanguage service, which ceased its operati<strong>on</strong>s in 1991. There are threemajor tasks that are assigned to the broadcasting interpreters:1. Interpreting the news programmes.2. Translating documentary programmes and checking the translati<strong>on</strong>.3. Voicing-over of documentary programmes.I would like to focus <strong>on</strong> the first task since it is the <strong>on</strong>e most similar tothe activity carried out by broadcasting interpreters working for NHK,the biggest broadcasting organisati<strong>on</strong> in Japan.


Broadcasting Interpreting in Japan and the UK 143News programmes c<strong>on</strong>sist of two parts, the lead and the piece. Thelead is the introducti<strong>on</strong> which is then followed by the piece or the corresp<strong>on</strong>dent’sreport. The piece is also called ‘TX’.Transcripts for the lead are usually filed in the computer systembeforehand. It is the resp<strong>on</strong>sibility of the interpreter who is in charge ofinterpreting the anchor <strong>on</strong> that day to prepare the Japanese translati<strong>on</strong>.Since the interpreter reads aloud the translati<strong>on</strong> at the very same time asthe programme goes <strong>on</strong> air, the translati<strong>on</strong> has to be as l<strong>on</strong>g as the originaland fit within the same time frame as the English source text. If the interpretati<strong>on</strong>is too l<strong>on</strong>g it will spill over into the TX, and will obstruct theinterpretati<strong>on</strong> of this secti<strong>on</strong>. This can have a very negative effect sincethe lead and the piece are interpreted by different interpreters.There are almost no transcripts available for interpreters who are incharge of the piece but corresp<strong>on</strong>dents’ reports are usually filed in thecomputer system in video format; interpreters can download the footagein order to prepare the Japanese translati<strong>on</strong>. As in the case of thelead, when read aloud the translati<strong>on</strong> should fit within the time frameof the original. The translati<strong>on</strong> should also occur in c<strong>on</strong>cert with whatis happening <strong>on</strong> the TV screen so that there is no c<strong>on</strong>flict between theinterpretati<strong>on</strong> and the picture. If there is not enough time to preparethe Japanese translati<strong>on</strong>, interpretati<strong>on</strong> takes place simultaneouslywhile <strong>on</strong> air. Simultaneous interpretati<strong>on</strong> is also called for in the case oflive coverage, when for example the anchor interviews a guest in thestudio, or the corresp<strong>on</strong>dent files a live report.Interpreting policy and quality c<strong>on</strong>trolThe quality of the Japanese is greatly emphasised by the editor, stressingthat the standards should be comparable to NHK news. Under the sloganof ‘less is more’, interpreters are asked to edit the informati<strong>on</strong> sothat the interpretati<strong>on</strong> is not <strong>on</strong>ly accurate but also easy for the viewersto understand. Delivery is c<strong>on</strong>sidered important and interpreters areoffered elocuti<strong>on</strong> training in Japanese. Interpreters are asked to complywith the ‘less is more’ policy even when they are interpretingsimultaneously; a rapid and somewhat garrulous delivery, which israther comm<strong>on</strong> in simultaneous interpretati<strong>on</strong>, is not welcomed.On BBC World TV, the interpreter’s name does not appear <strong>on</strong> thescreen, making it difficult for the viewer to identify the interpreterwhen there is any misinterpretati<strong>on</strong>. Although editors are in charge ofchecking the output of the interpreters, they tend to focus <strong>on</strong> purelytechnical matters such as voice level, paper rustle, etc. rather than <strong>on</strong>


144 Tomoyuki Shibaharathe linguistic merits of the translati<strong>on</strong>. Besides, given the time pressure,it is almost impossible for the editors to check the entire output.As for checking word usage, this is basically left to the interpreters tocross-check am<strong>on</strong>g themselves. Under this system, the translati<strong>on</strong> ofnew words tends to cause debate am<strong>on</strong>g the interpreters. In order tosolve this problem, there have been attempts at forming a <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g>Standardisati<strong>on</strong> Committee in charge of making the use of certain termsc<strong>on</strong>sistent. However, it is very difficult to create a c<strong>on</strong>sensus am<strong>on</strong>g theinterpreters and, so far, the attempts have not resulted in any committeebeing formed. N<strong>on</strong>etheless, a Standard <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> Database System isnow in place, where interpreters take turns to define the translati<strong>on</strong> ofnew words and add them to the database. In any case, editors have thefinal say in deciding which Japanese term should be used.Broadcasting interpreters at NHKBroadcasting interpreters for NHK are provided by NHK Joho NetworkInc., an affiliate company of NHK. The Bilingual Center, <strong>on</strong>e of thedivisi<strong>on</strong>s of NHK Joho Network Inc., is in charge of selecting and arranginginterpreters and translators. More than <strong>on</strong>e thousand interpreters andtranslators in some 60 languages are registered at the Bilingual Center.Since NHK interpreters work <strong>on</strong> a freelance basis, they have c<strong>on</strong>siderableflexibility. They can decide if they do not want to work very late orvery early hours. When there is a high volume of work, interpreters arecalled in more often, which means an increase in their income, as forexample during the reporting <strong>on</strong> the War in Iraq in spring 2003.However, working <strong>on</strong> a freelance basis means that there is no incomesecurity, and it can be very difficult for interpreters to rely entirely <strong>on</strong>the income from NHK to make a living. Besides, it is rather difficult foryoung interpreters to work for NHK in the first place because it is a verycompetitive envir<strong>on</strong>ment and most of the positi<strong>on</strong>s have already beentaken by experienced interpreters. Had it not been for the emergencysituati<strong>on</strong> presented by the war in Iraq, many interpreters might nothave had a chance to work for the NHK.NHK broadcasting interpreters work for two channels: BS-1, a satellitenews and sports channel; as well as General TV, a terrestrial channel. Inboth cases, broadcasting interpreters work for the news programmes<strong>on</strong>ly. NHK has many overseas documentary programmes but these aretranslated separately by broadcasting translators. Voice-over is also d<strong>on</strong>eseparately by voice actors and actresses. Although BS-1 has a larger andmore c<strong>on</strong>stant demand for interpreters, because it broadcasts many


Broadcasting Interpreting in Japan and the UK 145foreign news programmes, I would like to limit my explanati<strong>on</strong> belowto the case of General TV.The tasks of interpreters working for General TV are:(1) Simultaneous interpretati<strong>on</strong>: this is applied when somethingurgent happens and there is no time to prepare a translati<strong>on</strong> beforehand.In the case of the War in Iraq, there were three 8-hour shifts aday (00:00–08:00; 08:00–16:00; and 16:00–24:00), and two interpreterswere always standing by. When the initial air strike took place,NHK ran the live coverage of ABC News, which was interpretedsimultaneously. Interpreters were also asked to m<strong>on</strong>itor other newschannels such as BBC, CNN, and Fox. If editors decided to run any ofthese channels, interpreters were asked to interpret simultaneously. Inadditi<strong>on</strong> to simultaneous interpreting, interpreters are asked to providewhispering interpreting (chuchotage) for NHK editors. For this task,interpreters covered mainly the news c<strong>on</strong>ferences of the White Houseor the US Central Command. Editors listened to the chuchotage inorder to decide which part of the news c<strong>on</strong>ference should be cut outand used – usually with subtitles – in the news bulletin following. Inthis kind of work interpreters are then asked to pin-point the footagewith the video technician. Having found where the footage begins andends, interpreters are asked to interpret the c<strong>on</strong>tents. In most cases, theinterpretati<strong>on</strong> is used to make subtitles in Japanese and, when there isa shortage of manpower, interpreters are also asked to help with thesubtitling.(2) M<strong>on</strong>itoring of foreign news channels in case editors decide to useshort footages from these.(3) Reading the Japanese translati<strong>on</strong> of short footages: sometimesinterpreters are asked to voice-over the Japanese translati<strong>on</strong> in theactual telecast. Professi<strong>on</strong>al voice actors and actresses are rarely used forthis task unless it is something very important and there is enough timeto do so.(4) Providing translati<strong>on</strong> to make subtitles for short footages.The last two tasks are assigned to interpreters who have not reached thelevel of simultaneous interpreting or who have opted out of simultaneousinterpreting. They follow similar working shifts as simultaneousinterpreters and two to three interpreters are assigned to each shift. Thedifference in the functi<strong>on</strong>s between simultaneous interpreters andother interpreters is clearer in NHK than in the BBC Japanese Unit.Despite helping with the above two tasks, simultaneous interpreters


146 Tomoyuki Shibaharaand other interpreters basically work separately, dealing with differenttypes of tasks.Interpreting policy and quality c<strong>on</strong>trolThe pers<strong>on</strong> resp<strong>on</strong>sible for the selecti<strong>on</strong> of interpreters c<strong>on</strong>siders accurateinterpretati<strong>on</strong> very important together with a high degree of fluency insimultaneous interpretati<strong>on</strong>. As in the case of the BBC Japanese Unit,interpreters are expected to edit and to organise the informati<strong>on</strong>. It isalso important to avoid words which are not allowed to be used <strong>on</strong> air,such as terms which may be c<strong>on</strong>sidered discriminatory.Both <strong>on</strong> BS-1 and General TV, the interpreter’s name appears <strong>on</strong>screen. The programme is shown in the NHK news room where editorscan watch it and, in the event there is a problem with the interpreting,they can quickly point them out to interpreters.As for the standardisati<strong>on</strong> of certain translati<strong>on</strong> terms, there is at least<strong>on</strong>e set of guidelines for the General TV team. BS-1 channel provides abulletin board that interpreters can refer to for the translati<strong>on</strong> of newwords and <strong>on</strong> some occasi<strong>on</strong>s they hold study sessi<strong>on</strong>s, as happenedbefore the War in Iraq broke out.Comparis<strong>on</strong> between BBC Japanese Unitand NHK (General) TVInterpreters are employed in-house, full-time at the BBC Japanese Unit,while interpreters employed by NHK work <strong>on</strong> a freelance basis. Thismay be because interpreters at BBC World TV have to cover an entirenews bulletin, whereas interpreters at NHK have to interpret <strong>on</strong>ly partsof the news bulletin.Since job security is not guaranteed at NHK, interpreting fees arehigher than those paid by the BBC Japanese Unit. Working five days aweek, interpreters in NHK can earn roughly twice as much as interpretersin the BBC Japanese Unit working full-time.The work of the BBC Japanese Unit requires broadcasting interpretersto be all-rounders, while their counterparts at NHK are required to specialisein a certain area. This may be because of the different nature ofthe c<strong>on</strong>tents of the programmes broadcast by the channels for whichthey work. BBC World TV tends to follow a fixed pattern with news anddocumentary programmes broadcast every thirty minutes. Interpretershave to cover both types of programmes, although documentaries aretranslated and voiced-over beforehand. On BS-1 and NHK General TVnews programmes are not always run every hour, and they can be


Broadcasting Interpreting in Japan and the UK 147followed by sports or variety programmes, which do not necessarilyrequire broadcasting interpreters.Difference in the interpretati<strong>on</strong> policyand quality c<strong>on</strong>trolThe BBC Japanese Unit likes to stress the ‘broadcasting’ dimensi<strong>on</strong> ofthis professi<strong>on</strong>. In other words, it encourages interpreters to edit theinformati<strong>on</strong> in order to make the target text clearer to the viewers.Although this is also d<strong>on</strong>e by interpreters at NHK, more emphasis seemsto be put <strong>on</strong> the accuracy of the interpreting. This may be due to thefact that NHK is the biggest authority am<strong>on</strong>g TV stati<strong>on</strong>s in Japan andc<strong>on</strong>siders it <strong>on</strong>e of its duties to set high standards. However, this doesnot mean that BBC World TV sacrifices accuracy, as it has to competewith other TV channels such as CNN and NHK, and their interpretinghas to be more than ‘just accurate’.The greatest difference in the quality c<strong>on</strong>trol is whether interpretersare under c<strong>on</strong>stant m<strong>on</strong>itoring. It can be said that NHK has a verystrict system in this respect, while the BBC Japanese Unit has a moredemocratic, if not flexible, system. Some interpreters at the BBCJapanese Unit felt that the name of the interpreter should appear <strong>on</strong>the screen; the reas<strong>on</strong> for this being that it could provide an incentivefor interpreters to take more resp<strong>on</strong>sibility for their work and, c<strong>on</strong>sequently,boost the overall standard of interpreting. Having pers<strong>on</strong>allyworked in both organisati<strong>on</strong>s, I have found that adding the name <strong>on</strong>the screen does indeed have a great effect <strong>on</strong> the interpreters. However,this proposal was rejected at the BBC Japanese Unit because of financialc<strong>on</strong>siderati<strong>on</strong>s.C<strong>on</strong>clusi<strong>on</strong>Interpreting is a way of communicating and the effectiveness of thecommunicati<strong>on</strong> may be measured by judging how well the message isc<strong>on</strong>veyed. No matter how faithful the interpretati<strong>on</strong> is to the original, itmeans very little to the viewers if the final output is very hard to understand.In the case of broadcasting interpreting, it may be assumed thatviewers are not knowledgeable about all the subjects discussed. Therefore,it is not sufficient to ‘c<strong>on</strong>vert’ the Source <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> into the Target<str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> and hope that the viewer will understand the message behindthe facts. Interpreters have to understand the message in the Source<str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> and, if necessary, edit the informati<strong>on</strong> to make it easier for the


148 Tomoyuki Shibaharaviewers to understand. It may be said that any type of interpretingimplies editing informati<strong>on</strong> in <strong>on</strong>e way or another. However, in broadcastinginterpreting it is essential that interpreters actively edit the informati<strong>on</strong>to ensure that communicati<strong>on</strong> is as effective as possible.This editing leads, of course, to yet another questi<strong>on</strong> as to how free orfaithful an interpreting act should be.ReferencesBS Hōsō Tsūyaku Gurūpu (1998) Hōsō tsūyaku no sekai (The World of BroadcastInterpretati<strong>on</strong>). Tokyo: ALC.Mitsufuji, K. (2002) ‘Interpreting as audio-visual translati<strong>on</strong> (AVT)’. Interpretati<strong>on</strong>Studies 2: 87–98.


Part IIIAccessibility to the Media


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12Interlingual Subtitling forthe Deaf and Hard-of-HearingJosélia NevesIntroducti<strong>on</strong>C<strong>on</strong>siderable mileage has been covered since the early days, in the late1950s, when audiovisual translati<strong>on</strong> (AVT) began to be addressed asa subject in its own right. C<strong>on</strong>cerns have moved from the dubbing/subtitling debate to more specific domains such as the analysis of issuespertaining to discourse analysis, technical c<strong>on</strong>straints and audiencedesign. Comprehensive lists of audiovisual translati<strong>on</strong> typologies(Luyken et al., 1991; Gambier, 1996; Díaz Cintas, 2003) have reflectedthe gradual change in scope and are making space for newer forms oflanguage transfer within the audiovisual c<strong>on</strong>text. Indeed, the lines <strong>on</strong>cedrawn between language transfer types in the media are becoming lessand less visible. Principles and techniques are merging to give way tospecific offers, directed to specific audiences. This implies that the veryc<strong>on</strong>cept of ‘mass’ media is changing; technology is now allowing massesto be broken down into smaller groups and products are tailor-made tothe expectati<strong>on</strong>s and the needs of defined sub-groups. AVT willinevitably need to follow the general trend in the audiovisual marketand, rather than aiming to cater for a general audience, audiovisualtranslati<strong>on</strong> now finds itself focusing <strong>on</strong> the needs of smaller distinctaudiences in order to resp<strong>on</strong>d to them in a more adequate manner.This c<strong>on</strong>cern with making translati<strong>on</strong>s accessible to the intendedreceptor is not new. As a matter of fact, in his seminal work ‘Principles ofcorresp<strong>on</strong>dence’, Nida (1964) calls our attenti<strong>on</strong> to the fact that translati<strong>on</strong>sneed to be directed towards the different types of audiences. Thisscholar takes up the topic later (1991: 20) to specify that translators needto look at ‘the circumstances in which translati<strong>on</strong>s are to be used’. Eversince, academics and translators have g<strong>on</strong>e to great lengths to find151


152 Josélia Nevestheories and practices that reflect such c<strong>on</strong>cerns for their audiences.Kovač ič (1995: 376) questi<strong>on</strong>s the meaning of ‘recepti<strong>on</strong>’ in subtitling, tosee it as a multilayered c<strong>on</strong>struct in which factors such as ‘the socioculturalissue of n<strong>on</strong>-TV c<strong>on</strong>text influencing the process of receivingsubtitles’, ‘the attitudinal issue of viewers’ preference for subtitling overdubbing or vice versa’, ‘the perceptual issue of subtitle decoding (readingand viewing) strategies’, and ‘the psychological or cognitive issue of theimpact of cognitive envir<strong>on</strong>ment <strong>on</strong> understanding subtitles’ are ofparamount importance in audience design. Gambier (2003: 185) addsthat ‘these four aspects (socio-cultural, attitudinal, perceptual andpsychological/cognitive) could be used to inform a model for research<strong>on</strong> subtitle recepti<strong>on</strong>’. These very same aspects have proved to be ofutmost importance in the still <strong>on</strong>going study of SDH in Portugal; and itis with these in mind that I address a situati<strong>on</strong> that is changing just aswriting and reading are changing. In fact, technological and policychanges are offering new challenges to all those working within AVTand it would be interesting to see practices improving, by taking advantageof the new products for the benefit of audiences who should not beseen as minorities but as <strong>on</strong>e of the many parts of a fragmented reality.It is in this c<strong>on</strong>text of fragmentati<strong>on</strong> and plurality that a differenttype of subtitling soluti<strong>on</strong>, interlingual SDH, has emerged. A new c<strong>on</strong>ceptto most people, interlingual SDH is gradually gaining visibility,particularly in the DVD market where, further to intralingual subtitlesfor the hearing-impaired, a track is provided with interlingual subtitlesfor the hearing-impaired in a language other than that spoken in theoriginal soundtrack. The analysis of 200 randomly chosen DVDs, madeavailable in video rental shops in Portugal, showed that close to 38%c<strong>on</strong>tained intralingual SDH in English; 9% c<strong>on</strong>tained a track with interlingualSDH (15 titles had interlingual SDH in German; and 3 in Italian);and n<strong>on</strong>e of such titles c<strong>on</strong>tained SDH into Portuguese. Indeed, thesenumbers show that not many DVDs offer interlingual SDH, and thosethat do offer it, seem to do so by applying the c<strong>on</strong>venti<strong>on</strong>s of traditi<strong>on</strong>alsubtitling <strong>on</strong> DVD, which, I believe, do not cater for the needs of peoplewith hearing impairment.However unusual and scarce the offer, this ‘new product’, in its hybridmake-up, lends itself to reflecti<strong>on</strong> and allows <strong>on</strong>e to address problemsthat are shared with the more comm<strong>on</strong> types of subtitling: both interlingualsubtitling for hearers and intralingual SDH.In its complexity, interlingual SDH might be regarded as a perfectexample of transadaptati<strong>on</strong> (Gambier, 2003). On the <strong>on</strong>e hand, as happenswith traditi<strong>on</strong>al interlingual subtitling, <strong>on</strong>e is faced with an


Interlingual Subtitling for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing 153instance of translati<strong>on</strong> between two different languages. On the otherhand, as happens with intralingual subtitling, further to taking speechinto writing, there is a need for the adaptati<strong>on</strong> of multiple aural messages(speech, sound effects and music) so as to produce a visual (mostoften verbal) substitute for the informati<strong>on</strong> that cannot be picked upby people with hearing impairment. In my view, what most str<strong>on</strong>glydetermines the nature of this kind of subtitling is the need to ‘adapt’ aproduct to a target audience or addressee, which, according to Nord(2000: 196), is:... not a real pers<strong>on</strong> but a c<strong>on</strong>cept, an abstracti<strong>on</strong> gained from thesum total of our communicative experience, that is, from the vastnumber of characteristics of receivers we have observed in previouscommunicative occurrences that bear source analogy with the <strong>on</strong>ewe are c<strong>on</strong>fr<strong>on</strong>ted with in a particular situati<strong>on</strong>.In other words, if we are to c<strong>on</strong>sider subtitling as ‘translati<strong>on</strong>al acti<strong>on</strong>’(Vermeer, 1989: 221), serving a functi<strong>on</strong>al end, its skopos needs to beperfectly understood by all those involved in the commissi<strong>on</strong>. Quiteoften, the commissi<strong>on</strong>ers of SDH, and the subtitlers themselves, are notfully aware of the particular needs of their ‘clients’ for not much is givento them in terms of audience design or recepti<strong>on</strong> analysis. In fact, <strong>on</strong>lyby knowing the distinctive features of the target audience will peoplebe reas<strong>on</strong>ably aware of the possible effects of their work <strong>on</strong> the receptor.Only then can any<strong>on</strong>e aim at the utopian situati<strong>on</strong> where the ‘newviewer’s experience of the programme will differ as little as possiblefrom that of the original audience’ (Luyken et al., 1991: 29).No distincti<strong>on</strong> appears to be made between being deaf and being hardof-hearingin terms of intralingual subtitling. Both c<strong>on</strong>diti<strong>on</strong>s gohand-in-hand as if they were complementary or even interchangeable.Guidelines for intralingual subtitling assume that their subtitling soluti<strong>on</strong>scater for the needs of all alike and, in so doing, I would suggest thatthey are catering for the needs of neither. According to Nord (2000: 195):... the idea of the addressee the author has in mind, is a very important(if not the most important) criteri<strong>on</strong> guiding the writer’s stylistic andlinguistic decisi<strong>on</strong>s. If a text is to be functi<strong>on</strong>al for a certain pers<strong>on</strong> orgroup of pers<strong>on</strong>s, it has to be tailored to their needs and expectati<strong>on</strong>s.An ‘elastic’ text intended to fit all receivers and all sorts of purposes isbound to be equally unfit for any of them, and a specific purpose isbest achieved by a text specifically designed for this occasi<strong>on</strong>.


154 Josélia NevesIf subtitlers are to produce functi<strong>on</strong>ally adequate texts for theseparticular people, it seems fundamental that, however difficult it maybe, <strong>on</strong>e clarifies what is meant by ‘deaf’ and by ‘hard-of-hearing’, towhich I add another term: ‘Deaf’.Deaf vs. hard-of-hearing (HoH)Medically and clinically speaking, <strong>on</strong>e is c<strong>on</strong>sidered to be ‘deaf’ wheneverhearing loss is so severe that <strong>on</strong>e is unable to process linguistic informati<strong>on</strong>through hearing al<strong>on</strong>e. 1 On the other hand, <strong>on</strong>e is c<strong>on</strong>sidered tobe ‘hard-of-hearing’ when there is a hearing loss, whether permanent orfluctuating, which adversely affects an individual’s ability to detect anddecipher some sounds. In other words, despite the hearing loss, there isstill some residual hearing. Rodda and Grove (1987: 43) draw the linebetween audiological and social understanding of these terms:Defining hearing loss is a fairly simple matter of audiological assessment,although the interpretati<strong>on</strong> of the simple pure-t<strong>on</strong>e audiogramis more difficult. Defining deafness is exceedingly complex; it is asmuch, if not more, a sociological phenomen<strong>on</strong> as an audiologicaldefiniti<strong>on</strong>.This particular reference to the sociological dimensi<strong>on</strong> of deafness is ofutmost importance when it comes to knowing our addressees better. Infact, it leads us to a different c<strong>on</strong>cept, the c<strong>on</strong>cept of ‘Deaf’ which refersto the cultural heritage and community of deaf individuals, that is theDeaf culture or community. In this c<strong>on</strong>text, the term applies to thosewhose primary receptive channel of communicati<strong>on</strong> is visual. It is alsoin this c<strong>on</strong>text that we refer to the Deaf as a minority group, with alanguage of their own (nati<strong>on</strong>al sign language) and with an identitythat differs from that of hearers and that of the hard-of-hearing. Furtherto this, we are dealing with a group of people whose first language is notthat of hearers in their country. The (oral) nati<strong>on</strong>al language is, even forthose Deaf people who are Bi-Bi (bilingual and bicultural), a sec<strong>on</strong>dlanguage with all that this entails.With all this in mind, I will try to reformulate the traditi<strong>on</strong>allycan<strong>on</strong>ical ‘for the deaf and hard-of-hearing’ by readdressing hearingand deafness in terms of the two ends of a scale that spans between twodistinct poles: being a ‘hearer’ and being ‘Deaf’. Here too, I prefer toaddress deafness in sociological rather than audiological terms. To be‘hard-of-hearing’ means to be somewhere in the ‘grey z<strong>on</strong>e’, midway


Interlingual Subtitling for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing 155between two distinct realities. Usually, people who are hard-of-hearingidentify themselves with the hearing community. They have acquiredthe c<strong>on</strong>diti<strong>on</strong> through age or disease but they mainly partake of thesocial order of the community in which they were raised. Their mothert<strong>on</strong>gue is the spoken language of their nati<strong>on</strong>al group. They have anoti<strong>on</strong> of the sound systems which inhabit their envir<strong>on</strong>ment. Even incases of severe hearing loss, there is usually some residual hearing and,above all, sound is still stored in a fairly accessible memory bank, readyto be retrieved through effective stimuli. Being Deaf, <strong>on</strong> the other hand,means bel<strong>on</strong>ging to a world in which there is no sound, not necessarilymeaning that there is silence. Emmanuelle Laborit, a French Deafactress and author of an autobiography, The Cry of the Gull (1998), 2describes silence as ‘the absence of communicati<strong>on</strong>’, adding that ‘I’venever lived in complete silence: I have my own noises that areinexplicable to hearing people. I have my imaginati<strong>on</strong> and it has itsnoises that are inexplicable to hearing people’ (ibid.: 10). Further to this,Deaf people communicate am<strong>on</strong>g themselves using their natural language:sign language. Laborit (ibid.: 88) clarifies:That’s right. As far as I am c<strong>on</strong>cerned, sign language is my voice andmy eyes are my ears. Frankly, I d<strong>on</strong>’t feel deprived of anything. It’ssociety that makes me handicapped, that makes me dependent ofhearing people, that makes it impossible to c<strong>on</strong>tact a doctor directly,that makes me need to have c<strong>on</strong>versati<strong>on</strong>s translated, that makes mehave to ask for help to make a ph<strong>on</strong>e call or for capti<strong>on</strong>ing <strong>on</strong> TV(there are so few capti<strong>on</strong>ed programs). With more Minitels and capti<strong>on</strong>ing,I or rather we, the deaf, could have better access to culture.There wouldn’t be a handicap, a deadlock, a border between us.Up until fairly recently, Deaf children were brought up to ‘oralise’. Thismeant that they were taught to pr<strong>on</strong>ounce words and to make use of lipreading to understand speech. Communicating through sign languagewas not widely accepted and Deaf people were forced to use the nati<strong>on</strong>aloral language, regardless of the fact that their hearing and speech apparatuseswere not tuned to such a task. The ways in which Deaf childrenare educated determine their development and their percepti<strong>on</strong> of theworld. Their proficiency in the use of language will be of paramountimportance in their ability to decode messages. Needless to say, Deafpeople’s reading competence will necessarily be different from that ofhearers, and that of the hard-of-hearing as well. And subtitles are allabout reading.


156 Josélia NevesReading film ... in search of relevanceWatching a film is all about decoding informati<strong>on</strong> that is c<strong>on</strong>veyedthrough multiple channels (speech, sound, and image). Reading film isa complex process. It is problematic to say that full access to audiovisualtexts is ever attained, even in the case of people with no impairment. Inaccepting the dialectic interacti<strong>on</strong> between the producer and thereceiver in the c<strong>on</strong>structi<strong>on</strong> of meaning, and in the knowing that theaudiovisual text is a perceptive whole that does not equal the sum of itsparts, it is as obvious that decoding polysemiotic texts is a demandingtask for all.Speech is usually decoded through cognitive processing, and soundeffects and visual signs are often impressi<strong>on</strong>istic and c<strong>on</strong>current.Image, sound and speech are interrelated, quite often in a redundantmanner. Such redundancy makes access to the message easier and it is<strong>on</strong>ly when there is no direct access to <strong>on</strong>e of the elements, (either forsome sensory impairment or for lack of knowledge in the Source<str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g>) that subtitles gain importance. Interlingual subtitles usuallybridge the gap between the SL and the language of the target audience;intralingual subtitles replace more than speech, they are expected toaccount for paralinguistic informati<strong>on</strong> and for acoustic elements. Ifthey are to be fully integrated with the visual and auditory channels,subtitles must also guarantee a certain degree of redundancy in relati<strong>on</strong>to c<strong>on</strong>current informati<strong>on</strong>, fitting in with the whole in an integratedmanner, guaranteeing ease rather than adding to the load ofdecoding effort. Díaz Cintas (2003: 195) sheds light <strong>on</strong> the issue byreminding us that:Even for those with adequate command of the foreign language,every audiovisual product brings with it a range of additi<strong>on</strong>alobstacles to comprehensi<strong>on</strong>: dialectal and sociolectal variati<strong>on</strong>, lackof access to explanatory feedback, external and envir<strong>on</strong>mental soundlevel, overlapping speech, etc., making translati<strong>on</strong> of the productcrucial for the majority of users.This is so much more pertinent in the case of people with hearingimpairment. To a greater degree than in the case of people who do notunderstand the SL, to the Deaf and HoH subtitles are essential, ratherthan redundant. They are the visual face of sound. For the HoH theyare a stimulus and a memory exercise; for the Deaf, they are the <strong>on</strong>lymeans to gain access to aural informati<strong>on</strong>. However redundant, sound


Interlingual Subtitling for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing 157and image tell different stories. Watching images al<strong>on</strong>e will not allowus to grip the whole, just as listening without viewing will never allowfor a full understanding of the whole audiovisual c<strong>on</strong>struct. When subtitlingfor these specific audiences – the Deaf and the HoH –, it is up tothe subtitler to turn into written words both the dialogue that is heardand the sound effects that are <strong>on</strong>ly apprehended. In other words, subtitlersneed to be familiar with filmic codes so that they may capturethe different effects in order to transfer sensati<strong>on</strong>s and emoti<strong>on</strong>s intowords. Deciding what is relevant is a difficult task, for relevance isdetermined by the needs of the addressee. Ideally, as menti<strong>on</strong>ed before,subtitlers should aim at producing equivalent effects <strong>on</strong> their audienceas those produced in the target audience of the original. But, as Gutt(1991: 384) puts it:... this raises the questi<strong>on</strong> of what aspects of the original the receptorswould find relevant. Using his knowledge of the audience, thetranslator has to make assumpti<strong>on</strong>s about its cognitive envir<strong>on</strong>mentand about the potential relevance that any aspects of theinterpretati<strong>on</strong> would have in that cognitive envir<strong>on</strong>ment.Knowing the addressee’s cognitive envir<strong>on</strong>ment is relatively easy forsubtitlers who translate into their mother t<strong>on</strong>gue and for an audiencewho is believed to bel<strong>on</strong>g to their social group. But when it comes tosubtitling for the Deaf, hearing subtitlers rarely have true knowledge ofthe cognitive envir<strong>on</strong>ment of their target audience. This may be due tothe lack of specific training in the area, or even due to the fact thatsubtitlers are not aware that their ‘translati<strong>on</strong> acti<strong>on</strong>’ is specificallydirected towards addressees that do not share the subtitler’s language orculture. According to Gutt (ibid.: 386) and his approach to translati<strong>on</strong>and relevance:... whatever decisi<strong>on</strong> the translator reaches is based <strong>on</strong> his intuiti<strong>on</strong>sor beliefs about what is relevant to his audience. The translator doesnot have direct access to the cognitive envir<strong>on</strong>ment of his audience,he does not actually know what it is like – all he can have is someassumpti<strong>on</strong>s or beliefs about it. And, of course, as we have just seen,these assumpti<strong>on</strong>s may be wr<strong>on</strong>g. Thus our account of translati<strong>on</strong>does not predict that the principle of relevance makes all translati<strong>on</strong>efforts successful any more than it predicts that ostensive communicati<strong>on</strong>in general is successful. In fact, it predicts that failure of communicati<strong>on</strong>is likely to arise where the translator’s assumpti<strong>on</strong>s about


158 Josélia Nevesthe cognitive envir<strong>on</strong>ment of the receptor language audience areinaccurate.This al<strong>on</strong>e may account for many of the problems often found withsubtitles for the deaf and HoH, which I think should be rightfullynamed ‘subtitling for the Deaf and HoH’. What is relevant? How dothese two addressees (for they are indeed two different communities)perceive the world? How do they read film? And how do they readwords (subtitles)? How much informati<strong>on</strong> do they need for meaning tobe fully understood? When are words too much/too many? When arethey not enough? Only when subtitlers find answers to these questi<strong>on</strong>swill they be better equipped to determine their addressees’ profile.Only when that is d<strong>on</strong>e will they be able to decide <strong>on</strong> issues suchas how much and which informati<strong>on</strong> is to be presented in the text;how this informati<strong>on</strong> is to be structured; and which linguistic andstylistic devices are to be used to present the selected informati<strong>on</strong>, sothat the translati<strong>on</strong> may yield ‘the intended interpretati<strong>on</strong> withoutputting the audience to unnecessary processing effort’ (Gutt,1991: 377). Further, and keeping the audiences’ needs in mind, I wouldposit that subtitlers should questi<strong>on</strong> what supplement begs to be addedfor their benefit.In fact, when asked to comment up<strong>on</strong> the open subtitles offered <strong>on</strong>Portuguese televisi<strong>on</strong> programmes, the criticism that was most oftenmade by Deaf resp<strong>on</strong>dents was that subtitles were ‘difficult’. Deeperprobing led to the c<strong>on</strong>clusi<strong>on</strong> that the resp<strong>on</strong>dents were referring to thegreat effort they put into decoding (any) written text and particularlyinto the reading of subtitles. Not many people referred to the need forsupplementary informati<strong>on</strong> <strong>on</strong> sound effects. Most of the resp<strong>on</strong>dentshad little noti<strong>on</strong> that such informati<strong>on</strong> could be added at all, as at thetime of the survey in early 2003, there was no significant offer of intralingualsubtitles for the Deaf in Portugal. They demanded nothing,because they expected nothing, they did not know they could get anythingdifferent. But they voiced their frustrati<strong>on</strong> about not followingsubtitles: ‘subtitles come and go too rapidly’; ‘the vocabulary is too difficult’;‘the sentences d<strong>on</strong>’t make sense; they are too l<strong>on</strong>g and c<strong>on</strong>voluted’,were some of their comments.These reacti<strong>on</strong>s to comm<strong>on</strong>, open subtitles call for further reflecti<strong>on</strong><strong>on</strong> the different needs of the Deaf audience. One might questi<strong>on</strong> whatcould be d<strong>on</strong>e to attain the minimax effect (Kovač ič , 1994: 246) toimprove recepti<strong>on</strong> or to guarantee the viewer’s comfort. The answer isnot always straightforward. But further discussi<strong>on</strong> <strong>on</strong> how the Deaf


Interlingual Subtitling for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing 159read might shed some light <strong>on</strong> the issue. Laborit (1998: 120) speaks ofher reading experience in the first pers<strong>on</strong>:I was <strong>on</strong>e of the rare students in the Morvan program who read a lot.As a general rule, deaf people d<strong>on</strong>’t read very much. It’s hard forthem. They mix up the principles of oral and written expressi<strong>on</strong>.They c<strong>on</strong>sider written French a language for hearing people. In myopini<strong>on</strong>, though, reading is more or less image-based. It’s visual.If we can extrapolate, what seems important here is the fact that Deafpeople in general do not enjoy reading very much, and whereas the Deafhave this ‘visual’ reference base for the reading process, hearers complementit with an auditory reference system. Further to this, many have notdeveloped the tools that allow them to take a step forward from simpleword-processing to processing of a higher order such as inferencing andpredicting, (often d<strong>on</strong>e subc<strong>on</strong>sciously by the hearer), and planning,m<strong>on</strong>itoring, self-questi<strong>on</strong>ing and summarising (metacognitive techniquesthat are specific to highly skilled readers). Normative studies <strong>on</strong>the reading abilities of Deaf people (Di Francesca, 1972; C<strong>on</strong>rad, 1979;Savage et al., 1981; Quigley and Paul, 1984) substantiate this idea thatDeaf people attain very poor standards in reading. The results of the wellknown study c<strong>on</strong>ducted by the Office of Demographic Studies atGallaudet College, USA, in 1971, indicated that ‘although the readingskills of deaf students increase steadily from 6–20 years, they peak at areading level equivalent to Grade 4 in the United States school system(approximate chr<strong>on</strong>ological age 9 years)’ (Rodda and Grove, 1987: 165).It is widely accepted that subtitles are c<strong>on</strong>strained by time and spaceto the point of making language hostage to parameters that will dictateopti<strong>on</strong>s when writing subtitles. Such parameters vary in nature. Somepertain to the programme itself (genre, global rhythm, type of acti<strong>on</strong>);others to the nature of subtitles (spatial/temporal features; positi<strong>on</strong> ofsubtitles <strong>on</strong> the screen; pauses between subtitles; gap between dialogueand subtitles; density of informati<strong>on</strong>); and others to textual and paratextualfeatures (semantic/syntactic coherence; register; role of punctuati<strong>on</strong>).Further to these c<strong>on</strong>straints many more will derive fromfactors such as the medium (cinema, VHS/DVD, TV); country of transmissi<strong>on</strong>(AVT policies and practices); producers’, distributors’ and clients’demands; or, in the case of televisi<strong>on</strong> broadcasting, the time oftransmissi<strong>on</strong> and the expected audience.The problems that hearers find in reading subtitles will obviously beall the more acute for the Deaf viewer. Luyken et al. (1991) suggest that


160 Josélia Nevesaverage adult reading speeds hover around 150 to 180 words per minute.This number varies according to the manner in which the text is presented,to the quantity and complexity of the informati<strong>on</strong>, and to theacti<strong>on</strong> <strong>on</strong> the screen at any given moment (De Linde, 1995: 10). The6-sec<strong>on</strong>d rule has been widely accepted as rule of thumb for ‘readable’subtitles. On being questi<strong>on</strong>ed about the adequacy of such a ‘norm’ forthe specific needs of the Deaf, and with reference to studies <strong>on</strong> how theDeaf read subtitles, d’Ydewalle states that ‘the 6-sec<strong>on</strong>d rule should bereplaced by a 9-sec<strong>on</strong>d rule as they are typically slow readers’ (pers<strong>on</strong>alemail, 17 February 2003).Reducing the amount of informati<strong>on</strong> is not, in my opini<strong>on</strong>, the soluti<strong>on</strong>to this need for extra processing time. Reducti<strong>on</strong> is often achievedthrough the omissi<strong>on</strong> of informati<strong>on</strong> or by sacrificing interpers<strong>on</strong>almeaning. Redundancy is a feature of all natural languages and serves tomake messages better understood. Such redundancy – ph<strong>on</strong>etic, lexical,collocati<strong>on</strong>al or grammatical in nature – serves mainly to make up forpossible interference, or noise. In subtitles, losing redundancy for thesake of ec<strong>on</strong>omy is comm<strong>on</strong> practice, often resulting in a greater processingeffort <strong>on</strong> behalf of the reader/viewer. In fact, subtitling goes againstthe grain of most translati<strong>on</strong> practices in that rather than extending,subtitles usually seek to c<strong>on</strong>dense as much informati<strong>on</strong> as possible in aslittle space as possible. This often results in reducti<strong>on</strong> strategies that canmake decoding rather taxing, particularly for those who are readingsubtitles in their sec<strong>on</strong>d language.In the case of the Deaf reader/viewer, redundancy is of utmostimportance, for such elements will make reading less demanding. Thisobviously adds tensi<strong>on</strong> to the difficult equilibrium between ec<strong>on</strong>omyand expenditure. Ec<strong>on</strong>omy cannot be had if it is at the expense ofmeaning. The first priority, when subtitling for this particular audience,needs to be the c<strong>on</strong>veyance of meaning as fully as possible in as‘readable’ a manner as possible, and <strong>on</strong>ly then, in as c<strong>on</strong>densed a formas possible. Quite often, extra reading time might need to be given toallow for the reading of l<strong>on</strong>ger subtitles; however, if drawn out subtitlesmean the use of simpler structures or better known vocabulary, it maywell be worth sacrificing synchr<strong>on</strong>isati<strong>on</strong> and having subtitles appearinga little earlier or staying <strong>on</strong> a little l<strong>on</strong>ger, thus adding to readercomfort.Cohesive devices are also easily sacrificed in the search for ec<strong>on</strong>omy.When cohesi<strong>on</strong> is given by the image, subtitles may jeopardise cohesivedevices; the problem arises when cohesi<strong>on</strong> needs to be reinforcedthrough language for lack of visual redundancy. What is c<strong>on</strong>veyed


Interlingual Subtitling for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing 161through subtitles is never the message but a possible versi<strong>on</strong> of themessage and special care needs to be taken so that nothing canc<strong>on</strong>tradict that particular versi<strong>on</strong>. It is easy for the image to add,c<strong>on</strong>firm or even c<strong>on</strong>tradict the verbal message c<strong>on</strong>veyed. For Deafaudiences, who depend <strong>on</strong> visual cues to assist language decoding,special care needs to be taken so that subtitles may be truly complementaryand so be seen as part of the whole, never as an obtrusive, oreven cumbersome, add-<strong>on</strong>.<str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> has its own means of guaranteeing internal and externalredundancy. Speech naturally involves linguistic, paralinguistic andn<strong>on</strong>-linguistic signs. Paralinguistic signs cannot be interpreted exceptin relati<strong>on</strong> to the language they are accompanying. On the other hand,n<strong>on</strong>-linguistic signs are interpretable and can be produced without theco-existence of language. N<strong>on</strong>-linguistic signs or natural signs such asfacial expressi<strong>on</strong>s, postural and proxemic signs, gestures, and even somelinguistic features ‘are likely to be the most cross-culturally interpretable’(Cruse, 2000: 8) but also the source of many misunderstandings incross-cultural communicati<strong>on</strong>. Such kinetic elements are no greater aproblem to the Deaf than they are to hearers.However, paralinguistic signs are more often hidden from the Deafpers<strong>on</strong>, for they are <strong>on</strong>ly sensed in the t<strong>on</strong>e or colour of voice in eachspeech act. There are times when such paralinguistic signs actuallyalter the meaning of words; and more often than not, punctuati<strong>on</strong>cannot translate the full reach of such signs. Whenever such signshave informative value, there is a need for explicitati<strong>on</strong>, <strong>on</strong>e of the‘universals of translati<strong>on</strong>’ according to authors like Toury (1980: 60).In subtitling for the Deaf, explicitati<strong>on</strong> is a fundamental process tocompensate for the aural elements that go missing. In the case of paralinguisticinformati<strong>on</strong>, there might even be a need to spell out whatcan <strong>on</strong>ly be perceived in the way words are spoken. Sound effects(such as ‘ph<strong>on</strong>e rings’) are often straightforward to describe, butexpressing what comes with the t<strong>on</strong>e of voice (ir<strong>on</strong>y, sadness, irritati<strong>on</strong>)can be difficult. In feature films and series, paralinguistic featuresare most frequently found in moments when the story is beingpushed forward by emoti<strong>on</strong>al interplay or when characters revealsomething in themselves that goes against their words. This couldmean that adding extra informati<strong>on</strong> might alter the intended pace orcut down <strong>on</strong> the tensi<strong>on</strong>. Finding adequate soluti<strong>on</strong>s for the problemis a challenge for those working in the area. The use of smileys to c<strong>on</strong>veysuch informati<strong>on</strong> has proved effective thanks to the ec<strong>on</strong>omy oftheir pictorial nature. Deaf TV viewers in Portugal have reacted most


162 Josélia Nevesfavourably to the introducti<strong>on</strong> of comm<strong>on</strong>ly used smileys in the subtitlingof a primetime soap opera. 3 Even though the introducti<strong>on</strong> ofinformati<strong>on</strong> about paralinguistic signs may be c<strong>on</strong>sidered redundantfor hearers, it is fundamental for the Deaf if they are to get a betterpercepti<strong>on</strong> of the expressiveness of the intersemiotic whole. A studyc<strong>on</strong>ducted by Gielen and d’Ydewalle (1992: 257) c<strong>on</strong>cludes that ‘redundancyof informati<strong>on</strong> facilitates the processing of subtitles’. If Deafviewers are to gain better access to audiovisual texts, such redundantcomp<strong>on</strong>ents of speech will need to be made explicit, and then too, beredundant in terms of the subtitles that c<strong>on</strong>vey speech utterances.Such redundancy will be a fundamental element to boost the limitedshort-term working memory characteristic of Deaf individuals (Quigleyand Paul, 1984).Short-term working memory is of crucial importance in the readingprocess for it allows the reader to understand complex sentences andlinked ideas. Coherence and cohesi<strong>on</strong> is <strong>on</strong>ly possible if the reader cankeep different fracti<strong>on</strong>s of informati<strong>on</strong> active so that, <strong>on</strong>ce processedtogether, meaning might be achieved. This does not mean that Deaf peopleare cognitively impaired and unable to process informati<strong>on</strong> efficiently;what this means is that they make use of other strategies (str<strong>on</strong>gvisual memory) to process informati<strong>on</strong>. As Rodda and Grove (1987: 223)put it:Hearing impairment does not incapacitate their central comprehensi<strong>on</strong>processes. Provided deaf readers can grasp the semantic c<strong>on</strong>textof a message, they seem to be able to exploit the syntactical redundancyof natural language and to comprehend its c<strong>on</strong>tents with surprisingdegree of efficiency.Deaf viewers will benefit from subtitles that are syntactically andsemantically structured in ways that will facilitate reading. L<strong>on</strong>g complexsentences will obviously be more demanding <strong>on</strong> their short-termworking memory. Short direct structures, with phrasal breaks (e.g.avoiding the separati<strong>on</strong> <strong>on</strong>to different lines of the article from thenoun), will ease comprehensi<strong>on</strong> and make the reading of subtitles farmore profitable. This does not mean that Deaf people cannot copewith complex vocabulary. In fact, subtitles may be seen as a usefulmeans to improve the reading skills of Deaf viewers, as well as anopportunity to increment both their active and passive vocabulary.However, difficult vocabulary should <strong>on</strong>ly be used to some specificpurpose, and <strong>on</strong>ly when there is enough available time for theprocessing of meaning. In fact, this principle could apply to all sorts


Interlingual Subtitling for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing 163of subtitling for, as Gutt (1991: 380) reminds us when referring totranslati<strong>on</strong> in general:... rare lexical forms [ ... ] are stored in less accessible places in memory.Hence such unusual forms require more processing effort, andgiven that the communicator would have had available a perfectlyordinary alternative, [ ... ] the audience will rightly expect c<strong>on</strong>textualeffects, special pay-off, from the use of this more costly form.In the case of intralingual subtitling, where verbatim transcripti<strong>on</strong> ofspeech is frequently sought, pruning text is particularly difficult. Ininterlingual subtitling, functi<strong>on</strong>al shifts are less exposed and, therefore,it may be easier to adapt text to the needs of the Deaf addressee. In thecase of intralingual subtitles, editing might be understood as not givingthe Deaf all that is given to hearers. Writing every single word <strong>on</strong> thescreen, transcribing every utterance, is not, in my view, serving theneeds of this particular audience. Not having enough time to read subtitlesand to process informati<strong>on</strong>; not understanding the meaning of certainwords; or not being able to follow the flow of speech, cannot beunderstood as being given equal opportunities. Paraphrasing, deletingsuperfluous informati<strong>on</strong>, introducing explanatory notes, making explicitthe implicit, may mean achieving functi<strong>on</strong>al relevance for the benefit ofthe target audience. Borrowing Reiss’ terminology (1971: 161), in SDH weneed to make ‘intenti<strong>on</strong>al changes’ for our readers are definitely notthose intended for the original text. In order to gain accessibility forthose who cannot hear, we need to strive for ‘adequacy of the TL reverbalisati<strong>on</strong>in accordance with the “foreign functi<strong>on</strong>” ’ (ibid.) that is beingaimed at. Gutt (1991: 377) also sheds light <strong>on</strong> this issue:Thus if we ask in what respects the intended interpretati<strong>on</strong> of thetranslati<strong>on</strong> should resemble the original, the answer is: in respectsthat make it adequately relevant to the audience – that is, that offeradequate c<strong>on</strong>textual effects; if we ask how the translati<strong>on</strong> should beexpressed, the answer is: it should be expressed in such a mannerthat it yields the intended interpretati<strong>on</strong> without putting the audienceto unnecessary processing effort.Making sound visibleAs menti<strong>on</strong>ed before, audiovisual texts are multimodal in their makingand sound plays an important role in their narrative force. Most of the


164 Josélia Nevestime, hearers make very little effort to process sound in a film. Unlikespeech, that requires cognitive effort to be decoded, sound effects andinstrumental music c<strong>on</strong>vey meanings in a discreet way. According toM<strong>on</strong>aco (1981: 179), ‘we ‘read’ images by directing our attenti<strong>on</strong>; we d<strong>on</strong>ot read sound, at least not in the same c<strong>on</strong>scious way. Sound is not<strong>on</strong>ly omnipresent but omnidirecti<strong>on</strong>al. Because it is so pervasive, wetend to discount it’.Furthermore, in c<strong>on</strong>trast to speech and to paralinguistic features pertainingto oral expressi<strong>on</strong>, sound and music need no translati<strong>on</strong>. Ahearer will quite easily pick up the suggested meanings transmittedthrough sound effects that often underline images, sustaining themand guaranteeing c<strong>on</strong>tinuity and c<strong>on</strong>nectivity. Processing music issomewhat more difficult. However, hearing viewers have grown tounderstand filmic c<strong>on</strong>venti<strong>on</strong>s and have come to associate musicaltypes with certain genres and with particular filmic effects. Quite often,film music has been taken from its intersemiotic c<strong>on</strong>text to grow in theear of radio listeners, and to gain a life of its own. Yet, while associatedto image, its meaning is str<strong>on</strong>gly felt even if its existence is subtle andlittle more than a suggesti<strong>on</strong>. In fact, ‘it makes no difference whetherwe are dealing with speech, music, or envir<strong>on</strong>mental sound: all threeare at times variously parallel or counterpuntal, actual or commentative,synchr<strong>on</strong>ous or asynchr<strong>on</strong>ous’ (M<strong>on</strong>aco, 1981: 182) and it is inthis interplay that filmic meaning grows bey<strong>on</strong>d the images and thewhole becomes artistically expressive.One might questi<strong>on</strong> the pertinence of describing music and soundeffects to people who have never been able to hear. There is no questi<strong>on</strong>that to the HoH, a comment <strong>on</strong> sound effects or music may activate theaural memory and may even guide viewers to c<strong>on</strong>sciously direct theirresidual hearing capacities towards relevant c<strong>on</strong>tent. Those who havelost their hearing later <strong>on</strong> in life will recall previous experiences andmay find cultural, social and historical references in certain melodies orrhythms. But even those who were born deaf can, never having heard,make those very same c<strong>on</strong>necti<strong>on</strong>s creating their own references, foreven though they cannot hear, they live in a world of sound, whichthey perceive through vibrati<strong>on</strong>s and they learn to appreciate throughother sources (literature, televisi<strong>on</strong>, etc.). Once again, a Deaf pers<strong>on</strong>’stestim<strong>on</strong>y may clarify doubts (Laborit, 1998: 17):I was lucky to have music when I was a child. Some parents of deafchildren think it’s pointless, so they deprive their children of music.[ ... ] I love it. I feel its vibrati<strong>on</strong>s. [ ... ] I feel with my feet, or my whole


Interlingual Subtitling for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing 165body if I’m stretched out <strong>on</strong> the floor. And I can imagine the sounds.I’ve always imagined them. I perceive music through my body, withmy bare feet <strong>on</strong> the floor, latching <strong>on</strong>to the vibrati<strong>on</strong>s. The piano,electric guitar, African drums, percussi<strong>on</strong> instruments, all havecolors and I sway al<strong>on</strong>g with them. That’s how I see it, in color. [ ... ]Music is a rainbow of vibrant colors. It’s language bey<strong>on</strong>d words. It’suniversal. The most beautiful form of art that exists. It’s capable ofmaking the human body physically vibrate.I firmly believe that every effort should be made to c<strong>on</strong>vey sound andmusic visually. Present subtitling systems do not allow for much morethan alphabetical characters in the form of subtitles. Many teletext systemsdo not allow for the use of symbols, such as , and a # is often usedto indicate the presence of music. New strategies are already found in thesubtitling of DVDs, where special care is given to identifying musicthrough the use of symbols; yet the same cannot be said for televisi<strong>on</strong> for,at present, technical c<strong>on</strong>diti<strong>on</strong>s are still hindering progress in this domain.I believe that with the advent of digital technology, it will be possible toc<strong>on</strong>vey music visually, thus adding more informati<strong>on</strong> for those who cannothear. Until that day comes, subtitlers will need to be sensitive to soundand music to be able to decode their inherent messages and to find adequateand expressive soluti<strong>on</strong>s to c<strong>on</strong>vey such sensati<strong>on</strong>s verbally. Eventhough it may be difficult to find words that fully c<strong>on</strong>vey the expressiveforce of sound and music, the translator (subtitler) should try to producean analogous aesthetic effect (Nord, 1996: 83), as well as to reproduce theexpressive c<strong>on</strong>tent of the original in the case of thematic music.C<strong>on</strong>clusi<strong>on</strong>To c<strong>on</strong>clude, it seems appropriate to address the issue of SDH anew inorder to bring to the fore comm<strong>on</strong>ly held and often err<strong>on</strong>eous noti<strong>on</strong>sabout SDH: that SDH is intralingual subtitling; that the Deaf and HoHare <strong>on</strong>e and the same group; and that these specially c<strong>on</strong>ceived subtitlesare for hearing impaired viewers al<strong>on</strong>e.In the first case, and until fairly recently, this might have been a fact.Indeed, and particularly <strong>on</strong> televisi<strong>on</strong>, SDH has mainly been the intralingualtranspositi<strong>on</strong> of speech from the oral to the written mode.However, interlingual SDH might now be found <strong>on</strong> DVD, even if as yet<strong>on</strong>ly in a small number of films and languages. This may lead us tobelieve that comm<strong>on</strong> interlingual subtitles are sufficient and are usedby hearers and hearing-impaired alike. The latter assumpti<strong>on</strong> may be


166 Josélia Nevestrue, but the former can <strong>on</strong>ly be a misc<strong>on</strong>cepti<strong>on</strong>, for Deaf viewers willnot <strong>on</strong>ly be reading subtitles in a sec<strong>on</strong>d language but will be relatingthem to yet a third lingua-culture, that of the original audiovisual text.It would appear obvious that the future of interlingual subtitling for thedeaf and HoH lies ahead for, as Díaz Cintas (2003: 200) puts it:... failing to account for this type of subtitling would imply a tacitacceptance of the fallacy that the deaf and hard of hearing <strong>on</strong>lywatch programmes originally produced in their mother t<strong>on</strong>gue,when there is no doubt that they also watch programmes originatingin other languages and cultures. This in turn would mean that theyare forced to use the same interlingual subtitles as hearing people,when those subtitles are, to all intents and purposes, inappropriatefor their needs.This takes us to the sec<strong>on</strong>d noti<strong>on</strong> that, regardless of the languages thatmight be at stake, SDH serves the needs of Deaf and hard-of-hearingalike. As menti<strong>on</strong>ed above, it is misleading to c<strong>on</strong>sider the needs of eachof these groups similar in nature. It goes without saying that most of thetime neither of the two gets its due in what is presently offered. It wouldbe excellent to be able to arrive at a compromise that would not be tootaxing to either of the two. However, in an ideal world, these two audiencesshould be given different subtitles. Whilst that ideal situati<strong>on</strong> isnot yet with us, it seems <strong>on</strong>ly natural to me that <strong>on</strong>e should try toaddress those at the far end of the spectrum, the Deaf, in the knowledgethat the hard-of-hearing will be the <strong>on</strong>es left to choose between two notvery adequate soluti<strong>on</strong>s. If they choose to follow SDH they will obviouslyneed to make light of the extra care that has been put into themaking of such subtitles without succumbing to the feeling of beingpatr<strong>on</strong>ised. In fact, such subtitles were made with a different audiencein mind and should, therefore, be read as such.As for the last noti<strong>on</strong>, that SDH can <strong>on</strong>ly be of help to Deaf and HoHviewers, this could not be any falser. Indeed, the extra informati<strong>on</strong>about sound in intralingual SDH and the care with reading time andreading ease, might be felt as quite unnecessary for the majority of people,but it might be of use to those who, for some reas<strong>on</strong>, do not masterthe target language. In this group I would include poor readers; n<strong>on</strong>nativespeakers trying to learn the language of the subtitles; and a vastnumber of people with cognitive impairment.At this point in time, <strong>on</strong>ly DVD can offer differentiated soluti<strong>on</strong>sin up to 32 available tracks, but with televisi<strong>on</strong> going digital and


Interlingual Subtitling for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing 167interactive, audiences will be further fragmented and will be lookingfor a translati<strong>on</strong> soluti<strong>on</strong> that best suits their specific needs. This willmean that subtitles will be viewed <strong>on</strong> call, and open subtitling, as wenow know it, will no l<strong>on</strong>ger make sense in its undifferentiated existence.The opti<strong>on</strong> of a translati<strong>on</strong> soluti<strong>on</strong> will obviously require thatmultiple soluti<strong>on</strong>s (dubbing, interlingual subtitles, intralingual andinterlingual SDH, adapted subtitling) be produced for each audiovisualprogramme. The questi<strong>on</strong> of financial feasibility and cost effectivenessis clearly pertinent. <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> transfer of any kind costs m<strong>on</strong>ey and itis difficult to foresee whether providers of audiovisual materials will bewilling to pay for various versi<strong>on</strong>s of the same programme to suit allneeds and preferences.In short, the special care that goes into making SDH easily read wouldmost certainly be welcome in all sorts of subtitling soluti<strong>on</strong>s and particularlyhelpful to many viewers who, not being hearing-impaired, areless proficient readers. The extra informati<strong>on</strong> about sound, music andparalinguistic features, quite unnecessary features for hearing viewers,might be seen to raise aesthetic awareness and to those who are competentaudiovisual c<strong>on</strong>sumers provide an additi<strong>on</strong>al informati<strong>on</strong> channel.I truly believe that, rather than SDH, subtitles for the Deaf (SD) areessential for this particular group, helpful to the HoH, and not necessarilydisruptive or annoying to many hearers, provided that they are madewith sensitivity, sensibility and coherence.Notes1. See Hands & Voices (www.handsandvoices.org/resource_guide/19_definiti<strong>on</strong>s.html)for detailed definiti<strong>on</strong>s.2. The original Le Cri de la mouette was published in 1994 and has since beentranslated into a great number of languages. It is widely accepted by the Deafcommunity as being <strong>on</strong>e of the most illustrative accounts of the difficultiesthe Deaf pers<strong>on</strong> finds in trying to be part of the hearing society.3. In the knowledge that the Deaf use smileys in their SMS messages, a set ofeight smileys were used in Portuguese subtitles to depict emoti<strong>on</strong>s and t<strong>on</strong>eof voice. After being tested <strong>on</strong> cards with a restricted group of Deaf people,they were introduced in the subtitling of the Brazilian soap MulheresApaix<strong>on</strong>adas, aired daily in Portugal by SIC, a commercial channel whichintroduced SDH, via teletext, for the first time <strong>on</strong> 6 September 2004.:( sad:) happy:-/ angry:-S surprised:-& c<strong>on</strong>fused (drunk, dizzy, ...)


168 Josélia Neves;-) ir<strong>on</strong>y /sec<strong>on</strong>d meanings;-( acting out to be sad or angry:-O screaming:-º speaking softlyReferencesC<strong>on</strong>rad, R. (1979) The Deaf School Child. L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong>: Harper & Row.Cruse, A. (2000) Meaning in <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g>. An Introducti<strong>on</strong> to Semantics and Pragmatics.Oxford: Oxford University Press.De Linde, Z. (1995) ‘ “Read my lips” Subtitling principles, practices and problems’.Perspectives: Studies in Translatology 3(1): 9–20.Díaz Cintas, J. (2003) ‘<str<strong>on</strong>g>Audiovisual</str<strong>on</strong>g> <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> in the third millennium’. InG. Anderman and M. Rogers (eds) <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> Today. Trends and Perspectives(pp.192–204). Cleved<strong>on</strong>: Multilingual Matters.Di Francesca, S. (1972) Academic Achievement Test Results of a Nati<strong>on</strong>al TestingProgram for Hearing Impaired Students. Series D, 9. Washingt<strong>on</strong>, DC: Office ofDemographic Studies, Gallaudet College.Gambier, Y. (1996) ‘Introducti<strong>on</strong>: la traducti<strong>on</strong> audiovisuelle un genrenouveau?’. In Y. Gambier (ed.) Les transferts linguistiques dans les médias audiovisuels(pp. 7–12). Villeneuve d’Ascq (Nord): Presses Universitaires duSpetentri<strong>on</strong>.Gambier, Y. (2003) ‘Screen transadaptati<strong>on</strong>: an overview’. Génesis – Revistade Tradução e Interpretação do ISAI 3: 25–34.Gielen, I. and d’Ydewalle, G. (1992) ‘How do we watch subtitled televisi<strong>on</strong> programmes?’.In A. Demetri<strong>on</strong>, A. Efklides, E. G<strong>on</strong>ida, and M. Vakali (eds)Psychological Research in Greece: Vol. 1 Development, Learning and Instructi<strong>on</strong>(pp. 247–59). Thessal<strong>on</strong>ica: Arestotelian University Press.Gutt, E.A. (1991) ‘<str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> as interlingual interpretive use’. In L. Venuti (ed.)(2000) The <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> Studies Reader (pp. 376–96). L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong> and New York:Routledge.Kovač ič , I. (1994) ‘Relevance as a factor in subtitling reducti<strong>on</strong>s’. In C. Dollerupand A. Lindegaard (eds) Teaching <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> and Interpreting 2 (pp. 245–51).Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Kovač ič , I. (1995) ‘Recepti<strong>on</strong> of subtitles. The n<strong>on</strong>-existent ideal viewer’.Translatio, Nouvelles de la FIT-FIT Newsletter XIV(3–4): 376–83.Laborit, E. (1993) Le Cri de la mouette. Paris: Robert Laff<strong>on</strong>t.Laborit, E. (1998) The Cry of the Gull. Washingt<strong>on</strong>: Gallaudet University Press.Luyken, G.M., Herbst, T., Langham-Brown, J., Reid, H. and Spinhof, H. (1991)Overcoming <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> Barriers in Televisi<strong>on</strong>: Dubbing and Subtitling for the EuropeanAudience. Manchester: European Institute for the Media.M<strong>on</strong>aco, J. (1981) How to Read a Film. The Art, Technology, <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g>, History, andTheory of Film and Media. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.Nida, E. (1964) ‘Principles of corresp<strong>on</strong>dence’. In L. Venuti (ed.) (2000) The<str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> Studies Reader (pp. 126–40). L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong> and New York: Routledge.Nida, E. (1991) ‘Theories of translati<strong>on</strong>’. TTR – Traducti<strong>on</strong>, Terminologie, Rédacti<strong>on</strong>.Studies in the Text and its Transformati<strong>on</strong>s 4 (1): 19–32.


Interlingual Subtitling for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing 169Nord, C. (1996) ‘Text type and translati<strong>on</strong> method, an objective approach totranslati<strong>on</strong> criticism: Review of Katharina Reiss. Möglichkeiten an Grenzen derÜbersetzungskritik’. The Translator 2(1): 81–8.Nord, C. (2000) ‘What do we know about the target-text receiver?’. In A. Beeby,D. Ensinger and M. Presas (eds) Investigating <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> (pp. 195–212).Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Quigley, S. and Paul, P.V. (1984) <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> and Deafness. California: College-HillPress.Reiss, K. (1971) ‘Type, kind and individuality of text. Decisi<strong>on</strong> making in translati<strong>on</strong>’.In L. Venuti (ed.) (2000) The <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> Studies Reader (pp. 160–71).L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong> and New York: Routledge.Rodda, M. and Grove, C. (1987) <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g>, Cogniti<strong>on</strong> and Deafness. L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong>:Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Savage, R.D., Evans, L. and Savage, J.F. (1981) Psychology and Communicati<strong>on</strong> inDeaf Children. Tor<strong>on</strong>to: Grune & Stratt<strong>on</strong>.Toury, G. (1980) In Search of a Theory of <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g>. Tel Aviv: The Porter Institutefor Poetics and Semiotics.Vermeer, H.J. (1989) ‘Skopos and commissi<strong>on</strong> in translati<strong>on</strong>al acti<strong>on</strong>’. InL. Venuti (ed.) (2000) The <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> Studies Reader (pp. 221–32). L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong> andNew York: Routledge.


13Audio Descripti<strong>on</strong> in theTheatre and the Visual Arts:Images into WordsAndrew HollandIntroducti<strong>on</strong>The UK’s Royal Nati<strong>on</strong>al Institute of the Blind (RNIB) has defined audiodescripti<strong>on</strong> (AD) as ‘an enabling service for blind and partially sightedaudiences [ ... ] describing clearly, vividly and succinctly what is happening<strong>on</strong> screen or theatre stage in the silent intervals between programmecommentary or dialogue – in order to c<strong>on</strong>vey the principal visual elementsof a producti<strong>on</strong>’. 1 Essentially, it is an attempt to make accessible awork of theatre – or any other audiovisual producti<strong>on</strong> – for an audiencewho are either blind or have partial sight by giving in a verbal form someof the informati<strong>on</strong> which a sighted pers<strong>on</strong> can easily access.In broad terms, a descripti<strong>on</strong> in the theatre c<strong>on</strong>sists of two mainelements. The first is a descripti<strong>on</strong> of the set and costumes – the designor style of the producti<strong>on</strong>. This informati<strong>on</strong> is usually given before aperformance, and may be pre-recorded. The sec<strong>on</strong>d element is a descripti<strong>on</strong>of the acti<strong>on</strong> which takes place during the play. In theatre, this hasto be given live in order to accommodate changes in pace which are anintegral part of live performance. Audience members are present in theauditorium and wear a headset (which can use infrared or radio technology)to listen to the descripti<strong>on</strong>. This experience is very similar tothe way in which you might listen to simultaneous interpreting.The crucial skill for the describer here is to time the descripti<strong>on</strong> sothat it does not interfere with the words being spoken by the actorsfrom the stage. For films and recorded TV programmes, of course, thedescripti<strong>on</strong> of acti<strong>on</strong> is timed and recorded to run al<strong>on</strong>gside thesoundtrack.170


Audio Descripti<strong>on</strong> in Theatre and Visual Arts 171The process of audio describing – some examplesThe simple definiti<strong>on</strong> of descripti<strong>on</strong> as ‘an enabling service’ whichc<strong>on</strong>centrates <strong>on</strong> the ‘principal visual elements’ of a play, film, or workof art, does not get us very far in understanding how to describe something.It leaves a number of questi<strong>on</strong>s unanswered. In theatre we mightask the questi<strong>on</strong>: What makes a character? Is describing what they wearand what they look like enough? In the visual arts the same questi<strong>on</strong>pertains: By describing the physical characteristics of a work of art, arewe really describing the art? It was Braque (1952) who noted: ‘One canexplain everything about a painting except the bit that matters’. 2Before going into these questi<strong>on</strong>s, I want to c<strong>on</strong>sider three examplesof descripti<strong>on</strong>, all of which have something in comm<strong>on</strong>. The first isfrom Act 1, Scene V of Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare, andoccurs when Olivia quizzes her steward Malvolio about a young manat her gate:‘What kind of man is he?’ Olivia asks.‘Why, of mankind’, comes Malvolio’s reply.‘What manner of man?’‘Of very ill manner; he’ll speak with you, will you or no.’‘Of what pers<strong>on</strong>age and years is he?’ She enquires.‘Not yet old enough for a man, nor young enough for a boy; as asquash is before ‘tis a peascod, or a codling when ‘tis almost an apple.‘Tis with him in standing water between boy and man. He is verywell favoured, and he speaks very shrewishly. One would think hismother’s milk were scarce out of him.’The other two examples are from the book The Man Who Mistook HisWife For A Hat, by Oliver Sacks. 3 When examining a patient whoappeared to have problems with his sight, Dr Sacks handed him anobject to identify. The patient described it as (1985:13): ‘A c<strong>on</strong>tinuoussurface [ ... ] infolded <strong>on</strong> itself. It appears to have [ ... ] five outpouchings,if this is the word [ ... ] A c<strong>on</strong>tainer of some sort ? [ ... ] It could be achange-purse for coins of five sizes’. A sec<strong>on</strong>d object was described likethis: ‘About six inches in length [ ... ] A c<strong>on</strong>voluted red form with a lineargreen attachment [ ... ] It lacks the simple symmetry of the Plat<strong>on</strong>icsolids, although it may have a higher symmetry of its own’.What do these three extracts have in comm<strong>on</strong>? They certainly give usdetails about what or who they are describing, but do they clarify orc<strong>on</strong>fuse?


172 Andrew HollandIn the first example, Malvolio is being deliberately obtuse, and hisanswer tells us more about him than it tells us of the ‘young man at thegate’. We could perhaps make a stab at his age, but his height? Build?Hair colour? Skin colour? Looks? Clothes? Demeanour? Social standing?N<strong>on</strong>e of these details are divulged. In the other two examples the descripti<strong>on</strong>sare certainly detailed and closely observed, but do they communicateanything at all to a third party? How much easier would it havebeen for us to understand, if we knew that the ‘c<strong>on</strong>tinuous surface,infolded <strong>on</strong> itself, with its five outpouchings’ was, in fact, a glove. Sacks(1985: 9) tells us about his patient that he could <strong>on</strong>ly see parts, not thewhole picture: ‘His eyes would dart from <strong>on</strong>e thing to another, pickingup tiny features, individual features [ ... ] A striking brightness, a colour,a shape would arrest his attenti<strong>on</strong> and elicit comment – but in no casedid he get the scene-as-a-whole’. In c<strong>on</strong>trast, an audio descripti<strong>on</strong> aimsto provide the details that allow the picture as a whole to be formed.Working for the theatreVocaleyes (www.vocaleyes.co.uk) was set up in 1998, following tworesearch projects I undertook for the Arts Council of England. It wasc<strong>on</strong>stituted as a charity to provide professi<strong>on</strong>al audio descripti<strong>on</strong> servicesto theatres and to increase the provisi<strong>on</strong> and quality of access tovisually impaired people. At the time, although a number of theatresprovided audio descripti<strong>on</strong>, this was mostly d<strong>on</strong>e <strong>on</strong> a volunteer basis,and the describers were resident in theatres.Initially Vocaleyes served the needs of touring theatre. The rati<strong>on</strong>alebehind this was that with the volunteer describers being resident intheatres, a producti<strong>on</strong> which toured to, say, ten of these theatres wouldbe described by ten different sets of describers. At each theatre thedescribers would have to write the descripti<strong>on</strong> from new and somewould have very little time to prepare. Some descripti<strong>on</strong>s would be goodand some not so good. Some describers would have had training, otherswould be self-taught.The language used would be different; the acti<strong>on</strong>s described would bedifferent too; the ability of the describer to time their script and topresent it in sympathy with the mood of the play would vary from placeto place. No other part of the artistic output would be subject to theseregi<strong>on</strong>al variati<strong>on</strong>s. The result from the point of view of access is that ablind or partially sighted pers<strong>on</strong> attending each of the ten theatres <strong>on</strong>this tour would experience ten totally different producti<strong>on</strong>s, whereastheir sighted compani<strong>on</strong> would experience the same producti<strong>on</strong> ten


Audio Descripti<strong>on</strong> in Theatre and Visual Arts 173times. Access, then, is not neutral. It changes the entire nature of theartistic experience.Vocaleyes aimed to create a high quality professi<strong>on</strong>al service byplacing the describers with the touring producti<strong>on</strong> rather than with thereceiving theatre. Having the describers move around the country withthe producti<strong>on</strong> meant that the descripti<strong>on</strong> could remain c<strong>on</strong>sistentfrom theatre to theatre, and even develop as the describers becamemore and more familiar with the producti<strong>on</strong>, and as the producti<strong>on</strong>itself developed over the length of a tour. Placing the describer nearerthe creative process, it also allowed describers to become familiar withcertain directors and the specific challenges presented by their work,making them more able to describe – in Dr Sacks’ phrase – ‘the pictureas a whole’.ImpartialityWhen I trained to be a describer we were c<strong>on</strong>stantly reminded to be‘impartial’ and ‘objective’. Our job was to ‘say what we see’. The moredescripti<strong>on</strong> I undertake, however, the more impossible I feel thatpositi<strong>on</strong> to be. We were warned away from talking to creative people: ‘Ifyou talk to the director or the actors’, we were told, ‘they’ll tell you whatthey want you to see’. While there is a certain amount of logic in thisasserti<strong>on</strong>, there is a counter claim that this informati<strong>on</strong> – what they‘want you to see’, their artistic intenti<strong>on</strong> if you like – is a valuable thingto know about.To my mind, a describer should wish to know as much as possibleabout the art they are describing, a positi<strong>on</strong> which appears more obviousin other fields which have nothing to do with theatre or the visualarts, such as quite literal fields, for example cricket. There are limitedparallels between audio descripti<strong>on</strong> and cricket commentary. In someways they are the complete opposite: in cricket, not much happens andthe commentators have an awful lot of time to describe it – so they talkabout the weather and the buses and the birds – whereas in theatre,masses happens and the describer has no time at all. In cricket, theacti<strong>on</strong> is sp<strong>on</strong>taneous whereas in theatre (most theatre at least) theacti<strong>on</strong> is rehearsed and repeated. But a good cricket commentary relies<strong>on</strong> the commentator not <strong>on</strong>ly knowing the rules – what’s going <strong>on</strong> –but also what the two teams are trying to achieve by their varioustactical manoeuvres. A commentary given by some<strong>on</strong>e who knew nothingof the game would make no sense. The listener would not knowwhat was being attempted, or what achieved. The whole narrative of the


174 Andrew Hollandgame would be lost and instead it would be reduced to isolated, abstractacti<strong>on</strong>s with bat and ball – in the same way that the glove was reducedto isolated, abstract physical details. Now, to some people cricket is justa whole load of isolated, abstract acti<strong>on</strong>s with bat and ball, but not tofollowers of the game, and it is these people who the commentary isthere to serve.The same is true in theatre. The people who come to the theatre havean interest in it or they would not be there. They will not all haveworked in the theatre, in the same way that cricket followers have notall played cricket. But unless the pers<strong>on</strong> who describes the acti<strong>on</strong> of aplay has a good understanding of theatre as a whole the narrative of theacti<strong>on</strong> will be reduced to a string of meaningless details. So describersshould not be afraid to engage with the creative team <strong>on</strong> a producti<strong>on</strong>.They should find out as much as they can. Once in a positi<strong>on</strong> ofknowledge, it is then up to the describer to choose whether to use thisinformati<strong>on</strong> or not.Decisi<strong>on</strong>-making in audio descripti<strong>on</strong>I would like to offer an example from a producti<strong>on</strong> of Henrik Ibsen’sGhosts (see for example, Michael Meyer, 1980). The set was the gardenroom of Mrs Alving’s country house. It was a large, square room, withwalls about thirty feet high. The walls were panelled with wood andpainted a pale, grey-blue. In the wall to the left, a tall door led throughto a dining room. In the wall to the right, a slightly smaller door led toa hallway. Most of the rear wall of the room was cut away, and the roomextended back to form a glass c<strong>on</strong>servatory, bey<strong>on</strong>d which was a view ofbleak, steep mountains. Placed around the walls were a number of simple,white-painted wooden chairs. In the centre was a white, circularpedestal table.I talked to the director about the set and he said to me: ‘It’s a roomwith no history’. While I could understand what he meant, I felt thatthe phrase was too loaded to use directly. It didn’t actually describeanything that was there. I <strong>on</strong>ly knew what he meant by the phrase ‘It’sa room with no history’ because I could see the room. But the phrasedid bring out something about the atmosphere the room gave off; howordered it was. Something that was an important part of the design.There was nothing in the room specific to its owner, Mrs Alving.No pictures or photographs or ornaments <strong>on</strong> the mantlepiece. Noknick-knacks. No clutter. So while the phrase ‘This is a room with nohistory’, would have a limited meaning to a visually impaired pers<strong>on</strong>


Audio Descripti<strong>on</strong> in Theatre and Visual Arts 175<strong>on</strong> its own – and indeed could be interpreted a number of ways whichmight be misleading – a descripti<strong>on</strong> could express the c<strong>on</strong>cept throughthe physical details of the room. A descripti<strong>on</strong> could structure thedetails in such a way as to emphasise the ordered sterility, to bring outhow the distant bleak mountains and the grey, flat sky made the roomfeel isolated, cut off. This feeling, which is being reinforced to a sightedaudience all the time they are watching the play, needed to be presentin the earlier descripti<strong>on</strong> so that the set had an artistic force, and wasnot just a geographical placing of walls and furniture. In short, so thatit was a ‘set’ and not just a room.A decisi<strong>on</strong> which describers also have to make is where to strike thebalance between the literal truth and imaginative truth of something.A producti<strong>on</strong> of Philip Pullman’s The Firework-Maker’s Daughter, forinstance, used a host of imaginative illusi<strong>on</strong>s in its telling of the story;a physical style of theatre for which the producti<strong>on</strong> company Told by anIdiot is well known. As the heroine Leeyla lights the fuse of a firework,a woman dressed in red, with red gloves, their fingers ending in redmetallic tassels, comes <strong>on</strong> to the stage and moves al<strong>on</strong>g the fuse, hertasselled fingers waggling to become sparks. The two levels – <strong>on</strong>e literaland <strong>on</strong>e imaginative – coexist in the same moment, and there is comicpotential in the fact that the spark is, in fact, a human being.In another scene, Leeyla is <strong>on</strong> a journey. She wears a simple Chinesestylecostume with a c<strong>on</strong>ical straw hat. As she walks, an actor takes thehat and holds it at a distance so that it resembles the volcano to whichLeeyla is travelling. The actor pulls a party popper underneath so thatstreamers fly up through a hole in the hat, like the volcano erupting. Assighted viewers we are able to appreciate this moment both in terms ofthe narrative and how it is technically achieved. We are admiring thepicture that is created as well as the artistry involved in its creati<strong>on</strong>.Any descripti<strong>on</strong> of this moment therefore has to do justice to the physicalityof the performances as well as supporting the narrative. It needsto reflect the technical or literal truth as well as the imaginative truth.Too far in <strong>on</strong>e directi<strong>on</strong> and we miss out <strong>on</strong> the performance style. Toofar in the other directi<strong>on</strong> and we w<strong>on</strong>der why some<strong>on</strong>e has stolenLeeyla’s hat.But where to strike the balance will vary from play to play. Let us takea look at two quick examples from a stage producti<strong>on</strong> of Peter Pan. Peterand the Lost Boys find themselves at the Mermaid’s lago<strong>on</strong>, a shimmeringbay of green-blue sea which laps against crystal cliffs. In the centreof the bay is a large pock-marked rock which at low tide resembles ahuman skull. During the play, characters dive extravagantly off the


176 Andrew Hollandrock into the sea, swimming around, with their heads bobbing in thewaves as they tread water. At least this is the illusi<strong>on</strong>. The reality is thatthe sea is made from secti<strong>on</strong>s of green-blue cloth which stretch outfrom the rock in the centre of the bay to the cliffs at the back. Each secti<strong>on</strong>of cloth is edged with elastic, and is c<strong>on</strong>stantly moving to recreatethe lapping of the sea. When the characters dive, they are actuallyjumping down through the gap between two billowing cloth secti<strong>on</strong>s<strong>on</strong> to a crash mat beneath, then poking their heads up between thecloth and the crystal cliffs, as though treading water. The questi<strong>on</strong> is,which versi<strong>on</strong> of this descripti<strong>on</strong> should we give? The first suggests thewater is real, which it is not. The sec<strong>on</strong>d is prosaic and undermines theillusi<strong>on</strong>. We do not want crash mats in this beautiful lago<strong>on</strong>.Again, a sighted audience is able to sustain both worlds simultaneously,so in the end we went for something of both. The introductorynotes described both the way the sea worked technically and theimpressi<strong>on</strong> that was created. During the play itself, we supported theillusi<strong>on</strong> of it being sea, while slipping in the odd word which remindedpeople of the way the illusi<strong>on</strong> was achieved.The other big questi<strong>on</strong> in Peter Pan is how to describe the flying. Nomatter how clever the mechanism involved, an audience is alwaysaware that it is not ‘real’. But to describe this great moment in literalterms – ‘Peter, Wendy and the boys get hooked up <strong>on</strong> to wires and arethen hoisted into the air, kicking their legs and waving their armsabout as though flying’ – would be to seriously short change ouraudience. So again, we need to find a way to do both, dispensing withthe technical stuff before the story begins, so that when the timecomes and Peter sprinkles his magic dust, the children do what thosecharacters do – and fly.The live nature of theatreI menti<strong>on</strong>ed earlier that unlike cricket, where the acti<strong>on</strong> is sp<strong>on</strong>taneous,in most theatre the acti<strong>on</strong>s are rehearsed and repeated night after night.But this is not always the case; a fact which again emphasises the advantageof working closely with a company and knowing how they work.Some directors, for instance, do not block their actors’ moves.This means that from <strong>on</strong>e performance to the next, the actors will –externally – do different things. If you <strong>on</strong>ly have the opportunity to seethe producti<strong>on</strong> <strong>on</strong>ce or twice, descripti<strong>on</strong> can be tricky as describers arec<strong>on</strong>stantly being surprised. They have timed the descripti<strong>on</strong> of a certainacti<strong>on</strong> to fit within a certain pause. But in the next performance, not


Audio Descripti<strong>on</strong> in Theatre and Visual Arts 177<strong>on</strong>ly is the acti<strong>on</strong> different but the length of the pause is too. This is anunusual way of working and may seem c<strong>on</strong>fusing to some. But to thedirector, it emphasises the live, unfixed nature of theatre which distinguishesit from other art forms. You do not want to reheat the same mealevery night but to use the same ingredients to cook it afresh. Understandingsomething of this approach is important if you want to describe morethan just the acti<strong>on</strong>s. It means that, as a describer, you can begin to lookat the producti<strong>on</strong> differently, focusing <strong>on</strong> the internal motivati<strong>on</strong>s of thecharacters rather than their outward behaviour.An example of what happens when you do not adequately reflectmotivati<strong>on</strong>s occurred during <strong>on</strong>e descripti<strong>on</strong> I heard. In David Halliwell’splay Little Malcolm and His Struggle against the Eunuchs (1967), art studentMalcolm holds court in his dingy flat, discussing art and revoluti<strong>on</strong>with his college mates. But despite the bitterness of the weather, he doesnot light the metered gas fire, telling his friends that he has no m<strong>on</strong>ey.He sends them off <strong>on</strong> an errand and as so<strong>on</strong> as they leave, Malcolmtakes m<strong>on</strong>ey from his pocket, crouches by the fire and lights it, warminghis hands. While he is doing this a new character, Anne, comes in.The staging of this producti<strong>on</strong> highlighted Malcolm’s selfishduplicity. As he crouched by the fire with his back to the door, the doorslowly opened, making it appear to us that he might get caught. Thetensi<strong>on</strong> was then dispelled when another character – <strong>on</strong>e we had notmet before – entered. But Malcolm himself was clearly rattled by thepossibility that it could have been his friends returning. That he couldhave been caught. The descripti<strong>on</strong> of this moment, though, remainedentirely literal, giving us a sequence of external acti<strong>on</strong>s with no underlyingmessage: ‘The friends went out. Malcolm lit the fire. Anne camein’ – and all the subtleties of the carefully c<strong>on</strong>structed moment weremissed. Not <strong>on</strong>ly did the descripti<strong>on</strong> fail to articulate the drama, it alsofailed to give us Malcolm’s reacti<strong>on</strong>, and therefore to extend ourknowledge of his character. The narrative was reduced to a series ofacti<strong>on</strong>s, but descripti<strong>on</strong> needs to be more than this.Training audio describersBut if we cannot ever be wholly objective in our work, we can try to ben<strong>on</strong>-judgemental. When training theatre describers I use a number ofexercises where trainees describe photographs or illustrati<strong>on</strong>s. This is toc<strong>on</strong>sider a number of issues which affect descripti<strong>on</strong> generally – howinformati<strong>on</strong> is given and received – and to separate them off from thoseissues which relate specifically to audio descripti<strong>on</strong> in the theatre.


178 Andrew HollandA couple of years ago I was training describers in a regi<strong>on</strong>al theatreand we were looking at some Victorian Spot illustrati<strong>on</strong>s, the kinds ofsketch, sometimes humorous, which were used to illustrate books orpamphlets. In <strong>on</strong>e particular drawing, a man walked al<strong>on</strong>g a street. Thetrainee’s descripti<strong>on</strong> went al<strong>on</strong>g these lines: ‘He is wearing an overcoatwhich is not of the first quality. He carries an umbrella, for effect. Anda briefcase which probably c<strong>on</strong>tains little more than his sandwiches’.The coat, umbrella and briefcase were all there, certainly, but I asked thetrainee how she knew, for instance, about the sandwiches in the briefcase?‘Because I know men like this!’ she said.In this example the describer is judging the character rather thandescribing him, and coming up with a whole lot of detail the pictureitself did not c<strong>on</strong>tain. There was no evidence that the overcoat was ‘notof the first quality’ – no fraying of the collar, no marks of wear, no sagginghem. And the two other details could not possibly be obtained bylooking at this image al<strong>on</strong>e. If the next frame, so to speak, had shownthe man in the rain, would his umbrella have been up? And there wascertainly no way, using sight al<strong>on</strong>e, that we could know the c<strong>on</strong>tents ofthe man’s briefcase. Of course, were the man a character in a play, wewould be given a whole lot more informati<strong>on</strong> about him. He might,during the course of the acti<strong>on</strong>, open his briefcase and reveal ‘littlemore than sandwiches’. But this might be intended to surprise an audience.In this case it is the acti<strong>on</strong> which reveals something, not the man’sphysical appearance. So a balance has to be struck which recognisesthat although we cannot be wholly impartial, we do have a duty to ben<strong>on</strong>-judgemental. But is this balance the same in every work?Christopher, the narrator in Mark Hadd<strong>on</strong>’s novel The Curious Incidentof the Dog in the Night, makes many very astute observati<strong>on</strong>s about thedifficulties of describing people, especially where emoti<strong>on</strong>s are c<strong>on</strong>cerned(2003: 19):I find people c<strong>on</strong>fusing.This is for two main reas<strong>on</strong>s.The first main reas<strong>on</strong> is that people do a lot of talking without usingany words. Siobhan says that if you raise <strong>on</strong>e eyebrow it can mean lotsof different things. It can mean ‘I want to do sex with you’ and it canalso mean ‘I think that what you just said was very stupid’.Siobhan also says that if you close your mouth and breathe out loudlythrough your nose it can mean that you are relaxed, or that you arebored, or that you are angry – and it all depends <strong>on</strong> how much aircomes out of your nose and how fast and what shape your mouth is


Audio Descripti<strong>on</strong> in Theatre and Visual Arts 179when you do it and how you are sitting and what you said just beforeand hundreds of other things which are too complicated to work outin a few sec<strong>on</strong>ds.This seems to me to get to the heart of the problem. Using our sight weare exposed to hundreds of physical hints at any <strong>on</strong>e time. We areprocessing this informati<strong>on</strong> to work out attitudes, emoti<strong>on</strong>s and relati<strong>on</strong>ships.This processing is c<strong>on</strong>stant and, for the most part, we areunaware of it. In the theatre we will be interpreting and re-interpretinga character all the time she is <strong>on</strong> stage; all the time she is talking; all thetime she is listening; all the time she seems disengaged with the centralacti<strong>on</strong>. Sometimes even by her absence.A describer has two problems. The first is that the descripti<strong>on</strong> cannotbe c<strong>on</strong>tinuous. To fit around the dialogue of a play, a describer mayhave <strong>on</strong>ly a couple of sec<strong>on</strong>ds to sum up a particular emoti<strong>on</strong>. If thedescripti<strong>on</strong> c<strong>on</strong>centrates purely <strong>on</strong> the physical details – the raised eyebrow,for instance – this may not tell a visually impaired member of theaudience what the entire facial expressi<strong>on</strong> suggests to a sighted audiencemember. The sec<strong>on</strong>d problem is that the informati<strong>on</strong> is verbalisedand can <strong>on</strong>ly be given in a linear way whereas sight, although focusing<strong>on</strong> certain details, can also hold other details in the background.Verbalising something gives it a prominence in that <strong>on</strong>e thing is menti<strong>on</strong>edand not another thing. This means that it is the describer who ischoosing what the audience should focus <strong>on</strong>.During an intense dialogue between Henry and Stella, Henry walksover to the window. Well, how does he walk? Is the move casual or is itmore of a stomp? Is he displaying the same impetuosity we have seen inhim before? Or is this behaviour something new to us? This arrogantstrut, is this a side of his character we have not seen before? And is thefact that Henry is going towards something important? Is it moreimportant that he is moving away from Stella? Or that he is turning awayso that she cannot see his face? Or perhaps our focus should be <strong>on</strong> Stella.Is her reacti<strong>on</strong> to what Henry does more significant? For each seeminglysimple moment there will be many possible descripti<strong>on</strong>s and, as I saidbefore, there may be <strong>on</strong>ly <strong>on</strong>e or two sec<strong>on</strong>ds in which to describe it.The mere fact that as describers we have to choose to emphasise <strong>on</strong>ething rather than another, means that – whether we like it or not – weare making an artistic decisi<strong>on</strong>. We are c<strong>on</strong>tributing to how a piece ofart is experienced by a member of the audience. The more we knowabout the piece of work, the more likely we are to make the right choiceof what to describe.


180 Andrew HollandAudio descripti<strong>on</strong> in the visual artsThe issue of ‘interpretati<strong>on</strong>’ becomes more prominent when describingthe visual arts, if for no other reas<strong>on</strong> than the fact that in theatre avisually impaired member of the audience is integrating the informati<strong>on</strong>given by the describer with any residual sight they have and alsowith what is coming from the stage aurally. A descripti<strong>on</strong> will often be<strong>on</strong>ly minimal because the voice of the actor is doing so much. With apiece of visual art, however, less is likely to come from the work itself.This means that the descripti<strong>on</strong> will take <strong>on</strong> a greater role in interpretingas well as describing the material.In 2002, Vocaleyes worked with the RNIB and English Heritage <strong>on</strong>the Talking Images project. We undertook three case studies to examinethe use of audio descripti<strong>on</strong> within the visual arts, working with gallerieswho were interested in opening up their collecti<strong>on</strong>s for blind andvisually impaired visitors. We wanted to examine the language ofdescripti<strong>on</strong>, and cover a range of work from historical to c<strong>on</strong>temporaryand from figurative to abstract. An example from <strong>on</strong>e of the case studieswill serve to illustrate something of the process we went through. Thisinvolves the language of descripti<strong>on</strong>, specifically how ‘interpretative’ adescripti<strong>on</strong> should be.For the first case study we worked <strong>on</strong> an exhibiti<strong>on</strong> of drawings andlate reliefs by the abstract artist Ben Nichols<strong>on</strong>, curated by Kettle’s Yardin Cambridge. Working with a group of visually impaired users, wetried out a number of different descripti<strong>on</strong>s of the same work. This firstversi<strong>on</strong> attempted to c<strong>on</strong>centrate <strong>on</strong> the forms of the work and remainas much as possible ‘un-interpretative’:1968 Ramparts (oil <strong>on</strong> carved board)A rectangular background, some 19 inches high and 21 inches wide –that is about 48 by 53 centimetres – is painted a smooth earthybrown.Standing proud of it is a slightly smaller rectangle – this <strong>on</strong>e dividedup into a number of smaller, overlapping shapes.At top and bottom are areas of white. Between them a line of threedifferently sized rectangles. The <strong>on</strong>e to the left is brown like thebackground. The central <strong>on</strong>e is a darker brown, and the third, alighter, orangey brown.The line created by these three rectangles starts off – to the left – ashoriz<strong>on</strong>tal and almost central. But a little way across, the line shiftsso that the two rectangles centre and right slope downwards. To the


Audio Descripti<strong>on</strong> in Theatre and Visual Arts 181far right is a tall rectangle – painted the same brown as the background.Two other forms seem to float above the relief. Their colour is similarto the two white secti<strong>on</strong>s. Both are similar in shape – a trapezium –with parallel sides, horiz<strong>on</strong>tal tops, but with a bottom edge whichslopes down towards the right.One is positi<strong>on</strong>ed within the top white secti<strong>on</strong> and to the right. Itsslanting edge runs al<strong>on</strong>g the top edge of the slanting brown line.Carved within it is a circle – the inner edge painted white.The other trapezium sits next to it – just left of centre – and a littlelower. In this, another circle has been inscribed rather than cut.What does this rather literal descripti<strong>on</strong> tell us? It was greeted by thefocus group with a stunned silence. Then, after a little while <strong>on</strong>e of thegroup said: ‘Well, you’re <strong>on</strong> a hiding to nothing there’. And they wereright. There is a possibility that after listening carefully to this descripti<strong>on</strong>a number of times we could perhaps make a stab at rec<strong>on</strong>structingwhat it looks like: which shape fits where; what overlaps what; somethingof its compositi<strong>on</strong>. But what is the point of that? As a sightedpers<strong>on</strong> I do not go through that process. I do not look at a work in orderto memorise what goes where. My encounter with the work is <strong>on</strong> a completelydifferent level. I am looking for signs of intent, of humour. I amresp<strong>on</strong>ding to certain elements of compositi<strong>on</strong> or colour. I am askingquesti<strong>on</strong>s about why I resp<strong>on</strong>d in the way I do. As a sighted pers<strong>on</strong> Ihave some kind of emoti<strong>on</strong>al relati<strong>on</strong>ship with the piece. I experiencethe arrangement of physical details – it is not enough just to know theyare there.The sec<strong>on</strong>d descripti<strong>on</strong> that we tried out with the focus groupallowed for a level of interpretati<strong>on</strong>. Colours, for instance, were giventactile qualities which reflected the physical process the artist used tomake the piece. So the areas at top and bottom became areas of ‘frosty,silvery white – scratched and rubbed in places to create an unevensurface, like snow drifting across dirty ice’. Another area had been‘roughly scraped so that the grubby brown of the hardboard showsthrough like a stain’. With the three differently sized rectangles inthe centre, colour was described in terms of how it is perceived by theviewer – the visual tricks it plays. So, the central, darker rectanglewith its blacker sheen ‘makes it seem to sink back away from us intothe relief, although in reality it stands proud of the <strong>on</strong>e to the left’.The line of rectangles to which this bel<strong>on</strong>gs ‘progresses in a line acrossthe work from left to right’. Their shift downwards ‘as though a


182 Andrew Hollandgeographical fault has sheered this layer and pushed it bodily down.Now sloping, these two rectangles seem in danger of sliding out ofthe compositi<strong>on</strong> – squeezed out from between the frosted whitesecti<strong>on</strong>s at top and bottom’.The language creates a narrative within the piece, and makes referenceoutside the world of the work to our own world to try to capturesome of the work’s dynamic. The sense we get as sighted viewers is ofthe shapes somehow acting <strong>on</strong> each other. Although they are static,the angles, different depths and c<strong>on</strong>trasting colours of the variousgeometric shapes create a sense of slow, powerful movement. Thereare internal forces which although dynamic, achieve a kind of balanceor equilibrium. As a sighted viewer I experience both the feeling ofmovement and the feeling of stasis. So to describe the piece simply interms of the relative positi<strong>on</strong> of each individual shape is to reduce it topointlessness.It could be argued that the references to snow, ice and geographicalfaults are a pers<strong>on</strong>al judgement which cannot be justified. But thefocus group got much more from this descripti<strong>on</strong> than the earlier, uninterpretiveversi<strong>on</strong>. They felt they had had some kind of encounterwith the work. They felt that it was worth listening to, whereas the firstversi<strong>on</strong>, although accurate, gave them nothing at all.The interdependence of the sensesBack in 2004 I attended a talk given by experimental psychologistDr Charles Spence in which he described a series of experimentswhich showed how interdependent our senses are. People’s experienceof touch, for instance, is affected by sight and sound. In <strong>on</strong>eexperiment, subjects were asked to touch a number of pieces of sandpaperwhich they could not see. Wearing headph<strong>on</strong>es, they couldhear the sound their finger made as it rubbed the sandpaper. Theexperiment showed that the subject’s experience of the sand-paperwas directly influenced by the sound-frequency that was played tothem as they touched the paper. ‘Rougher’, they said, and ‘smoother’,even though the sand-paper stayed the same. The fact that the sensesare interdependent is something that artists have used in their workfor centuries, and much figurative art goes to great lengths to transcendthe visual.Berens<strong>on</strong> (1896: 5) writing about Giotto stated how: ‘Psychology hasascertained that sight al<strong>on</strong>e gives us no accurate sense of the thirddimensi<strong>on</strong>’ and that ‘every time our eyes recognise reality, we are, as a


Audio Descripti<strong>on</strong> in Theatre and Visual Arts 183matter of fact, giving tactile values to retinal impressi<strong>on</strong>s’. He arguedfurther that:Painting is an art which aims at giving an abiding impressi<strong>on</strong> of artisticreality with <strong>on</strong>ly two dimensi<strong>on</strong>s. The painter must, therefore, doc<strong>on</strong>sciously what we all do unc<strong>on</strong>sciously – c<strong>on</strong>struct his third dimensi<strong>on</strong>.And he can accomplish his task <strong>on</strong>ly as we accomplish ours, bygiving tactile values to retinal impressi<strong>on</strong>s. His first business, therefore,is to rouse the tactile sense, for I must have the illusi<strong>on</strong> of beingable to touch a figure ... before I shall take it for granted as real.Cloth has weight, weave and texture. The simple glove that we talkedabout earlier may not have ‘five outpouchings’ but it might, perhaps, befine, intricate, old, coarse, supple, warm, frayed, discarded. Clothes maybe rich, delicate, finely woven, roughly stitched, worn formally or witha casual disregard. Rooms have three dimensi<strong>on</strong>s; urns are cracked; adog balances precariously; bodies have mass and density; are fragile,infirm; water has luminosity; bodies sweat; woodland reeks of decay. Adescripti<strong>on</strong> has to work just as hard to ‘give tactile values’ to the ‘retinalimpressi<strong>on</strong>s’ described, to appeal to more than the visual.C<strong>on</strong>clusi<strong>on</strong>This brings me back to why I feel that the definiti<strong>on</strong> given at the beginningof this chapter, that is, of audio descripti<strong>on</strong> as ‘an enabling service’,is inadequate: because what it picks up <strong>on</strong> is the language of discriminati<strong>on</strong>and disability rather than the language of artistic endeavour andachievement.The danger is that we regard audio descripti<strong>on</strong> as we would a screenreader – a simple access tool, a kind of functi<strong>on</strong>al software, a window tomeaning. With a screen reader there is a direct equivalence between thetext which is written and the text which is voiced. There are few choicesor decisi<strong>on</strong>s for the software to make. The relati<strong>on</strong>ship between them isclear and unambiguous. Some things may be a little hard to understandbecause of a strange int<strong>on</strong>ati<strong>on</strong>, but we can work out what the meaningis. But audio descripti<strong>on</strong> is not like this. It can never be transparent. Byits very nature it will change the experience some<strong>on</strong>e has of the art.I also w<strong>on</strong>der if the term ‘enabling’ would be acceptable in any otherarea of the arts? When translating a play, for instance, are we simply‘enabling’ some<strong>on</strong>e with another language to know what the play isabout – its storyline, its characters, its themes? Or do we want our


184 Andrew Hollandaudience to experience the play directly, with all its complexities? Withno direct equivalence between <strong>on</strong>e language and another, a translatorhas to make a series of decisi<strong>on</strong>s about which <strong>on</strong>e of several possiblemeanings or nuances to go with. This decisi<strong>on</strong> will inevitably have aknock-<strong>on</strong> effect <strong>on</strong> the rest of the play, and the translator may even beaccused of skewing the text in some way. But the opti<strong>on</strong> not to makechoices, to translate literally and include, perhaps, alternatives withinthe text, while it might enable people to know about the text, wouldcreate an un-watchable piece of theatre. The audience would be c<strong>on</strong>stantlyreminded that they were watching a translati<strong>on</strong> of ‘somethingelse’. They would come out of the theatre more aware of the problemsfaced by the translator than of what the playwright wanted to say.In the same way, audio descripti<strong>on</strong> is a way of translating artisticmaterial from <strong>on</strong>e medium to another. There is no direct equivalencebetween a moment <strong>on</strong> stage and the words chosen to describe it. Theexhortati<strong>on</strong> to be ‘impartial’ doesn’t recognise this fact – and toooften has the effect of focussing the audience’s attenti<strong>on</strong> <strong>on</strong> the enablingtool – forcing them to remain distant from the actual piece. For me, andfor many visually impaired people, that is not enough.Descripti<strong>on</strong> should aim to get to the heart of a work of art and to recreatean experience of that work by bringing it to life. It should not bec<strong>on</strong>tent with telling some<strong>on</strong>e the physical details of something theycannot see. When you leave the art gallery, you want to come awaydiscussing the art, not the descripti<strong>on</strong>. So in order to be n<strong>on</strong>-intrusive adescripti<strong>on</strong> has to make decisi<strong>on</strong>s and not pretend it is not there.I have tried to argue that in order to write a meaningful descripti<strong>on</strong>,an audio describer has to do more than ‘say what he sees’, that thisphrase is a n<strong>on</strong>sense which attempts err<strong>on</strong>eously to divorce ‘seeing’from ‘understanding’, and that in this process of understanding theother senses are involved al<strong>on</strong>gside sight.The quotati<strong>on</strong> given earlier by Oliver Sacks seems to me to get to theheart of what a good descripti<strong>on</strong> should be. Of his patient he said (1985:9): ‘He failed to see the whole, seeing <strong>on</strong>ly details, which he spottedlike blips <strong>on</strong> a radar screen. He never entered into a relati<strong>on</strong> with thepicture as a whole’. Good descripti<strong>on</strong> must allow the viewer to enterinto a relati<strong>on</strong> with the object, pers<strong>on</strong> or painting being described ‘as awhole’. This means integrating the descripti<strong>on</strong> so that it becomes partof the artistic experience, rather than keeping that experience at arms’length.And the third example, the <strong>on</strong>e the patient described as a ‘c<strong>on</strong>volutedred form with a linear green attachment’? Dr Sacks suggested the patient


Audio Descripti<strong>on</strong> in Theatre and Visual Arts 185smell it (1985:12–13): ‘Beautiful’, the patient said – ‘An early rose. Whata heavenly smell!’Notes1. Quoted from the introducti<strong>on</strong> to A Nati<strong>on</strong>al Standard for Theatre AudioDescripti<strong>on</strong> – AUDEST report, 1998.2. ‘Il n’est en art qu’une chose qui vaille. Celle que l’<strong>on</strong> ne peut expliquer’. Trans.Ben Nichols<strong>on</strong>.3. The article of the same name was originally published in the L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong> Reviewof Books, 1981.ReferencesBerens<strong>on</strong>, B. (1896) The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance. New York andL<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong>: G.P. Puttnam’s S<strong>on</strong>s.Braque, G. (1952) Cahiers 1917–1952, Paris. Translated by Ben Nichols<strong>on</strong> [Quotedby Peter Khoroche in his introducti<strong>on</strong> to Ben Nichols<strong>on</strong>: Drawings and PaintedReliefs (2002). L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong>: Lund Humphries, Ashgate Publishing].Hadd<strong>on</strong>, M. (2003) The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night. L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong>:Vintage.Halliwell, D. (1967) Little Malcolm and His Struggle Against the Eunuchs: A Play.L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong>: Faber.Meyer, M. (Trans.) (1980) Ibsen Plays: Ghosts, The Wild Duck, The Master Builder.L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong>: Methuen.Pullman, P. (1995) The Firework-Maker’s Daughter. L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong>: Corgi Yealing.Sacks, O. (1985) The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat. L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong>: GeraldDuckworth.Shakespeare, W. (1623) Twelfth Night. In S. Wells and G. Taylor (eds) (1986) TheOxford Shakespeare. The Complete Works. Oxford: Oxford University Press.


14Usability and WebsiteLocalisati<strong>on</strong> 1Mario De Bortoli andJesús Maroto Ortiz-SotomayorIntroducti<strong>on</strong>Established multinati<strong>on</strong>als or small companies expanding into overseasmarkets need a well-coordinated internati<strong>on</strong>al sales and marketingeffort in order to succeed. A website can serve as a company’s premiermarketing tool, a facilitator of direct sales, and a technical supportmechanism; but it can also be used for purposes of public, customer,investor or employee relati<strong>on</strong>s. When users are able to interact successfullywith a website, positive impressi<strong>on</strong>s and attitudes about both thesite and the associated organisati<strong>on</strong> are created. Hence, having a webpresence, like advertising, should make possible the boosting of a corporateimage. This effect is crucial because the website may be related tobranding, especially if it is a vehicle for sales.To this end, websites are often customised, or localised, for foreignmarkets, taking into account local language issues, business and socialstandards, and aesthetic preferences. Localising a website is a complicatedbut necessary task. The idea of making different versi<strong>on</strong>s of a sitefor other cultures dem<strong>on</strong>strates a willingness to show the c<strong>on</strong>sumersthat the organisati<strong>on</strong> is willing to accommodate their needs. Accordingto research carried out by Hayward and T<strong>on</strong>g (2001), users perceive acompany more favourably (that is, as more trustworthy, more likeable)when they see a versi<strong>on</strong> of the company’s website in their mothert<strong>on</strong>gue, regardless of the user’s proficiency in the English language.Written text plays a crucial role <strong>on</strong> the web, as most websites –particularly corporate sites – are c<strong>on</strong>tent-based. Too many companieshave found themselves in trouble by entrusting their translati<strong>on</strong> tosome<strong>on</strong>e in the company who has travelled the world and is ‘fluent’ insix languages, or to people who happen to be bilingual but have no186


Usability and Website Localisati<strong>on</strong> 187localisati<strong>on</strong> background whatsoever. We have all had the experience oflaughing at copy poorly translated into English. However, failing togain market share because of linguistic issues is not a laughing matter.In any case, successful localisati<strong>on</strong> involves a lot more than simplytranslating c<strong>on</strong>tent. The manner in which people carry out tasks candiffer from culture to culture. For example, approaches such as the‘shopping trolley’ or ‘shopping cart’ metaphor found <strong>on</strong> many websitesmay not transfer accurately to some cultures, which may dramaticallylimit the usability of an e-commerce site, thus reducing potentialrevenue in those countries.Having made large investments, companies should not allow theirwebsites to be downgraded in their internati<strong>on</strong>al versi<strong>on</strong>s. Fortunately,there is a growing acknowledgement am<strong>on</strong>gst internati<strong>on</strong>al businessesthat each of their foreign markets is best served by its own culturallyspecific website. Furthermore, there is an important financial casebehind this awareness since n<strong>on</strong>-English speaking Internet users al<strong>on</strong>erepresent over 64% of the world <strong>on</strong>line populati<strong>on</strong> (Global Reach). 2 Thefact is that although many internati<strong>on</strong>al businesses have had theirEnglish websites translated into the languages of their main foreignmarkets, some of these sites have not performed as successfully as their<strong>home</strong> versi<strong>on</strong>s. For a site to be well received and successful – today morethan ever – it should address those intangible aspects that make a groupof people a community, rather than deal exclusively with customisingthe obvious, superficial items such as measurement units or currency.Failure of localisati<strong>on</strong>Quite apart from the linguistic dimensi<strong>on</strong>, localising the c<strong>on</strong>tent of awebsite is not easy; from a technical point of view, localising web c<strong>on</strong>tentposes some daunting challenges. Websites come in many shapesand forms, from a few pages of HTML created in basic text editors tovast scripted or database-driven sites. Internal company sites, intranets,are also becoming more popular for the private disseminati<strong>on</strong> of informati<strong>on</strong>in a structured manner. Timeliness and up-to-the-minute c<strong>on</strong>tentare rapidly becoming the key discriminators of a company’s website,and as the web is a global phenomen<strong>on</strong>, the speed at which this c<strong>on</strong>tentis localised is also becoming an issue for many companies.In additi<strong>on</strong> to the linguistic and technical issues, website localisati<strong>on</strong>also faces cultural challenges. According to Hofstede (1991), culture dictateshow people from a specific locati<strong>on</strong> view and react to images andmessages in relati<strong>on</strong> to their own patterns of acting, feeling and


188 M. De Bortoli & J.M. Ortiz-Sotomayorthinking, often ingrained in them by late childhood. Any differencesin these patterns are displayed in the choice of symbols, rituals andvalues of any given cultural community. A culture influences thepercepti<strong>on</strong>s, thoughts and acti<strong>on</strong>s of all its members, and it is thisshared influence that defines them as a group.These various sets of ideas and expectati<strong>on</strong>s that culture provides areall brought to bear when interacting with technology. Dialogue betweenhumans and computers is c<strong>on</strong>strained not <strong>on</strong>ly by the design laws ofthe computer, but also by the user’s understanding of the world and itsnorms. If the design of a computer system does not match the user’sunderstanding of the task in hand then the interacti<strong>on</strong> between thetwo will be sub-optimal. Products designed in <strong>on</strong>e culture for use inanother often fall into this category. This is generally the result of thetwo comm<strong>on</strong> errors in the localisati<strong>on</strong> process discussed below.Designers do not necessarily knowabout other culturesThe first stumbling block encountered by most localisati<strong>on</strong> projects isthe limits of human intuiti<strong>on</strong> about other people. However much webelieve we know about a group or an individual, as human beings wetend to be extremely poor at anticipating their requirements. Whenc<strong>on</strong>sidering the needs of users from another country, even well intenti<strong>on</strong>eddesigners may be unaware of their own bias and ignorance aboutthe people of that culture. Often they are unable to filter out interfacefeatures, which may handicap users from other cultures (Fernandes,1995). Some designers attempt to circumvent these problems by enlistinga friend or colleague who has lived in the target culture and canspeak the language. Unless these individuals have spent a c<strong>on</strong>siderableamount of their time in that country working <strong>on</strong> markedly similarprojects, it is unlikely that their insights will be any more accurate thanthose of any<strong>on</strong>e else. In reality, successful localisati<strong>on</strong> begins with therecogniti<strong>on</strong> that we do not necessarily know the requirements of othercultures when a project is launched. What is really needed is a systematicapproach to gathering informati<strong>on</strong> about the users of a particularproduct or service in other countries.Cosmetic changes are not enoughThe sec<strong>on</strong>d most comm<strong>on</strong> mistake is to pay attenti<strong>on</strong> <strong>on</strong>ly to superficialdifferences between cultures in the belief that this represents an


Usability and Website Localisati<strong>on</strong> 189adequate attempt at localisati<strong>on</strong>. In order to improve the quality ofwhat is essentially guesswork, designers tend to use guidelines, helpingthem address the features which vary superficially across cultures.These guidelines cover such aspects as basic differences in currency andcalendar.Guidelines often serve to give designers and management the mistakenimpressi<strong>on</strong> that the website has been localised and effectively‘fireproofed’ for cross-cultural usability problems. In fact, culture actuallyinfluences interacti<strong>on</strong> with computers at levels significantly deeperand less observable than the use of local calendars or currencies.Human Computer Interacti<strong>on</strong> (HCI) research shows that successfulinteracti<strong>on</strong> depends <strong>on</strong> more than just using the correct language. Forauthors like Bourges-Waldegg and Scrivener (1998) and French andSmith (2000), interacti<strong>on</strong> is also dependent up<strong>on</strong> the culturallyembedded meaning of objects such as ic<strong>on</strong>s and metaphors – forexample, the desktop or the shopping cart. Whilst the USA and the UKshare a comm<strong>on</strong> language, a website which, for instance, has recourseto the metaphor of the white pages (the US ph<strong>on</strong>e directory) to helpusers find individuals’ c<strong>on</strong>tact details may not be appropriate for usein the UK, where yellow pages are the standard. This is despite the factthat to all appearances the site may not appear to be in need oflocalisati<strong>on</strong>. What is needed, therefore, is a new definiti<strong>on</strong> of effectivelocalisati<strong>on</strong> and its scope.Extending the scope of localisati<strong>on</strong>through the inclusi<strong>on</strong> of HCI expertiseAs menti<strong>on</strong>ed above, website localisati<strong>on</strong> efforts have traditi<strong>on</strong>ally beenc<strong>on</strong>cerned mainly with translati<strong>on</strong> and character encoding issues.However, it is our belief that this al<strong>on</strong>e is not sufficient to meet thetechnology needs of users from other cultures. Indeed, there is a c<strong>on</strong>siderableamount of evidence detailing the difficulties and failuresexperienced by users of culturally inappropriate systems. The extent ofhuman diversity is such that the mere translati<strong>on</strong> of an interface from<strong>on</strong>e language to another is not always sufficient to meet the needs ofanother culture.HCI approaches model systems from the user’s perspective andtherefore are well placed to inform localisati<strong>on</strong> requirements for a site ifemployed early enough in the design process. During the 1990scross-cultural HCI research expanded from issuing guidelines andimporting models from the social sciences (Hall, 1976; Hofstede, 1991)


190 M. De Bortoli & J.M. Ortiz-Sotomayorto developing its own frameworks (Bourges-Waldegg and Scrivener,1998; French and Smith, 2000). Papers with a global dimensi<strong>on</strong> regularlyfeature in all major HCI c<strong>on</strong>ference programmes.However, despite this explosi<strong>on</strong> of research interest, the number ofdesigners using HCI support for cross-cultural interactive systemsremains low. Additi<strong>on</strong>ally, a worrying number of misinterpreted theorieshave been imported piecemeal from other fields such as social science,linguistics and cognitive psychology. This is not uncomm<strong>on</strong> in interfacedesign where imported theories are often adopted and cited bydesigners unaware of the research background. These theories thengain credibility within the design community at the expense of otherfindings (Green et al., 1996).There is a clear need for culturally sensitive technology, a need whichis currently not being met. What is obvious is that designers should nowbe expected to add localisati<strong>on</strong> to their skill-set. The interdisciplinarynature of localisati<strong>on</strong> means that it does not lend itself to ‘<strong>on</strong>e-size-fitsall’soluti<strong>on</strong>s, which can be learnt and applied in identical fashi<strong>on</strong> to allprojects. The background of each applicable theory and the subtleties oflocal culture and language must be understood fully.Whether the product in questi<strong>on</strong> is software, a website or a mobileph<strong>on</strong>e, preparing the user interface for use in an internati<strong>on</strong>al c<strong>on</strong>textcalls for expertise from a variety of fields. Designers are required fortheir creative abilities. Equally, properly qualified linguists and translatorsare necessary not just to translate c<strong>on</strong>tent, but also to ensure thatthe essential meaning of each message is communicated adequately.However, successful interacti<strong>on</strong> cannot be boiled down to a simple matterof aesthetic preferences and translati<strong>on</strong>. This ignores the behaviour<strong>on</strong> the part of the user: people all over the world have different,culturally rooted resp<strong>on</strong>ses to stimuli and act accordingly. For example,Chinese c<strong>on</strong>sumers seem to prefer shopping at <strong>on</strong>line stores that offerthe possibility of bargaining in spite of the price they actually end uppaying sometimes being greater than that at other stores (Liang andDo<strong>on</strong>g, 2000). HCI professi<strong>on</strong>als utilise a range of approaches, fromcognitive models to usability testing and user-participatory methods,which help determine the requirements of different cultures. These canbe applied to make recommendati<strong>on</strong>s <strong>on</strong> the subsequent process oflocalisati<strong>on</strong>. If properly implemented at an early enough stage byprofessi<strong>on</strong>als with the correct knowledge of localisati<strong>on</strong> issues, theserecommendati<strong>on</strong>s can significantly improve the end result, increasereturn <strong>on</strong> investment and improve the relati<strong>on</strong>ship of a brand with itstarget group of c<strong>on</strong>sumers.


Usability and Website Localisati<strong>on</strong> 191The marketIn many ways, the choice of <strong>on</strong>e brand over another is increasinglybecoming a political choice by c<strong>on</strong>sumers, who express a whole rangeof values when buying a product. Therefore, for the product to be successfulit must represent and address the c<strong>on</strong>sumer’s c<strong>on</strong>cerns andbeliefs. And this is where a simple literal translati<strong>on</strong> can never beenough. Each market has to be scrutinised and culture-specific soluti<strong>on</strong>sfound. C<strong>on</strong>sumers <strong>on</strong>ly respect a brand that respects them. Thereare many opportunities for brands that are willing to listen to theirmarkets and are prepared to go the extra mile in the localisati<strong>on</strong> process.Brands have to understand that markets are there to be seduced, notpatr<strong>on</strong>ised, and the <strong>on</strong>ly way to seduce them is to know how they thinkand feel, and act accordingly. From a marketing perspective, brandsneed to realise that being internati<strong>on</strong>al means that each secti<strong>on</strong> of theirtarget market is as important as the <strong>home</strong> <strong>on</strong>e. German or Polish websiteusers believe that they are entitled to as much attenti<strong>on</strong> from a brand astheir American or British counterparts. After all, they may be payingjust as much m<strong>on</strong>ey for the product. At the end of the day it is for theseller to make an effort in a transacti<strong>on</strong>, not the buyer.Generally speaking, the recipe for internati<strong>on</strong>al success is to c<strong>on</strong>vincepeople that the product is good and that it was produced with the c<strong>on</strong>sumer’sneeds in mind. Each linguistic community will need to have thisexplained from a slightly different angle, determined by priorities of thelocal culture. Problems in this process occur when English-speaking, andespecially American, businesses tend to c<strong>on</strong>fuse increasing Internet useworldwide with increasing Americanisati<strong>on</strong> of other cultures. Thereseems to be the mispercepti<strong>on</strong> that if people in another country haveaccess to the web, they will already have been exposed to enough Westerninfluences to be able to use sites of Anglo-American origin. In fact, despiteits history, there is nothing inherently American or even Western aboutInternet use, as evidenced by the latest estimates for Internet users bylanguage growth stating Chinese has grown by 622% and Arabic by2062% between 2000 and 2008 (Internet World Stats: <strong>on</strong>line). 3All of the above means that an internati<strong>on</strong>al campaign, or a multilingualwebsite, cannot be researched and developed in English, andthen sent for translati<strong>on</strong>, an attitude that is viewed as arrogant by many.As stated earlier, superficial approaches to localisati<strong>on</strong> do not adequatelymeet the needs of users in different countries, and do not create thepositive awareness that companies crave for their brand. In order forlocalised sites to perform effectively, differences in culture must be


192 M. De Bortoli & J.M. Ortiz-Sotomayorreflected in the design of each <strong>on</strong>e. To achieve this, the localisati<strong>on</strong>process has to be integrated at a much earlier stage of the planning orcreative process than is now d<strong>on</strong>e. Every aspect should be discussed andstudied before its development, and <strong>on</strong>ly then implemented. This representsa revoluti<strong>on</strong> in localisati<strong>on</strong> as we know it at present – but anecessity for most companies at a time of increasing dependency <strong>on</strong>foreign markets.In fact, a better-integrated localisati<strong>on</strong> approach might meansignificant savings <strong>on</strong> post-producti<strong>on</strong> adaptati<strong>on</strong>s via ec<strong>on</strong>omies ofscale and the pooling of assets and resources via new technologies, aswell as greater branding c<strong>on</strong>sistency and, as a result, greater return <strong>on</strong>investment. The reduced cost of localisati<strong>on</strong> achieved in this way might,for example, also allow entry into previously unviable markets.C<strong>on</strong>clusi<strong>on</strong>Products such as websites expose companies to global markets, but fewof them pay adequate attenti<strong>on</strong> to the vast audiences outside their ownborders. Am<strong>on</strong>g those that do, most are <strong>on</strong>ly prepared to pay the absoluteminimum for translated versi<strong>on</strong>s of their main site. Whilst superficiallylocalised, these sites do not usually fulfil their intended functi<strong>on</strong>as they may remain culturally unsuitable. Localisati<strong>on</strong> must start froman in-depth knowledge of the local culture and requirements, thenaddress those requirements within the framework of existing localstructures. Cultural differences affect interacti<strong>on</strong> at levels significantlydeeper than language. Addressing these differences requires the earlyattenti<strong>on</strong> of professi<strong>on</strong>als with expertise in a variety of fields, includinguser-centred design, HCI, psychology and linguistics. Only a synthesisof this expertise can guarantee the reaping of the enormous benefitsthat globalisati<strong>on</strong> can offer to truly internati<strong>on</strong>al businesses.Notes1. This chapter would not have been possible without the assistance and cooperati<strong>on</strong>of Robert Gilham, HCI c<strong>on</strong>sultant at Amberlight Partners.2. An <strong>on</strong>line marketing multilingual website at http://global-reach.biz3. Informati<strong>on</strong> available <strong>on</strong> www.internetworldstats.com/stats/.htmReferencesBourges-Waldegg, P. and Scrivener, S.A.R. (1998) ‘Meaning, the central issue incross-cultural HCI design’. Interacting with Computers 9(3): 287–309.


Usability and Website Localisati<strong>on</strong> 193Fernandes, T. (1995) Global Interface Design: A Guide to Designing Internati<strong>on</strong>alUser Interfaces. Bost<strong>on</strong>, MA: AP Professi<strong>on</strong>al.French, T. and Smith, A. (2000) ‘Semiotically enhanced web interfaces for sharedmeanings: Can semiotics help us meet the challenge of cross-cultural HCIdesign?’ IWIPS 2000. Baltimore, USA, 23–38.Green, T.R.G., Davies, S.P and Gilmore, D.J. (1996) ‘Delivering cognitivepsychology to HCI: the problems of comm<strong>on</strong> language and of knowledgetransfer’. Interacting with Computers 8(1): 89–111.Hall, E.T. (1976) Bey<strong>on</strong>d Culture. Garden City, NY: Anchor Press.Hayward, W.G. and T<strong>on</strong>g, K.K. (2001) ‘The influence of language proficiency <strong>on</strong>web site usage with bilingual users’. www.psy.cuhk.edu.hk/~usability/research/HaywardT<strong>on</strong>g.pdfHofstede, G. (1991) Cultures and Organizati<strong>on</strong>s: Software of the Mind. Maidenhead:McGraw-Hill.Liang, T. and Do<strong>on</strong>g, H. (2000) ‘Effect of bargaining in electr<strong>on</strong>ic commerce’.Internati<strong>on</strong>al Journal of Electr<strong>on</strong>ic Commerce 4(3): 23–43.


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Part IVEducati<strong>on</strong> and Training


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15Teaching Screen <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g>:The Role of Pragmatics inSubtitlingErik SkuggevikIntroducti<strong>on</strong>It is an inescapable fact that subtitling, as a form of interlingualtranslati<strong>on</strong>, must simplify informati<strong>on</strong>, if not wherever possible, thenwherever necessary. This need to simplify arises because subtitles do notreplace the original language of the film, they coexist with it, as well aswith the other audio and visual channels of the film, and even – shouldthe subtitles be too complex – compete with them. Thus, having tomatch reading speed to speaking speed invariably leads to choices aboutwhat to prioritise in subtitles, and this forms an equal part of the wholetranslati<strong>on</strong> process.The subtitlers, in many ways, have nowhere to hide. They presenttheir translated renditi<strong>on</strong> of whatever is spoken at the precise momentwhen it is said, and any viewer with a grasp of the original language isable to make an instant comparis<strong>on</strong>. This is what terrifies any novice,and even some experienced subtitlers; a fear that can manifest itself intoo rigid an adherence to the original syntax and to the denotativevalues of the spoken words, often resulting in – am<strong>on</strong>gst other things –over-l<strong>on</strong>g subtitles and literally-translated metaphors.The c<strong>on</strong>fidence to translate subtitles with a degree of ec<strong>on</strong>omy mightimprove with experience and sensitivity, but as an alternative to theintuitive skills acquired in this process, we can also develop or dem<strong>on</strong>stratesuch awareness through subtitling pragmatics. In this chapter weshall be looking at the speech act analyses of Grice (1975) and Jakobs<strong>on</strong>(1960), and c<strong>on</strong>sider a number of aspects that, to varying degrees, maybe said to form part of the emerging field of subtitling theory.197


198 Erik SkuggevikThe five levels of competence in subtitlingIn order for us to delineate the field into which we are about to delve,we may briefly outline five levels of subtitling competence. Grice’scooperative principle and its maxims can be associated with the third,while Jakobs<strong>on</strong>’s speech act theory can be aligned to the fourth.1. The first level is technical competence, that is the ability to deal withthe sheer practical demands of the job as it appears to most workingsubtitlers: use of software, line breaks, positi<strong>on</strong>ing <strong>on</strong> the screen,time and space restricti<strong>on</strong>s, use of italics, etc. This is an area wheremistakes are easily quantifiable, as there are clearly identifiable rightsand wr<strong>on</strong>gs.2. The sec<strong>on</strong>d level c<strong>on</strong>cerns the linguistic skills of the students; thetranslators’ expertise and sensitivity to their own and to the Source<str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> (SL). These are language skills that students will have todraw <strong>on</strong> in any translati<strong>on</strong> work.3. The third level refers to the translators’ understanding of social andcultural (n<strong>on</strong>-linguistic) aspects and the awareness of their relativevalues. Any number of dicti<strong>on</strong>aries cannot be a substitute for thehands-<strong>on</strong> experience of living and breathing the way of life of anotherculture, its language use and the hierarchies of social values.4. The fourth level is possibly the most elusive analytically but also themost universal: comprehensi<strong>on</strong> of the psychological or emoti<strong>on</strong>aldimensi<strong>on</strong> inherent in the acti<strong>on</strong> that accompanies the spokenwords.5. There is, in my opini<strong>on</strong>, a fifth level which is the competence whichallows taking all these previous areas into c<strong>on</strong>siderati<strong>on</strong> in a holisticexercise of determining strategies based up<strong>on</strong> the limitati<strong>on</strong>s andpossibilities <strong>on</strong> offer, in order to formulate any given subtitle. I shallreturn to some additi<strong>on</strong>al c<strong>on</strong>siderati<strong>on</strong>s about this fifth level ofcompetence at the end of this chapter.Within the discipline of pragmatics, many of these dimensi<strong>on</strong>s are c<strong>on</strong>sideredas part of the importance that c<strong>on</strong>text, readership, culturalexpectati<strong>on</strong>s and implicatures play in communicati<strong>on</strong>. However, as weshall see, subtitling places rather specific demands <strong>on</strong> the type ofanalysis needed since its main c<strong>on</strong>cern is the transfer of the communicativeact itself, not in its entirety (like literary translati<strong>on</strong>), butpartially, as the visual and audio channels are running c<strong>on</strong>currentlyand are complementary.


Role of Pragmatics in Subtitling 199Subtitling and implicaturesOne problem area characterising subtitling results from violati<strong>on</strong>s ofthe maxims of the cooperative principle (Grice, 1975), or differentlyput, the problems of transferring the operative differences of thesemaxims between language-cultures without having recourse to thesocial or cultural landscape in which they exist.We should note here that the terms c<strong>on</strong>venti<strong>on</strong>al (or standard) implicatureversus c<strong>on</strong>versati<strong>on</strong>al implicature may be most easily recognisedthrough reference to denotative and c<strong>on</strong>notative values respectively.There is a close parallel distincti<strong>on</strong> between stated meaning (as bothdenotative value/standard implicature) and implied meaning (as bothc<strong>on</strong>notative value/c<strong>on</strong>versati<strong>on</strong>al implicature), and although there areinstances where the two sets of distincti<strong>on</strong>s have their different uses, theoverlap is sufficient to explain why both sets of terms are used at timesinterchangeably. For our purposes, the term ‘standard’ (Levins<strong>on</strong>, 1983)is used in preference to Grice’s ‘c<strong>on</strong>venti<strong>on</strong>al implicature’, to make itvisually (and ph<strong>on</strong>etically) easier to distinguish from c<strong>on</strong>versati<strong>on</strong>alimplicature.In order for us to investigate the usefulness of Grice’s formulati<strong>on</strong>s ofthe cooperative principle and to what extent it applies to subtitling, itmight be c<strong>on</strong>venient to summarise the initial list of maxims providedby Grice (quoted in Katan, 1999: 211):● The maxim of Quantity: give as much informati<strong>on</strong> as needed.● The maxim of Quality: speak truthfully.● The maxim of Relati<strong>on</strong>: say things that are relevant.● The maxim of Manner: say things clearly and briefly.According to Grice (1975), these maxims will inform the choices madeby both speakers and listeners when deciding how to communicate orinterpret informati<strong>on</strong>: as standard implicature when no maxim hasbeen violated, or as c<strong>on</strong>versati<strong>on</strong>al implicature when <strong>on</strong>e or more ofthem have been flouted.Looking around, particularly at social interacti<strong>on</strong> in the Westernworld which we may identify as problematic (from our own experienceor from observati<strong>on</strong>), it becomes evident that there are a few other possiblemaxims in operati<strong>on</strong>:● Be polite.● Do not embarrass.● Do not dominate.


200 Erik Skuggevik● Do not be too subservient.● Do not exaggerate your status.The fact that there are maxims other than the <strong>on</strong>es suggested by Grice isnot surprising. He freely admits that his list is not exhaustive, and hintsthat there may be additi<strong>on</strong>s. That there may be hierarchies involved inthe importance of the maxims is also something Grice (1975: 46) c<strong>on</strong>cedeshimself when he states that: ‘It is obvious that the observance ofthese maxims is a matter of less urgency than the observance of others;a man that has expressed himself with undue prolixity would, in general,be open to milder comments than a man who has said somethinghe believes to be false’. In other words, it is worse to lie than to talk toomuch. But this may not be the order of priorities in every culture, asclearly pointed out by Baker (1992: 233):In some cultures “Be polite” indeed seems to override all othermaxims. Loveday (1982: 364) explains that “No” almost c<strong>on</strong>stitutesa term of abuse in Japanese and equivocati<strong>on</strong>, exiting or even lyingis preferred to its use.’ If this is true, it would suggest that the maximsof Quality and Manner are easily overridden by c<strong>on</strong>siderati<strong>on</strong>s ofpoliteness in some cultures.Grice’s maxims, and their hierarchical potential, must then be seen asculture-specific, and although they provide a method of making explicitthe motives and inferences of speakers, they do not assist translati<strong>on</strong>and are in general better suited to describe communicative failures thanprescriptive strategies. Indeed, it is worth registering that the relati<strong>on</strong>shipbetween the cooperative principle and its maxims is analogous tothe relati<strong>on</strong>ship between the Saussurean langue and parole, where Grice’sdefiniti<strong>on</strong>s are firmly rooted in the descripti<strong>on</strong> of the parole of maximsand implicatures.In the field of commercial film translati<strong>on</strong>, the market is dominatedby US (and to some extent British) films, and for many European culturesthe Anglo-Sax<strong>on</strong> hierarchical organisati<strong>on</strong> of Gricean maximsand their own have large areas of overlap, some more than others.Below, however, we shall have a quick look at a particular difference innuance between Norwegian and English maxims.Norwegian and English variati<strong>on</strong>The gap between the operative maxims in American or British societiesand Norwegian society is generally very narrow. However, <strong>on</strong>e


Role of Pragmatics in Subtitling 201difference lies in the maxim of being instituti<strong>on</strong>ally (or minimally)polite. When subtitling a large number of occurrences of statementsending in the words ‘please’ or ‘thank you’ into Norwegian (Swedishand Danish would be much the same) the tendency is often to omitthese words, and this is not just because it is space-saving: to includethe Norwegian semantic units vennligst, takk or er du snill (denotative/c<strong>on</strong>notative equivalents of ‘please’ or ‘thank you’) might often seemexcessively polite, and could therefore activate the c<strong>on</strong>notative,Norwegian interpretati<strong>on</strong> (c<strong>on</strong>versati<strong>on</strong>al implicature) of ir<strong>on</strong>y or sarcasm.A scene at an English restaurant where Mr A says, ‘Could I havethe menu, please?’ presents us with a standard implicature in English,but a Norwegian Mr B who says, Kan jeg få menyen, takk/er du snill?runs the risk of invoking the c<strong>on</strong>versati<strong>on</strong>al implicature ‘I need amenu and I am getting impatient’. The omissi<strong>on</strong> of ‘please’ thereforeseems logical, and rarely presents a problem in Norwegian subtitles.Indeed this difference in linguistic code is summed up in what manyNorwegians describe as a British preoccupati<strong>on</strong> with ‘please’ and‘thank you’.Occasi<strong>on</strong>ally, however, the violati<strong>on</strong> of this (instituti<strong>on</strong>al) politenessmaxim becomes foregrounded, as when the withholding of a ‘thanks,’which would normally have been omitted in a Norwegian subtitle, givesrise to a c<strong>on</strong>versati<strong>on</strong>al implicature in English. The following scenetakes place in a restaurant, where the waiter attending a table finds theguest quite uncooperative:ENGLISHNORWEGIAN- Would you like pepper? - Vil du ha litt pepper?- No. - Nei.- I was <strong>on</strong>ly asking. - Jeg bare spurte.- And I said no. - Og jeg sa nei.To a British audience it is not difficult to see that the reas<strong>on</strong> for thewaiter’s remark (and he gets our sympathies) was prompted by a feelingof ‘a void’ in the normal communicative pattern. It is virtually obligatoryto say ‘No, thanks’ when declining an offer in English, whereas inNorwegian, judged by the subtitles at least, the feeling created is thatthe waiter is over-sensitive and that the guest has a valid point. Onemight say ‘No, thanks’ in Norwegian as well, but then it is an added


202 Erik Skuggevikdegree of politeness. In Britain it is obligatory. While the English versi<strong>on</strong>violates the maxim of politeness, the Norwegian does not. Since Grice’sproposal offers no methods of transferring maxims between cultures,we shall return to this point after we have looked at Jakobs<strong>on</strong>’scommunicati<strong>on</strong> functi<strong>on</strong>s.The kind of difference in cooperative hierarchies discussed abovecould in theory be formulated between different languages and culturesas the closer two cultures are, the less divergence between themaxims. The further removed from each other cultures are, the moreimportant it becomes to use strategies to act as a form of intermediaryarea in which comparis<strong>on</strong>s of relative value might be c<strong>on</strong>ducted withgreater ease.In order to provide a possible Rosetta St<strong>on</strong>e between the difference inrelative value of culturally defined maxims, we can turn to an analysisof communicati<strong>on</strong>, essentially more psychological than cultural, based<strong>on</strong> the assumpti<strong>on</strong> that there must at least be a high value attached tothe maxim of Relati<strong>on</strong> (be relevant), as indeed communicati<strong>on</strong> seemspointless if there did not exist a maxim that addressed the questi<strong>on</strong>‘why are we talking at all?’. Here Jakobs<strong>on</strong>’s (1960) speech act analysis,originally a linguistic model, may provide us with an approach makingexplicit the dynamics; this is important in cases of violati<strong>on</strong> of themaxims of Grice’s cooperative principle, that is when culturally codifiedc<strong>on</strong>venti<strong>on</strong>s are challenged, to the point when the subtitler’s skillwill be put to the test.Communicati<strong>on</strong> in subtitlingJakobs<strong>on</strong> (1960) proposes that there are six necessary comp<strong>on</strong>ents ofany speech act. I will extend these to encompass all forms of communicati<strong>on</strong>as the functi<strong>on</strong>al principles involved are exactly the same.Jakobs<strong>on</strong>’s comp<strong>on</strong>ents are obligatory in the sense that if any <strong>on</strong>e ofthem is removed no communicati<strong>on</strong> can take place. They are illustratedin Figure 15.1.SenderCodeC<strong>on</strong>tactC<strong>on</strong>textMessageReceiverFigure 15.1 Jakobs<strong>on</strong>’s six comp<strong>on</strong>ents


Role of Pragmatics in Subtitling 203We shall briefly list some examples of these six categories:● Sender (or addresser): Me, the Prime Minister, a pers<strong>on</strong> from thesixteenth century, etc.● Code: Spanish, mathematical indexes, legalese, cockney, morse code,body language, etc.● C<strong>on</strong>tact: Pers<strong>on</strong> to pers<strong>on</strong>, a newspaper, Internet, teleph<strong>on</strong>e, runes <strong>on</strong>a st<strong>on</strong>e, TV, etc.● C<strong>on</strong>text: Attending a lecture, sitting <strong>on</strong> the underground, walking thedog, etc.● Message: (The lexical/semiotic c<strong>on</strong>tent) ‘Meet me at 11pm’, ‘There willbe tax rises’, etc.● Receiver (or addressee): You, the President, the ph<strong>on</strong>e operator, a pers<strong>on</strong>in the twenty-third century.As an example of a situati<strong>on</strong> involving these comp<strong>on</strong>ents we could pickanything that may be viewed as communicati<strong>on</strong>, but the <strong>on</strong>e that you,in your present role as reader, are experiencing will serve as an illustrati<strong>on</strong>.You (the receiver) are reading this paper, the factual c<strong>on</strong>tent ofwhich is the message, written by me (the sender). The c<strong>on</strong>tact that makesthis possible is the book you have in fr<strong>on</strong>t of you. The c<strong>on</strong>text is the situati<strong>on</strong>you are in right now, sitting at <strong>home</strong>, at college, <strong>on</strong> the bus –maybe you have been asked to read the paper or found it by accident.The code employed is English, somewhat academic, specialised in thefield of <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> Studies. Remove <strong>on</strong>e of these ingredients and youwill not be able to make any sense, c<strong>on</strong>tact or inferences from yourexperience (although the removal of c<strong>on</strong>text al<strong>on</strong>e is an impossiblepropositi<strong>on</strong>, as there can be no c<strong>on</strong>text-free experience).These formal comp<strong>on</strong>ents of the communicative act can be seen asuniversal. The recogniti<strong>on</strong> and identificati<strong>on</strong> of each <strong>on</strong>e of them (albeitsubliminally) lies at the core of any analysis of communicati<strong>on</strong>. Forinstance, in order to correctly interpret any violati<strong>on</strong> of a Gricean maxim,it would be necessary to first – and this is an unspoken assumpti<strong>on</strong> inGrice’s proposal – eliminate the possibility that there may be a breakdownin communicati<strong>on</strong>, due to faults in the code, mode of c<strong>on</strong>tact,misunderstandings of c<strong>on</strong>text, or misidentificati<strong>on</strong> of receiver/sender.Only then can any n<strong>on</strong>-adherence to accepted maxims be given an inferenceor implicature, and any message interpreted accordingly.Once the presence of these six comp<strong>on</strong>ents is established, it becomesclear that at different times any <strong>on</strong>e of them may seem more centralto the tenor of a communicative act. <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> theory scholars have


204 Erik SkuggevikEmotiveSenderMetacommunicativeCodePhaticC<strong>on</strong>tactReferentialC<strong>on</strong>textPerformativeMessageC<strong>on</strong>ativeReceiverFigure 15.2 Jakobs<strong>on</strong>’s six functi<strong>on</strong>s of communicati<strong>on</strong> 1l<strong>on</strong>g recognised that particular linguistic features may be linked to acorresp<strong>on</strong>ding problem or situati<strong>on</strong> – e.g. Bühler (1934: expressive,appellative, informative); Reiss (1971: informative, expressive, operative).Each of Jakobs<strong>on</strong>’s c<strong>on</strong>stituents may be seen as capable ofproviding the focus for a type of communicati<strong>on</strong>, either because thereis a semantic problem (code, c<strong>on</strong>tact), a particular objective (sender,receiver), an informative purpose (c<strong>on</strong>text) or a particular aestheticimperative (message). As acknowledged by Jakobs<strong>on</strong> (1960), communicati<strong>on</strong>displays certain features when it gravitates towards eachof the six c<strong>on</strong>stituents, and he ascribes to them the functi<strong>on</strong>s inFigure 15.2.Jakobs<strong>on</strong>’s functi<strong>on</strong>s could easily form the basis of a further classificati<strong>on</strong>of ‘text types’ leading to a more comprehensive versi<strong>on</strong> thanReiss’s model, (informative, expressive and operative – in Jakobs<strong>on</strong>’sterms referential, emotive and c<strong>on</strong>ative), although Reiss (1971: 172)does not believe this is a fruitful approach. Nord (quoted in Munday,2001: 74) 2 added the phatic functi<strong>on</strong> to Reiss’s text types, leavingJakobs<strong>on</strong>’s performative (poetic) and metacommunicative (metalinguistic)functi<strong>on</strong>s to be incorporated into a potentially more completesystem.However, Jakobs<strong>on</strong> himself never suggested that these functi<strong>on</strong>sshould define text types as such. On the c<strong>on</strong>trary, the functi<strong>on</strong>s, as adominant factor of any communicati<strong>on</strong>, are in c<strong>on</strong>stant flux and in anyact of communicati<strong>on</strong> the focus could shift quickly from <strong>on</strong>e to another,as different approaches may be employed in order to achieve a particulargoal: cajole, tempt, flatter, threaten, reas<strong>on</strong>... For subtitlers this is ofcourse a most familiar occurrence. Let us briefly look at a summary ofJakobs<strong>on</strong>’s (1960) definiti<strong>on</strong>s:1. Emotive: When the communicati<strong>on</strong> is focused <strong>on</strong> the sender(addresser), expressing how s/he feels and thinks: ‘I am totally


Role of Pragmatics in Subtitling 205opposed to this plan!’, ‘Never mind your husband, what about me?’,‘I love this place’, etc.2. Metacommunicative (metalinguistic in Jakobs<strong>on</strong>’s original usage):Communicati<strong>on</strong> about communicati<strong>on</strong> (redefiniti<strong>on</strong>s, reformulating,explaining words) or when the code itself is in focus, see theexample below from the film Meet the Parents.3. Phatic: When language is used just to establish or maintain c<strong>on</strong>tactas in ‘How are you doing?’, ‘Nice day today, isn’t it?’, etc.4. Referential: It takes place when the communicati<strong>on</strong> is appropriate tothe c<strong>on</strong>text, e.g. when in a meeting, it is appropriate to discuss theagenda; when lecturing, it is appropriate to impart informati<strong>on</strong>.Referential communicati<strong>on</strong> is focused <strong>on</strong> something external, independentfacts, descripti<strong>on</strong>s, relevant informati<strong>on</strong>, etc.5. Performative (poetic in Jakobs<strong>on</strong>’s original usage): Communicati<strong>on</strong>that indulges in the poetic, aesthetic or musical qualities of thecode. It is important to remember that this does not necessarilyimply ‘something beautiful’, just that communicati<strong>on</strong> works performatively.Most modern adverts do in fact perform visually andmusically by associating aesthetic values with their product(Barthes, 1977).6. C<strong>on</strong>ative: Not to be c<strong>on</strong>fused with ‘c<strong>on</strong>notative’. Communicati<strong>on</strong>focused <strong>on</strong> the receiver’s (addressee’s) needs and situati<strong>on</strong>: ‘D<strong>on</strong>’tworry, nothing bad will happen, you just take your time’, ‘Is thatsomething you can live with?’, ‘I w<strong>on</strong>’t forget you’, etc.Multiple choicesAs far as subtitling is c<strong>on</strong>cerned, it is of course imperative to recognisethat it is not the words themselves which necessarily determine thecommunicative functi<strong>on</strong> of a statement, but the way they are givenexpressi<strong>on</strong>; their relati<strong>on</strong>ship to t<strong>on</strong>e of voice, body language and situati<strong>on</strong>.As an example, we shall look at a phrase subtitlers often encounter,‘I’m OK’, heard in many films, from which several examples aregiven below.‘I’m OK’ simply seen <strong>on</strong> a page will make most people interpret it(by a kind of ‘cultural collocati<strong>on</strong>’) as a standard implicature: ‘I amfine, no need to do anything’. But the phrase is often uttered to expressentirely different sentiments. These are indicated, most importantly,by c<strong>on</strong>text, mood and body language, something that becomes clearwhen attempting to subtitle a large number of versi<strong>on</strong>s of ‘I’m OK’


206 Erik Skuggevikinto Norwegian. In the following six examples, different c<strong>on</strong>notati<strong>on</strong>sof ‘OK’ mean that they cannot be expressed by <strong>on</strong>e and the samephrase:1. Referential: factual resp<strong>on</strong>se to c<strong>on</strong>text. Nate asks Lisa whether she wantsanother drink. She smiles, shakes her hand and replies: ‘I’m OK’ –Nei, takk [No, thanks].2. C<strong>on</strong>ative: seeking to reassure. Claire puts her arm around Russell, whois visibly upset following an emoti<strong>on</strong>al ordeal. He is shivering, looksblankly straight ahead and says quietly: ‘I’m OK’ – Det går bra / Jegklarer meg [It goes well / I’ll manage].3. Performative: the delivery of the message is rhythmically adapted to givesensual or poetic expressi<strong>on</strong> to the words. Asked how he is feeling, John,sitting in a hot Jacuzzi, sipping champagne, replies in an overly slow,breathy voice, pausing between each word, lingering for a l<strong>on</strong>g time<strong>on</strong> the letter ‘o’: ‘I ... am ... ooooo ... kay’ – Jeg ... har det ... deilig! [I have itlovely].4. Emotive: statement of feeling. Some<strong>on</strong>e runs jubilantly out from adoctor’s surgery, having just received news that s/he does not havesome suspected disease, shouting to a friend: ‘I’m OK!’ – Jeg er frisk! /Alt er bra! [I am well (healthy)! / All is good!].5. Phatic: c<strong>on</strong>firming that the communicati<strong>on</strong> channel works. The chairmanof a teleph<strong>on</strong>e meeting checks that all the c<strong>on</strong>nected participantsare hooked up, and asks: ‘Can every<strong>on</strong>e hear me?’. Several ofthe participants answer: ‘I’m OK’ – Alt i orden [All is in order].6. Metacommuncative: terms used to illuminate other terms. A c<strong>on</strong>fusedforeigner asks a friend: ‘What does “I am swell” mean?’ The friendreplies: ‘It means “I’m OK” ’ – Det betyr: Jeg er ok [It means, I am OK].Although the Norwegian subtitling choices above no doubt might havebeen expressed differently by another subtitler, the fact remains thatthere is no way of translating the words ‘I’m OK’ into Norwegian (orany other language) without c<strong>on</strong>sidering the underlying c<strong>on</strong>notativemessage.CodeIn the early stages of the film Meet the Parents we have a situati<strong>on</strong> wherethe daughter brings her new boyfriend <strong>home</strong> to meet her parents.However, the reuni<strong>on</strong> serves to isolate the boyfriend as he witnesses a


Role of Pragmatics in Subtitling 207stream of private language, childish nicknames and small ‘games’between father and daughter:Hi, Daddy! Hi!- I missed you so much, Pamcake.- I missed you too, Popjack.Oh, boy! Oh, boy! Oh, boy!Shortstack, shortstack, coming up!Where’s my widdle girl?Mommy! My mom!← Daughter runs up to dad.← Father hugs.← Daughter← Father, as he swirls daughteraround in an embrace.← Both father and daughter asthey ‘stack’ hands.← Mother, with apr<strong>on</strong>appearing in doorway.← Daughter, goes to hugmother.Should we choose to analyse the scene above in terms of Gricean maxims(even if Grice does not deal with c<strong>on</strong>venti<strong>on</strong>s or the cooperative principlein relati<strong>on</strong> to group dynamics), there are a number of maxims in suchinteracti<strong>on</strong>s that are clearly relevant to Greg, the ‘forgotten’ guest. Therecertainly is a breach of the maxim of relati<strong>on</strong> (relevance), because to Greg,the whole scene becomes an embarrassment as it does not involve him atall. The scene also dem<strong>on</strong>strates a breach of the maxim of politeness. ButGrice’s maxims cannot tell us (for translati<strong>on</strong> purposes) in what way thelanguage in the scene communicates that sense of exclusi<strong>on</strong>.Following Jakobs<strong>on</strong>’s categories, what we see in this extract is thepractice of a kind of specialised, somewhat regressive, childish language,practised by the family <strong>on</strong>ly, and in Jakobs<strong>on</strong>’s terminology, this scenehas at its centre its very own code. Greg, the alienated outsider, has noaccess to this private language. How do we translate words like ‘pamcake’,‘popjack, ‘shortstack’, ‘shortstack coming up’, or ‘my widdle girl’?The words are c<strong>on</strong>fusing, certainly, if all you have is a dicti<strong>on</strong>ary.Although there are referential references in the dialogue, at the centre,most importantly, is the use of a private code, a code that c<strong>on</strong>stitutes asecret family b<strong>on</strong>d. This is functi<strong>on</strong>ally what we need to hold <strong>on</strong> to. Thetranslated subtitles should not ignore the alienating effect of this privatecode because Greg’s alienati<strong>on</strong> and embarrassment is what the filmrevolves around from that moment <strong>on</strong>.Now imagine you are watching a film sequence where Mr J<strong>on</strong>es andMrs Smith are talking about aeroplanes. But they are both pilots.


208 Erik SkuggevikPerhaps their c<strong>on</strong>versati<strong>on</strong> is, purely phatic, that is, not so much aboutaeroplanes but just about talking to kill time, or to just stay in touch.That can give the subtitler good guidance in what choices to make, toavoid language that accidentally makes it sound more technical thannecessary, or at least make sure that the t<strong>on</strong>e of the translati<strong>on</strong> reflectsthe phatic functi<strong>on</strong> of the scene as a whole.Or imagine the following scene in a film: a coal miner exhaustedafter a terrible ordeal down a burning mine shaft exclaims: ‘I think Ineed a cup of tea’. On the face of it, this seems very clear. The statementappears referential in nature, has a clear outside physical comp<strong>on</strong>entand is grammatically straightforward. Indeed, I cannot imagine toomany different ways of translating this line into Norwegian. But imaginefor a sec<strong>on</strong>d that in your country drinking tea is something that notmany people do and those who do bel<strong>on</strong>g to the social elite. So againstthis background a coal miner wanting a cup of tea would seem a bitstrange. What do you do? In the UK, having a ‘cuppa’ can be associatedwith caring, hospitality, safety and normality. The expressi<strong>on</strong> ‘I think Ineed a cup of tea’ in this situati<strong>on</strong> is not primarily referential in nature,it c<strong>on</strong>cerns itself with the situati<strong>on</strong>: it is an expressi<strong>on</strong> of the speaker’sfeelings. The functi<strong>on</strong>, according to Jakobs<strong>on</strong>, is emotive, that is, it hasto do with the feelings of the speaker and is actually expressing a need(albeit with well-known British understatement) for comfort and normality.If both good knowledge of the English instituti<strong>on</strong> of tea or theEnglish language is lacking in the Target <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> (TL), there may be adistinct advantage in translating this request for tea in a more generalway. But how? Given that we identify the functi<strong>on</strong> of this statement asemotive, we should remain within that sphere, and we could maybec<strong>on</strong>sider: ‘I need something soothing/relaxing to drink’.The meaning of ‘No’We have discussed, above, the situati<strong>on</strong> where a waiter might have feltslightly offended by the guest’s failure to say ‘no, thanks’ when askedwhether he wanted pepper <strong>on</strong> his food. We recognised that there was aviolati<strong>on</strong> of the Gricean maxim of politeness which caused this offencein English, whereas in Norwegian the expectati<strong>on</strong> is virtually absent.Admittedly, this is not a major problem in Norwegian subtitling, but allthe same, it is interesting to analyse further. How should we view theimportance of the flouting of the maxim of politeness in this situati<strong>on</strong>?According to Jakobs<strong>on</strong>’s functi<strong>on</strong>s, ‘thanks’ and ‘please’ are an instituti<strong>on</strong>alisedform of c<strong>on</strong>ative behaviour since politeness (as standard


Role of Pragmatics in Subtitling 209implicature) usually carries a c<strong>on</strong>ative functi<strong>on</strong>. Omissi<strong>on</strong> of thisobligatory resp<strong>on</strong>se makes the guest perform an emotive act; his answerhas become self-centred. In Norwegian it is more culturally acceptableto give an emotive or referential answer to an offer with no c<strong>on</strong>ativeelement. When subtitling this dialogue, we should endeavour to reflectthe guest’s rudeness, as was the waiter’s interpretati<strong>on</strong>. How do youmake the emotive ‘no’ more emotive or impolite without adding morewords? One method is simply to add an exclamati<strong>on</strong> mark (more comm<strong>on</strong>lyused in Norwegian). This would not interfere with the wordec<strong>on</strong>omy, and could almost imperceptibly accentuate the unexpectednessof the guest’s resp<strong>on</strong>se. This strategy could also work in English:- Would you like pepper?- No!- I was <strong>on</strong>ly asking.- And I said no.At the beginning of this discussi<strong>on</strong> we menti<strong>on</strong>ed the possibility of afifth, holistic, subtitling level of competence and some further remarks<strong>on</strong> the subject might seem appropriate at this point. A number of relatedobservati<strong>on</strong>s have been made by Ivarss<strong>on</strong> and Carroll (1998) andGottlieb (2003), but we shall have a look at two which have receivedlimited attenti<strong>on</strong>.Dynamic coexistenceAs language users we have a relati<strong>on</strong>ship to words which is not <strong>on</strong>lytechnical or semantic, but also sensuous or, at least as far as the speakeris c<strong>on</strong>cerned, performative. In subtitling we need to give c<strong>on</strong>siderati<strong>on</strong>to a certain mirroring of dynamism between what is said and how itreads. By ‘dynamic coexistence’ I refer to the relati<strong>on</strong>ship between thespoken and the written word; for a subtitle to sit comfortably with whatwe hear, we also need to get a reas<strong>on</strong>able semblance of the aural impactof the words. What we are referring to here is how we read a writtentext. As pointed out by De Linde and Kay (1999: 20), it is important thatwe take into account the inner voice that makes people, even whenreading, pr<strong>on</strong>ounce the words:Studies in homoph<strong>on</strong>ic reading support the noti<strong>on</strong> that inner speechis significant in the reading process. Most studies c<strong>on</strong>firm that thespeed and/or accuracy of silent reading is influenced by the sounds


210 Erik Skuggevikof words. Likewise, sentences c<strong>on</strong>taining a series of words that rhymeor alliterate (t<strong>on</strong>gue-twisters) are more difficult to read both silentlyand aloud.We need to remember that subtitles are a ‘<strong>on</strong>e-way street’ in the sensethat, unlike words <strong>on</strong> a page, we cannot go back and check or re-read. Asubtitler must therefore ensure the viewer gets the message the firsttime around by not overcrowding the subtitles with phrases or wordsthat require c<strong>on</strong>centrated reading.Most subtitlers recognise that the performative element inherent inswearing or slang must be given attenti<strong>on</strong> but so must the rhythm ofidiomatic expressi<strong>on</strong>s or the poetic nature of amorous communicati<strong>on</strong>.The noti<strong>on</strong> of dynamic coexistence might also rule out the possibilityof translati<strong>on</strong> <strong>on</strong> plain readability al<strong>on</strong>e, as when letter combinati<strong>on</strong>sand words read with such difficulty that – never mind the correctnessof the semantic and grammatical equivalence – the viewer simply cannotdisentangle the subtitle before it has disappeared.A c<strong>on</strong>siderati<strong>on</strong> of the dynamic coexistence of speech and subtitlesshould also ensure that we let short expressi<strong>on</strong>s stay short in translati<strong>on</strong>,or give a semblance of verbosity in the subtitle if the speaker is verbose.Sometimes, by chance, it happens that an entire sentence of as many asten words can be expressed accurately by a short phrase in translati<strong>on</strong>,but much as subtitles strive for ec<strong>on</strong>omy of expressi<strong>on</strong>, in such cases <strong>on</strong>emight have to add words simply in order to mirror the time it takes toread a subtitle with the time it takes for it to be spoken in the original.The importance of body languageAlthough originally presented in order to define poetics, Jakobs<strong>on</strong>’sfuncti<strong>on</strong>s are far from being just linguistic. In a visual medium such asa film the viewer will be bombarded with clues as to what is going <strong>on</strong>.Communicati<strong>on</strong> is also body language and usually coincides functi<strong>on</strong>allywith the spoken word. Somebody stroking some<strong>on</strong>e over the headwill most often match that with words fulfilling the same functi<strong>on</strong> – inthis case the c<strong>on</strong>ative, centred <strong>on</strong> the receiver. A pers<strong>on</strong> wildly wavingtheir arms about in discussi<strong>on</strong> will normally use words that reflect theemotive functi<strong>on</strong>; some<strong>on</strong>e using their hands to delineate or drawshapes and spatial relati<strong>on</strong>ships will equally be inclined to using referentiallanguage; a handshake is the physical equivalent of establishingverbal c<strong>on</strong>tact, both given a phatic functi<strong>on</strong>, etc. Sometimes the subtitlermay be struggling with a particularly obtuse or unusual phrase,


Role of Pragmatics in Subtitling 211sentence or sequence to translate, even if they have a general idea ofwhat the meaning of it is. In such instances it may be a useful strategyto simply switch off the sound and view communicati<strong>on</strong> at the level ofbody language: who is relating to whom, in what manner, what are thepower dynamics in the situati<strong>on</strong>, etc. This exercise can often unlock –or at the very least c<strong>on</strong>firm – some of the psychological relati<strong>on</strong>shipsand messages in a particular scene. We do this in our own lives everyday, <strong>on</strong>ly then we cannot switch the sound off!However, if body language does not match words, the effect is ofcourse entirely different. It is quite impossible to imagine a pers<strong>on</strong> witha referential body language, using his hands in a manner of somebodymaking a business presentati<strong>on</strong>, while at the same time declaring hisundying love for his girlfriend. If somebody’s physical acti<strong>on</strong> is strokinganother pers<strong>on</strong>’s hair (c<strong>on</strong>ative), but the c<strong>on</strong>current verbal acti<strong>on</strong> istalking about the weather (phatic), or themselves (emotive), then thereis a jarring of functi<strong>on</strong>s. As viewers, we may sense that a film sequenceexpresses something rather odd without knowing how or why. However,this way of analysing may give a clue about how to combine differentelements in order to reflect what is odd. These kinds of relati<strong>on</strong>aldynamics may be structured as shown in Figure 15.3.This is obviously virtual reality and it is not suggested here that suchtables should be drawn up; there are far too many variables in communicati<strong>on</strong>to do this. But it is possible to make explicit what functi<strong>on</strong>alrelati<strong>on</strong>ship the spoken words have to a particular audiovisual sequenceas an aid to solving a particular subtitling problem. In cases where thereis a clash between body and verbal messages, the subtitler must of course<strong>on</strong>ly focus <strong>on</strong> the expressi<strong>on</strong> of the verbal element, as the interrelati<strong>on</strong>shipof physical and verbal acti<strong>on</strong>s are intenti<strong>on</strong>ally at odds, a prioritythat also holds in cases of poor-quality acting.Verbal functi<strong>on</strong> Physical functi<strong>on</strong> Cumulative effectPhatic (talking about theweather)Emotive (talking about<strong>on</strong>eself)+ c<strong>on</strong>ative (comforting) = Insincerity+ c<strong>on</strong>ative (comforting) = Self-centrednessC<strong>on</strong>ative (declaring <strong>on</strong>e’sadmirati<strong>on</strong> for some<strong>on</strong>e)+ referential (using handsfactually like a politician)= Patr<strong>on</strong>isingFigure 15.3 Cumulative functi<strong>on</strong>s


212 Erik SkuggevikC<strong>on</strong>clusi<strong>on</strong>The process of breaking down the communicative functi<strong>on</strong>s of filmicdialogue, with a view to transferring them to subtitles, can be seen as alargely structuralist activity, and as such amounts to more than justpragmatic c<strong>on</strong>siderati<strong>on</strong>s. Indeed, subtitling choices are not simplymodified by the associative functi<strong>on</strong>s we have discussed but are, infact, defined by them.In subtitling, the balance between acti<strong>on</strong>, meaning and words needsto be accurate, which is successfully incorporated by the fifth competencementi<strong>on</strong>ed in our discussi<strong>on</strong>. When c<strong>on</strong>fr<strong>on</strong>ted with a subtitlingtask, we must ask ourselves: ‘What is most important here?’, and thevarious areas outlined as levels of competences need to be c<strong>on</strong>sidered inreverse order. First, we need to understand the communicative functi<strong>on</strong>,and c<strong>on</strong>sider how to formulate this expressi<strong>on</strong>. Sec<strong>on</strong>dly, we must try toalign this expressi<strong>on</strong> with the cultural associati<strong>on</strong>s of the situati<strong>on</strong>,including any possible violati<strong>on</strong>s of Gricean maxims. Thirdly, we musttry to get close to the meaning of the spoken words themselves. But inour search for the words, or the right cultural associati<strong>on</strong>s and potentialimplicatures, we must not forget the communicative functi<strong>on</strong>, sincethis is the most basic of any equivalence we might be trying to recreate. 3By looking at the different interpretati<strong>on</strong>s and translati<strong>on</strong>s of the phrase‘I’m OK’ we have shown that creating equivalence at word level maynot be possible. In all translati<strong>on</strong> acts there will be a compromise, butwhat we cannot ignore when subtitling is the communicative functi<strong>on</strong>performed by a phrase or sentence.Notes1. Jakobs<strong>on</strong> uses the terms ‘metalinguistic’ and ‘poetic’, which in this discussi<strong>on</strong>,have been replaced by ‘metacommunicative’ and ‘performative’ in orderto move from a linguistic to a more general semiotic dimensi<strong>on</strong>.2. No doubt Jakobs<strong>on</strong> (1960) must have been widely read, including by Nord,but his typology does not seem to have had enough impact to make text typeanalysis incorporate all six functi<strong>on</strong>s.3. The existence of equivalence at a more general level, for example betweensubtitle and filmic dialogue, is arguable, at least in a c<strong>on</strong>venti<strong>on</strong>al way. Itmust be remembered that subtitles are not in themselves a complete productas they are symbiotically tied to the film. They are the result of an interlingualrepositi<strong>on</strong>ing of selected elements of the original verbal c<strong>on</strong>tent takenfrom, and reintroduced back into, the overall narrative of the film. It is also abasic premise that for equivalence to be a relevant c<strong>on</strong>cept, a replacement ofthe original needs to have taken place. Strictly speaking, subtitles live a lifeof coexistence, not replacement.


Role of Pragmatics in Subtitling 213ReferencesBaker, M. (1992) In Other Words. L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong>: Routledge.Barthes, R. (1977) Image, Music, Text (Transl. Stephen Heath). L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong>: F<strong>on</strong>tanaPress.Bühler, K. (1934 [1967]) Sprachteorie: Die Darstellungsfunkti<strong>on</strong> der Sprache. Stuttgart:Gustav Fisher.De Linde, Z. and Kay, N. (1999) The Semiotics of Subtitling. Manchester: St. Jerome.Gottlieb, H. (2003) Screen <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g>: Six Studies in Subtitling, Dubbing and Voice-Over. Copenhagen: University of Copenhagen.Grice, H.P. (1975) ‘Logic and c<strong>on</strong>versati<strong>on</strong>’. In L. Cole and J.L. Morgan (eds)Syntax and Semantics (pp. 41–58). New York: Academic Press.Ivarss<strong>on</strong>, J. and Carroll, M. (1998) Subtitling. Simrishamn: TransEdit.Jakobs<strong>on</strong>, R. (1960) ‘Closing statement: linguistics and poetics’. In R. DeGeorgeand F. DeGeorge (eds) (1972) The Structuralists: From Marx to Levi-Strauss(pp. 85–122). New York: Anchor Books.Katan, D. (1999) Translating Cultures: An Introducti<strong>on</strong> for Translators, Interpretersand Mediators. Manchester: St. Jerome.Levins<strong>on</strong>, S.C. (1983) Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Loveday, L.J. (1982) ‘C<strong>on</strong>flicting framing patterns: the sociosemiotics of <strong>on</strong>ecomp<strong>on</strong>ent in cross-cultural communicati<strong>on</strong>’. Text 2(4): 359–74.Munday, J. (2001) Introducing <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> Studies: Theories and Applicati<strong>on</strong>s.L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong>: Routledge.Reiss, K. (1971) ‘Decisi<strong>on</strong> making in translati<strong>on</strong>’. In L. Venuti (ed.) (2000) The<str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> Studies Reader (pp. 168–79). L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong>: Routledge.


16Pedagogical Tools forthe Training of SubtitlersChristopher TaylorIntroducti<strong>on</strong>Several research projects exploiting the potential of the ‘multimodaltranscripti<strong>on</strong>’ as devised originally by Thibault and Baldry (2000) havepointed to useful tools for the screen translator with particular referenceto the subtitler. The methodology as adapted here c<strong>on</strong>sists in thedrawing up of a table c<strong>on</strong>sisting of rows and columns (see Figure 16.1)of the Italian soap opera Un posto al sole.The first column indicates time in sec<strong>on</strong>ds while the sec<strong>on</strong>d columnc<strong>on</strong>tains the individual frames of a film which may be, as in theexample in Figure 16.1, of <strong>on</strong>e-sec<strong>on</strong>d durati<strong>on</strong>. The third column(visual image and kinesic acti<strong>on</strong>) describes in some detail what is visible<strong>on</strong> the screen and what acti<strong>on</strong> is taking place. This is effectedthrough a series of codes (‘D’ stands for distance, ‘CP’ for camera positi<strong>on</strong>,‘VS’ for visual salience, ‘VC’ for visual collocati<strong>on</strong> and ‘VF’ forvisual focus) and features such as perspective, lighting effects, primaryand sec<strong>on</strong>dary visual salience, gaze vectors and many other elementsare thus described. The fourth column describes the sounds that are tobe heard in each frame, including musical accompaniments and dialogue.The final column is reserved for the appending of subtitleswhere required.The minute descripti<strong>on</strong> c<strong>on</strong>tained in the middle columns allows fora thorough analysis of the multimodal text in all its manifestati<strong>on</strong>s,and sensitises the analyst to the complicated meaning-making resourcesc<strong>on</strong>tained therein. The purpose of this methodology, as far as subtitlingstudents are c<strong>on</strong>cerned, is that it enables them to base their translati<strong>on</strong>choices <strong>on</strong> the meaning already provided by the other semiotic214


Pedagogical Tools for Training Subtitlers 2158 CP: horiz<strong>on</strong>talD: medium closeVS: Renato gesticulating,women passivelyabsorbing.VC: apartment furnishings.Gaze: Renato looks atboth women, looking foragreement.Lighting natural.Renato moves far right,hands still forward andmoving frenetically.9 (as above)VF: Renato looks down atGiulia (power pose).Hands folded down, palmsup.Questo n<strong>on</strong> èun desiderio...Questa è unapazzia!This isn’t just awish!This ismadness!10 (as above)Giulia opens palms ingesture of frustrati<strong>on</strong>.Renato,calmati!Renato, calmdown!Figure 16.1modalities c<strong>on</strong>tained in the text (visual elements, music, colour, camerapositi<strong>on</strong>ing, gestures). This process, though time-c<strong>on</strong>suming from apractical point of view, has proved to be an extremely valid pedagogicalinstrument.Students at Trieste University have been encouraged to carry out thistype of analysis over a whole range of film types (feature films, soapoperas, carto<strong>on</strong>s, advertisements, televisi<strong>on</strong> series, news broadcasts,documentaries, etc.) as material for their graduate dissertati<strong>on</strong>s. Theresults have shown how the various film types require different treatmentwhen translating for subtitles. An obvious example is that of thenature documentary where the corresp<strong>on</strong>dence between the visual andthe verbal is at its highest, as compared to an animated scene from asoap opera where the dialogue may refer to many events and peopleoutside the immediate setting.


216 Christopher TaylorHowever, given the impracticality of the method for professi<strong>on</strong>alpurposes with anything l<strong>on</strong>ger than a short televisi<strong>on</strong> advertisement,a sec<strong>on</strong>d stage in the research brought in the c<strong>on</strong>cept of phasal analysis,following the ideas of Gregory (2002) who used this term to describehis analyses of written texts. Thus, rather than individual frames, filmtexts can be divided or parsed into phases, sub-phases and ‘phaselets’based <strong>on</strong> the identificati<strong>on</strong> of coherent and harm<strong>on</strong>ious sets of semioticmodalities working together to create meaning in recognisablechunks, rather in the manner of written texts. Such texts can be analysedin terms of their phasal c<strong>on</strong>structi<strong>on</strong>, which includes the transiti<strong>on</strong>sthat separate the phases and that behave somewhat likec<strong>on</strong>juncti<strong>on</strong>s or discourse markers in the written mode; various devicesfrom the clear cut from <strong>on</strong>e shot/scene to another, to fading in or out,to a blurred screen heralding a dream sequence, etc. are employed. Thisfurther extensi<strong>on</strong> of the original tool provides the basis for a thoroughgoinganalysis of any film text, and will provide what is hoped will bea useful additi<strong>on</strong> to the pedagogy of film translati<strong>on</strong>. This chapterreports <strong>on</strong> the progress being made in refining this tool within theenvir<strong>on</strong>ment of university courses in screen translati<strong>on</strong>. It also closelyadheres to the ideas of Kress and van Leeuwen (1996) relating to multimodaltexts and visual grammar.Discourse, Design, Producti<strong>on</strong>, Distributi<strong>on</strong>and Interpretati<strong>on</strong> (DDPDI)Kress and van Leeuwen (1996) describe the creati<strong>on</strong> of multimodaltexts in terms of four, not necessarily chr<strong>on</strong>ological, stages – discourse,design, producti<strong>on</strong> and distributi<strong>on</strong>. They also add a final stage completingthe whole process, that of interpretati<strong>on</strong> <strong>on</strong> the part of thereceiver of the multimodal text. Firstly they use the term ‘discourse’ torefer to an abstract level of ‘text’ that transcends even the c<strong>on</strong>cept ofgenre. In a sense it hangs in the air from where it can be channelledinto the language use associated with identifiable genres and genreletsthrough instantiati<strong>on</strong>. For example, there exists a discourse of ‘love’which may manifest itself in talk between lovers, in written love letters,<strong>on</strong> the problem pages of tabloid newspapers or in a Danielle Steelenovel or, what is of particular interest for this chapter, in a filmsequence.Design involves the use of all the semiotic resources available to themultimodal text creator (words, images, music, etc.) in instantiating


Pedagogical Tools for Training Subtitlers 217discourse. It involves, for example, choosing between the verbal andthe visual, or deciding the weighting of various semiotic modalities.Such design decisi<strong>on</strong>s vary from individual to individual and from ageto age. C<strong>on</strong>sider, for instance, commercial advertisements which <strong>on</strong>cewere a purely verbal phenomen<strong>on</strong>, a written text appearing in anewspaper, whereas now they are the embodiment of the sophisticatedmultimodal text, at times using a vast array of meaning-makingresources. Feature films can also exploit the whole gamut of semioticmodalities, especially combining them to create meanings that transcendthe significance of the individual elements. Film design thus liesin the hands of scriptwriters, set designers, costume designers, make-upartists, lighting engineers, etc.Producti<strong>on</strong> can be described as the organisati<strong>on</strong> of the expressi<strong>on</strong>,the putting into practice of the designed discourse. Film producti<strong>on</strong> is acomplicated process; film is a complex semiotic event involving manyparticipant ‘producers’. Actors, of course, produce the spoken discourse.Cameramen are resp<strong>on</strong>sible for the producti<strong>on</strong> of the visual discourse,musicians for the soundtrack and sound engineers for accompanyingeffects. It is also true that producti<strong>on</strong> is often shared. For example, whilerecognising that the camera crews create the visual text, the actors alsoc<strong>on</strong>tribute in some way by dint of gesture, body language, movementand the like. The star of the film may sing to a musical accompaniment.Many other ‘producers’ may be involved and the l<strong>on</strong>g list ofacknowledgements that appear at the end of any film is testim<strong>on</strong>y tothis. But then, in the final analysis, it is the director who could be saidto produce the whole multimodal event, or at least exercise c<strong>on</strong>trol overthat ‘producti<strong>on</strong>’.The distributi<strong>on</strong> stage is that in which the multimodal product ispresented to, potentially, milli<strong>on</strong>s of receivers. Music, for example, isdistributed as CDs, <strong>on</strong> televisi<strong>on</strong>, or <strong>on</strong> the stage. Film is distributed incinemas, <strong>on</strong> televisi<strong>on</strong>, as video cassettes and, increasingly, as DVDsand through <strong>on</strong>line streaming. Home movies, holiday videos and weddingshoots are examples of <strong>home</strong>-made multimodal texts where perhapsa small group of people handle the whole process from discoursethrough distributi<strong>on</strong> to interpretati<strong>on</strong>, but in the case of film, thenumber of people involved may be very large and disparate and thestages may be handled totally separately.As all communicati<strong>on</strong> depends <strong>on</strong> interpretati<strong>on</strong>, the result of discourse,design, producti<strong>on</strong> and distributi<strong>on</strong> needs to be interpretedby the end user. The act of interpretati<strong>on</strong> completes the process, and


218 Christopher Taylornot necessarily in a predictable way. As Kress and van Leeuwen(1996: 8) point out: ‘Which discourses interpreters or users bring tobear <strong>on</strong> a semiotic product or event has everything to do, in turn,with their place in the social and cultural world’. And this is interpretati<strong>on</strong>at a first remove. The questi<strong>on</strong> of interpretati<strong>on</strong> becomes muchmore important when the original multimodal text is a translatedproduct.DDPDI and film textWe shall now examine Kress and van Leeuwen’s stages as they relatespecifically to film text, and subsequently as they relate to film subtitling.The discourse of film <strong>on</strong> <strong>on</strong>e level can be seen as the discourse ofthe particular theme or subject matter, e.g. Mafia discourse in TheGodfather, or cowboy discourse in John Wayne vehicles, and theseinclude the n<strong>on</strong>verbal elements such as Armani suits in the <strong>on</strong>e instanceand guns and holsters in the sec<strong>on</strong>d. At another level, film language isa law unto itself and differs from real language use. Starting from thepremise that film scripts are ‘written to be spoken as if not written’(Gregory and Carroll, 1978), any comparis<strong>on</strong> with real, sp<strong>on</strong>taneousspoken language should dem<strong>on</strong>strate similar patterns in both. However,experiments carried out at the University of Trieste tend instead to pointto the difficulty of reproducing genuine oral discourse in film.Comparing the scripts of fifty modern films set in c<strong>on</strong>temporary, ‘real’envir<strong>on</strong>ments with an equivalent-sized sample of spoken language fromthe Cobuild Bank of English corpus, it was discovered that, at least interms of a number of chosen variables, the film scripts differed c<strong>on</strong>siderablyfrom the corpus sample. The use of six discourse markers (‘now’,‘well’, ‘right’, ‘yes’, ‘OK’ and ‘so’), all typical of authentic spoken language,is much more marked in the corpus sample than in the filmscripts. Other experiments that tested for the frequency of tag questi<strong>on</strong>s,hedges and vague language (‘sort of’, ‘kind of’, etc.) in televisi<strong>on</strong>series produced similar results.In terms of design, in the design of a film the discourse is channelledinto something with possibly multiple aims. For example thediscourse of ‘love’ in the film Notting Hill provides a vehicle for theclassic boy–girl development of the plot, but is also designed to entertainand amuse. It creates feelings of empathy, antag<strong>on</strong>ism or eroticismby using the semiotic modalities at its disposal. The shift from script toscreen with the skilful use of multimodal resources such as music,light, camera angle, etc. can create a new semiotic phenomen<strong>on</strong>. At


Pedagogical Tools for Training Subtitlers 219this point it is sometimes hard to distinguish design from producti<strong>on</strong>.Just as actors can break out of the scripted strait-jacket and redesign anoriginal script (transcripti<strong>on</strong>s of film dialogue often show discrepanciesin relati<strong>on</strong> to the original script, as the actors begin to ‘feel’ thepart and, as a result, render the dialogue more authentic), they can alsoredesign the ‘stage directi<strong>on</strong>s’ and produce some semiotic element thatenhances, modifies, even ‘brands’ the original discourse. C<strong>on</strong>siderBogart and Bergman’s famous kiss in the film Casablanca, as comparedto the mechanical design of a porno movie.Finally, distributi<strong>on</strong> occurs after the director has completed theediting process and presented a finished product. The director’s roleis crucial in the development of the semiotic potential that enablesfilm to become a recognisable ‘language’ (Kress and van Leeuwen,1996: 85), to be interpreted by an audience whose size can never bepredicted. The extent and directi<strong>on</strong> of distributi<strong>on</strong> depends partly <strong>on</strong>the intrinsic worth bestowed by the first three stages in the filmmakingprocess and the subsequent popularity or critical acclaim ofthe product, but also depends <strong>on</strong> commercial and political factorswhich are instrumental in terms of audience reach, while audienceinterpretati<strong>on</strong>, inasmuch as it manifests itself in positive or negativeresp<strong>on</strong>se, is equally instrumental in maintaining or improvingdistributi<strong>on</strong> levels.Phasal analysisThe focus of the study now shifts back to Gregory’s (2002) c<strong>on</strong>cept ofphasal analysis. <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> functi<strong>on</strong>s to realise social interacti<strong>on</strong>; that is,it combines the three comp<strong>on</strong>ents of the c<strong>on</strong>text of situati<strong>on</strong>, namelyfield, tenor and mode (Halliday, 1994), to create discourse. In practicallyany text, including multimodal texts, it is possible to identify discretephases characterised by factors that bind that particular part of a texttogether as a single, homogeneous unit. The three comp<strong>on</strong>ents of thec<strong>on</strong>text of situati<strong>on</strong> (field, tenor and mode) relate directly to the three(meta)functi<strong>on</strong>s of language delineated by Halliday (1994): ideati<strong>on</strong>al,interpers<strong>on</strong>al and textual functi<strong>on</strong>s.The ideati<strong>on</strong>al functi<strong>on</strong> of language is that of providing interlocutorswith the means to talk about the world, in the general sense, and theirexperiences within the world. The interpers<strong>on</strong>al functi<strong>on</strong> enables relati<strong>on</strong>shipsto be established, maintained and altered and for roles toemerge in communicati<strong>on</strong> acts. The textual functi<strong>on</strong> is what allowscommunicators to c<strong>on</strong>struct discourse and to present informati<strong>on</strong>


220 Christopher Taylorcohesively and coherently. In terms of phasal analysis, thosec<strong>on</strong>tinuous and disc<strong>on</strong>tinuous stretches of discourse which can be identifiedas phases share ideati<strong>on</strong>al, interpers<strong>on</strong>al and textual c<strong>on</strong>sistencyand c<strong>on</strong>gruity. A clear example is provided by any televisi<strong>on</strong> soapopera. A number of parallel plots or stories run simultaneously, but tomaintain the interest of the viewers, they are presented clip by clip in aseemingly endless successi<strong>on</strong> of short alternating scenes or scenesequences. The latter can be c<strong>on</strong>sidered disc<strong>on</strong>tinuous phases, oftendivisible in turn into subphases and sub-subphases, which retain anumber of features that are intrinsic, even unique, to those phases.Thibault and Baldry (2000: 320) were the first to apply Gregory’sphasal analysis to multimodal texts, explaining that phases in thissense are characterised by ‘a high level of metafuncti<strong>on</strong>al c<strong>on</strong>sistency[ ... ] am<strong>on</strong>g the selecti<strong>on</strong>s from the various semiotic systems(music, acti<strong>on</strong>, dialogue, etc.)’. Gregory (2002) uses the term ‘communicatingcommunity c<strong>on</strong>text’ (CCC) as a macro versi<strong>on</strong> of the c<strong>on</strong>ceptof the c<strong>on</strong>text of situati<strong>on</strong> in which an act of communicati<strong>on</strong> takesplace. It refers to the dimensi<strong>on</strong>s of time, geographical locati<strong>on</strong>, ideologico-politicalsituati<strong>on</strong>, etc. The CCC therefore partially reflects andpartially c<strong>on</strong>structs the functi<strong>on</strong>ing of language in c<strong>on</strong>versati<strong>on</strong>, butin the case of film, the CCC surrounds a group of actors being directedto play a scene in what we shall call an ‘artificially produced situati<strong>on</strong>’(APS). This APS must relate, like all other communicating communityc<strong>on</strong>texts, to the participants’ knowledge of the world and, naturally, tothe language they are using.However, the actors’ knowledge of the world (time, place, traditi<strong>on</strong>,culture, etc.) in the form of sets of schemata variously described asscripts (Minsky, 1975), frames (Schank and Abels<strong>on</strong>, 1977), mentalmodels (Johns<strong>on</strong>-Laird, 1980) or scenarios (Sanford and Garrod, 1981),is harnessed to an imaginary character’s gnostology. This would providesome explanati<strong>on</strong> as to why scriptwriters and actors find it difficult torecreate c<strong>on</strong>vincing dialogue but also raises another questi<strong>on</strong>. Could itbe that the great actor’s gift (or acquired skill) is that of c<strong>on</strong>structingand rec<strong>on</strong>structing schemata to the point of making an APS seem real?The phasal analysis of a (multimodal) text provides ‘a c<strong>on</strong>necti<strong>on</strong> withc<strong>on</strong>ceptual and gnostological analysis – a basis for the investigati<strong>on</strong> ofhow speakers c<strong>on</strong>struct reality’ (Gregory, 2002: 342). And this appliesequally to the unreal situati<strong>on</strong>s that we find in film. Even in filmsituati<strong>on</strong>s, the participants interact coherently in terms of all the semioticmodalities in play, and viewers understand films (usually) becausethey make an effort to ‘refer language to some understandable social


Pedagogical Tools for Training Subtitlers 221interacti<strong>on</strong>’ (Fries, 2002: 347). This understanding/interpretati<strong>on</strong>is assisted here by phasal analysis which throws up identifiablepatterns of use. Just as in written texts, within the c<strong>on</strong>tinuous anddisc<strong>on</strong>tinuous stretches of discourse, items re-occur and co-occur tocreate recognisable circuits and chains of meaning, similarly, in multimodaltexts, n<strong>on</strong>verbal elements will re-occur and co-occur in the sameway, and in an integrated relati<strong>on</strong>ship with the verbal elements, formingclusters of semiotic modalities.The ‘Bundaberg Beer’ textFigure 16.2 shows three frames from a short Australian advertisementfor Bundaberg ginger beer. The pictures in the frames best representthe three macro-phases identified within this multimodal text. InT Visual frame VI + kinesic acti<strong>on</strong> Soundtrack Subtitle1Man walkingpurposefullythrough outback.Music/no speaking2Acti<strong>on</strong> with bottle.‘You can’t walkaway from thetruth’‘Naturally brewedfrom our ownfamily ownedcompany’‘N<strong>on</strong> puoi fuggiredalla verità’‘Prodotta in mod<strong>on</strong>aturale dallanostra azienda difamiglia’3Attenti<strong>on</strong> focussed<strong>on</strong> product.TRUE BREWGINGER BEERGINGER BEERQUELLA VERAFigure 16.2


222 Christopher Taylormacro-phase 1 a man can be seen walking through the outback <strong>on</strong> ahot day, passing in fr<strong>on</strong>t of a mountain, wading through a stream, andclimbing a rocky outcrop. When he gets to the top, macro-phase2 commences as he spies a bottle of Bundaberg ginger beer nestling ina bed of ice; he takes the bottle, opens it and drinks it with enormousgusto. These acti<strong>on</strong>s are accompanied by a voice off describing theproduct in a broad Australian accent. Finally in macro-phase 3 theproduct is shown in the c<strong>on</strong>venti<strong>on</strong>al style with the camera movingbackwards and forwards over a picture of the product and the slogan:‘True brew ginger beer’.The phases are identified as such in that various semiotic modalitiescan be seen to come together to form a unified whole. For example, inmacro-phase 1 the single acti<strong>on</strong> of walking through the outback isaccompanied by a particular piece of music which ends at the end of thephase. The transiti<strong>on</strong> then leads us into macro-phase 2 which is ofcourse c<strong>on</strong>nected to 1 but recognised as a distinct unit – that of thedrinking of the beer accompanied by a different musical item. There isalso c<strong>on</strong>necti<strong>on</strong> at an intertextual level. This advertisement forms partof a series, linked very clearly by a number of factors – the samecharacters, the same music, the same appeal to the outdoors, verysimilar wording, the same slogan, the same voice off and, of course, thesame product.In Kress and van Leeuwen’s (1996) terms, the multimodal discourseof all the ads is that of c<strong>on</strong>vivial outdoor beer drinking in hot weatherallied to the c<strong>on</strong>venti<strong>on</strong>s of drinks advertising. The design is re-proposedthroughout the series of advertisements which take the verbaland visual discourse of the original and create new, instantly recognisablemultimodal texts using mostly the same resources. In terms ofproducti<strong>on</strong>, different discourses are used in the creati<strong>on</strong> of genreletsof the subgenre ‘Bundaberg ads’ of the main genre ‘drinks ads’. Forexample, the man’s no-n<strong>on</strong>sense voice and pr<strong>on</strong>ounced Australianaccent add texture to the discourse. These advertisements are thendistributed <strong>on</strong> televisi<strong>on</strong> to a large audience, originally to an audienceanchored in the cultural c<strong>on</strong>text of Australia, and of beer drinking.Interestingly, the commercial promotes a n<strong>on</strong>-alcoholic productbut within the collective semiotic knowledge regarding serious beerdrinking. Its discourse is not that of Coca Cola. Figure 16.3 shows thedivisi<strong>on</strong> in macro-phases and micro-phases of the Bundaberg beeradvertisement, indicating how the verbal and n<strong>on</strong>verbal elementscombine.


Pedagogical Tools for Training Subtitlers 223MACRO-PHASES:1. Man walking through outback Musical accompaniment2. Acti<strong>on</strong> with bottle3. Attenti<strong>on</strong> <strong>on</strong> productMacro-phase 1:1. Man walking away through grass2. Side shot of legs (mountain behind)3. Passes tree under red sky4. Back view of man5. Side shot of legs6. Walking through stream7. Close-up of feet8. Emerging from stream Music changes9. Walking through undergrowth10. Climbing rock face11. Reaches summitMacro-phase 2:12. Man sees bottle13. Reaches for bottle ‘You can’t escape from the truth’14. Opens bottle ‘Naturally brewed from our own family owned company’15. Drinks from bottleMacro-phase 3:16. Close-up of label, panning back17. Bottle shown and words TRUE BREW GINGER BEERFigure 16.3Some suggesti<strong>on</strong>s for the subtitler – DDPDIAs menti<strong>on</strong>ed above, the discourse of the Bundaberg advertisementshanging in the air is that associated with beer drinking and televisi<strong>on</strong>advertising, particularly as these relate to the original linguistic andcultural setting. The ads are archetypically Australian. This poses a


224 Christopher Taylordilemma for the subtitler who has to tap into both an abstract discoursedefined by local cultural mores, and translati<strong>on</strong> norms for writtensubtitles. The dilemma hinges <strong>on</strong> the activating of a localisati<strong>on</strong>process (adapting the text to a local audience’s expectati<strong>on</strong>s) as opposedto adopting the opposite strategy of foreignising the text and maintainingthe original flavour. It is possible that ginger beer is best advertisedin its Australian c<strong>on</strong>text, as this appeals to the foreign viewermore than a grafting of a locally c<strong>on</strong>notated (written) text <strong>on</strong>to theoriginal. On the other hand, as subtitling is an additive process, nothingis lost of the original including the voice and accent, and this maybe enough to preserve the Anglo-Sax<strong>on</strong> c<strong>on</strong>text, even if the writtentext is localised. In fact, it is riskier to foreignise the wording – i.e. giveit an Australian feel – in, say, Italian (the extreme case of this would besimply to leave the subtitles out altogether) as the discourse of the subtitleshas also to adhere to the linguistic games being played. Thus theplay <strong>on</strong> the key word ‘truth/true’ [verità/vera] needs to be kept; the useof m<strong>on</strong>osyllabic generic terms, rhyme and word play are all up there inthe abstract as integral parts of the discourse of advertising. While thediscourse of Italian advertising can to a certain extent fit into this slot,the final slogan poses a questi<strong>on</strong>. The translati<strong>on</strong> of ‘True brew gingerbeer’ with Ginger beer quella vera is dictated by the need to translate(localise) the term ‘brew’ which, unlike ‘true’, is not at all familiar to amass audience. Does this matter, if the sound and rhythm and rhyme,and particularly the picture, c<strong>on</strong>vey the message adequately? No answerwill be given to this basically rhetorical questi<strong>on</strong> because its purpose issimply to illustrate the kind of thinking that needs to be activated inaddressing the problem of localising or foreignising the discourse ofthe source text.The design of the visual and oral discourse in the Bundaberg textsremains, and in a subtitled versi<strong>on</strong> the <strong>on</strong>ly alterati<strong>on</strong> to producti<strong>on</strong> isin the verbal text. However, the latter is transferred back from the spokento the written medium, which is itself complicated by the fact thatthe original was ‘written to be spoken as if not written’. Complicati<strong>on</strong>snotwithstanding, the actual wording of the titles c<strong>on</strong>stitutes a phase ofproducti<strong>on</strong> and a number of factors come into play, which are not foundin any other type of text producti<strong>on</strong> or translati<strong>on</strong> process. The writingof the subtitles is based firstly <strong>on</strong> a variegated set of c<strong>on</strong>siderati<strong>on</strong>s andstrategies of a linguistic, semantic and pragmatic nature. A limitednumber of scholars and experts have written <strong>on</strong> the subject of subtitlingstrategies but the works of Ivarss<strong>on</strong> (1992), Ivarss<strong>on</strong> and Carroll(1998), Gottlieb (1992, 1997, 2000) and Gambier (1995, 1998) are


Pedagogical Tools for Training Subtitlers 225sufficient to show that a great many noti<strong>on</strong>s exist as to how to bestperform this craft. Sec<strong>on</strong>dly, subtitle producti<strong>on</strong> is governed by a wholeseries of technical c<strong>on</strong>straints ranging from positi<strong>on</strong>ing to timing anddesigning. The art of spotting (i.e. placing the subtitles in the right placeat the right moment) is a crucial part of this producti<strong>on</strong> process.Turning to distributi<strong>on</strong>, the questi<strong>on</strong> of localising/foreignising arisesagain. Subtitling a film involves projecting the discourse, design andproducti<strong>on</strong> of the original product into a new culture. An example ofthe kind of issue that can arise is provided by <strong>on</strong>e of the Bundabergadvertisements in which a young girl <strong>on</strong> the beach spills some gingerbeer from its bottle <strong>on</strong>to a magazine, and then proceeds to drink fromthe folded mag. This causes no real c<strong>on</strong>cern in Anglo-Sax<strong>on</strong> culturesbut in some other cultures this would be frowned up<strong>on</strong>, and showingthe advertisement would not be c<strong>on</strong>ducive to marketing the product.Finally, in terms of interpretati<strong>on</strong>, the words of subtitles represent adistinct (macro) genre and are not interpreted in the same way as writtenscripted words, words <strong>on</strong> the screen in the original language or thespoken words. Thus, where localisati<strong>on</strong> is required, and this is often thecase in advertising, subtitles can act to soothe sensibilities and avoidtensi<strong>on</strong>s. Their interpretati<strong>on</strong> is, however, bound to other accompanyingsemiotic features, such as a raucous or a sensuous voice, or a musicaltheme.Less<strong>on</strong>s for the subtitler – phasal analysis(1) Phasal analysis allows us to see how (multimodal) texts arec<strong>on</strong>structed, c<strong>on</strong>tinuously and disc<strong>on</strong>tinuously, and thus where tolook for patterns at a lexico-grammatical and semantic level. Thesepatterns must be recognised and, if possible, respected.(2) Within the ‘artificially produced situati<strong>on</strong>’, subtitlers can distinguishcombinati<strong>on</strong>s of field, tenor and mode and attempt to relate them tothe kind of situati<strong>on</strong> they wish to create for the target audience.(3) Field: does the translator’s knowledge of the world and range ofschemata equip him/her to effectively relay the meaning of the text,or is more care required in foreignising or localising the text?(4) Tenor: this is the most delicate area for the subtitler. Scholars likeKovač ič (1998) have shown that in subtitling there is a str<strong>on</strong>g tendencyto sacrifice the interpers<strong>on</strong>al element, those items that particularlydistinguish spoken language, as exemplified in thedescripti<strong>on</strong> of the experiment c<strong>on</strong>ducted in Trieste (see above). It isat least advisable to maintain a sufficient number of these features.


226 Christopher TaylorKovač ič herself provides the example of the mother figure in thetelevised rendering of Eugene O’Neill’s L<strong>on</strong>g Day’s Journey intoNight. The mother, in the midst of feverish discussi<strong>on</strong>s of a subversivepolitical nature between earnest young men at table, c<strong>on</strong>tinuesto repeat platitudes about her hair, of no c<strong>on</strong>sequence to theunravelling of the plot. However, the character of the mother isimportant as a kind of counterpoint to the serious revoluti<strong>on</strong>aryacti<strong>on</strong>, and is highlighted by her inane repetiti<strong>on</strong>s. Similarly, thestuttering of the character Ken, played by Michael Palin, in thefilm A Fish Called Wanda, while not adding to the storyline, providesan important angle <strong>on</strong> the character and c<strong>on</strong>tributes to thehumour of the text, thereby deserving of the translator’s attenti<strong>on</strong>through Gottlieb’s strategy of ‘imitati<strong>on</strong>’ (1992: 166), that is, theph<strong>on</strong>etic transcribing of the stutter. The dynamic force of repetiti<strong>on</strong>,hesitati<strong>on</strong>, discourse markers, and hedging devices shouldnot be underestimated.(5) Mode: in a counter-tendency to the omissi<strong>on</strong> of interpers<strong>on</strong>alelements, the spoken-to-written transformati<strong>on</strong> often results in overexplicitnessin the informati<strong>on</strong> load. Baker (1995) c<strong>on</strong>ducted research<strong>on</strong> written texts proving, through a comparis<strong>on</strong> of parallel texts,that translated material tended to be more explicit than equivalenttexts written in the original language. For example the ‘that’ relative,which is often expendable, is found significantly more often intranslated texts. Abbreviati<strong>on</strong>s of the ‘d<strong>on</strong>’t’, ‘wouldn’t’ kind are significantlymore frequent in original texts. Thus the presentati<strong>on</strong> ofinformati<strong>on</strong> in translati<strong>on</strong>s has proved to be slightly different over alarge amount of material. The questi<strong>on</strong> of whether the same occursin subtitles is inevitably c<strong>on</strong>nected to the ‘written to be spoken as ifnot written’ c<strong>on</strong>undrum. In theory the writer of the text to be translatedwill have made efforts to make that text seem natural ororiginal, even though we have seen that this objective is difficult toachieve. In any case, subtitlers must be aware of this and also c<strong>on</strong>siderthat their subtitles are, in a sense, ‘written to be read as if notwritten’.(6) Subtitlers must make every effort to be faithful to the original textin terms of ‘experience relati<strong>on</strong>ships’ or the ideati<strong>on</strong>al element,‘interacti<strong>on</strong> relati<strong>on</strong>ships’ or the interpers<strong>on</strong>al element, and themedium relati<strong>on</strong>ships, and thus recognise where the ideati<strong>on</strong>al,interpers<strong>on</strong>al and textual features show c<strong>on</strong>sistency and c<strong>on</strong>gruity.(7) The experience, interacti<strong>on</strong> and medium relati<strong>on</strong>ships are alsopresent in the n<strong>on</strong>-linguistic modalities (visual, musical, gestural)


Pedagogical Tools for Training Subtitlers 227and the c<strong>on</strong>sistency and c<strong>on</strong>gruity must be identified as an integratedwhole. Phasal analysis, as adapted by Thibault and Baldry(2000), performs this task.(8) Subtitlers should work from the transcribed text of the original film,not the original script. The way actors react to artificially producedsituati<strong>on</strong>s often results in dialogue that moves closer to real languageuse. As Zaber (1980: 8) states: ‘The kind and degree of trainingand the sophisticati<strong>on</strong> an actor brings to his art are further filters <strong>on</strong>the script performed’.These suggesti<strong>on</strong>s, provided as debating points rather than prescriptiverules, mark the end of an initial phase in theoretical research into screentranslati<strong>on</strong> didactics. Much hard work of a more practical nature is nowrequired to make sure these ideas are c<strong>on</strong>verted into useful tools for thescreen translator.ReferencesBaker, M. (1995) ‘Corpora in <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> Studies: an overview and some suggesti<strong>on</strong>sfor future research’. Target 7: 223–43.Baldry, A. (ed.) (2000) Multimodality and Multimediality in the Distance LearningAge. Campobasso: Palladino Editore.Fries, P. (2002) ‘Some aspects of coherence in a c<strong>on</strong>versati<strong>on</strong>’. In P. Fries,M. Cummings, D. Lockwood and W. Sprueill (eds). Relati<strong>on</strong>s and Functi<strong>on</strong>swithin and around <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> (pp. 346–88). L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong>, C<strong>on</strong>tinuum.Gambier, Y. (ed.) (1995) <str<strong>on</strong>g>Audiovisual</str<strong>on</strong>g> Communicati<strong>on</strong> and <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> <str<strong>on</strong>g>Transfer</str<strong>on</strong>g>.Translatio, Nouvelles de la FIT – FIT Newsletter XIV(3–4).Gambier, Y. (ed.) (1998) Translating for the Media. Turku: University of Turku.Gregory, M. (2002) ‘Phasal analysis within communicati<strong>on</strong> linguistics: twoc<strong>on</strong>trastive discourses’. In P. Fries, M. Cummings, D. Lockwood and W. Sprueill(eds) Relati<strong>on</strong>s and Functi<strong>on</strong>s within and around <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> (pp. 316–45). L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong>,C<strong>on</strong>tinuum.Gregory, M. and Carroll, M. (1978) <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> and Situati<strong>on</strong>: <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> Varieties andTheir Social C<strong>on</strong>text. L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong>: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Gottlieb, H. (1992) ‘Subtitling – a new university discipline’. In C. Dollerup andA. Loddegaard (eds) Teaching <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> and Interpreting: Training, Talent andExperience (pp. 161–70). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins,Gottlieb, H. (1997) Subtitles, <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> and Idioms. Copenhagen: University ofCopenhagen.Gottlieb, H. (2000) Screen <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g>: Six Studies in Subtitling, Dubbing andVoice-over. Copenhagen: University of Copenhagen.Halliday, M.A.K. (1994) An Introducti<strong>on</strong> to Functi<strong>on</strong>al Grammar. L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong>: EdwardArnold.Ivarss<strong>on</strong>, J. (1992) Subtitling for the Media. A Handbook of an Art. Stockholm:TransEdit.


228 Christopher TaylorIvarss<strong>on</strong>, J. and Carroll, M. (1998) Subtitling. Simrishamn: TransEdit.Johns<strong>on</strong>-Laird, P.N. (1980) ‘Mental models in cognitive science’. Cognitive Science4(1): 71–15.Kovač ič , I. (1998) ‘Six subtitling texts’. In L. Bowekr, M. Cr<strong>on</strong>in, D. Kenny andJ. Pears<strong>on</strong>. (eds) Unity in Diversity? Current Trends in <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> Studies(pp. 75–82). Manchester: St. Jerome.Kress, G. and van Leeuwen, T. (1996) Reading Images: the Grammar of VisualDesign. L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong>: Routledge.Minsky, M. (1975) ‘A framework for representing knowledge’. In P. Winst<strong>on</strong> (ed.)The Psychology of Computer Visi<strong>on</strong> (pp. 211–77). New York: McGraw Hill.Sanford, A.J. and Garrod, S.C. (1981) Understanding Written <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g>. New York:Wiley.Schank, R.C. and Abels<strong>on</strong>, R.P. (1977) Scripts, Plans, Goals and Understanding.Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum.Thibault, P. and A. Baldry (2000) ‘The multimodal transcripti<strong>on</strong> of a televisi<strong>on</strong>advertisement: theory and practice’. In A. Baldry (ed.) Multimodality andMultimediality in the Distance Learning Age (pp. 311–85). Campobasso:Palladino Editore.Zaber, O. (1980) The <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g>s of Theatre: Problems in the <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> andTranspositi<strong>on</strong> of Drama. Oxford: Pergam<strong>on</strong> Press.


17Teaching Subtitling in aVirtual Envir<strong>on</strong>ment 1Francesca BartrinaIntroducti<strong>on</strong>The crucial role played by audiovisual translati<strong>on</strong> (AVT) in c<strong>on</strong>temporaryinternati<strong>on</strong>al communicati<strong>on</strong> invites translator trainers to c<strong>on</strong>templatethe different possibilities available when training translators for themodern mass-communicati<strong>on</strong> market. The acquisiti<strong>on</strong> of new skills inthe use of Informati<strong>on</strong> and Communicati<strong>on</strong> Technology (ICT) is a challengethat instructors of subtitling and trainees must face up to. In<strong>on</strong>line multimedia courses, the use of digital technology is an imperative,but professi<strong>on</strong>al computer programs are expensive and educati<strong>on</strong>allicences are often unavailable. In this situati<strong>on</strong>, how can students getthe hands-<strong>on</strong> training they need? In resp<strong>on</strong>se to this situati<strong>on</strong>, someacademic instituti<strong>on</strong>s try to generate their own in-house soluti<strong>on</strong>s.In the Catalan/Spanish c<strong>on</strong>text, two universities have answeredthese challenges by creating their own programs. The UniversitatAutònoma of Barcel<strong>on</strong>a (UAB) has developed the programs Subtitul@mfor subtitling and REVOice for dubbing and voice-over: ‘Both are pi<strong>on</strong>eeringprograms that give students the opportunity to simulate realworking c<strong>on</strong>diti<strong>on</strong>s and become familiar with the various proceduresinvolved in the different AVT modes’ (Díaz Cintas and Orero, 2003:373). In 2001 Richard Sams<strong>on</strong> in the <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> School of theUniversitat de Vic, in Barcel<strong>on</strong>a, created the Poor Technology Group(PTG) ‘for people who work in the field of educati<strong>on</strong> and who seekinnovative low-budget digital soluti<strong>on</strong>s to vocati<strong>on</strong>al (professi<strong>on</strong>altraining) educati<strong>on</strong>al problems’ (www.uvic.es/fchtd/especial/en/ptg/ptg.html). Ever since, the group and its members have been developingsoluti<strong>on</strong>s to a variety of training issues, including dubbing and voiceover.They faced the demands of <strong>on</strong>line subtitling instructors who229


230 Francesca Bartrinac<strong>on</strong>sidered the subtitling practi<strong>on</strong>ers as a ‘highly specialisedprofessi<strong>on</strong>al sector that uses exceedingly expensive software’. Sams<strong>on</strong>has created the Digital Video Subtitling Compilati<strong>on</strong> (DVSC) that canbe either distributed to students <strong>on</strong> CD-ROM format or downloaded asa demo. The programs included in this project are free and available<strong>on</strong> the following websites:● Subtitle Workshop (Subtitle editor): www.urusoft.net/downloads.php● Direct X (Windows multimedia library files): www.microsoft.com/windows/directx● Digital Video Subtitling Compilati<strong>on</strong>: www.uvic.es/fchtd/especial/en/ptg/ptg.htmlWhen teaching subtitling <strong>on</strong>line, it is essential to work with digital subtitlingprograms because they emulate the working c<strong>on</strong>diti<strong>on</strong>s of professi<strong>on</strong>alsubtitlers in the c<strong>on</strong>temporary market. In the real world,subtitlers are exposed to different subtitling software packages in eachof the companies they work for. We need to train our students to be ableto use as many subtitling programs as are available <strong>on</strong> the market. 2 Inwhat follows, I discuss some aspects of teaching subtitling in a virtualenvir<strong>on</strong>ment.Quality in teaching interlingual subtitling:the Catalan and Spanish c<strong>on</strong>textsSubtitling is a way of translating what is being said in an audiovisualtext, with two characteristic features. First, there is a change of medium,from the oral to the written form. Sec<strong>on</strong>d, the oral message of the sourceaudiovisual text is also present in the translated product. The specificityof subtitling can be dealt with in an <strong>on</strong>line campus taking into accountthe following requisites.Spain is a dubbing country and the high quality of some Spanish andCatalan dubbed programmes has been stressed. In his book, Ávila (1997:37) praises the 1940s to the early 1970s as the Golden Age of Spanishdubbing and deplores the declining levels of quality nowadays. TheCatalan Channel TV3 (1997: 209–10), in its Criteris lingüístics sobre traducciói doblatge, pays tribute to the translators of the best dubbed filmsin the first 12 years of broadcasting of the channel. Unfortunately,nothing similar can be said in the case of subtitling. Until recently, thepoor quality of Spanish and Catalan subtitling has led us to pose thequesti<strong>on</strong>: do Spanish audiences prefer dubbing because of the low


Teaching Subtitling in a Virtual Envir<strong>on</strong>ment 231quality of subtitling or is the low quality of subtitling due to its marginalstatus? (Díaz Cintas, 2003: 69).The popularisati<strong>on</strong> of DVD has increased the availability and theamount of Spanish and Catalan subtitling. This increase does notnecessarily mean a c<strong>on</strong>centrati<strong>on</strong> of work in the Spanish industry,because due to the phenomen<strong>on</strong> of globalisati<strong>on</strong> not all Spanish andCatalan subtitling is d<strong>on</strong>e in Spain. However, we have to prepare ourstudents for the global market in order to jump from <strong>on</strong>line campusesto the virtual professi<strong>on</strong>al envir<strong>on</strong>ment. We have to train our studentsto be competitive, which means that they have to be able tooffer their services as subtitlers to internati<strong>on</strong>al subtitling companieslocated around the world. The use of digital subtitling software in<strong>on</strong>line campuses is the best way to prepare for it. At the same time,the dialogue between universities and subtitling companies must bec<strong>on</strong>stant and fluid. 3The audienceIn subtitling, the oral and written messages are received simultaneously,allowing for comparis<strong>on</strong> between Source Text (ST) and Target Text (TT).In his seminal work, Ivarss<strong>on</strong> (1992: 49) states that: ‘It is, moreover,unnecessarily irritating to those who have some knowledge of the languagewhen a pers<strong>on</strong> says something and it is not translated. The naturalreacti<strong>on</strong> is: Why ever did they skip that?’. Such remarks made by theaudience make this kind of translati<strong>on</strong> particularly ‘vulnerable’, as DíazCintas has emphasised in several of his works (2001, 2003). Viewerswho are familiar with the Source <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> of an audiovisual text tendto notice some of the discrepancies between the target subtitles and thesource dialogue and often criticise subtitlers for their inaccuracy. Whensubtitling, professi<strong>on</strong>als are extremely c<strong>on</strong>scious of what their audiencesexpect to be translated. They frequently choose the translati<strong>on</strong>soluti<strong>on</strong>s that are most similar to the ST.As trainers, two ways are open for us here. The first <strong>on</strong>e is to c<strong>on</strong>siderthat, following audience expectati<strong>on</strong>s, similarity to the ST is a qualitycriteri<strong>on</strong> in subtitling. We can encourage students to follow the order ofthe verbal elements of the ST and to go for the soluti<strong>on</strong> which is moresimilar to the original. The sec<strong>on</strong>d <strong>on</strong>e is to encourage them to choosethe most fluent soluti<strong>on</strong>, in terms of accessibility, as we will see below,encouraging an experience for the receivers of subtitles that will hopefullychange this prejudice. Probably, the best soluti<strong>on</strong> is to find a balancebetween the two positi<strong>on</strong>s.


232 Francesca BartrinaUnquesti<strong>on</strong>ably, subtitling directly affects the audience’s percepti<strong>on</strong>of the audiovisual programme. Gambier (2001: 102–3) has stressed thefact that audience percepti<strong>on</strong>s of subtitling depend <strong>on</strong> sociological andaudiovisual variables such as age, reading habits, knowledge ofthe Source <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> (SL) and Target <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> (TL), genre of theaudiovisual programme, channel, broadcasting time and rhythm of theaudiovisual product, am<strong>on</strong>g others.We could argue that the impact of DVD has challenged the way inwhich viewers perceive quality and subtitling. Audiences’ empowermenthas been increased with the possibility of comparing dubbed andsubtitled translati<strong>on</strong>s of the same audiovisual programme. This situati<strong>on</strong>has already had c<strong>on</strong>sequences in the professi<strong>on</strong> with clients demandingthat dubbed and subtitled versi<strong>on</strong>s of the same film be similar. It seemsthat for DVD subtitling similarity to the dubbed versi<strong>on</strong> and literal soluti<strong>on</strong>sare demanded.Another issue to be c<strong>on</strong>sidered is the channels at the audience’s disposalto express their views about subtitling. In our field, there is astr<strong>on</strong>g demand for audience studies in order to know what the viewersreally think about AVT. However, we should remember that most audiencestudies carried out in Spain are d<strong>on</strong>e to attract publicity agents.Mayoral (2001: 44–5) discusses the c<strong>on</strong>straints and limitati<strong>on</strong>s thatscholars in <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> Studies have to face when embarking <strong>on</strong> researchof this nature.The questi<strong>on</strong> arises as to what kind of subtitling quality awarenesscan be developed in c<strong>on</strong>tinuous <strong>on</strong>line assessment, and we need to finda balance between homogeneity and diversity. Students need to beexposed to a range of different standards that are operative today in thecinema, TV, video and DVD subtitling markets, but they also needtraining in specific standards in order to be prepared for academic grading.We therefore have to study various subtitling practices implementedin the market, without forgetting to use a unifying code, a unique set ofsubtitling standards as proposed by Ivarss<strong>on</strong> and Carroll (1998) orKaramitroglou (1998).Gambier (2001, 2003) has written extensively <strong>on</strong> the expectati<strong>on</strong> ofquality in screen translati<strong>on</strong>. For him, the key word for quality in AVTis ‘accessibility’, a c<strong>on</strong>cept including many features that can easily beadapted to the c<strong>on</strong>text of subtitling: acceptability (grammar, style, terminology),legibility (positi<strong>on</strong>, subtitle rates), readability (reading speedrates, shot changes), synchr<strong>on</strong>icity (what is read is what is shown),relevance (what informati<strong>on</strong> is to be deleted or added) and translati<strong>on</strong>strategies when dealing with cultural items. It can be c<strong>on</strong>cluded that


Teaching Subtitling in a Virtual Envir<strong>on</strong>ment 233these features are the criteria for quality in subtitling, and they can bec<strong>on</strong>sidered the basis for fluency in this kind of translati<strong>on</strong>.In my opini<strong>on</strong>, the c<strong>on</strong>cept of accessibility is extremely useful whenteaching subtitling. It is an eclectic term in the sense that it tries tocover what has been said in general definiti<strong>on</strong>s of good subtitlingpractice, such as that of James (1998: 245): ‘to produce subtitles whichare accurate, credible, easy to assimilate and which flow smoothly’.And it also includes specific demands <strong>on</strong> subtitling such as: ‘writtensubtitles should be made to ‘sound’ like their spoken equivalents’(Br<strong>on</strong>deel, 1994: 29). Students should be told at the beginning of thecourse that this is the quality standard up<strong>on</strong> which their work will beassessed.Teaching subtitling <strong>on</strong>lineWhen teaching <strong>on</strong>line, a great deal of activity <strong>on</strong> the virtual platformbecomes crucial. Trainers have to use all the <strong>on</strong>line resources at theirdisposal to keep students motivated. When teaching subtitling, a goodmethod can be the design of a set of activities aimed at familiarising studentswith the whole process and the spatial, temporal and textualparameters. These activities must be an integral part of a curriculum thatis learning-centred and that involves high-level cognitive processing. 4These activities can be found within the virtual platform, togetherwith the audiovisual material. Sometimes it may be more c<strong>on</strong>venient tosend a CD to the students with the audiovisual material, because of itslarge volume. Some activities should be aimed at encouraging studentsto find their own audiovisual material and to locate scripts using differentInternet resources.In distance learning, the relati<strong>on</strong>ship between student and teacherhas to be reinforced with specific tools like forums, chats and frequentinteracti<strong>on</strong> via e-mail. 5 A timetable for students’ work should be madeexplicit at the beginning of the course. If students carry out activitiesfrequently (every <strong>on</strong>e or two weeks) and trainers answer promptly withtheir remarks, the motivati<strong>on</strong> of the whole virtual group is bound toincrease. It is also very important to work with professi<strong>on</strong>al deadlines:subtitlers need to work fast and accurately.The literature <strong>on</strong> the subject stresses the importance of training translatorsto be able to work <strong>on</strong> the whole process: timing or spotting, translating,adapting, and editing. If the same professi<strong>on</strong>al carries out thewhole process, the quality of the subtitling is more likely to be guaranteed.Using a digital subtitling program, students can work simulating a


234 Francesca Bartrinaprofessi<strong>on</strong>al c<strong>on</strong>text. This experience will boost their employabilitybecause they will be the sort of professi<strong>on</strong>al the market needs.ViewingStudents working with a dialogue list need to check the written scriptagainst the text that is actually spoken in the programme. However,Gottlieb (1996: 284) has argued for the need to teach subtitling withoutscripts, mainly because:Without scripts as translatory crutches students remain focused <strong>on</strong>the fact that subtitling is not just a matter of translating some linesfrom a script and shaping them into neat blocks. Subtitling is a craftin which <strong>on</strong>e recreates the foreign dialogue in <strong>on</strong>e’s own (written)language, as an integral part of the original film whose visual c<strong>on</strong>tentco-interprets the meaning of the lines as they are spoken.Subtitling without scripts can help students appreciate the specificity ofthe audiovisual mode and reinforce the fact that the spoken text andthe image are indissoluble. They are encouraged first to understand andsec<strong>on</strong>dly to translate and do the timing simultaneously. Subtitlingwithout a script can make timing easier. However, in the professi<strong>on</strong>alworld, when translators are given a good postproducti<strong>on</strong> script with anadequate glossary of difficult terms the quality of the audiovisual translati<strong>on</strong>tends to improve c<strong>on</strong>siderably. Also, the use of scripts is morec<strong>on</strong>venient and less time-c<strong>on</strong>suming for teaching purposes.When viewing the audiovisual text, students may be guided in differentactivities so that they are aware of all the n<strong>on</strong>-spoken informati<strong>on</strong>that should be translated: signs, notices, etc. They should decide whethers<strong>on</strong>gs need to be translated or not, and they should also have to makedecisi<strong>on</strong>s <strong>on</strong> questi<strong>on</strong>s of politeness and the way the characters addresseach other, formally or informally (for example, in Spanish Tú/Usted/Ustedes and Catalan Tu/Vostè/Vostès).Timing, spotting or cueingDigital subtitling programs allow students to work with an alreadymadetiming and to practise with strict c<strong>on</strong>straints. In additi<strong>on</strong>, theyalso allow students to create the timing themselves and to learn thetechnique. In the market, subtitlers have to learn to do both. If theywork for the DVD industry, they often receive a document with analready-made timing (known in the professi<strong>on</strong> as ‘master list’ or ‘genesisfile’), but students also have to be prepared to do the spotting themselves


Teaching Subtitling in a Virtual Envir<strong>on</strong>ment 235and a digital subtitling program allows them to practise this skill.Activities should also be designed to allow students to change, modifyand improve an already-made timing.The aim of these activities is to stimulate students to practise spotting,taking into c<strong>on</strong>siderati<strong>on</strong> the start and finish of characters’ utterances,the semantic units of the dialogue, the rhythm of speech, thechanges in camera shots and sound bridges.TranslatingTiming c<strong>on</strong>straints determine the priorities when subtitling. Studentshave to translate what is being said <strong>on</strong> the screen, taking into accountthe informati<strong>on</strong> given by the ic<strong>on</strong>ic dimensi<strong>on</strong> of the image, and takingadvantage of the tools given by the virtual c<strong>on</strong>text: <strong>on</strong>line dicti<strong>on</strong>aries,encyclopaedias and databases, audiovisual translators’ chats and forums,associati<strong>on</strong>s’ websites, electr<strong>on</strong>ic journals and a multitude of suggesti<strong>on</strong>sin, for example, terminology management systems and others. Asmenti<strong>on</strong>ed by Koby and Baer (2003: 216), when teaching the use of suchtools, our main pedagogical goal must be the acquisiti<strong>on</strong> of c<strong>on</strong>ceptualknowledge:In a computerized translati<strong>on</strong> classroom or lab, the overarching goalis to enable students to acquire both declarative knowledge (i.e. specifictechnical skills in an applicati<strong>on</strong>) and procedural knowledge(i.e., the ability to recognize and c<strong>on</strong>textualize technical issueswithin a c<strong>on</strong>ceptual framework) to enable them to work effectivelyin an increasingly technologized translati<strong>on</strong> industry, and to dealwith change proactively through their understanding of the natureand underlying principles of the technology.EditingThis is an important stage of the quality c<strong>on</strong>trol. Digital subtitling programsmake it easy for students to check their work – c<strong>on</strong>venti<strong>on</strong>s ofwritten language and technical correcti<strong>on</strong>s, if needed – improving theirimpact <strong>on</strong> the final product since they are able to c<strong>on</strong>trol the wholesubtitling process. Students should be encouraged to edit both theirown work and the work of other colleagues. Mayoral (1999: 3) remindsus that: ‘Students must be trained for teamwork, sharing translati<strong>on</strong>tasks not <strong>on</strong>ly with other translators but also with professi<strong>on</strong>als in otherfields (actors, producers, multimedia technicians, editors, etc.)’.Teamwork is a highly appreciated skill in the professi<strong>on</strong>al world. The


236 Francesca Bartrinateacher may work here as a facilitator, distributing students’ versi<strong>on</strong>sand c<strong>on</strong>tributing to group debates.Priorities in subtitlingIn the c<strong>on</strong>text of an <strong>on</strong>line campus, we should prepare and developactivities aimed at practising the following skills.Synthesis, redundancy and synchr<strong>on</strong>ySynthetic reducti<strong>on</strong>s are inevitable in subtitling. They can be partial(c<strong>on</strong>densati<strong>on</strong> or c<strong>on</strong>cisi<strong>on</strong>) or total (eliminati<strong>on</strong> or deleti<strong>on</strong>). Synthesisis related to redundancy, a very important c<strong>on</strong>cept in subtitling, becausethe informati<strong>on</strong> not given by the subtitles may be supplied by otherelements present in the audiovisual text: the image and/or the sound.Gottlieb (1994: 273) distinguishes between:(1) Intersemiotic redundancy, which enables the viewer to supplementthe semiotic c<strong>on</strong>tent of the subtitles with informati<strong>on</strong> from otheraudiovisual channels – notably the image, and prosodic features inthe dialogue.(2) Intrasemiotic redundancy, in the dialog. Especially with sp<strong>on</strong>taneousspeech, not <strong>on</strong>ly the informative c<strong>on</strong>tent, but also the verbal styleand characterizati<strong>on</strong> of the speaker are better served with somereducti<strong>on</strong>s in the subtitles.Gottlieb’s proposed distincti<strong>on</strong> is very important as it helps students tobe aware of how synthesis works in subtitling and some activities shouldbe prepared in order to practise this skill. It is important to insist up<strong>on</strong>all decisi<strong>on</strong>s being taken in relati<strong>on</strong> to synchr<strong>on</strong>y. Ivarss<strong>on</strong> (1992:46–51) establishes two main types of synchr<strong>on</strong>y: between image andsubtitle, and between sound and subtitle c<strong>on</strong>tent. In his own words(ibid.: 49): ‘When items are enumerated they should be written in thesame order as in the original so as to c<strong>on</strong>fuse the viewers as little as possible.(Strangely enough, viewers are much more irritated by a change inthe order than by the omissi<strong>on</strong> of <strong>on</strong>e or two items)’.Spatial, temporal and linguistic parametersIt is important to ask students to follow different typographical guidelinesto emulate the reality of the professi<strong>on</strong>al world. Differences arevisible in programmes commercialised by the very same distributor,company or TV channel. Spatial and temporal parameters given to


Teaching Subtitling in a Virtual Envir<strong>on</strong>ment 237students may follow the internati<strong>on</strong>al standards of subtitling (Ivarss<strong>on</strong>and Carroll, 1998; Karamitroglou, 1998) and the specific guidelinesapplied by professi<strong>on</strong>al subtitling companies. Students should be familiarwith different parameters but we have to make clear to them whichparameters must be used in each activity.From <strong>on</strong>line campuses to thevirtual professi<strong>on</strong>al envir<strong>on</strong>mentWe may have different answers to the questi<strong>on</strong> ‘What is quality in subtitling?’depending <strong>on</strong> the group of people we want to address: subtitlingcompanies, producers, distributors, broadcasters or viewers. Inthis c<strong>on</strong>text, how can we train translators to be good professi<strong>on</strong>als?What sort of skills do they need to have? In my opini<strong>on</strong>, the followingcompetences are required:● Excellent command of the two relevant languages and culturesat work.● Knowledge of the semiotics of the audiovisual text. 6● Ability to summarise.● Documentati<strong>on</strong> skills.● Capacity for self-evaluati<strong>on</strong>.● Ability to work fast and accurately. 7● Skills to negotiate with other professi<strong>on</strong>als.● Capacity to co-ordinate a project.It is unquesti<strong>on</strong>able that the use of digital software can help to developthe following skills:● Quick adaptati<strong>on</strong> to changing subtitling software.● Adaptability to real world c<strong>on</strong>straints and priorities.● C<strong>on</strong>trol of all the stages in the subtitling process.● Professi<strong>on</strong>al documentati<strong>on</strong> skills for <strong>on</strong>line resources.C<strong>on</strong>clusi<strong>on</strong>As trainers, we have a duty to make explicit which are the quality criteriawe follow when assessing and marking students’ work. By workingin a virtual envir<strong>on</strong>ment with the help of digital subtitling programs,we are empowering our students and giving them the tools they needto improve the quality of the subtitled product. In the professi<strong>on</strong>al


238 Francesca Bartrinaworld, clients have the power to impose their own quality criteria, eventhough subtitling companies may have their own in-house guidelines.Following Gambier (2003), we also advocate accessibility as the mainquality parameter of subtitling, a c<strong>on</strong>cept that may include the demandsof clients, subtitling companies, viewers, scholars and subtitlers.Notes1. The author wishes to express her thanks for the research grant awarded bythe Generalitat de Catalunya, 2003MQD 00062.2. Mayoral (1999: 3) c<strong>on</strong>siders that: ‘We should also be training students in‘teletranslati<strong>on</strong>’ (translati<strong>on</strong> at a distance), since the professi<strong>on</strong>al market hasbeen globalised to the extent that a translator can work for a client in anypart of the word. This requires competence in the use of the Internet andability to work in teams across distance’.3. I agree with Díaz Cintas and Orero (2003: 373) when they state that:‘Universities are always behind as far as technological development is c<strong>on</strong>cerned,and maintaining c<strong>on</strong>tact with the industry can help to keep lecturersupdated and informed. C<strong>on</strong>versely, subtitling companies can benefit fromlinks with university programmes because they can have a greater say in thedesign of the academic curriculum and offer advice <strong>on</strong> skills they most needwhen recruiting new staff’.4. Some guided subtitling activities can be found in Bartrina and Espasa (2003:30–8).5. The importance of interacti<strong>on</strong> in e-learning and the experience of runningan Open Distance Learning MA in <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> Studies has been analysed byMillán-Varela (2001).6. Future subtitlers should be familiar with Film Studies. At the University ofVic, students of subtitling can follow courses in the Escola de Cinema i<str<strong>on</strong>g>Audiovisual</str<strong>on</strong>g>s de Catalunya thanks to a specific agreement between the twoinstituti<strong>on</strong>s. Our students also have the opportunity to subtitle into Englishthe audiovisual programmes made by final-year students of cinema for internati<strong>on</strong>alfestivals.7. We should encourage students to try and improve the working c<strong>on</strong>diti<strong>on</strong>s ofthe professi<strong>on</strong>al market: educating the clients, bel<strong>on</strong>ging to Associati<strong>on</strong>s ofTranslators. But, at the same time, students have to learn to work underadverse c<strong>on</strong>diti<strong>on</strong>s.ReferencesÁvila, A. (1997) El doblaje. Madrid: Cátedra.Bartrina, F. and Espasa, E. (2003) ‘Traducción de textos audiovisuales’. InM. G<strong>on</strong>zález Davies (ed.) Secuencias. Tareas para el aprendizaje interactivo de latraducción especializada (pp. 19–38). Barcel<strong>on</strong>a: Octaedro.Br<strong>on</strong>deel, H. (1994) ‘Teaching subtitling routines’. Meta 39(1): 26–33. www.erudit.org/revue/meta/1994/v39/n1/index.html


Teaching Subtitling in a Virtual Envir<strong>on</strong>ment 239Díaz Cintas, J. (2001) La traducción audiovisual. El subtitulado. Salamanca:Almar.Díaz Cintas, J. (2003) Teoría y práctica de la subtitulación: inglés–español. Barcel<strong>on</strong>a:Ariel.Díaz Cintas, J. and Orero, P. (2003) ‘Course profile: postgraduate courses in<str<strong>on</strong>g>Audiovisual</str<strong>on</strong>g> <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g>’. The Translator 9(2): 371–88.Gambier, Y. (2001) ‘Les traducteurs face aux écrans: une élite d’experts’. InF. Chaume and R. Agost (eds) La traducción en los medios audiovisuales (pp.91–114). Castelló: Universitat Jaume I.Gambier, Y. (2003) ‘Introducti<strong>on</strong>. Screen transadaptati<strong>on</strong>: percepti<strong>on</strong> and recepti<strong>on</strong>’.The Translator 9(2): 173–89.Gottlieb, H. (1994) ‘Subtitling: people translating people’. In C. Dollerup andA. Lindegaard (eds) Teaching <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> and Interpreting 2 (pp. 261–74).Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Gottlieb, H. (1996) ‘Theory into practice: designing a symbiotic course in subtitling’.In C. Heiss and R.M. Bollettieri Bosinelli (eds) Traduzi<strong>on</strong>e multimedialeper il cinema, la televisi<strong>on</strong>e e la scena (pp. 281–95). Bologna: CLUEB.Ivarss<strong>on</strong>, J. (1992) Subtitling for the Media: A Handbook of an Art. Stockholm:TransEdit.Ivarss<strong>on</strong>, J. and Carroll, M. (1998) ‘Code of good subtitling practice’. <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g>Today, April: 1–3. Also found at: www.transedit.st/code.htmJames, H. (1998) ‘Screen translati<strong>on</strong> training and European cooperati<strong>on</strong>’. InY. Gambier (ed.) Translating for the Media (pp. 243–58). Turku: University ofTurku.Karamitroglou, F. (1998) ‘A proposed set of subtitling standards in Europe’.<str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> Journal 2(2). www.accurapid.com/journal/04stndrd.htmKoby, G.S. and Baer, B.J. (2003) ‘Task-based instructi<strong>on</strong> and the new technology’.In B.J. Baer and G.S. Koby (eds) Bey<strong>on</strong>d the Ivory Tower. Rethinking <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g>Pedagogy. ATA Scholarly M<strong>on</strong>ograph Series, Vol. XII (pp. 211–29). Amsterdamand Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Mayoral, R. (1999) ‘Notes <strong>on</strong> translator training’. Intercultural Studies GroupInnovati<strong>on</strong> in Translator and Interpreter Training. www.fut.es/~apym/symp/mayoral.htmlMayoral, R. (2001) ‘El espectador y la traducción audiovisual’. In F. Chaume andR. Agost (eds) La traducción en los medios audiovisuales (pp. 33–46). Castelló:Universitat Jaume I.Millán-Varela, C. (2001) ‘Building bridges: an open distance learning MA<str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> Studies’. In S. Cunico (ed.) Training Translators and Interpreters in theNew Millenium (sic) (pp. 124–35). Portsmouth: University of Portsmouth.TV3, Televisió de Catalunya (1997) Criteris lingüístics sobre traducció i doblatge.Barcel<strong>on</strong>a: Edici<strong>on</strong>s 62.


18Subtitling: <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> Learners’Needs vs. <str<strong>on</strong>g>Audiovisual</str<strong>on</strong>g>Market NeedsAnnamaria CaimiIntroducti<strong>on</strong>In the c<strong>on</strong>text of globalisati<strong>on</strong>, the questi<strong>on</strong> of audiovisual translati<strong>on</strong>(AVT), generally taken to mean dubbing and/or subtitling, is fundamentalfor linguistic educati<strong>on</strong> and resp<strong>on</strong>ds to new multiculturalneeds with reference to Europe and, more extensively, to theinternati<strong>on</strong>al world. The amazingly powerful role played by TV, cinema,video and DVD viewing in the twentieth century has brought about anupsurge of academic interest in multimedia translati<strong>on</strong>, which is movinginto the twenty-first century with renewed vigour.This chapter focuses <strong>on</strong> the important role that subtitled films andTV programmes have in the field of language learning, with a view tobridging the gap between producers’ budgetary c<strong>on</strong>straints and linguists’demand for quality subtitling, in order to serve the needs bothof the ever growing populati<strong>on</strong> of sec<strong>on</strong>d language learners and of filmmarketers.As far as research <strong>on</strong> subtitling is c<strong>on</strong>cerned, the range of publicati<strong>on</strong>sis impressive. We are particularly indebted to Gottlieb, author of aninternati<strong>on</strong>al annotated bibliography <strong>on</strong> interlingual subtitling for cinema,TV, video and DVD, covering seven decades, from the inventi<strong>on</strong> offilm subtitling in 1929 to 1999. The bibliography is published in thejournal RILA (Caimi, 2002: 215–397), and Gottlieb (2002: 222) writes inhis introducti<strong>on</strong> that it is a ‘reader-friendly guide to the growing literature<strong>on</strong> interlingual subtitling’.240


Subtitling: <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> Learners and the AV Market 241The linguistic perspective: cogniti<strong>on</strong>and simplificati<strong>on</strong> in subtitling<str<strong>on</strong>g>Audiovisual</str<strong>on</strong>g> translati<strong>on</strong> researchers know that, linguistically, subtitlesmust be c<strong>on</strong>cise and easy to understand and the text must be carefullyedited and split: the spoken word directly transcribed usually exceedsthe space and time available, since subtitles should not stay <strong>on</strong> thescreen for l<strong>on</strong>ger than six sec<strong>on</strong>ds. Yet, they should c<strong>on</strong>vey the relevantinformati<strong>on</strong> and linguistic nuances c<strong>on</strong>tained in the original dialogueto satisfy sec<strong>on</strong>d language audience needs. Viewing subtitled films is across-linguistic communicati<strong>on</strong> experience, where the message is simultaneouslyc<strong>on</strong>veyed by the two most comm<strong>on</strong> channels of communicati<strong>on</strong>:speech and writing. C<strong>on</strong>sequently, viewers have to practise readingand listening skills simultaneously, backed up by the visual, animatedinput of the storyline of the film.In an entertaining audiovisual situati<strong>on</strong>, the measurement of listeningand reading comprehensi<strong>on</strong> abilities may be c<strong>on</strong>sidered fromdifferent perspectives, as it is the result of integrated multifuncti<strong>on</strong>alactivities. The linguistic perspective I have chosen to highlight in thischapter is restricted to the strategy of simplificati<strong>on</strong>, almost regularlyapplied in subtitling, due to space and time restricti<strong>on</strong>s.Subtitlers tend to encode important informati<strong>on</strong> to the detriment ofdetails which may deprive the message of relevant, though not fundamental,clues. There are good reas<strong>on</strong>s for resorting to simplificati<strong>on</strong>: itfacilitates the transfer from <strong>on</strong>e language to another and from the spokento the written media. It also speeds up the viewers’ reading activity. Whenresorting to simplificati<strong>on</strong> and reducti<strong>on</strong> of the Source Text (ST), translatorsin general must be aware of the psycholinguistic and sociolinguisticissues which are likely to influence the target viewers. This awarenessshould guide the linguistic choices which must be in keeping with thesocio-cultural background of the target audience (Pavesi, 2002: 128;Laviosa, 1998; Baker, 1993 and 1996; Blum-Kulka and Levenst<strong>on</strong>, 1983).Simplificati<strong>on</strong> influences all translati<strong>on</strong> processes and is of paramountimportance in subtitling, where the transfer from Source<str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> (SL) to Target <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> (TL) is subsidiary to the dialogue ofthe soundtrack. Nowadays, subtitling has achieved general recogniti<strong>on</strong>as a type of AVT. Decoding and recoding subtitles involves cognitiveprocesses that interact and interfere in the multifuncti<strong>on</strong>al acti<strong>on</strong> oftranslators – who transfer the film dialogue into subtitles – as well as inthe combined effort of the film viewers – who have to read, understandand interpret them. Subtitling, which is almost always seen as a languagemediati<strong>on</strong> service, is increasingly being perceived as an attractive


242 Annamaria Caimieducati<strong>on</strong>al opti<strong>on</strong> (Díaz Cintas and Fernández Cruz, 2008; Pavesi andPerego, 2008) in the field of language learning and teaching methodology.In what follows, I analyse some examples of written dialogue and theircorresp<strong>on</strong>ding subtitles from a cognitive perspective. My aim is to addsome c<strong>on</strong>ceptual noti<strong>on</strong>s to the verbal changes brought about byprocesses of simplificati<strong>on</strong>, highlighted by cognitive insights.Setting the sceneLet us first set the scene by sketching the plot of the film Billy Elliot, inorder to frame the cues of the dialogue in its geographical, historical andsocio-cultural c<strong>on</strong>text. The basic storyline is about an 11-year-old boy ina miner’s family who discovers that he prefers to join the girls for balletclasses rather than attending boxing classes. When his father finds outthat the m<strong>on</strong>ey he regularly saves to send Billy to boxing less<strong>on</strong>s has beenspent by his s<strong>on</strong> to learn ballet, he is furious. Billy’s father and T<strong>on</strong>y,Billy’s older brother, do not think ballet is a proper activity for a boy, andare prepared to back up their opini<strong>on</strong> with violence. The small family(father, two s<strong>on</strong>s and an old grandmother) lives in Everingt<strong>on</strong>, a depressedcoal town with ugly brick houses and giant slag heaps, which c<strong>on</strong>veys thepoverty and m<strong>on</strong>ot<strong>on</strong>y of the bleak northern British setting. Billy’s fatherand older brother, both miners, are <strong>on</strong> the picket lines during the hugeminers’ strike, which in the early 1980s upset the coal-mining regi<strong>on</strong> ofNorthern England. They speak Geordie, a dialect that is typical of peoplefrom Tyneside. The expressi<strong>on</strong>s they use are often colourful, and all theexamples below are used by male characters. In Example 1, Billy is sayinggoodbye to his gay friend Michael. Billy’s father is watching them withdisapproval and T<strong>on</strong>y, Billy’s brother, reacts by saying to him:Example 1T<strong>on</strong>y: Stop being an old fucking woman!ItalianBack translati<strong>on</strong>La pianti di comportarticome una suocera?(Can you) stop behavinglike a mother-in-law?T<strong>on</strong>y is a miner like his father and c<strong>on</strong>strues his message according to hissociolinguistic parameters. He does not speak standard English. He speaksthe dialect of the coal-mining regi<strong>on</strong> of Northern England, where he livesand like, most young adults, his language is unrestrained and aggressive.


Subtitling: <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> Learners and the AV Market 243The subtitler chooses to transfer this cue by replacing the vulgarexpressi<strong>on</strong> ‘old fucking woman’ with the term suocera, which preservesthe negative c<strong>on</strong>notati<strong>on</strong>, because the cliché of the mother-in-law, seenas an annoying pers<strong>on</strong>, is well known to Italian speakers. This meansthat the perspective of the subtitle, which is the perspective of thetranslator, foregrounds the negative c<strong>on</strong>notati<strong>on</strong> of the message, butremoves the vulgarity of the English expressi<strong>on</strong>. Two different languagesare c<strong>on</strong>cerned and the devices that involve c<strong>on</strong>ceptualising <strong>on</strong>edomain of experience in terms of another depend <strong>on</strong> the knowledge ofthe two different cultures. In this example, where T<strong>on</strong>y speaks a type ofdialectal English, the Italian translator could have resorted to a similarregi<strong>on</strong>al or working-class dialect, but he prefers to avoid dialectal termsand instead simplifies the expressi<strong>on</strong> by using core vocabulary. The languageof miners or factory workers is usually rich in metaphorical expressi<strong>on</strong>s.The translator identifies the source domain suocera [mother-in-law]because it is in keeping with the target domain c<strong>on</strong>veying the Italianc<strong>on</strong>cept of suocera as ‘a pain in the neck’.If we highlight the basic cognitive noti<strong>on</strong>s which motivated T<strong>on</strong>y’smessage and assess to what extent the source c<strong>on</strong>ceptualisati<strong>on</strong> may betransferred into the TL c<strong>on</strong>ceptualisati<strong>on</strong> of the same metaphorical pattern,we understand that asymmetry of interpretati<strong>on</strong> in the two languagesis motivated by the fact that translati<strong>on</strong> from L2 to L1 (subtitlersusually translate into their mother t<strong>on</strong>gue) is accomplished directly <strong>on</strong>the basis of transferring the cultural c<strong>on</strong>ceptualisati<strong>on</strong> of the situati<strong>on</strong>.The crucial point is to find lexical links between words which c<strong>on</strong>veythe same c<strong>on</strong>ceptualisati<strong>on</strong> of the situati<strong>on</strong> in the two languages.In this subtitle, the translator decides that an expressi<strong>on</strong> in Italianwhich is compositi<strong>on</strong>ally parallel to <strong>on</strong>e in English cannot be found. Hedelves into Italian metaphorical devices related to women’s most salientdefects and chooses the <strong>on</strong>e which, according to him, is c<strong>on</strong>ceptually nearenough to the phrase pr<strong>on</strong>ounced by T<strong>on</strong>y, although compositi<strong>on</strong>allyincomplete. The aim is to give all types of viewers the possibility of quickunderstanding in order not to make them lose the thread of the story.Example 2George: I haven’t seen hide nor hair of Billy for m<strong>on</strong>ths.ItalianBack translati<strong>on</strong>Neanche l’ombra del tuo Billy da mesi.I haven’t even seen the shadow of Billy for m<strong>on</strong>ths.


244 Annamaria CaimiGeorge, Billy’s boxing trainer, tells Billy’s father that the boy is nol<strong>on</strong>ger attending his less<strong>on</strong>s. Perspective and foregrounding c<strong>on</strong>nect linguisticcoding closely to visual percepti<strong>on</strong> in the English expressi<strong>on</strong>,which is rendered into Italian with a corresp<strong>on</strong>ding idiomatic form. Theverb form ‘I haven’t seen’ has been eliminated because it does not affectthe meaning of the cue.Example 3George: He’s like a fanny in a fit.ItalianBack translati<strong>on</strong>Si agita come una femminuccia.He flaps about like a right wet.The original dialogue and the translati<strong>on</strong>, both give prominence to thefeminine qualities attributed to Billy in a derogative way, but the vulgarsexual reference of the English is again absent from the Italian versi<strong>on</strong>.The aim is always to facilitate comprehensi<strong>on</strong> by using everyday language.The learner is interested in what is meant, not in Geordie dialectexpressi<strong>on</strong>s, and this linguistic choice guarantees comprehensi<strong>on</strong>. Inthe following example, George offers himself to help Billy’s father topersuade Billy to give up ballet:Example 4George: Send him round to my house. I’ll knock sense into him.ItalianBack translati<strong>on</strong>Digli di passare da me.Lo rimetto subito in rigaSend him round to my place.I’ll sort him out straight away.We can observe parallel interpretati<strong>on</strong>s in the two versi<strong>on</strong>s but theEnglish foregrounds the language of boxing appropriate to George’sidiolect, whereas the Italian subtitle, though sharing the same c<strong>on</strong>ceptualperspective, is rendered into standard, idiomatic Italian.In Example 5, Billy’s father complains about the sacrifice he is makingto save m<strong>on</strong>ey to send Billy to boxing less<strong>on</strong>s. Interpretati<strong>on</strong>, perspectiveand foregrounding are crucial to an understanding of colloquialexpressi<strong>on</strong>s both in English and in Italian. The difference between thetwo versi<strong>on</strong>s rests with the vulgar expressi<strong>on</strong> used by the miner, whichis chastened by the subtitler who has decided to use mi faccio il mazzo


Subtitling: <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> Learners and the AV Market 245Example 5Billy’s father: I’m busting my ass for those 50 pence.ItalianBack translati<strong>on</strong>Io mi faccio il mazzoper quei 50 pence.I’m working my guts outfor those 50p.[I’m working my guts out] instead of the more vulgar mi faccio un culocosì [I’m busting my ass]. The tendency to avoid transferring vulgarexpressi<strong>on</strong>s is typically aimed at c<strong>on</strong>veying everyday colloquial languagerather than ‘colourful’ idioms. I c<strong>on</strong>clude this sketchy analysis ofmale dialogues with a cue of Billy’s brother, addressing Mrs Wilkins<strong>on</strong>,the ballet instructor:Example 6T<strong>on</strong>y: What are you going to do? Make him a scab for the rest of his life?ItalianBack translati<strong>on</strong>Sta cercando di farne un crumiro?Are you trying to make him a black-leg?Although the verbose original is fitted into a <strong>on</strong>e-liner, the core c<strong>on</strong>ceptis preserved. Here the subtitler has implemented the strategy of simplificati<strong>on</strong>by deleting, in hierarchical order, the redundancies c<strong>on</strong>nectedwith the young miner’s rough way of speaking. He reduces the cue bycrossing out the reference to ‘for the rest of his life’, which is elicited byT<strong>on</strong>y just to reinforce the core c<strong>on</strong>cept of the message. The term ‘scab’is an informal, disapproving way of referring to a strike-breaker, who,according to T<strong>on</strong>y’s social knowledge of the world, can be associatedwith a pers<strong>on</strong> who follows his artistic aptitude, like his brother. In bothcases a pers<strong>on</strong> to be ashamed of.The dialogue exchanges we have examined above stress the harshnessof Billy’s envir<strong>on</strong>ment based <strong>on</strong> miners’ macho culture and his family’sresistance to dance, as opposed to the redempti<strong>on</strong> of masculinity throughthe desire to succeed in an artistic job, despite n<strong>on</strong>-c<strong>on</strong>formity. Theexamples show that simplificati<strong>on</strong> is a complex strategy entailing a hierarchyof choices, such as reducti<strong>on</strong>, c<strong>on</strong>densati<strong>on</strong> and decimati<strong>on</strong>, <strong>on</strong>the basis of psychological, socio-cultural and linguistic priorities. Thesehelp the translator in singling out the chunks of text which must be keptand those which can be eliminated or c<strong>on</strong>densed. 1


246 Annamaria CaimiThe teaching/learning perspective: subtitlingin sec<strong>on</strong>d language acquisiti<strong>on</strong>According to Krashen (1981), language acquisiti<strong>on</strong> c<strong>on</strong>sists of the sp<strong>on</strong>taneousprocess of rule internalisati<strong>on</strong> that results from natural languageuse, while language learning is the process of developing c<strong>on</strong>scious L2knowledge through formal study. I belive Krashen’s c<strong>on</strong>ceptual distincti<strong>on</strong>is appropriate because, in sec<strong>on</strong>d language learning, subtitled films,TV films and TV programmes occupy an intermediate positi<strong>on</strong> betweensp<strong>on</strong>taneous exposure in natural settings and formal instructi<strong>on</strong>.Following Krashen’s double perspective, viewers/learners may bedivided into two types: informal learners (Ellis, 1985: 288), who aremore c<strong>on</strong>cerned with communicating, and formal learners, who aremore interested in acquiring grammatical rules to reach proficient communicativestandards. The first type is widespread am<strong>on</strong>g speakers oflesser-used languages who tend to live in subtitling countries such asGreece, Cyprus and Portugal in southern Europe, and Wales, theNetherlands, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden in the north.Most of them are unintenti<strong>on</strong>al learners because they live in regi<strong>on</strong>swhere the established practice is to broadcast original programmes subtitled.The usual explanati<strong>on</strong> for such practice is that subtitling ischeaper than dubbing, but the situati<strong>on</strong> is somewhat more complex andincludes a number of socio-cultural c<strong>on</strong>siderati<strong>on</strong>s such as local c<strong>on</strong>venti<strong>on</strong>s,audience profile and the like. Informal/unintenti<strong>on</strong>al viewers/learnersare interested in developing lexical resources and pragmaticskills, as their main c<strong>on</strong>cern is to enjoy films, televisi<strong>on</strong> programmes orlive events. If by c<strong>on</strong>venti<strong>on</strong> these programmes are screened or broadcastin the original, with the support of subtitles in the TL, viewers’exposure to the sec<strong>on</strong>d language works to their advantage, because theycan profit by all the beneficial influences arising from the audiovisualenvir<strong>on</strong>ment. In fact, the effectiveness of subtitles is crucially dependentup<strong>on</strong> the hidden semiotic c<strong>on</strong>necti<strong>on</strong>s between text and image,which affect the meaning of the visual-linguistic message and the wayin which the spoken/written message is ultimately received. Due to thesubsidiary presence of first-language written cues, this type of audiovisualsetting may be c<strong>on</strong>sidered a semi-natural way of sec<strong>on</strong>d languageacquisiti<strong>on</strong>, whose benefit can be evaluated according to the type orcategory of viewers.Both verbal and n<strong>on</strong>verbal cogniti<strong>on</strong> are interwoven throughoutmultimedia subtitled products, emphasising the powerful role of simultaneousinterdependence of linguistic and n<strong>on</strong>-linguistic knowledge


Subtitling: <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> Learners and the AV Market 247and mental imagery. In fact, building referential links between accuratemental representati<strong>on</strong>s of the word forms and mental images of relevantpictures is useful in understanding and remembering words (Sadoskiand Paivio, 2001: 166). Fixing image–form c<strong>on</strong>necti<strong>on</strong>s is an internalprocess, which accounts for how learners handle input data and howthey use L2 resources in the producti<strong>on</strong> of L2 messages. The input isshaped to make it learnable and each individual learner works <strong>on</strong>the input according to his/her L2 experience, matched to his/herknowledge of the world, to turn input into intake (Ellis, 1985: 166). Therecepti<strong>on</strong> of subtitled audiovisual programmes is an invaluable devicefor internalising and automating L2 knowledge. If a viewer is practisingthis learning situati<strong>on</strong> every day, the recepti<strong>on</strong> process becomes astrategic device that motivates the sp<strong>on</strong>taneous use of existing communicativeresources.If communicati<strong>on</strong> strategies through viewing subtitled programmesare not practised every day, irregular exposure to L2, although facilitatedby AVT, is not enough to reach producti<strong>on</strong> ability (speaking/writing). Ittriggers passive/receptive skills, whose effectiveness is directly proporti<strong>on</strong>alto the mastery of L2 grammatical data suited to the viewer’s stageof development.People learn a sec<strong>on</strong>d language by being exposed to it, but they haveto be taught or corrected for their mistakes, because the linguistic rulesthat are not shared by their first language cannot develop unc<strong>on</strong>sciously.Sec<strong>on</strong>d language learning is a process which involves activemental processes and not simply the forming of linguistic habits. Whenintenti<strong>on</strong>al or unintenti<strong>on</strong>al learners have to tackle a sec<strong>on</strong>d languagein a multimedia situati<strong>on</strong>, the effectiveness of their resp<strong>on</strong>se depends<strong>on</strong> the way they are able to exploit their cognitive and affectivevariables. In other words, it depends <strong>on</strong> how they combine the mentalprocesses they make use of (thinking, remembering, perceiving, inferring,recognising, classifying, generalising, m<strong>on</strong>itoring, analysing,evaluating and memorising) with their pers<strong>on</strong>ality, attitudes, motivati<strong>on</strong>and emoti<strong>on</strong>s.Learners’ proficiency in a foreign language, as the result of what hasbeen taught and learnt during a period of instructi<strong>on</strong>, that is languagelearners’ achievement, may be c<strong>on</strong>trasted with language aptitude,which is the natural ability to learn a language, not necessarily includingintelligence, motivati<strong>on</strong> or interest. Films are always popular sourcesof foreign language teaching materials, and there is no doubt that theyare valuable tools for general unintenti<strong>on</strong>al language acquisiti<strong>on</strong> – based<strong>on</strong> the gradient of mere language aptitude – as well as for formal


248 Annamaria Caimiintenti<strong>on</strong>al learning goals. In fact, a good standard of subtitling encouragesformal students to:● Understand more about the theme of the film.● Recognise degrees of informati<strong>on</strong>.● C<strong>on</strong>sider and recognise different registers.● Assess the complexity of the text.● Appreciate the storyline.In the third millennium, language acquisiti<strong>on</strong> is pivotal to the <strong>on</strong>goingprocess of globalisati<strong>on</strong> but as a collective practice, it always has to cometo terms with individual potential or limitati<strong>on</strong>s.The marketing perspective:cost-effectiveness vs. subtitling accuracyThe quality of AVT often leaves much to be desired and this is a drawbackfor both untutored/naturalist acquisiti<strong>on</strong>, and tutored/classroomacquisiti<strong>on</strong>. <str<strong>on</strong>g>Audiovisual</str<strong>on</strong>g> programmes in a foreign language are in needof language mediati<strong>on</strong> – for example subtitling – which demands c<strong>on</strong>tinualimprovement in quality. In order to boost an internati<strong>on</strong>al policyof interlingual and intercultural promoti<strong>on</strong>, the actors of the subtitlingprocess (professi<strong>on</strong>al screen translators, multilingual subtitlingcompanies, film producers and distributors) should reach a trade-offbetween what is c<strong>on</strong>sidered an extra cost for the audiovisual product,that is subtitling, and the most cost-effective way of marketing subtitledprogrammes. Marketers must comply with the producers’ and distributors’need for a desired level of transacti<strong>on</strong>s with a target market, andanalyse the demand for subtitled films in different areas of the audiovisuallandscape. The marketing task is to find ways to c<strong>on</strong>nect the benefitsof the product with the viewers’ needs and interests, by influencingthe level of demand in a way that will help the company achieve itsobjectives. This task is carried out by marketing research and planning.Within marketing planning, marketers must make decisi<strong>on</strong>s <strong>on</strong> targetmarkets, market positi<strong>on</strong>ing, product development, pricing, channels ofdistributi<strong>on</strong>, physical distributi<strong>on</strong>, communicati<strong>on</strong> and promoti<strong>on</strong>(Kotler, 1988).As we are moving into a more complex society where communicati<strong>on</strong>at intercultural and internati<strong>on</strong>al level is growing rapidly, it is of paramountimportance to safeguard the communicati<strong>on</strong> possibilities of thelanguages in use by multimedia products. Serious reflecti<strong>on</strong>s <strong>on</strong> all the


Subtitling: <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> Learners and the AV Market 249linguistic c<strong>on</strong>straints that audiovisual translators must overcome shouldbe shared by linguists and language teachers, as well as by film marketers.Linguists and language teachers are c<strong>on</strong>cerned with linguistic andcultural differences that exist between SL and TL. These differences areevidenced by a series of variables such as experience of translati<strong>on</strong> practice,TL and target culture competence, general linguistic and extralinguisticknowledge, typological knowledge, age of the translator andlevel of pedagogic practice.Marketers should be aware of the importance of the tasks carried outby film translators in order to increase users’ opti<strong>on</strong>s for c<strong>on</strong>sumpti<strong>on</strong>,and to value their work, not <strong>on</strong>ly by using emoti<strong>on</strong>al appeal in marketing,and advertising the storyline of subtitled products, but also byhighlighting their cross-cultural and cross-linguistic value. The internati<strong>on</strong>alcommunity of viewer-learners is offered a dense network ofmultilingual, multimedia opti<strong>on</strong>al products which are functi<strong>on</strong>al <strong>on</strong>lyif the quality of the translati<strong>on</strong> is good. The noti<strong>on</strong> of quality cannot beseparated from the noti<strong>on</strong> of risk and uncertainty. Every ec<strong>on</strong>omictransacti<strong>on</strong> entails a divisi<strong>on</strong> of work between seller and buyer (youproduce a film, I watch it), but such divisi<strong>on</strong> of work pertains to differenttypes of activity: <strong>on</strong>e is risk-taking, which is predictable and can beplanned for <strong>on</strong>ly <strong>on</strong> a statistical basis; the other is represented by envisaginguncertainties that cannot possibly be found by statistics. The riskpart of transacti<strong>on</strong>s is increasing significantly, but uncertainties aregreater and unpredictable in our society, requiring increased capacityfor learning and adaptati<strong>on</strong>. The demand for higher quality in filmtranslati<strong>on</strong> can be seen as an attempt by the viewer-learners to forceproducers to improve their products, to manage more c<strong>on</strong>sciously therisk and uncertainty of their offers.From a political perspective, we should resort to legal c<strong>on</strong>straints toattain a balance between cultural and linguistic values and ec<strong>on</strong>omicprofit. For example, the documents of the European Commissi<strong>on</strong>, or ofother highly influential internati<strong>on</strong>al instituti<strong>on</strong>s that promote interlingualand intercultural educati<strong>on</strong>, should menti<strong>on</strong> the importance ofoptimal quality in AVT and set guidelines to safeguard language correctnessand appropriateness, in order to guarantee viewer’s satisfacti<strong>on</strong>and keep language accuracy at a high level. This is a fundamental prerequisitebecause the general laws of the market, no matter what the marketedproduct may be, are profit-oriented rather than quality-oriented.Since screen translati<strong>on</strong> is an extra cost, which is often charged to localdistributors, the respect for language correctness should be suggested, ifnot imposed by law.


250 Annamaria CaimiA sec<strong>on</strong>d prerequisite is the development of highly advanced courses<strong>on</strong> AVT with the aim of h<strong>on</strong>ing the students’ linguistic as well as technicalskills (see Bartrina, this volume). In additi<strong>on</strong> to learning all thetranslati<strong>on</strong> strategies appropriate to the transfer of dialogue into subtitles,without leaving aside the questi<strong>on</strong> of cultural adaptati<strong>on</strong>, studentsshould learn to match the rhythm of the film, to determine the in andout time for each subtitle, to maintain synchr<strong>on</strong>isati<strong>on</strong> between textand sound. They should also learn how to edit the subtitles and to correctand polish the language where necessary. In other words, at the endof the course they must become professi<strong>on</strong>al subtitlers, able to workwith sophisticated subtitling equipment and as part of a team.A third prerequisite c<strong>on</strong>cerns training programmes for film producersand distributors, which should include less<strong>on</strong>s <strong>on</strong> the functi<strong>on</strong> and thebenefits of subtitling for internati<strong>on</strong>al sales and distributi<strong>on</strong>. Peopleinvolved in the communicati<strong>on</strong> business should prepare a subtitled versi<strong>on</strong>for all communicati<strong>on</strong> formats, including cinema.Every major advance in subtitling technology, which coverseverything from offline PC-based subtitle preparati<strong>on</strong> systems tomultilingual, fully automated transmissi<strong>on</strong> soluti<strong>on</strong>s, should becatapulted into the twenty-first century as the unavoidable frameworkfor linguistic and cultural values. This will give due emphasis to therole of languages as the most important means for internati<strong>on</strong>alexchange and mutual comprehensi<strong>on</strong>, the most important means ofcommunicati<strong>on</strong>.Note1. See Pavesi and Tomasi (2001) for an in-depth study <strong>on</strong> the translati<strong>on</strong> universalof simplificati<strong>on</strong>.ReferencesBaker, M. (1993) ‘Corpus linguistics and translati<strong>on</strong> studies: Implicati<strong>on</strong>s andapplicati<strong>on</strong>s’. In M. Baker, G. Francis and E. Tognini-B<strong>on</strong>elli (eds) Text andTechnology: In H<strong>on</strong>our of J. Sinclair (pp. 233–50). Amsterdam and Philadelphia:John Benjamins.Baker, M. (1996) ‘Corpus based translati<strong>on</strong> studies: The challenges that lieahead’. In H. Somers (ed.) Terminology, LSP and <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g>. Studies in <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g>Engineering in H<strong>on</strong>our of Juan C. Sager (pp. 175–86). Amsterdam and Philadelphia:John Benjamins.Baldry, A. (ed.) (2000) Multimodality and Multimediality in the Distance LearningAge. Campobasso: Palladino Editore.


Subtitling: <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> Learners and the AV Market 251Blum-Kulka, S. and Levenst<strong>on</strong>, E. (1983) ‘Universal of lexical simplificati<strong>on</strong>’. InC. Faerch and G. Kasper (eds) Strategies in Interlanguage Communicati<strong>on</strong>(pp. 119–39). L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong> and New York: L<strong>on</strong>gman.Caimi, A. (ed.) (2002) Cinema: Paradiso delle Lingue. I Sottotitoli nell’ApprendimentoLinguistico. Special Issue of RILA (Rassegna Italiana di Linguistica Applicata)34(1–2).Díaz Cintas, J. and Fernández Cruz, M. (2008) ‘Using subtitled video materialsfor foreign language instructi<strong>on</strong>’. In J. Díaz Cintas (ed.) The Didactics of<str<strong>on</strong>g>Audiovisual</str<strong>on</strong>g> <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> (pp. 201–14). Amsterdam and Philadephia: JohnBenjamins.Ellis, R. (1985) Understanding Sec<strong>on</strong>d <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> Acquisiti<strong>on</strong>. Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press.Gottlieb, H. (2002) ‘Titles <strong>on</strong> subtitling 1929–1999’. In A. Caimi (ed.) Cinema:Paradiso delle Lingue. I Sottotitoli nell’Apprendimento Linguistico. Special Issue ofRILA (Rassegna Italiana di Linguistica Applicata) 34(1-2): 215-397.Kotler, P. (1988) Marketing Management. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.Krashen, S. (1981) Sec<strong>on</strong>d <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> Acquisiti<strong>on</strong> and Sec<strong>on</strong>d <str<strong>on</strong>g>Language</str<strong>on</strong>g> Learning.Oxford: Pergam<strong>on</strong>.Laviosa, S. (1998) ‘Universals of translati<strong>on</strong>’. In M. Baker (ed.) Encyclopedia of<str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> Studies (pp. 288–91). L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong>: Routledge.Pavesi, M. and Tomasi, A. (2001) ‘Per un’analisi degli universali della traduzi<strong>on</strong>ein testi scientifici: L’esplicitazi<strong>on</strong>e e la semplificazi<strong>on</strong>e’. In C. Bett<strong>on</strong>i, D. Calòand A. Zampolli (eds) Atti del sec<strong>on</strong>do c<strong>on</strong>vegno dell’AITLA (pp. 129–49). Perugia:Guerra.Pavesi, M. (2002) ‘Sottotitoli: dalla semplificazi<strong>on</strong>e nella traduzi<strong>on</strong>eall’apprendimento linguistico’. In A. Caimi (ed.) Cinema: Paradiso delle Lingue.I Sottotitoli nell’Apprendimento Linguistico. Special Issue of RILA (RassegnaItaliana di Linguistica Applicata) 34(1–2): 127–42.Pavesi, M. and Perego, E. (2008) ‘Tailor-made interlingual subtitling as a meansto enhance sec<strong>on</strong>d language acquisiti<strong>on</strong>’. In J. Díaz Cintas ( ed.) The Didacticsof <str<strong>on</strong>g>Audiovisual</str<strong>on</strong>g> <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> (pp. 215–25). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: JohnBenjamins.Sadoski, M. and Paivio, A. (2001) Imagery and Text – A Dual Coding Theory ofReading and Writing. Mahwah, N.J. and L<strong>on</strong>d<strong>on</strong>: Lawrence Erlbaum.


IndexA Fish Called Wanda, 226accent, 134, 137, 224accessibility, 1, 5–6, 12–13, 86,149, 163, 231–3, 238UK, 6, 12, 16USA, 6, 12, 16see also audio descripti<strong>on</strong>; blind;deaf; subtitling for the deafand hard-of-hearingadaptati<strong>on</strong>(s), 10–12, 74, 76, 81,95, 115–17, 119–20, 122–8, 153,192, 237, 249–50Spain / Germany, 12, 115ffAdriana Lecouvreur, 68Albert Herring, 10, 71, 74–7, 79, 81American producti<strong>on</strong>s, 88, 98, 119anime, 49audience design, 151–3audience recepti<strong>on</strong>, 3, 231–3Italy, 11, 97ffNorway, 87–9, 94, 208–9Spain, 100, 232see also dubbing; subtitlingaudio describer, 13, 170, 172–80,184audio descripti<strong>on</strong> (AD), 2, 6, 11, 180,183–4decisi<strong>on</strong> making, 174–6impartiality, 173–4targets, 16theatre, 13, 170ffsee also blind; partially sightedaudio subtitling, 7audiovisual market, 12, 15, 30, 112,151, 200, 240ffBilly Elliot, 242blind, 2, 5–7, 170, 172, 180see also accessibility; audiodescripti<strong>on</strong>; partially sightedbody language, 6, 92, 203, 205,210–11, 217Braveheart, 25British Broadcasting Corporati<strong>on</strong>(BBC), 1, 12, 133, 135, 140–3,145–7Britten, Benjamin, 10, 62, 71, 74–6,78–9see also operaBohème, La, 66broadcast interpreting, seeinterpretingcapti<strong>on</strong>ing, 56–8, 64, 91, 155closed, 5see also subtitling for the deaf andhard-of-hearing; teletextCarmen, 63, 73, 124carto<strong>on</strong>s, 2–4, 102, 106, 215Casa de Bernarda Alba, La, 120–1channelacoustic, 37–8visual, 23, 37–8, 154, 197, 198cinema, 2, 4, 6, 10, 22, 48–9, 58, 88,105, 115, 118–19, 123, 125, 159,217, 232, 240, 250audience(s), 94see also filmClub Dumas, El, 122coherence, 47, 159, 162, 167cohesi<strong>on</strong>, 22, 25, 47, 160, 162cohesive devices, 87commentary, 24, 131, 133, 173–4c<strong>on</strong>densati<strong>on</strong>, 50, 86, 96, 236, 245c<strong>on</strong>straint(s), 29, 34, 36, 43–4, 47,57, 79, 92, 159, 232, 237,240, 249financial, 5linguistic, 21, 26, 249technical, 21–2, 50, 151, 225textual, 21, 26see also dubbing; subtitling;voice-overc<strong>on</strong>venti<strong>on</strong>(s), 32–3, 64, 67, 80,110–11, 152, 164, 202, 207,235, 246252


Index 253cooperative principle, 198–200, 202,207see also maxims (Gricean);pragmaticscueing, 31, 37, 43, 45–6, 67, 234see also spotting; timingcultural reference(s), 10, 79, 100, 102 ,188–9, 223Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night,The, 178cut(s), 41, 43, 46, 65, 216deaf/Deaf, 5, 153–67see also accessibility; hard-ofhearing;subtitling for the deafand hard-of-hearingdeleti<strong>on</strong>, 25, 236Descriptive <str<strong>on</strong>g>Translati<strong>on</strong></str<strong>on</strong>g> Studies,9, 36dialect(al), 11, 26, 88, 109, 156,242–4see also idiolect(al); sociolect(al)dialogue list, 91, 95, 135–6, 234digital, 1, 6, 13, 22, 59–60, 135, 166,229–31, 233–5, 237technology, 3, 6, 15, 165, 229discourse, 25–6, 75, 134, 151,216–26distributor(s), 3, 159, 236–7, 248–50documentary, 91, 95, 135–6, 142, 144,146, 215dubbese, 102, 108–12Italy, 102ffsee also audience recepti<strong>on</strong>;dubbingdubbing, 4, 13, 97ff, 125, 130–4, 167,229, 240c<strong>on</strong>straints, 92countries, 2–3, 11, 32, 36–7, 85, 93,95, 97–8, 119, 230industry, 98–9, 111–12, 119versus subtitling, 10–11, 85ff,151–2, 246see also revoicing; voice-overDumas, Alexandre, 67DVD, 1–4, 13, 22–3, 30, 32–3, 38, 48,56, 58, 65, 67, 69, 112, 118–19,152, 159, 165–6, 217, 231–2, 240market, 6, 9, 21, 34, 97, 232, 234editing, 34, 59, 65, 90, 148, 163, 219,233, 235English Nati<strong>on</strong>al Opera, 59,61, 73English Patient, The, 9,39–41, 44equivalence, 10, 37, 77–8, 183–4, 210,212EuropeanCommissi<strong>on</strong>, 112, 249TV channels, 1, 95Uni<strong>on</strong>, 6European Blind Uni<strong>on</strong>, 6European Capti<strong>on</strong>ing Institute (ECI),9, 33–4expletive(s), 65see also swear word(s); taboolanguageexplicitati<strong>on</strong>, 161exposure time, 86–8fansub(s), 49see also (amateur) subtitlingfeedback effect, 25–6, 29Fellowship of the Ring, The, 9,50, 57film(s), 2–4, 6, 23, 26, 36–8, 85, 90,95, 99, 106, 117, 131, 156, 161,164, 170–1, 197, 210–11, 217, 219,246–8dialogue, 25, 133, 212, 219,227, 241family, 94, 96festival(s), 1, 92, 118–19genres, 47, 86, 123, 125, 215industry, 1, 8, 49, 85, 92, 98, 118,240, 248–50Studies, 130, 133, 238text(s), 14–15, 216, 218transfer norms, 11–12, 115, 118,124translati<strong>on</strong>, 15, 56, 200, 216, 249see also adaptati<strong>on</strong>(s)frame(s), 46, 58, 214, 216, 221globalisati<strong>on</strong>, 4, 14, 98, 142, 231,240, 248Gregory Hines’ Show, The, 94Grice, Paul: see maxims


254 Indexhard-of-hearing (HoH), 13, 154–8,164–7see also accessibility; deaf/Deaf;subtitling for the deaf andhard-of-hearinghumour, 10, 74, 77–9, 81, 100, 123,181, 226joke(s), 67–8, 100ICT, 229idiolect(al), 26, 244see also dialect(al); sociolect(al)implicature(s), 198–201, 203, 205,209, 212see also pragmatics; Speech ActTheoryinsert(s), 23, 33, 52, 91, 109Internet, 1–4, 9, 13, 15, 49–50,56, 68, 106, 187, 191, 203, 233,238interpreting, 4, 11–12, 50, 132, 140–1,145–7broadcast interpreting, 12, 140–8Japan / UK, 12, 140–7simultaneous, 141–3, 145–6, 170war in Iraq, 144–6intersemiotic, 116, 162, 164, 236see also semiotic; polysemioticint<strong>on</strong>ati<strong>on</strong>, 25, 75, 86–7, 93, 183ir<strong>on</strong>y, 33, 161, 168, 201Japan Broadcasting Corporati<strong>on</strong>(NHK), 12, 140, 142–7kinesic, 25, 214, 221language transfer norms, 115ffsee also film transfer norms;normslanguage learning, 7, 15, 97, 240, 242,246–7learning, 15, 233, 238, 248–50legibility, 22, 60, 232lip synchr<strong>on</strong>isati<strong>on</strong>, seesynchr<strong>on</strong>isati<strong>on</strong>localisati<strong>on</strong>, 13–14, 186–92, 224–5Human Computer Interacti<strong>on</strong>(HCI), 189–90, 192L<strong>on</strong>g Day’s Journey into Night, 226Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat,171Manhattan Murder Mystery, 40, 44maxim(s) (Gricean), 198–203, 207–8,212see also implicatures; pragmatics;Speech Act TheoryMeet the Parents, 205–6mother t<strong>on</strong>gue, 31, 100, 134, 155, 157,166, 186, 243multimedia, 15, 229–30, 235, 240,246–9multimodal, 14, 163, 214, 216–22, 225multilingual, 9, 14, 191–2, 249–50Murder One, 95music, 4, 10, 14, 38–9, 47, 71–81, 105,108, 153, 164–5, 167, 214, 217–18,220–3narrati<strong>on</strong>, 4, 6, 131, 135narrative, 14, 25, 73, 90, 123, 125,163, 173–5, 177, 182, 212noise(s), 38, 47, 50, 155, 160norm(s), 9, 12, 22, 36–7, 39, 41–4,46–7, 100–1, 103, 109–10, 115,118, 124–6, 160, 188, 224Norwegian Broadcasting Corporati<strong>on</strong>(NRK), 87, 89Notting Hill, 9, 39–43, 218omissi<strong>on</strong>(s), 37, 40–1, 43–4, 46, 86,160, 201, 209, 226, 236<strong>on</strong>line, 15, 118, 187, 190, 217, 229–33,235–7see also trainingopera(s), 1, 10, 58–69, 71–81French, 72, 74, 76–80German, 61, 65, 72, 77Italian, 60–2, 65–6, 68, 72Kobbé, G., 73–4libretto adaptati<strong>on</strong>, 71–81see also surtitlingparalinguistic, 5, 156, 161–2,164, 167partially sighted, 2, 6, 170, 172see also accessibility; audiodescripti<strong>on</strong>; blindPerfect Storm, The, 39–40


Index 255phasal analysis 219–23, 225–7see also multimodalitypivotlanguage, 116translati<strong>on</strong>, 134polysemiotic, 156see also intersemiotic; semioticPolysystem Theory, 12, 115pragmatics, 14, 197–8see also cooperative principle;maxims; Speech Act TheoryPsycho, 23Pullman, Philip, 175pun(s), 74, 78, 102punctuati<strong>on</strong>, 62, 159, 161quality, 15, 53, 56, 85, 92, 211, 232,234, 238, 248–9audio descripti<strong>on</strong>, 172–3, 178Catalan, 230–1dubbing, 11, 99–100, 106, 111interpreting, 12, 142–3, 146–7localisati<strong>on</strong>, 189maxim of, 199–200subtitling, 9–10, 34, 39, 49–51,230–3, 237, 240training, 230–5, 237–8see also (amateur) subtitlingreadability, 21–3, 26, 86–7, 96, 210,232reading speed(s), 22, 24–5, 34, 58, 86,88, 160, 197, 232redundancy, 25, 156, 160–2, 236reducti<strong>on</strong>, 26, 30, 160, 236, 241, 245register, 75, 77, 88–9, 159, 248relevance, 156–7, 163, 199, 207, 232revoicing, 4, 10–11, 95, 131see also dubbing; voice-overRoyal Nati<strong>on</strong>al Institute for the Blind( RNIB), 170, 180Royal Opera House, The (ROH) 59,62, 64Sacks, Oliver, 171–3, 184sec<strong>on</strong>d language, 52, 154, 160, 166,240–1, 247acquisiti<strong>on</strong>, 7, 246segmentati<strong>on</strong>, 24, 37semiotic(s), 13–15, 99–100, 203, 212,214, 216–22, 225, 236–7, 246see also intersemiotic;polysemioticshot change, 23, 42, 90, 232sign(s), 47, 103, 109, 156, 161–2, 234sign language, 16, 154–5sitcom(s), 2–4, 88, 98, 102, 106, 110slang, 31, 65, 210soap opera(s), 2–3, 98, 102, 111, 162,167, 214–16, 220sociolect(al), 11, 88, 156see also dialect(al); idiolect(al)software, 58–60, 69, 183, 190, 237s<strong>on</strong>g(s), 33, 44, 64, 71–2, 76, 81, 102,234sound effect(s), 28, 153, 157–8, 161,164soundtrack(s), 4–5, 9–12, 22–3, 25–6,28, 30–1, 87, 93, 132, 152, 170,217, 221, 241Speech Act Theory, 14, 197–8, 202see also maxims; pragmaticsspotting, 31, 37, 48, 225, 233–5see also cueing; timingsubtitle(s) / subtitlingaccuracy, 248–9amateur, 9, 49–51, 54–7audio subtitling, 7c<strong>on</strong>straints, 9–11, 21–2, 26–7, 29,36, 86, 90, 234–5countries, 11, 13, 85, 90,97, 246for the deaf and hard-of-hearing(SDH), 2, 5–6, 13, 16, 28–9,151–3, 163, 165–7Greece / Spain, 9, 36ffguidelines, 237–8, 249interlingual, 6, 13, 21, 151–2, 156,163, 165–7, 230, 240intralingual, 6, 12–13, 152–3, 156,158, 163, 165–7live, 49, 58master, 9, 234multilingual, 9, 30, 248Norway, 197ffsoftware, 3, 57, 198, 230–1, 237see also trainingsupertitles, 58


256 Indexsurtitles / surtitling, 1, 9–10, 58–69,71, 73–4, 81see also operaswear word(s), 89, 103, 110see also expletive(s); taboo languagesynchr<strong>on</strong>isati<strong>on</strong> / synchr<strong>on</strong>y / sync,21, 37–9, 43, 45–6, 90, 132, 160,236, 250lip, 4, 92, 94, 103, 110, 131taboo language, 89, 103, 110–11teletext, 5, 22, 58, 165, 167see also capti<strong>on</strong>ing; subtitling forthe deaf and hard-of-hearingtelevisi<strong>on</strong> (TV), 1–7, 10–11, 13, 16, 22,38, 47, 49, 58, 65, 69, 85–91,93–5, 98, 101, 111, 118–19, 132–3,136, 141, 158–9, 164–6, 215–18,220, 222–3, 246channels, 1, 95, 137template(s), 9, 30–4theatre, 1, 10, 13, 58, 61, 65, 69, 72–3, 81timing, 22–3, 28, 30–3, 74, 90, 225,233–5see also cueing; spottingtraining, 14, 157, 227, 229, 232–3,238, 250audio descripti<strong>on</strong>, 172,177–8interpreting, 143<strong>on</strong>line, 229ffsubtitling, 7, 14, 31, 47,214Catal<strong>on</strong>ia / Spain, 229–31transadaptati<strong>on</strong>, 152Twelfth Night, 171Un posto al sole, 111, 214Vertigo, 24, 27VHS, 3–4, 33, 48, 119, 159voice-over, 4, 9, 11–12,92–3, 95, 130–7, 144–5,229c<strong>on</strong>straints, 137war in Iraq, 135–7see also dubbing; revoicingWeird Science, 24, 28Willy the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, 110

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