1 what is this thing called journal of audiovisual translation? anna jankowska elena di giovanni jan-louis kruger jan pedersen nina reviers pablo romero-fresco _________________________________________________________ abstract we are proud to present the first issue of the journal of audiovisual translation. launching this new journal would not have been possible without the hard work of the editorial board members, much appreciated contributions from the authors and support from esist and scientific board members. audiovisual translation has come of age as a discipline in its own right and we strongly believe that it deserves a journal that is dedicated to this very specific field. journal of audiovisual translation wishes to serve as an international forum and reference point for high-quality, innovative and in-depth research in all avenues of audiovisual translation studies. key words: journal of audiovisual translation, jat, audiovisual translation, media accessibility, dubbing, subtitling, voice-over, surtitilng, audio description, subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing, translation studies  a.jankowska@jatjournal.org; https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6863-5940  e.digiovanni@jatjournal.org; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5823-0082  jl.kruger@jatjournal.org; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4817-5390  j.pedersen@jatjournal.org; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9189-0330  n.reviers@jatjournal.org; https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0271-6662  p.romerofresco@jatjournal.org; https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2166-5792 citation: jankowska, a., di giovanni, e., kruger, j.-l., pedersen, j., reviers, n., & romero-fresco, p. (2018). what is this thing called journal of audiovisual translation? journal of audiovisual translation, 1(1), 1-7. published: november 15, 2018 copyright: ©2018 jankowska, di giovanni, kruger, pedersen, reviers & romero-fresco. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license. this allows for unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6863-5940 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5823-0082 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4817-5390 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9189-0330 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0271-6662 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2166-5792 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6863-5940 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5823-0082 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4817-5390 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9189-0330 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0271-6662 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2166-5792 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 2 audiovisual translation (avt) has come of age as a discipline in its own right (cf. chaume in this volume). there is a great deal of evidence to back this claim, dissemination of research being one of them. from the inception of the languages and the media conference series back in the 1990s and the subsequent launching of media for all in 2005, the last couple of decades have seen the proliferation of conferences dedicated to avt in many countries around the globe. with ever more consumer groups asking for, and getting, their due right to media accessibility (ma), research in that field has skyrocketed as well, with subfields such as audio description and subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing (sdh) taking pride of place. this growth in the volume of research has been matched increasingly by a frustration among scholars at not having any dedicated outlet in which to publish the written accounts of their studies. instead, avt and ma research has been published in many journals and books in neighbouring fields, such as the parent disciplines translation studies and media studies, but also in disability studies and many more. this is hardly surprising, as avt is basically interdisciplinarity incarnate. however, a mature field of research deserves its own outlet, and that is the rationale for creating this very journal. avt, including ma, can now finally claim that it has reached full maturity, with a steady supply of conferences, books and now also a journal that is dedicated to this very specific field. there have been discussions about starting a journal dedicated to avt for many years. under the editorship of henrik gottlieb, perspectives: studies in translatology (now perspectives: studies in translation theory and practice) has been an early patron of the field, with many special issues and articles on various aspect of avt. a number of other translation studies journals, such as the journal of specialised translation, have also been frequent outlets for papers on avt, and will continue to be so. the first concrete steps to establishing a dedicated journal for avt were taken a few years ago within the board of the association for studies in screen translation, esist, when elena di giovanni and jan pedersen started approaching publishers and evaluating different formulas. the idea was to have a dedicated journal that was supported by, but scientifically independent from, the association. the initial proposal was to go with an established and influential publisher, and a deal was negotiated along those lines with one of the leading international publishers known in translation studies circles. the esist general meeting turned down the proposal, however, and a decision was made that the new journal should be free, open access and available online. and that is how jat was born: the world’s first free, open access, online, double blind peer-reviewed journal dedicated to avt. the journal is supported financially by esist, but independent from the association. the jat editorial team is headed by anna jankowska, who is editor-in-chief. the rest of the team is made up by the editorial board, which consists of accomplished scholars in the field of avt: elena di giovanni, jan-louis kruger, jan pedersen, nina reviers and pablo romero-fresco. jat has a very distinguished scientific board made up of 28 established scholars and industry experts from all continents except antarctica. the journal also has an extensive list of reviewers which is constantly updated, as an essential component of our scientific endeavour. what is this thing called journal of audiovisual translation? 3 for this inaugural issue all articles and other texts have been commissioned by the editorial board, but they have all been subject to a double-blind peer review, in line with one of the journal’s main tenets. we wanted the inaugural issue to reflect the state of the art for avt, including ma, and to that end we contacted established leaders in the various subfields and asked them for contributions. the result is a heady mixture of overview articles, case studies, contributions on methodology, reflections on avt and ma practice, theoretical discussions, an interview and even a letter to young avt scholars. these contributions fulfil the contrasting roles of strengthening the nature of avt as a mature field and, at the same time, questioning a static conception of this nature. far from being a problem, this shows that avt is not only strong, but also alive. thus, while some contributions show evidence of the current maturity of avt and the vibrancy of its core modalities as they adapt to ever-changing technological developments, others point to new avenues of research and practice (such as the notion of integrated access) and pose challenging questions about the complex relationship between avt and ma and the need to embrace neighbouring areas of knowledge that may be more related to ma than translation studies. this collection of articles is impressive in its scope and serves the purpose of displaying the diversity of the field, and also of providing a somewhat unconventional look at our discipline. we felt justified in giving our authors this poetic license in this inaugural issue, as it marks the beginning of something great and uncharted. our subsequent issues will remain true to the pioneering work signalled in many of these contributions, although we will settle into a more traditional scientific style of publications in future issues as we strive to become a respected presence on the landscape of scholarly journals. agnieszka szarkowska and piotr wasylczyk’s contribution is an overview of the questions most often raised in avt research. their article sketches helpful answers to these questions and should be useful for any new researcher in the field, as they tackle issues ranging from research methodology to publishing. a dialogue-style contribution stars one of the most experienced scholars in both avt and ts, yves gambier, in conversation with haina jin. this text provides wonderful insights into the history of avt in china in terms of its role in cross-cultural communication, industrial development and social integration. the overview touches on the role of avt in the export of chinese media, in access to foreign media in china and, importantly, in providing access to ethnic minority languages. to give a historical perspective, frederic chaume’s overview of avt focuses on four methodological turns brought about in the field by digital technology and what that has meant for producers, distributors and consumers of audiovisual products, namely the descriptive, the cultural, the sociological and the cognitive turns in avt. his article provides a convincing bridge between avt and ts while also signalling important new avenues that will inevitably open up as this field continues to grow. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 4 as a good example of how avt research is not only interdisciplinary but also international, elisa perego’s article on cross-national research sets the tone for serious engagement with interdisciplinary research on a global scale. tapping into this methodology, already applied in fields such as sociology, political science, geography and economics, perego shows the benefits and potential of cross-national research to avt and ma, particularly in areas like reception studies. one of the core modalities of avt, subtitling, is discussed in jan pedersen’s article. working from a norm perspective, the article shows how subtitling has developed and evolved over time, following landmark developments in technology and globalisation. the article reaches the state of the art of subtitling norm development as it investigates the guidelines of international giant netflix and shows how the development has gone from being local to being truly global. maria pavesi’s article focuses on the analysis of dubbing language. the focus on the verbal code alone has been criticised, but that does not mean that everything has been said and done when it comes to linguistic analysis. this article investigates the linguistic component of the multimodal complex for reasons of feasibility, autonomy of the object of investigation and social impact, and it sketches new ways forward. but avt is not only about film and television. carme mangiron shows how localisation in the game industry – which is much bigger than the film industry in terms of revenues – is in dire need of further academic investigation, as well as more attention from the industry. she identifies the “burning issues” that require specific scrutiny, as game localisation is finding its place in relation to neighbouring and parent disciplines. anna matamala and pilar orero present one of the ways in which research results can be transferred to the industry and to society. they take us through the process of creating international standards, especially in the field of accessibility, present the international standardisation bodies and discuss the main challenges faced by researchers involved in this process. elena di giovanni’s article in participatory accessibility illustrates just how far avt has come in catering for inclusive design, but also in co-developing content with the users creatively. her case study on the creation of ad for live theatre with blind, sighted, and partially sighted children provides an inspiring example of a new age in media accessibility. louise fryer’s article on integrated audio description shows just how far this ma mode has come since its inception. she shows how we are moving away from the detrimental practice of always having ma and avt entering the production process as an afterthought. in line with the notion of accessible filmmaking, theatre directors and producers are now taking a greater interest in making their work accessible to audience members with sensory impairments, and this article shows how this affects norms and stakeholders. what is this thing called journal of audiovisual translation? 5 pablo romero-fresco takes the idea of integrated ma even further in his article, where he supports a wide view of ma that encompasses both people with and without disabilities who need access to audiovisual content. using two emerging areas (interlingual respeaking and accessible filmmaking) as an example, he makes a distinction between access to content and access to creation. the latter enables persons with sensory disabilities to create audiovisual products and can provide a more inclusive and empathetic audiovisual experience than the current model of ma. gian maria greco’s article goes beyond ma and charts the emerging field of accessibility studies. this is the field concerned with the investigation of accessibility processes and phenomena, but also with the design, implementation and evaluation of accessibility-based or accessibilityoriented methodologies. the article discusses the origins of this field and also tries to define its place in relation to ma and the great benefits that can be reaped from studies in this new and exciting field. these are the articles and other contributions to be found in the inaugural issue of the world’s first journal dedicated to avt. admittedly, there are many topics and subfields missing from this issue, but that just means that there is so much more to come in the upcoming issues. jat is scheduled to appear twice a year, typically with one general content issue and one special issue. if you are working in the field of avt, including ma, and want to be part of expanding and developing the content of the journal, you can submit your manuscripts continuously throughout the year. our first regular issue is scheduled to appear in june 2019 and we have already received many fascinating manuscripts for it, which are now being peer reviewed. we look forward to bringing you many years of reading jat issues filled to the brim with avt articles of the highest quality. now: read on, macduff! the jat editorial team biographical notes anna jankowska, phd, is lecturer and research associate at the chair for translation studies and intercultural communication at the jagiellonian university in krakow (poland) and visiting scholar at the universitat autònoma de barcelona within the mobility plus program of the polish ministry of science and higher education (2016-2019). she is member of intermedia – audiovisual translation research group and transmedia catalonia research groups. her recent research projects include studies on mobile accessibility and software (audiomovie – cinema for all and openart – modern art for all), the viability of translating audio description scripts from foreign languages, multiculturalism in audio description, audio description for foreign films and the history of audiovisual translation. she is also the founder and president of the seventh sense foundation which provides access services. she is the editor-in-chief of the journal of audiovisual translation. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 6 elena di giovanni, phd, is associate professor of english translation at the university of macerata, italy. she has a degree in specialized translation and a phd in english and audiovisual translation. she has been invited to give lectures and workshops on audiovisual translation and media accessibility at several universities and institutions in italy (bergamo, trieste, milano, roma, palermo, bari, bologna, napoli) and around the world (valencia, sevilla, barcelona, leeds, belfast, berlin, cairo, nitra, new york, shanghai). from 2008 to 2016, she was visiting lecturer at roehampton university, london, ma course in audiovisual translation. from 2014 to 2016, she was guest lecturer at montclair state university, new jersey, usa. since 2013, she lectures on cinema accessibility at the venice international film festival, within the european parliament-funded lux prize for cinema. in 2012-2013, she was director of the international ma in accessibility to media, arts and culture of the university of macerata. since november 2016, she is president of esist, european association of studies in screen translation (www.esist.org). she has published extensively on audiovisual translation and other areas of translation studies. jan-louis kruger, phd, is head of the department of linguistics at macquarie university in sydney, australia where he also teaches in avt. his main research interests include studies on the reception and processing of audiovisual translation products including aspects such as cognitive load, comprehension, attention allocation, and psychological immersion. his current research projects investigate cognitive load in the context of educational subtitling with a view to optimising subtitles as language support in second language environments, as well as the processing of subtitles as dynamic text using eye tracking. before joining the editorial board of jat, he was a co-editor of perspectives – studies in translation theory and practice. jan pedersen was educated at the universities of stockholm, copenhagen and uppsala. he received his ph.d. from stockholm university in 2007 and was made an associate professor in translation studies there in 2015. his dissertation is entitled scandinavian subtitles, and it is a comparative study of tv subtitling norms in the scandinavian countries. jan's research interests include translation studies, translation theory, audiovisual translation, pragmatics and comparative linguistics. he is the former president of the european association for studies in screen translation (esist), member of the european society for translation studies (est), founding member of the nordic network for translation studies (tranor) and co-editor of journal of audiovisual translation and benjamins translation library, and former co-editor of perspectives – studies in translation theory and practice. he is a frequent presenter at international conferences and his publications include the 2011 monograph subtitling norms for television, as well as several articles on subtitling, translation and linguistics. he also worked as a television subtitler for many years, subtitling shows like late show with david letterman, the simpsons and nikolaj og julie. jan is an associate professor at stockholm university, where he holds posts as deputy head of the department of swedish language and multilingualism and as director of the institute for interpretation and translation studies, where he also researches and teaches audiovisual translation. what is this thing called journal of audiovisual translation? 7 nina reviers received her ph.d. at the university of antwerp (department of translators and interpreters, trics research group) in the field of media accessibility. her research project involves the development of the first multimodal corpus of dutch audio descriptions, and applies computer-based techniques from corpus linguistics, multimodal corpus development and natural language processing. she has professional experience as an audiovisual translator, particularly in the theatre and has collaborated with several prominent flemish theatres, accessibility providers and user organisations. she has experience in academic and professional training (ma courses in interpreting, vocational audio description workshops, training of interns in audio description) and helped develop flemish guidelines for the audio description of live-events as a member of the transmedia benelux research group. she has collaborated in the european projects adlab, adlab pro and act. pablo romero-fresco, phd, is a ramón y cajal grant holder at universidade de vigo (spain) and honorary professor of translation and filmmaking at the university of roehampton (london, uk). he is the editor of the reception of subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing in europe (2015, peter lang) and the author of the books subtitling through speech recognition: respeaking (2012, routledge) and accessible filmmaking: integrating translation and accessibility into the filmmaking process (forthcoming, routledge). his accessible filmmaking guide, written with louise fryer, is currently being used by governments, film schools and filmmakers in several countries and he has collaborated with governments, universities, companies and user associations around the world to introduce and improve access to live events for people with hearing loss. he is the leader of the international research group galma (galician observatory for media access), for which he is currently coordinating several international projects on media accessibility and accessible filmmaking, including “ilsa: interlingual live subtitling for access”, funded by the eu commission. pablo is also a filmmaker. his first documentary, joining the dots (2012), was used by netflix as well as schools around europe to raise awareness about audio description. abstract citation: jankowska, a., di giovanni, e., kruger, j.-l., pedersen, j., reviers, n., & romero-fresco, p. (2018). what is this thing called journal of audiovisual translation? journal of audiovisual translation, 1(1), 1-7. published: november 15, 2018 copyright: ©2018 jankowska, di giovanni, kruger, pedersen, reviers & romero-fresco. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license. this allows for unrestricted use, distribution, and reproductio... biographical notes 1 framing media accessibility quality gian maria greco autonomous university of barcelona, spain university of vigo, spain anna jankowska jagiellonian university in kraków, poland _________________________________________________________ abstract the article provides an initial general overview of the status of quality in media accessibility. after highlighting some of the reasons behind the importance of addressing quality in media accessibility, the article discusses some problems that undermine the potential for full maturation of research and practices on quality. then, it presents some possible solutions and proposes to use “media accessibility quality” to refer to the overarching problem of quality in media accessibility. the article concludes by listing a set of actions that constitutes a first draft of an agenda for the future of media accessibility quality. key words: accessibility studies, audiovisual translation, media accessibility, media accessibility quality, quality.  gianmaria.greco@poiesis.it, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8714-6349  anna.m.jankowska@uj.edu.pl, https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6863-5940 citation: greco, g. m. & jankowska, a. (2019). framing media accessibility quality. journal of audiovisual translation, 2(2), 1–10. copyright: ©2019 greco & jankowska. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license. this allows for unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 2 2 1. introduction quality is one of the first topics collectively identified as a major issue in the field of translation studies. the official recognition of quality as a critical issue by the international translation community can be traced back to at least the third congress of the international federation of translators held in 1959, under the heading, “quality in translation”. in the book’s preface, summarising the preparatory discussions that led to the choice of the topic, caillé (1963b) states: after weighing the pros and cons for a long time, we fixed our choice on the theme of quality. the word opened such horizons that it lost its clarity. we knew it. however, it was right in the centre of the imperatives of the profession. it was a bit of a geometric locus – in abstracto – and had the merit of provoking the immediate reaction of translators as well as those who needed them. the term ‘quality’ was also the richest in extensions. it required the study of the entire mechanism of the profession, it involved looking into the training of translators, information, documentation, the exchanges of translators between countries, delivery times for a work, defending copyright, the remuneration for translated works, etc. (p. xiv) if we look at the articles included in the over 550-page proceedings, we can identify many of the questions that are still under debate nowadays from the subjectivity of translation quality to the strive for the identification of objective measures, from fidelity to adaptation, from the impact of limited time and low pay on the work of professionals – and thus on the quality of the work – to non-professionalism (cary & jumpelt, 1963). since then, quality has become one of the most hotlydiscussed issues in translation studies, as testified by the massive number of monographs, edited books, journals’ special issues, articles, and conferences. a simple search on google scholar for “translation quality” gives 38.700 results.1 obviously, this search does not have any substantial bibliometric value, and thus does not accurately represent the status of the literature on the topic. it would need to be refined with more precision; for example, by excluding the publications where the search string occurs but that are not relevant while including those that discuss the topic but do not use that string. still, the figure gives us a sense of just how significant a topic quality is in translation studies. its prominent status has been reinforced by the advent of the information revolution, and it is now taking on a new life with the increase in technological developments, such as artificial intelligence, whose widespread adoption may trigger radical changes in our world. reaching a similar outlook is much more difficult for audiovisual translation (avt) and media accessibility (ma). when searching for “quality + ‘audiovisual translation’” and “quality + ‘media accessibility’”, google scholar retrieves 4.720 and 1.960 entries, respectively.2 once more, the results are by no means representative of the situation and should be refined. a direct comparison with translation studies would also not be fair, given that ma and avt are new 1 retrieved december 27, 2019. 2 retrieved december 27, 2019. framing media accessibility quality 3 additions to the knowledge enterprise club. nonetheless, given the low number of results, at least a bit more insight can be gained for the case of ma, being the one with the lowest number of entries and thus easier to analyse. almost half of the entries (n=928) refer to works produced in the past five years (2015-2019), and only the 6% of them (n=58) are not relevant. we can see that of late, the topic of quality has become of increased significance among scholars. one more sign of the intensifying interest is the umaq conference held in barcelona in june 2018, the first one ever explicitly devoted to quality in ma. it attracted so much interest that a second edition has been already scheduled to be held at the university of vigo in september 2020. this special issue of the journal of audiovisual translation marks the first collective publication that deals specifically with quality in ma and avt. some of the articles included in this special issue discuss the topic of quality only marginally. the choice is not accidental. they accurately represent the breadth and complexity of the issue of quality as well as the current fragmented status of the debate, which we will further delve into in the following pages. with this special issue, the journal of audiovisual translation has created a new section called practice reports. once again, the choice is not accidental. despite the complexity involved in specifying what constitutes quality, a multitude of ma actors – such as practitioners, companies, service providers, and users – deal with the issue of quality on a daily basis (pedersen, 2017). some of them have developed their own procedures, methods, models, and metrics, which are continuously tested and modified and are thus of great use in helping address quality. since the specific contribution of each article is clearly summarised in its own abstract, we will dedicate the following pages to a brief discussion of several of the general issues at hand. more specifically, in section two we will highlight the importance of addressing quality in ma. in section three, we will discuss some problems that undermine the potential for full maturation of research and practices on quality in ma, and we will discuss some possible solutions. finally, in section four we conclude with a list some actions that constitute a first draft of an agenda for future research. 2. the importance of quality in media accessibility initially born, at least academically, as an area of avt, ma has been steadily growing into an area of accessibility studies, becoming a driver for major social change. as proposed by greco (2018), a prominent reason behind this process can be identified in the three shifts that ma has been experiencing over the past few years: a shift from particularist accounts to a universalist account of accessibility, from maker-centred to user-centred approaches, and from reactive to proactive models. firstly, for many years ma was framed as the subdomain of avt concerned with specific modalities related to persons with sensory disabilities. more recently, scholars have been increasingly embracing a universalist account that challenges traditional notions of avt and ma, and sees ma as the area of accessibility studies that focuses on “access to media and non-media journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 2 4 objects, services and environments through media solutions, for any person who cannot or would not be able to, either partially or completely, access them in their original form” (greco, 2019, p. 18). secondly, though previously ignored or downplayed for years, the involvement of users has become a bedrock of ma. users are now seen as bearers of unique knowledge that is essential for both the design and the evaluation of access solutions. and lastly, while ma solutions have long been regarded as an add-on and, as such, relegated to the end of the production process of an artefact, they are now at the centre of practices that promote their full integration into that very process, jumping from the ex-post to the ex-ante phase. the change of focus from quantity to quality can be seen as connected to and influenced by the new position reached by ma as a consequence of the aforementioned shifts. for quite some time, research and industry have focused on the development and implementation of access services, while policies have focused on promoting the widespread adoption of those services and setting quotas (romero-fresco, 2016). however, over the past few years, the different actors, especially scholars, have increasingly started to turn their attention to the quality of those services, through the development of quality models (e.g., pedersen, 2017; romero-fresco & pérez, 2015; romero-fresco & pöchhacker, 2018), the analysis of quality in production practices (e.g., robert & remael, 2016), and the discussion of the impact of machine translation on the quality of access services (e.g., doherty & kruger, 2018), just to name a few cases. as stated above, the rise of quality as a major concern can be connected to the three major shifts ma has been experiencing over the past few years. a case in point is the shift from maker-centred and expert-centred to user-centred approaches, which is evident in the recent increase of reception studies within ma (di giovanni & gambier, 2018; jankowska, 2019). in order to investigate the quality of ma services and products, identify critical issues, devise solution-oriented strategies, and define and test quality metrics, researchers have been conducting more and more tests with end-users using methods from other research fields, such as experimental psychology. given the situation briefly summarised so far, two questions stand out. what are the factors driving the move towards quality? and, why should quality matter in ma? a detailed answer to these questions would require more space than the one at our disposal. for the scope of this article, it is sufficient to draft some possible answers. as for the first question, let us sketch only some of the many factors that are guiding the rise in prominence of quality in ma. one factor is the recent change of pace in international, especially european, policies, with the publication of documents that either directly address or indirectly affect ma. just consider the new audio visual media services directive3 and the european accessibility act4. a second factor is the growing relevance of standards and their very practical influence on the daily life of individuals. consider the increasing involvement of ma researchers in the work of standardisation organisations (matamala & orero, 2018) and the recent 3 https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/revision-audiovisual-media-services-directive-avmsd 4 https://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catid=1202 framing media accessibility quality 5 release of a series of standards on accessibility, such the standard on “accessibility requirements for ict products and services”5 and one on “design for all”6. a third factor can be identified in the social transformations brought about by information and communication technologies. they are radically changing the patterns of access to the world and making ma services more and more necessary instruments for guaranteeing access for all (graham & dutton, 2014; greco, 2018). finally, the second and third shifts mentioned previously have also significantly contributed to making quality a priority. for example, the search for ways to increase the quality of experience offered by ma services is strictly connected with the inquiry into the integration of those services in the production process (fryer, 2018; romero-fresco, 2019). in order to answer the second question however, we should look more closely at the first shift in ma, or better still, at its general standing. the shift from particularist accounts to a universalist account of ma mirrors and is a consequence of a more general shift concerning accessibility within the human rights framework. it is precisely in this shift that we can identify the core reason behind the importance of the topic of quality in ma. the most commonly accepted justification for human rights is that they are instruments for human dignity. in order to guarantee human rights, and thus human dignity, we need to provide access to the various material and immaterial goods that are the objects of human rights, that is, that are considered to be fundamental for a dignified life. this means that access is a necessary requirement for the fulfilment of human rights and the respect of human dignity (greco, 2016). however, merely providing access services – i.e., quantity – is not sufficient. in a hypothetical world where access services are so widespread to pervade every aspect of life, human rights and human dignity could still be at risk if those access services do not provide an equitable experience to all. it is precisely in the experiential dimension that the importance of quality lies. 3. quality in media accessibility: some problems despite an ever more dynamic situation, research on quality in ma is facing the risk to be undermined by a series of foundational and methodological problems that may hamper its growth to a mature stage. openly addressing these problems should be a priority for scholars as well as for other stakeholders. if not tackled through a collective commitment in a timely manner, they may very well jeopardise the successful implementation of research results into practice, and ultimately run the risk of reinforcing old – or even producing new – inequalities. 5 https://standards.cen.eu/dyn/www/f?p=204:110:0::::fsp_project,fsp_org_id:66602,855949&cs=1edad 9d32175767f919bcc673ea996cfd 6 https://standards.cen.eu/dyn/www/f?p=204:110:0::::fsp_project,fsp_org_id:62323,2301962&cs=1d28 cfdc66e7cef3ce441294caa9feabe https://standards.cen.eu/dyn/www/f?p=204:110:0::::fsp_project,fsp_org_id:66602,855949&cs=1edad https://standards.cen.eu/dyn/www/f?p=204:110:0::::fsp_project,fsp_org_id:66602,855949&cs=1edad https://standards.cen.eu/dyn/www/f?p=204:110:0::::fsp_project,fsp_org_id:62323,2301962&cs=1d28 https://standards.cen.eu/dyn/www/f?p=204:110:0::::fsp_project,fsp_org_id:62323,2301962&cs=1d28 journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 2 6 the most pressing problem is that of fragmentation. so far, attention has been spread out over a very diverse range of issues while lacking a cohesive framework for the investigation of quality in ma. to be clear, there is nothing wrong with focusing on minute aspects of a wider problem and trying to solve them. actually, it could be quite a commendable strategy, if only put into the right structure. the cartesian method of dividing a problem into smaller parts presupposes the existence of such a problem to divide. without being contextualised in relation to a bigger problem, all the efforts put into addressing the small issues may risk being done in vain, or to have minimal effect, or to be even counter-productive. until now, scholars have limited their efforts to address quality to only some modalities or contexts, and often exclusively on specific aspects of these. the general problem of what quality is in ma has been largely ignored. actually, even the smaller problem of what quality is for those modalities or in those contexts has not been extensively addressed; and research has usually focused on some specific dimensions of quality for those modalities. however, posing the overarching problem of quality in ma – as well as posing the general problem of quality for each ma service – and being aware of its complexities and implications is crucial for having a cohesive framework that could then support a solid inquiry into the small issues. having such a unified framework for the investigation of quality in ma does not entail that all efforts should be focused on the formulation of a unified theory of quality in ma. quality is an inherently vague term. any attempt to formulate a unified theory of quality would be pointless or even detrimental, even in the case of a single ma service. however, a common framework would facilitate the correlation between the different aspects involved as well as encourage a harmonised discussion on quality in ma. it could also act as an ideal place where researchers might be able to coordinate their efforts in order to provide a more efficient and interconnected account of the various issues connected to quality. a second problem is related to the relationship between ma and translation studies. in the context of ma, this means that a good portion of the research carried out so far is still too strictly based on, or even mirror with minimal adaptation, models and metrics from translation studies. more generally, research in ma still addresses the problem of quality adopting a translation-based and translation-centred approach. from a historical point of view, this is comprehensible. academically, ma was born as a subfield of avt, and thus of translation studies. the significant influence of translation studies should therefore not surprise. however, this view considers access problems as merely a case of a more general class of translation problems. as discussed in greco (2019), this is rather controversial and could lead to a series of abuses and misuses of both translation and accessibility. avt and ma do not overlap, but rather, intersect. this means that quality issues in ma cannot be reduced to avt quality issues. the latter do not satisfactory cover the problem of access, which on the contrary is the ultimate question in ma. consider audio description. so far research on quality has focused on the most diverse aspects of a film as an audiovisual text, that is, it has approached audio description from a translation-based and translation-centred approach. nontranslation-based aspects, such as delivery (e.g., choice of voice, pace, and intonation) and reproduction (e.g., sound mix) framing media accessibility quality 7 have been deemed as secondary or even ignored. in ma, where the aim is to provide access to an equitable experience, these aspects are not secondary at all. the new position of ma as an area of accessibility studies, that only intersects with translation studies, requires us to start looking at the issue of quality from other points of view beyond translation (greco, 2019; greco & jankowska, in press). a third problem concerns the nature of quality. despite its vagueness, or more properly as a way to deal with it, there is a widespread agreement to interpret quality as a multidimensional construct. according to this view, quality is a function of different variables, i.e., its dimensions. the multidimensionality of quality has received scarce attention in ma. thus far, research has focused on one or a few dimensions of quality for some specific ma service, such as accuracy, segmentation, or synchronisation. as we said, such a focus on small problems is a commendable enterprise from a cartesian point of view. however, if not explicitly clarified that the one under scrutiny is part of a set of dimensions, there is the risk of conducting research on some dimension of an ma service but then drawing conclusions at the general level of quality for that service. such a risk is also faced by some of the various models produced so far for evaluating quality in the context of some ma service, which merely mention other dimensions. consequently, they are not models for the evaluation of quality per se, but only for the evaluation of some dimensions. nonetheless, they are often perceived as being models about (overall) quality, as a consequence of the classic synecdochal move of confusing a part for the whole. moreover, the dimensions ignored or minimised are often the ones that do not involve forms of translation, which take us back to the problem of the dominion of translation-centred approached to quality in ma. a fourth problem is, prima facie, terminological. it concerns the lack of a specific noun for indicating the general topic of quality in the context of ma. something similar to translation quality in the field of translation studies. we suggest to use media accessibility quality (maq). while seeming like a trivial issue, it is far from that; and it is not a mere terminological issue either. it connects especially with both the influence of translation-based approaches and the fragmentation of efforts. adopting maq to refer to the general problem of quality in ma would help to keep present that whatever the specific topic at hand, it is part of a wider context. for example, in a paper that presents the research results on some dimension of quality in subtitling, just mentioning maq would prompt the readers to recall the general context within which they should frame both the research and its results. starting to refer to maq may also facilitate a more systematic approach to the issue of quality in media accessibility, encouraging more coordinated efforts in research and practices. most importantly, it would act as a reminder that, whatever the specific issue addressed at a certain point might be, it should be matched upon the problem of access, that is, the ultimate question of ma. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 2 8 4. conclusion: a first draft of an agenda for media accessibility quality given the picture drawn in the previous pages, in this concluding section we will briefly suggest a series of lines of action that await maq in the course of time, and that we believe would benefit from a more systematic and coordinated discussion as per the terms discussed in the previous pages. some of the actions mirror the problems analysed in the previous section. as in that case, the following list should not be considered exhaustive either. our main goal is to raise awareness and encourage further work. a first action concerns the very concept of quality. as we mentioned, quality is inherently vague. this is not ignored in ma. yet, it should be acknowledged even more explicitly. acknowledging – and reminding more often – the vague nature of quality could, for example, save us from falling into the trap of considering some model as the model. a second action concerns the fact that dealing with quality means navigating the treacherous waters between the scylla of objectivity and the charybdis of relativity. this is an issue already extensively debated in other fields but only marginally in ma. it would mean, for example, trying to justify the choice of some specific dimensions. is that choice completely arbitrary? is it possible to find some mechanism that could confer some forms of objectivity? this point leads to a third action: dealing with the lack of proper acknowledgement of the agency distribution involved in the definition of both quality and models for its evaluation in specific ma services. this means, for example, investigating the role of the human factor in the definition and assessment of quality, dealing with the differences among stakeholders, defining mechanisms for addressing the divergent perspective and expectations of the various stakeholders, and, especially, providing a justification for such choices. a fourth action concerns the need make quality models and research results user-friendly (romerofresco, in press). that is, finding ways to (a) make research results and models understandable by the different stakeholders, especially users; and (b) improve how we communicate research results to and how we engage with the other stakeholders. so far this has been done sporadically. we need to make it a regular activity. a fifth action is to investigate the usefulness of adopting the distinction between quality of service and quality of experience, following the example of other fields. a sixth action concerns the systematic extension of research on quality to all the different end users’ groups – such as children, younger adults, the elderly, migrants – and not only to persons with disabilities. this means that future investigation on quality should also address the role played by intersectionality in both the definition and the assessment of quality in ma. framing media accessibility quality 9 a seventh action is related to the pedagogy of ma (greco, in press). more attention should be paid to (a) the investigation of the influence of current education and training programmes on how the question of quality is framed in ma, and (b) how the issue of quality should be presented and discussed in education and training curricula. an eight action involves looking at how quality has been addressed in other fields. the development in time of new, ad hoc approaches, and thus methods and metrics, that respond to the specificities of ma is not a remote possibility, though one that would require substantial efforts. however, in line with the interdisciplinary nature of accessibility studies and thus of ma, a more practicable path would be to look at the theories, methods, and metrics produced in other fields that face the problem of quality and investigate if and how they can be applied, upon due modification, to the context of maq. in his opening speech delivered at the congress of the international federation of translators we mentioned in the introductory section, caillé (1963a) states: “in a world where translation is increasingly used, quality is a basic necessity and our touchstone” (p. 8). paraphrasing his words, we believe that in a world where accessibility is increasingly becoming and used as an essential tool for human dignity, quality is indeed a basic necessity and should be the touchstone of all research and practices in accessibility studies, including ma. acknowledgements we express our gratitude to the authors and the reviewers for their contributions to this special issue. gian maria greco is the first author of this article. teressa canosa skilfully copyedited the final version. the research presented in this article as well as this special issue have received funding from the european union’s horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the marie skłodowska-curie grant agreement no 752659 and mobility plus grant no 1311/mob/iv/2015/0 of the polish ministry of science and higher education for the years 2016-2019. gian maria greco is a member of the transmedia catalonia research group, funded by the catalan government under the sgr funding scheme (2017sgr113), and the galma research group, funded by the galician government under the scheme proxecto de excelencia 2017. references caillé, p.-f. (1963a). discours inaugural. in e. cary & r. w. jumpelt (eds.), quality in translation. proceedings of the iiird congress of the international federation of translators (fit), bad godesberg germany, 1959 (pp. 5-10). oxford: pergamon press. caillé, p.-f. (1963b). préface. in e. cary & r. w. jumpelt (eds.), quality in translation. proceedings of the iiird congress of the international federation of translators (fit), bad godesberg germany, 1959 (pp. v-xviii). oxford: pergamon press. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 2 10 cary, e., & jumpelt, r. w. (eds.). (1963). quality in translation. proceedings of the iiird congress of the international federation of translators (fit), bad godesberg germany, 1959. oxford: pergamon press. di giovanni, e., & gambier, y. (2018). introduction. in e. di giovanni & y. gambier (eds.), reception studies and audiovisual translation (pp. vii-xii). amsterdam: john benjamins. doherty, s., & kruger, j.-l. 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(2017). the far model: assessing quality in interlingual subtitling. journal of specialised translation(28), 210-229. robert, i., & remael, a. (2016). quality control in the subtitling industry: an exploratory survey study. meta: journal des traducteurs/meta: translators’ journal, 61(3), 578-605. romero-fresco, p. (2016). accessing communication: the quality of live subtitles in the uk. language & communication, 49, 56-69. romero-fresco, p. (2019). accessible filmmaking: integrating translation and accessibility into the filmmaking process. london: routledge. romero-fresco, p. (in press). negotiating quality assessment in media accessibility: the case of live subtitling. universal access in the information society. romero-fresco, p., & pérez, j. m. (2015). accuracy rate in live subtitling: the ner model. in r. baños piñero & j. díaz cintas (eds.), audiovisual translation in a global context (pp. 2850). london: palgrave macmillan. romero-fresco, p., & pöchhacker, f. (2018). quality assessment in interlingual live subtitling: the ntr model. linguistica antverpiensia, new series–themes in translation studies, 16, 149-167. 155 participatory accessibility: creating audio description with blind and non-blind children elena di giovanni university of macerata _________________________________________________________ abstract this article focuses on participatory accessibility by providin a definition, several theoretical insights and practical example by reporting on an inclusive and participatory experience carried ou with blind, partially sighted and non-blind children in the draftin recording and using audio description (ad) for a live oper performance, the aim is to bring into the spotlight the potential benefit of making accessibility a collective, open enterprise where end-user and creators are one. the article also advocates for the participator turn in media accessibility research and practice. key words: media accessibility, audio description (ad), participation, children, inclusion g s. t g, a s s y  elena.digiovanni@unimc.it; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5823-0082 citation: di giovanni, e. (2018). participatory accessibility: creating audio description with blind and nonblind children. journal of audiovisual translation, 1(1), 155-169. editor(s): a. jankowska & j.-l. kruger received: january 22, 2018 accepted: june 30, 2018 published: november 15, 2018 copyright: ©2018 di giovanni. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license. this allows for unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5823-0082 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5823-0082 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 156 these performances simply wouldn’t exist without an audience; it’s not a matter of needing spectators, but of needing co-creators. (kattwinkel, 2003, xi) as susan kattwinkel says with reference to the experiences reported in her collection of essays on audience participation (2003, x), “the audience has had a direct and immediate effect on the performance”, which upturns the more frequent point of view in research whereby the effect of the performance on the audience (reception) is under scrutiny, and not the opposite. in the contributions to kattwinkel's volume, “either the performance is structured to include audience members, or it was created with the help of potential audience members” (p. x). taking one step further, in this article we will present and discuss an experience that encompassed both aspects: the performance was structured to include audience members, but it was also created with their direct participation. moreover, such twofold participation occurred on two levels: the performance was initially conceived for the young (children and teenagers) but was later expanded to the blind and partially sighted. opera domani is an italian opera education project founded in 1997. every year, a new opera is commissioned, generally based on a work from the international repertoire. this new opera normally contains arias and music from the original work, with the addition of some dialogues and a partial or total change of settings. its main beneficiaries are school teachers and, above all, students who are invited to be creative and participate in the performance by producing some elements of the costumes, by preparing for singing and even dancing. with over 140 performances across italy in the first six months of 2018 carmen la stella del circo di siviglia (bernard, n.d.) (a 90-minute opera performance) reached out to 5,000 teachers and 140,000 students. in june 2018, the opera was made accessible with and for blind children for the very first time. by reporting on this experiment in participatory accessibility, the aim of this article is to reflect on the changing face of media access services, their provision, their consumption and related research. fifteen years ago, audiovisual translation (avt) scholars first opening up to media accessibility research were eager to develop a knowledge of the target users (mainly deaf and blind) so as to be able to reflect on, and enhance, services for them. today we seem to be increasingly moving towards the end users' active participation, with a positive reshuffling of the production-toconsumption cycle. in the following sections, methodological and theoretical reflections on end users' engagement in the creation of access services, here defined as participatory accessibility, will accompany the report on an inclusive, creative audio description laboratory with blind and non-blind children, the very first of its kind. informed by an interdisciplinary approach and steeped in action research, this contribution aims to pave the way for more audience participation in media accessibility research and practice. participatory accessibility: creating audio description with blind and non-blind children 157 1. from audience mapping to participation in relation to avt consumption, particularly for live events, the move from merely studying audiences, to their involvement and participation has matched the evolution of the viewer/spectator from user to prosumer (toffler, 1980), and ultimately produser (bird, 2011; bruns, 2008). in relation to several avt techniques, this has been evident for a few years: see, for instance, the increasing relevance of the work of fansubbers and fandubbers around the globe and the amount of – crossdisciplinary – research their activities have generated. for other forms of entertainment, such an evolution has been slower to come, especially with reference to live shows and even more with special segments of the audience such as persons with sensory impairments. there are several reasons behind such a slower evolution: first of all, access services for live shows are generally more complex to create and, far too often, they live and die within the duration of a performance, not enjoying any afterlife as often happens with cinema, television and vod. a second reason is to be found in the primary audience for such services: taking ad as a case in point, the blind and partially sighted are still seen today as a niche audience, therefore pouring resources into access services for them is not always financially viable. however, it is precisely by setting up these services, by disseminating them and ultimately by sharing their very creation and consumption that an ever-larger space can be created, and accessibility can further expand. going back to avt and the evolution of the role of the audience, the acknowledgement of the latter as prosumers (toffler, 1980) rather than 'merely' spectators, has indeed defined a turning point in research, but also in provision and consumption. the advent of tv on demand and of increasingly specialized channels at the turn of the century, clearly laid the emphasis on the needs and tastes of what had far too long been considered a somewhat blurred, mass audience (drotner, schroeder, murray & kline 2003). from then onwards, prosumers have been seen increasingly and more systematically as contributors not only to the success of an avt text, but also to its content: initially influencing the shape of new texts, audience members have been increasingly taking part in their very creation. indeed, as bruns prophetically stated ten years ago with reference to the internet and the consumption of online content, “the future is user-led” (2008) and this future – now turned present – conveys a passage from passive to active audience involvement. with reference to accessibility for the blind and partially sighted that is central to this article, this active involvement (or participation), is still in its infancy and it is the applied researcher's task to support and enhance it as much as possible. although already used several times above, the word participation deserves a definition. in general terms, participation evokes action, agency, shared learning and experience. it implies a proactive attitude and, as intended in this article, it also involves a move beyond involvement. in relation to access services, for instance, audience involvement may refer to encouraging attendance to accessible performances, followed by the collection of feedback, but also to being journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 158 involved in creating accessibility. participation, in accordance with kattwinkel's definition (2003), is here synonymous with full collaboration, with the sharing of creative efforts, consumption and further creation. thus, participatory accessibility refers to the design, creation, revision and consumption of access services in an inclusive way: the blind, partially sighted and non-blind; the deaf, hard of hearing and non-deaf; children and adults; they can all work together in the making of truly shared access services for the media, for live performances, for museums. in fact, when referring to participatory accessibility, even the word 'services' becomes inappropriate: what is created and enjoyed should rather be seen as an inclusive experience, not merely a service. although it implies difficulties at several levels, participatory accessibility also ensures many benefits: as a shared experience, it implies learning from each other, regardless of sensory or age-related limitations. moreover, it involves shared awareness of the difficulties that lie in the creation and provision of accessibility and, at the same time, it stimulates joint efforts in advocating for it. indeed, participatory accessibility is a joint effort both in the creation and in the dissemination of the inclusive experience, thus also bypassing potential problems of mistrust and lack of commitment on the part of any end user. furthermore, participatory accessibility supports the central notion of the universality of inclusive entertainment, where benefits are for all, beyond more or less codified, standardized classifications of audience types and special needs. to be more precise, in participatory accessibility those special needs remain central and are indeed taken into consideration, but they are blended into the needs of other audience types and groups. as kattwinkel (2003) states, participation means inclusion in a performance from beginning to end. but where exactly does a performance begin, and where does it end? these and other issues will be discussed with reference to our own case study in the following sections, but before we get there, let us focus on opera, its audiences and their emotions. 2. profiling opera audiences and their emotions in the second part of the 20th century and into the beginning of the 21st, opera suffered from an image as a stilted, elitist genre, appealing to well-educated, wealthy and generally not-so-young audiences (piso, 2010). this was true across europe and north america, although several attempts at creating opera for the masses (restoring its original 17th and 18th century purpose) had been made during this period. one example of this can be seen in the history of the new york city opera and its endeavours since the 1940s (mcfadden, 2014). another is evident in the innovative dissemination enterprise started by the metropolitan opera in 1977 to broadcast opera on television (the metropolitan opera, n.d.), which has since inspired dozens of theatres and opera companies worldwide. today, opening up to, and embracing, as broad and diverse an audience as possible is a major concern of virtually all opera houses and festivals: thus, accessibility has become participatory accessibility: creating audio description with blind and non-blind children 159 a buzzword across europe and north america. opera aims to reach out to all, and this aim is pursued in a variety of ways: from opening rehearsals to the public to inviting it behind the scenes. from classes and lectures delivered everywhere (from kindergarten to nursing homes), to extras and singers recruited in the streets, there seems to be no limit to what accessibility can mean in relation to opera today. in terms of research, beyond the predictably wide explorations carried out in musicology and music history, opera has offered stimuli for analysis to many a scholar in many other fields. from a reception studies perspective, opera audiences have been widely explored, occasionally − and perhaps most interestingly − in relation to people's emotional responses to different types of performance. being most frequently and traditionally enjoyed live on unique occasions, opera allows for the collection of feedback immediately after a performance, complex though this operation may be. in “opera and emotion: the cultural value of attendance for the highly engaged”, o'neill, edelman and sloboda (2016) focus on emotional engagement with opera by carrying out qualitative research in audience experience through interviews with 19 opera attendees, selected for being longstanding opera lovers. although the number of interviewees is not particularly high, the interviews' structure and ensuing qualitative analysis are complex and stimulating. experience in this study is especially related to audience behaviour, sensations and reactions, all factors which are indeed essential to study both the audience itself and the performance appreciation. in their article, the authors start by making an interesting distinction between feedback gathered during and feedback obtained after a performance. although claiming that evaluating emotional response during or immediately after a performance is of tantamount importance (o'neill, edelman & sloboda, 2016), in their study they settle for the process of reflection on the opera experience, i.e. the “reflective activity” (p. 26) which can be stimulated in the days following a performance, which they recorded by means of structured interviews. as a first methodological strategy for their analysis, the authors identify 16 themes, based on their recurrence across the interviews. among them, one of the most salient is 'emotion', which is mentioned several times by virtually all interviewees and which connects back to the sensations and reactions identified as central issues in the article premises. concentrating on 'emotion', especially in relation to engagement as it surfaces in most interviews, o'neill et. al (2016) report on what has elsewhere been defined as the “mediated experiencing of emotions” (dias & jorge, 2016, p. 431), i.e. the reporting of emotions through individual memory. interestingly, although the emotions they analysed were mediated through memory, their conclusions lead the scholars to define their respondents as “highly engaged” (2016, p. 443). if this is certainly true in relation to the interviewees' enthusiasm, which brought them to volunteer for the study, it is not perhaps so objectively true for their experience, which was recalled through memory after a number of days. a comparison of feedback gathered straight after a performance and upon recollection several days later would indeed be of great interest. however, although recollection is beyond the scope of this essay, behaviour, sensations and reactions, as well as overall emotional engagement are key concepts in relation to participatory accessibility and will be called into play in our analysis of the inclusive experience reported below, journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 160 where emotions were felt and recorded live and involved the participants, their families and the experiment operators. 3. participatory accessibility in practice: opera domani and carmen la stella del circo di siviglia as mentioned in the introduction, participation and action go hand in hand, since participation is action. thus, participatory activities are ideally the object of action research, as we aim to demonstrate in the following paragraphs. 3.1. participation in action research amongst the many approaches and methodologies employed to analyse participatory activities from the point of view of action research, we will mainly refer to andrew townsend's 2013 volume action research. the challenges of understanding and changing practice, where a detailed discussion of the opportunities and challenges offered by action research is provided from the very first pages. in particular, townsend identifies three major modes of action research. the first is especially relevant for this essay: named “community engagement and participative enquiry” (2013, p. 8), it is defined as the involvement of communities in processes of action and change and it refers to experiences which enable people or groups to participate effectively in action and change. as an added value for this type of action and the ensuing research, the author evokes authenticity, i.e. the participation in an authentic experience/action, not constructed for an experiment. the second mode of action research is defined as “developing practices through reflective enquiry” (twonsend, p. 9) and it refers to ways in which action research can be a stimulus to reflect upon, and further develop, those practices. rather than being different from the first, this second mode seems to identify an additional pathway for investigation: community engagement and participative enquiry can be further observed through reflection, and the outcome of this reflection can then be applied to review practice. both approaches are useful and relevant for a description of the inclusive and participatory experience with carmen, la stella del circo di siviglia. equally relevant is one of the models for the action research cycle that townsend illustrates in his volume. although it is the oldest and simplest (first proposed by kurt lewin in 1946) it seems to be of great relevance for the study of participatory accessibility: participatory accessibility: creating audio description with blind and non-blind children 161 figure 1. kurt lewin's action research cycle. it may be worth recalling here that kurt lewin (1946), generally recognized as the father of action research, was long concerned with empowering minority groups, raising their self-esteem and helping them seek “independence, equality and cooperation” (adelman, 1993, p. 18). lewin supported what he called democratic participation (inclusion, in our terms) in many contexts, thus being perfectly in line with the aim of this essay and the experience it discusses. according to lewin's cycle outline, plan−act−observe−reflect are consequential but also feeding into each other, thus all equally essential to renew the cycle. this seems to suggest that action research, and the participatory activities it is concerned with, are never a final point, but rather the stimuli for further planning, acting, observing and reflecting. this is precisely what we shall see below, in a description of our participatory and inclusive experience. 3.2. planning the participatory experience the project called opera domani finds its roots in opera education from a participatory standpoint: every year a new opera is written to fully include the audience, i.e. young viewers/participants from 6 to 14 years of age, under the guidance of their teachers. as it stands, opera education aims first and foremost at educating young viewers to enjoy the opera by removing all virtual barriers between the performance and the audience. inspired by such a truly participatory enterprise, a group of scholars active in the provision of opera accessibility and working at the university of maceratai decided to design a lab to make the opera domani experience inclusive also for blind and partially sighted (bps) children. as carmen, la stella del circo di siviglia was to close its italian tour in macerata, on 5 and 6 june 2018, we contacted the managers of opera domani and discussed the idea of setting up a participatory laboratory to write, revise and record the ad for the show with blind and non-blind children and teenagers, to then deliver it live in the form of short audio clips during the performance. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 162 the proposal was received enthusiastically, and we thus drafted a programme for the lab, to be held on 29 may 2018. we shared the draft with the president of unione italiana dei ciechi e degli ipovedenti (uici)ii for the marche region and defined the details together. a call for participants was then issued and distributed to all five provincial sections of uici for the region. the call mentioned that each bps boy or girl who wished to take part in our lab could bring along one or more friends, brothers or sisters between the ages of 6 and 14. we aimed to host a maximum of 20 participants, in line with the number of seats we were able to reserve for the 6 june performance. being the very first experience of this kind, recruiting participants was not too easy. nonetheless, 5 bps girls and 1 boy took part in the lab, along with 9 sighted friends or relatives of approximately the same age. in order to make the lab as entertaining and interactive as possible, we planned two subsequent sessions, starting from 2.30 pm. the first one (approximately 90 minutes) was for rewriting and revising the ad together, whereas the second one (approximately 90 minutes) was for recording the ad. as our young participants were between 6 and 15 years of age (average age: 9.8), we tried to keep all sections of our lab as flexible as possible, making drinks and snacks available throughout the afternoon and welcoming parents on the premises. having prepared a draft ad for the first part of our lab, we used it as a basis for discussion with the bps and non-blind participants; as we will exemplify below, many changes were suggested by our group as a result of lively discussions. for the first part of the lab, we used three laptops, one for reading out the text, one for making all the changes and additions, and one for the projection and sound diffusion of the show recording. for the ensuing recording session, we used one laptop and two recorders: one recorder was connected to the laptop (marantz professional mpm-1000, plus a 3-channel yamaha mixer), while the other was a portable zoom h1 handy recorder. recordings and mixing were performed on audacity 2.2.2. 3.3. acting together having dealt with the planning stage, we will now focus on the actions involved in our inclusive and participatory experience. although they were manifold, the actions can be summed up under four headings: 1) drafting the ad; 2) discussing, revising, and rewriting the ad; 3) recording it; 4) and listening to it during the performance. as anticipated, a draft ad was created in advance by two members of the university of macerata team: they worked on the introductory section and the in-act descriptions based on a full recording of the 90-minute show, but also on the booklet prepared by opera domani to guide the teachers participatory accessibility: creating audio description with blind and non-blind children 163 and the sighted pupils in their preparation for the show. a shortened, accessible version of this booklet, containing the arias to be sung, a physical description of the characters and the plot of the show, was created by the university of macerata team and sent by email to the families of all participants 10 days before the lab. the aim of the draft ad was to function as a basis for discussion with the bps and non-blind participants. it proved very useful also as a practical explanation for those who had no previous exposure to ad, i.e. over 80% of the participants. to ensure full participation during the lab, chairs were arranged in a semi-circle, facing a wall where the recording of the show was projected. very good sound diffusion for the audio was ensured and the three operators running the lab were seated among the children. the latter were mixed: the bps sat next to their sighted friends or relatives, the youngest children (6 to 8 years old) occasionally stood up and sometimes they went as far as mimicking the objects or actions we were discussing. as is customary for the university of macerata team, the ad was drafted in the form of a rather long introductory sequence comprising the following sections: 1) an initial, explanatory (how-to-use-thisad) message, 2) a summary of the plot, 3) a description of the settings, 4) a description of the main costumes, 5) a description of the initial scene. to this introductory sequence, approximately 70 short in-act descriptions were added, to highlight the main changes or actions happening during the performance. as a starting point, the explanatory message of the draft ad was read out to the participants and, after a lively discussion, it was shortened by a third for the final ad. below is an excerpt from this section, where the names of all characters and the reference to an “all colourful” circus, “with a lot of artists”, where added on the children's suggestion. example 1. excerpt from ad. the plot section was also shortened and a number of references were revised or utterly changed during the discussion. subsequently, the first 15 minutes of the video were played, and the settings, costumes and main actions were discussed, so as to define the respective introductory descriptions. example 2 below shows the draft and the final version of the ad for the settings. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 164 example 2. draft ad and final ad for the settings. besides being visibly shorter, the final ad contains a variety of changes which are worth discussing briefly, although a linguistic and semantic analysis of the two ads is beyond the scope of this article. first of all, the young participants liked the idea of explicitly locating the point of view of the audience (“like the circus audience, the performance is right in front of us”), although this is not customary participatory accessibility: creating audio description with blind and non-blind children 165 in ad. on the contrary, they asked us to remove the descriptions of the platforms, the seats and also the red and yellow blocks that mark the performance area. in general, the participants suggested that we deleted most information about objects (a large wheel, the trapeze artist's hoop, etc.) and instead asked us to add references to the characters that appear on stage: acrobats, jugglers, dancers and above all the charmer, who aroused great curiosity and excitement. these changes recall one recurring feature discussed by researchers working on the perception of still or moving images, as found, for instance, in eye tracking research: goldstein, woods and peli (2007) ranked individuals and their faces as the most frequent centre of interest (coi) in most experiments with moving images, whereas cerf, harel, einhaeuser and koch (2007) focused on faces only and found, for instance, that these were fixated by 88.9% of their experiment participants in their first two fixations, whereas other areas of interest scored much lower percentages. in avt research, similar findings from eye tracking tests on film are discussed by di giovanni (2013). to continue with the discussion and rewriting of the ad during the lab, the following sections of the introduction and the short in-act descriptions yielded equally interesting and occasionally unexpected results, with all lab participants providing comments and solutions through constructive and lively negotiation. for the recording session, we had planned to actively involve the sighted participants only, who would have read out the revised ad text from printed sheets. to our great surprise, however, all the bps children and teenagers were eager to participate in the recording session and asked us to read out to them excerpts from the script, which they would memorize and repeat. their memorization skills represented the most impressive finding of the whole experience, which the operators hadn't even envisaged. in the end, most of the recordings (over 85%) were done by the bps, as the sighted participants found it hard to memorize sentences and their reading was generally far less natural than the spontaneous acting of the bps. during the performance, on 6 june 2018, we distributed headsets to the 15 lab participants, who listened to their own ad and sang along with the other children in the audience. we managed to record some of their comments right after the performance, to support us in the “reflective enquiry” suggested by kurt lewin (1946). 3.4. observing and collecting observations during and immediately after the lab, the three operators involved in this inclusive and participatory experience (including the author of this article) exchanged comments and made notes of what had been observed. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 166 one common observation was related to the lengthy and passionate discussions among the lab participants about colours to be mentioned in the ad. as stated elsewhere (di giovanni, 2014), bps children are eager for colours in ad, to such an extent that empirical research shows that references to colours are frequently amongst the best remembered. for us, sighted adults, it was incredibly interesting to hear the blind, partially sighted and non-blind young participants discuss nuances of colours, or suggest the addition of bright colour references for costume and set descriptions where they had not been inserted. in the brief interviews gathered immediately after the performance, over 80% of the interviewees, both bps and non-blind, mentioned colours as being well described and useful for overall comprehension. another interesting observation resulting from the lab experience is connected with the use of what we may here generally define as 'engaging verbs', which were often preferred, or even suggested by the bps participants. as we can see from the three examples in example 3, more engaging, less generic verbs were preferred to convey actions, thus implicitly enhancing the overall emotional engagement: example 3. change of verbs from the draft to the final ad. with reference to this last point, it is perhaps even more interesting to note that such preferences in the choice of verbs were especially noticed by some parents attending the lab, who informed us they had never thought of discussing nuances of meaning for verbs or other words with their children. parents' engagement is the next element that was generally observed and that we would like to highlight here, as it was one of the most remarkable outcomes of this participatory lab. when leaving the premises after the lab, all parents thanked us for the overall experience and a few of them reiterated that our discussion over word meaning had been especially enlightening. 4. reflections and conclusions: the lessons of participation as a final set of reflections to close our action research cycle and foster a new start, let us first focus on the discoveries that were made during this inclusive and participatory experience. from the point of view of the action researchers, discoveries were made mostly in connection with the emotional engagement and the skills of the primary users of ad, i.e. bps children and teenagers. participatory accessibility: creating audio description with blind and non-blind children 167 their memorization skills, their enthusiasm in searching for the most engaging words to describe actions, their active role in the overall lab − they were often more active than their non-blind counterparts − were indeed surprising. equally surprising was the bps children and teenagers' wish to engage several senses during the lab: they asked us to listen to some excerpts from the show more than once, to touch the computers and the recorders we were using, to sit on our laps and also touch us while we were working. emotional engagement for bps children, to use o'neill's et. al, seems to come from an active participation which “involves multiple sensorial stimuli and reactions” (2016, p. 440). as a further reflection coming from this experience, learning needs to be mentioned, as it happened on many levels: the operators, or active researchers, learned from all the discoveries above, but also from the spontaneous, constructive collaboration between all blind and non-blind participants, from their discussions over nuances of meaning, from the parents' interest. as stated above, some parents overtly reported to have learned from the lab, whereas other parents admitted that this inclusive and participatory lab was one of a kind, hopefully to be repeated in the future. the children themselves learned about the opera, as most of them had never heard about carmen or about classical opera in general. as a semi-final comment, let us say that this experience did not end here, as reflections were immediately turned into the planning of further action. in 2019, the newly commissioned opera by opera domani will be the object of participatory ad labs in 3 towns throughout italy. all the observations above have been poured into the drafting of an action plan for this experience, to be refined and expanded through further experience. a very final comment takes us back to the beginning of this article, where the changing face of media accessibility research and practice was highlighted: participatory accessibility can and should bring about great changes, towards increased awareness and true inclusion. our hopes are that a participatory turn in media accessibility research and practice will be acknowledged soon. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 168 biographical note elena di giovanni, phd, is associate professor of english translation at the university of macerata, italy. she has taught audiovisual translation and media accessibility for 20 years, her research interests ranging from dubbing and subtitling from a reception studies perspective to media accessibility, especially audio description. from 2008 to 2016, she was visiting lecturer at roehampton university, london, ma in audiovisual translation. since 2013, she lectures on film translation and accessibility at the venice international film festival, within the european parliament-funded lux prize for cinema. since november, 2016, she is president of esist, european association for the study of screen translation (www.esist.org). she is coordinator of accessibility services at macerata opera festival (www.sferisterio.it) and teatro grande in brescia (www.teatrogrande.it). she has published extensively on translation from a literary and audiovisual perspective. her publications are here: http://docenti.unimc.it/elena.digiovanni content=publications. references adelman, c. (1993). kurt lewin and the origins of action research. educational action research, 1(1), 7-24. bernard, a. (director). (n.d.). carmen la stella del circo di siviglia. bird, s. e. (2011). are we all produsers now? cultural studies, 25(4-5), 502-516. bruns, a. (2008). the future is user-led: the path towards widespread produsage. fibre culture journal, 11. retrieved from http://eleven.fibreculturejournal.org/fcj-066-the-future-is-userled-the-path-towards-widespread-produsage/ cerf, m., harel. j., einhaeuser, w., & koch, c. (2007). predicting human gaze using low-level saliency combined with face detection. in j.c. platt, d. koller, y. singer & s.t. roweis (eds.), advances in neural information processing systems 20 neural information processing systems. retrieved from https://papers.nips.cc/paper/3169-predicting-human-gaze-using-low-levelsaliency-combined-with-face-detection.pdf di giovanni, e. (2013). visual and narrative priorities of the blind and non-blind: eye tracking and audio description. perspectives: studies in translatology, 22(1), 136-153. di giovanni, e. (2014). pinocchio for all: joining ad and screenplay writing. prosopopeya, 9, 1-16. dias, p., jorge, a. (2016). audience experiencing of emotions in the contemporary media landscape. participations, 13(1), 431-445. drotner, k., schroeder, k.s., murray, c., & kline, s. (2003). researching audiences. london: arnold. goldstein, r.b., woods, r.l., & peli, e. (2007). where people look when watching movies: do all viewers look at the same place? computers in biology and medicine, 37(7), 957-964. kattwinkel, s. (2003). audience participation: essays on inclusion in performance. westport, ct: praeger. http://docenti.unimc.it/elena.digiovanni#content=publications http://docenti.unimc.it/elena.digiovanni#content=publications http://eleven.fibreculturejournal.org/fcj-066-the-future-is-user-led-the-path-towards-widespread-produsage/ http://eleven.fibreculturejournal.org/fcj-066-the-future-is-user-led-the-path-towards-widespread-produsage/ https://papers.nips.cc/paper/3169-predicting-human-gaze-using-low-level-saliency-combined-with-face-detection.pdf https://papers.nips.cc/paper/3169-predicting-human-gaze-using-low-level-saliency-combined-with-face-detection.pdf participatory accessibility: creating audio description with blind and non-blind children 169 lewin, k. (1946). action research and minority problems. in g.w. lewin (ed.), resolving social conflicts. selected papers on group dynamic (pp. 143-152). washington dc: american psychological association. mcfadden, r.d. (2014, june 26). julius rudel, longtime impresario and conductor of city opera, dies at 93. new york times. retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/27/arts/music/julius-rudel-longtime-city-operaimpresario-dies-at-93.html metrpolitan opera. (n.d.). ous story. retrieved from https://www.metopera.org/about/the-met/ o'neil, s. edelman, j., & sloboda, j. (2016). opera and emotions: the cultural value of attendance for the highly engaged. participations, 13(1), 24-50. piso, i. (2010). the crisis of the opera? a study of musical hermeneutics. newcastle: cambridge scholars publishing. toffler, a. (1980). the third wave: the classic study of tomorrow. new york: bantam. townsend, a. (2013). action research. the challenges of understanding and changing practice. mc graw hill: open university press. i the team is led by the author of this article and it comprises dr. francesca raffi and dr. chiara pazzelli, all from the university of macerata. my warmest thanks to both of them for their precious collaboration. ii unione italiana dei ciechi e degli ipovedenti (uici) is the most prominent italian association for blind and partially sighted people. their website is here: https://www.uiciechi.it (accessed august 2018). https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/27/arts/music/julius-rudel-longtime-city-opera-impresario-dies-at-93.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/27/arts/music/julius-rudel-longtime-city-opera-impresario-dies-at-93.html https://www.metopera.org/about/the-met/ 1. from audience mapping to participation 2. profiling opera audiences and their emotions 3. participatory accessibility in practice: opera domani and carmen la stella del circo di siviglia 3.1. participation in action research 3.2. planning the participatory experience 3.3. acting together 3.4. observing and collecting observations 4. reflections and conclusions: the lessons of participation biographical note references 72 norms in avt: a dual approach to a long-lasting and fundamental notion josé luis martí ferriol universitat jaume i _____________________________________________________ abstract the main objective of this article is to review the concept of norm in audiovisual translation (avt), a concept which has been subject to a dual approach when using it, both a descriptive one and a prescriptive one. the review proposed in this article is intended to be twofold: descriptive and critical. a descriptive approach will be the focus in the first two sections of the paper, where the history and evolution of the concept is analysed. a more critical stance is then adopted in the following two sections of the paper. the dual orientation of the concept of norm is highlighted in section 3. the hypothetical application of norm theory to professional practices for the main modes within avt has in most cases taken the form of guidelines, the result of a pure prescriptive approach. this discussion is covered in section 4. the final fifth section summarizes the review, while pointing out the great significance of this fundamental notion within the field of avt. all in all, the concept has proven to be successful and long-lasting, and it is mainly accepted that norms obtained from empirical research should give rise to guidelines for professional practice in translation. key words: audiovisual translation, norm, descriptivism, prescriptivism, dubbing, subtitling, accessibility.  martij@uji.es, http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2604-9094 citation: martí ferriol, j. l. (2020). norms in avt: a dual approach to a longlasting and fundamental notion. journal of audiovisual translation, 3(1), 72–86. editor(s): a. jankowska received: september 18, 2018 accepted: july 17, 2020 published: november 13, 2020 copyright: ©2020 martí ferriol. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license. this allows for unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2604-9094 about:blank about:blank norms in avt: a dual approach to a long-lasting and fundamental notion 73 1. history and norm theory the concept of norm in translation studies was introduced by the so-called manipulation school, a group of scholars who held several meetings at the end of the 1970s, and who dealt mainly with literary translation. one of them, theo hermans, compiled their postulates in 1985, in a seminal volume entitled the manipulation of literature, studies in literary translation. according to the scholar (1985: 10–11), all contributions in the volume had some points in common. among them: (1) the view of literature as a complex and dynamic system; (2) the conviction that there should be an interplay between theoretical models and practical case studies; (3) an approach to literary translation which was descriptive, target-oriented, functional and systemic; and (4) an interest in the norms and constraints involved in the production and reception of translations. other scholars belonging to this group, gideon toury and itamar even-zohar, introduced the concept of polysystem in translation studies. these proposals were significant within the field and were further developed by others, such as nord (1991), chesterman (1997), hermans (1999) and munday (2001). however, the publications by toury (1980, 1995) are the ones which may have had a big impact on the development of the concept of norm, especially his proposal to classify norms into different categories. chesterman and nord also presented their proposals for the classification of norms, which will be covered in some detail later in this section. for a definition of the concept of norm, we can use the one suggested by hermans: […] the term ”norm” refers both to a regularity of behaviour, i.e. a recurring pattern, and to the underlying mechanism which accounts for that behaviour. the mechanism is a psychological and social entity. it mediates between the individual and the collective, between the individual’s intentions, choices and actions, and collectively held beliefs, values and preferences. […] the norms and conventions of translation guide and facilitate decisionmaking. the basic premise is that translation, as a communicative act, constitutes a form of social behaviour. for communication to succeed, those engaged in the process need to coordinate their actions. (hermans, 1999, p. 80). the quote above pairs together the concept of “norm” with that of “convention”, without really defining a relationship rank between them. toury (1995) introduces other terms like “rules” and “idiosyncrasies”. it seems, then, that the degree of regularization (or the recurring patterns) in translation practice can have various potencies. pedersen (2011) makes an excellent revision of “the potency of norms”. he states: more specifically, however, “norms” themselves are part of a cline of social and translation behaviour that is illustrated in figure a. this means that the term “norm” is both a hyponym and a hypernym, which is somewhat unfortunate, but it is common norm studies terminology, and it should be clear from the context in what sense the term is used. (pedersen, 2011, p. 30). journal of audiovisual translation, volume 3, issue 1 74 according to pedersen, the mentioned figure a, entitled as the potency of translation norms, is based on toury (1995), chesterman (1997) and hermans (1999), and it is explained as follows: at the bottom of the cline, there are “idiosyncrasies”, which are fairly random, and are best used to describe the preferences of a single translator. the next level is called “regularities”, and these are recurring patterns, which may or may not have been noticed and shared by others. for the researcher, regularities in the material are the first sign that there might be a norm at work. “conventions” is the first level where regularities of behaviour become socially noticed. […].“norms” are thus stronger than conventions, but norms spring from conventions. […] the main difference between norms and conventions is that while conventions tell you what to do, norms tell you what you should do, because this is the way that people like you do things. […] when we move beyond norms, we find “rules”, which tend to be both codified and authoritarian. […] “laws” of translation are a controversial issue, and they are of a slightly different kind from the other terms, in that they are not binding in the same way as e.g. rules. instead, laws are of a universal nature, arrived at, not by legislation or other authorization means, but through observation by translation scholars. the laws of translational behaviour are predictive and probabilistic laws, and they have the following structure: “if x, then the greater/the lesser the likelihood that y” (pedersen, 2011, p. 31–33). another publication that has added some additional insight to this cline is the one by martínez sierra (2014). here, the author moves from idiosyncrasies to norms, trying to find an intermediate path. he introduces the concept of “trend” or “tendency” (tendencia, in spanish), which is used for “weak” norms, generally obtained from research that can be considered as “superficial” or “scarce” (e.g. from a corpus, which would be insufficient to formulate a new norm, but sufficient to suggest the possible presence of a norm). although the author bases his study on the proposals by toury (1995), he does not cite the work by pedersen (2011). toury’s norms (1995, p. 56–58) are broken down into three main types: the initial norm, preliminary norms, and operational norms. the initial norm has to do with the translated text, in the sense that it adheres to the source culture norms (“adequacy”), or that it subscribes to norms originating in the target culture (“acceptability”). in a way, this norm somehow reproduces the two main extreme approaches that may be followed while producing a translation (martí ferriol, 2013). hermans (1999, p. 76–77) has criticized toury’s concepts of “adequacy” and “acceptability” on two accounts, as pedersen (2011, p. 35) points out: first, the aspiration to produce an “adequate translation” is utopian, and second, the two terms are terminologically confusing. the preliminary norms by toury have to do with translation policies (which text types are to be translated), and with directness of translation (the use of mediating languages in translation). as far as operational norms are concerned, they are “conceived as directing the decisions made during the act of translation itself”. they are of two kinds: matricial norms, which govern the target-language material intended to substitute for the corresponding source-language material, its location in the text, and its segmentation; and textual-linguistic norms, which govern the selection of material to formulate the target text (lexis, sentence structure, etc.). norms in avt: a dual approach to a long-lasting and fundamental notion 75 pedersen (2011, p. 35) comments on toury’s norms as follows: the advantage of toury’s norm system is that it is holistic: it takes the whole process into consideration, not only the translation itself. the drawback is that the terms are somewhat ambivalent. furthermore, in toury’s system, all norms seem equally pertinent, but in actual fact they have very unequal leverage. while all toury’s norms should be taken into consideration when analyzing translations, in actual practice, the main focus will inevitably be the textual-linguistic norms, as some of the others could be easily investigated. one example is the norm of directness: is a pivot translation used? this is a basic yes/no question, whereas the analysis of textual-linguistic norms can – and does – fill bookshelves. chesterman’s norms are to a larger extent associated with the individuals involved in the translation process, rather than with the translation process itself. they are split up into two groups: product norms and process norms. the former ones are also referred to as “expectancy norms”, “established by the expectations of readers of a translation (of a given type) concerning what a translation (of this type) should be like” (chesterman, 1997, p. 64). the latter ones are also termed “professional norms”; they are subordinate to expectancy norms, and are of three different types: the accountability norm, the communication norm, and the relation norm. the accountability norm is ethical, the communication norm sees translation as social interaction, and the relation norm focuses on equivalence and fidelity between source text and target text. these three norm types, respectively, are further described by the author as follows: a translator should act in such a way that the demands of loyalty are appropriately met with regard to the original writer, the commissioner of the translation, the translator himself or herself, the prospective readership and any other relevant parties (chesterman, 1997, p. 68). a translator should act in such a way as to optimize communication, as required by the situation, between all parties involved (chesterman, 1997, p. 69). a translator should act in such a way that an appropriate relation of relevant similarity is established and maintained between the source text and the target text (chesterman, 1997, p. 69). according to pedersen (2011, p. 36), “one advantage of chesterman’s norms is that they emphasize the role of the reader. another advantage is that a distinction is made between product and process”. however, pedersen (2011, p. 36) also states that “a possible drawback of chesterman’s norm is that their form makes them open to criticism for being prescriptive”. as it turns out, this dual interpretation of the notion of norm is inherent to its very concept, and as such, it has and will be highlighted along this article. nord’s (1991) approach to norms is similar to the one by chesterman, although her classification was presented some years earlier, in 1991. this similarity is due to the consideration of both product and process standpoints. for product norms, nord uses the term constitutive norms, while she terms the process norms as regulatory norms, which might as well be considered as “conventions”. nord’s early journal of audiovisual translation, volume 3, issue 1 76 and pioneering classification of norms could be termed as “paramount”, in the sense that it adds other considerations to the concept of norm, other than the role of the translator. 2. research methods and studies associated with norms: the descriptive paradigm in avt by the end of the 80s, delabastita (1989, 1990) made the first attempt to incorporate the notion of norm to avt. this has been recognized by karamitroglou, whose contribution will be further commented on later in this section, when he cites the work of delabastita (1989, p. 206): to my knowledge, delabastita was the first translation scholar to attempt to investigate this particular field, therefore “mapping the contours of a still virgin area” (karamitroglou, 2000, p. 105). delabastita investigates the norms that lie behind the selection of audiovisual texts to be translated, in other words, toury’s preliminary norms. based on the observation of those translated texts, the author proposes a list of questions which may highlight the presence of certain regularities. delabastita’s pioneering contribution was also followed by others like lambert (1994), who suggests the possibility of using the descriptive paradigm in the field of avt, and hermans (1999, p. 45), who highlights this possibility as a clear indication of some wider objectives within the paradigm. in 1993, goris published the results of a case study related to dubbing in france, where he already proposed four types of norms for audiovisual translation: linguistic standardization, naturalization, explicitation, as well as the so-called “secondary norms” (respect of the grammar structures in the original text, and conservation of the specific characteristics of the genre in avt). besides this proposal, the french scholar presented a 4-step methodology to be followed in order to obtain global norms. a big step forward was made in 2000, when karamitroglou published his study on avt norms (as conceived from the descriptive point of view) in greece. his book includes an insightful critical theoretical review of the classifications proposed by toury, chesterman and nord (described in the previous section). the greek scholar also reviews the methodological approach which, according to him, should be followed in the study of norms in avt. apart from his comments on delabastita’s publications (see above), he also reviews the work of other scholars, such as toury (karamitroglou, 2000, p. 97–88), lambert & van gorp ( karamitroglou, p. 99–100), nord ( karamitroglou, p. 101–102), puurtinen (karamitroglou, p. 102) and du-nour (karamitroglou, p. 102–103), although not all of these studies are really devoted to avt. all in all, this book covers many interesting aspects, and it could possibly be defined as the first one to be fully devoted to translation norms in the field of avt. the contributions made to avt research on norms in the 21st century have been numerous. ballester (2001) was probably the first one, and it has been followed by other scholars, where the main methodology used was the descriptive approach normally applied to dubbing and subtitling in the form of case studies. norms in avt: a dual approach to a long-lasting and fundamental notion 77 ballester devotes a case study to the spanish dubbing of the film blood and sand (rouben mamoulian, 1941), in the historical context of franco’s dictatorship in spain. she establishes some avt norms, like naturalization (borrowed from goris’ work), explicitation (which is understood in a similar way as goris does), and euphemization, where the ethical implications of some parts of content in the source text may be altered in the target text (by means of strategies like omission, addition or substitution), so that they are ideologically acceptable in the target culture. by building on these and similar case studies, some new and specific classifications for norms in avt (specifically for dubbing and subtitling) have been put forward (martí ferriol, 2007, 2013). in this case, the author proposes norms for two specific translation phases: the preliminary phase and the translation phase. for the former, which includes the part of the translation process where the translation act itself has not been started yet, norms have to do with the observation of professional and macro-textual conventions for dubbing and subtitling assignments, such as the translation skopos, the style to be followed (as stated in style books, for example), the schedule, and other situational and economic factors. for the latter, the translation process itself, the norm taxonomy is mainly built upon the above-mentioned components, although it also includes new norms: linguistic standardization, naturalization, explicitation, linguistic fidelity, euphemization and disphemization. most of the studies which identify norms in avt also take into account other important notions, like constraints and translation techniques in avt; these are usually considered in relation with the catalogue of norms put forward. some discussion about the possibility of terming the results obtained from case studies as “norms” has also been present in literature. as mentioned in the previous section, this has been pointed out by martínez sierra (2014). when case studies are involved, research concepts like the selection of a corpus and its representativeness are undoubtedly important concepts to be considered. among more recent studies on avt norms, pedersen (2011) should be highlighted. he presents an empirical case study, in which he proposes translation norms for the specific problem of extralinguistic cultural references in tv subtitles. some research effort related to translation norms has also been devoted to the main accessibility modes, namely sdh (subtitling for the deaf and hard-of-hearing) and ad (audio description). as a result of this effort, a number of books and articles have been published, in which norms (or regularities) are in some cases supposedly identified from a descriptive standpoint. this is so, as it will be explained, because it is sometimes difficult to identify the main approach followed in these research studies (either descriptive or prescriptive, or a combination of both). some selected publications in this fashion are mentioned below. among the former publications, the ones which deal with sdh, we could point out those by neves (2005, 2008), and matamala & orero (2010); among the ones that deal with ad we can mention those by snyder (2005), salway (2007) and matamala & remael (2015). other compilations, like díazjournal of audiovisual translation, volume 3, issue 1 78 cintas, orero & remael (2007), deal with accessibility as a whole. some comments on their approach to norms and regularities follow. the work published by neves in 2005 is based on her phd dissertation, the first one devoted to this avt modality (sdh). the first part of its abstract clearly indicates that her work is especially relevant in a review like this, since it combines both the descriptive and prescriptive approaches: a study of subtitling for the deaf and hard-of-hearing (sdh) with special reference to the portuguese context. on the one hand it accounts for a descriptive analysis of sdh in various european countries (sic) with the aim of arriving at the norms that govern present practices and that may be found in the form of guidelines and / or in actual subtitled products. […] nonetheless it takes a step beyond to seek reasons and to propose change rather then (sic) simply to describe objects and actions. in neves (2008), the author tries to clarify some misconceptions and misunderstandings related to sdh and its practical implementation. among the 10 fallacies cited, one (the fourth) is entitled standardization and norms are good. the abstract of the article describes the approach followed: in this paper, a few of the above-mentioned misconceptions will be addressed in a critical eye and a provocative tone. ten fallacies are listed in the hope that other researchers and professionals might take up the problematic issues as a starting point for further research and thus shed further light on them. due to the prescriptive position mostly adopted as far as sdh norms are concerned in some european countries, the author indicates that these norms also have to take into account how operational these norms may be, once applied in real practice. the book edited by matamala and orero (2010) presents the outcomes of a research project on sdh, where several parties (mainly spanish universities) were involved. as its abstract states: this book is the first monographic study on subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing from a multidisciplinary perspective, from engineering to philology. the book departs from studies, analyses, tests, validations, resulting data, and their application from the nation-wide research on accessibility and usability of subtitles carried out in spain. […] the book also contains articles which discuss present and future research on subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing carried out in canada and across europe: belgium, denmark, italy, poland, spain, and uk. it provides an outlook for the implementation of the european guidelines on media accessibility. in this case, both descriptive and prescriptive approaches to norms and regularities in sdh are combined. as a consequence, it could be assumed in general terms that conclusions generated from research projects are more likely to fall into the descriptive area, although they may also involve the generation of some prescriptive conventions and standards. norms in avt: a dual approach to a long-lasting and fundamental notion 79 the book edited by díaz-cintas et al. (2007) is probably the first compilation of articles devoted to accessibility as a whole. here, contributions related to sdh, ad and sign language are put together, either with a descriptive or prescriptive approach. as far as ad is concerned, the publications mentioned before are the ones by snyder (2005), salway (2007) and matamala & remael (2015). snyder, in his work of 2005, presents an article which can be considered as pioneering and seminal for audio description. the article was published together with many others in the vision 2005 proceedings of the international congress held between 4 and 7 april 2005 in london, uk. as such, it contains definitions and general hints about this practice, as the abstract reads: audio description (ad) allows persons with visual impairments to hear what cannot be seen at theater performances, on film and video, in museum exhibitions—in a wide range of human endeavor. […] ad provides a verbal version of the visual—the visual is made verbal, aural, and oral for the benefit of people who are blind or have low vision. thus, this article sets the rules for the practice of this accessibility mode. it provides hints and recommendations for the practice of the mode (which could be considered as guidelines). although they may be regarded as prescriptive, they do not really stem from descriptive research. salway (2007) tries to identify specific characteristics (regularities) of the language used in audio description by making use of corpus analysis. this contribution can be found in the volume edited by díaz-cintas, orero and remael (2007). in a way, salway’s work could be classified as part of the descriptive efforts to identify fundamental norms for this modality in avt (ad). matamala & remael (2015) published a case study on ad, which illustrates the need for and implementation of additional descriptive studies in this avt mode. the abstract of this article reads as follows: this article explores whether the so-called new “cinema of attractions”, with its supposed focus on visual effects to the detriment of storytelling, requires a specific approach to audiodescription (ad). after some thoughts on film narrative in this type of cinema and the way in which it incorporates special effects, selected scenes with ad from two feature films, 2012 (directed by emmerich) and hero (directed by zhang yimou), are analysed. […] the results suggest that effect-driven narratives require carefully timed and phrased ads that devote much attention to the prosody of the ad script, its interaction with sounds and the use of metaphor. this sort of studies somehow indicates that some scholars are still trying to run the descriptive path (which may eventually lead to prescriptive guidelines) in some accessibility modes like ad. as it turns out, it seems that it has not been until the first and second decades of the 21st century that descriptivism and norm theory have pervaded into the accessibility world. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 3, issue 1 80 3. discussion of a dual approach to the notion of norm the concept of norm, from the very beginning, has been subject to a great deal of controversy. although norms have always been understood as indications of patterns of behaviour, their potential use, once identified, has given rise to many discussions. a possible explanation to this may be the sheer definition of norm. as mechanisms of interaction among individuals, norms should meet expectations by others. but others might as well only accept them if they turn out as expected. in terms of translation and translation theory, toury (1980) proposed case studies as a means to identify “trends in translation behaviour”, which should then help “reconstruct” the norms operating during the translation process. this idea was later cited and rephrased by munday: the aim of toury’s case studies is to distinguish trends of translation behaviour, to make generalizations regarding the decision-making process of the translator and then to ‘reconstruct’ the norms that have been in operation in the translation and make hypothesis that can be tested by future descriptive studies (munday, 2001, p. 113). but in his later publication (1995), toury further elaborated the idea on how norms could be used, while following a more prescriptive path: […] the translation of general values or ideas shared by the community—as to what is right or wrong, adequate or inadequate—into performance instructions appropriate and applicable to particular situations (toury, 1995, p. 65). he even went further and stated in the same work that the cumulative identification of norms could lead to the formulation of “probabilistic laws of translation”, also known as “universals of translation”. this idea may inevitably include a final prescriptive intention. munday recorded the idea as follows: toury hopes that the cumulative identification of norms in descriptive studies will enable the formulation of probabilistic “laws” of translation and hence the “universals” of translation (munday, 2001, p. 155). as a whole, although toury’s original ideas on descriptive studies and their use as a means to identify norms (or regularities) are widely recognized, it is obvious that some of his proposals regarding norms may not be completely clear (or maybe they have not been quite correctly interpreted), since the balance between the use of the descriptive or the prescriptive approach for the notion of norm has, undoubtedly, become the basis of controversy. hermans summarizes this as follows: the strength of toury’s work (toury 1980 and 1995) lies in the consistency and rigour with which he draws up practical research procedures. the corollary has been the risk of sliding from rigour into rigidity, and a relative neglect of the theoretical underpinning of some of the methodological stances, which remain vulnerable to criticism for that reason (hermans, 1995, p. 35). norms in avt: a dual approach to a long-lasting and fundamental notion 81 from this, one could probably associate the concept of “rigour” with “descriptivism”, while the one of “rigidity” would probably have more to do with “prescriptivism”. this vulnerability to criticism, stated by hermans, might as well have paved the way to the mentioned controversy. it may also be possible (and this may be open to discussion) that the concept of norm, controversial as such from its very formulation, may have additionally undergone some sort of change in its initial meaning, or in its interpretation along the years, when the initial theoretical postulates of descriptivism have had to pass the filter of real case studies and their practical applications through decades. all in all (and as toury’s early work pointed out), it may only be logical to think that the knowledge acquired from descriptive research might as well be used to provide guidance to other translators involved in similar tasks. additionally, the proposal of prescriptive “guidelines” (or “best practices”) related to the translation process for particular applications has also been important over the last decades, no matter if these recommendations came about from rigorous descriptive research, or not. some researchers, like karamitroglou, have contributed to the field with publications following both approaches (descriptive and prescriptive), thus making it clear that they are not incompatible. next to the already mentioned book published in 2000, whose conclusions are based on a descriptive research method (mainly related to the audiovisual translation policy in greece for different avt modes), in 1998 the author published a set of very practical recommendations for the creation of subtitles (a proposed set of subtitling standards in europe), which were obviously prescriptive. another more recent and similar text was published by pedersen (2011). in his case, the subtitling norms for the specific problem of extralinguistic cultural references are the result of a descriptive study. still, obtained (and proposed) norms may be considered to be prescriptive in the sense that they can become guidelines to other professional subtitlers who must deal with the specific problem of translating cultural references in subtitling for tv. these examples illustrate that a dual approach to the implementation of the concept of norm in avt is both feasible and useful. 4. conventions and standards: the prescriptive way in this section, some examples of conventions and standards regarding specific aspects of various avt modalities are presented. from an analytic perspective, they may be placed in the central (or intermediate) part of the cline for the potency of norms proposed by pedersen (2011), mentioned earlier in this article. depending on the degree of their expected compliance, these conventions and standards could be termed as conventions, norms or rules, from a theoretical (or terminological) standpoint. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 3, issue 1 82 in some cases, these conventions stem from descriptive research (if pure practice observation could be considered as such). thus, the most common practices are then recommended as guidelines. this may be the case for modalities such as dubbing and subtitling, the most consolidated and spread-out modalities of avt, which are also the ones which have been subject to descriptive studies (mainly case studies) along the past decades. in other cases, conventions and standards are developed by private or public organizations, in an attempt to create a standardised scenario where “best practices” are enforced. this is the case for accessibility avt modalities: subtitling for the deaf and hard-of-hearing and audio description. both public and private organizations do generate conventions and standards, usually written by experts and consultants, as new rules and laws regarding accessibility concepts such as design for all and inclusiveness are passed in different countries. because these accessibility modalities are much younger, the number of descriptive studies is smaller. still, as mentioned above, case studies on these topics are becoming more and more common. some examples of guidelines for subtitling (we could consider them norms, as they result from a descriptive methodology) have been suggested by díaz-cintas: in a book from 2003, a volume written in spanish for the linguistic combination of english-spanish; and especially in the book from 2007, another seminal work written in english and co-authored with remael, a “must” to be read by professional subtitlers. not to be forgotten, mainly because of its early publication, is the pioneer code of good subtitling practices, endorsed by the european association for studies in screen translation in berlin on 17 october 1998, and written by mary carroll and jan ivarsson. the list of suggested classic publications that enforce conventions and standards for subtitling would also include the early one by karamitroglou (1998) cited above. as far as dubbing is concerned, professional norms (and practices) vary across countries, or even across different regions within the same country, as it happens to be the case in spain. chaume is the scholar who has strived along the decades to try to come up with a description of dubbing practices in europe, but also in other countries around the world. his work has been compiled in three books (as well as in many other publications of various kinds), each written in a different language: catalan, spanish and english. those are his works from 2003, 2004 and 2012. his book published in 2012 could be considered seminal for two reasons. on the one hand, it compiles and summarises all his earlier research findings regarding dubbing and dubbing norms, while it also adds new interesting theoretical and practical material. on the other hand, the fact that it is written in english can provide access to a much wider audience. another more recent initiative (published in 2014) regarding subtitling and sdh guidelines is caption quality: international approaches to standards and measurement, generated in australia, a complete and comprehensive document which is an outstanding effort to compile regulations and conventions in all countries around the world as far as subtitling and accessibility in subtitles (sdh) norms in avt: a dual approach to a long-lasting and fundamental notion 83 are concerned. this document also presents different models for measuring caption quality (wer, ncam, ner), and evaluates caption quality measurement models. these key aspects of the publication can be pointed out, as cited from its website: media access australia has released a white paper entitled caption quality: international approaches to standards and measurement. it focuses on issues surrounding the live captioning of tv programs, the difficulties in measuring caption quality effectively, and some of the solutions that have been proposed. section 5 in this paper is possibly the most recommended section for reading, as far as standards and conventions are concerned. it is entitled quality standards around the world, and it describes in much detail the efforts accomplished by different institutions and companies in countries like the united kingdom, canada, united states, france, spain, germany and australia (all these countries are covered in sections 5.1 through 5.7). another avt mode which has recently gained importance and visibility is audio description. for this mode, the necessity to come up with standards and regulations may have not followed the same path as the one in other more “classical” avt modes, like dubbing and subtitling. unlike those, but as in sdh, ad may have suffered some delay in the production of empirical descriptive research results. however, different institutions have enforced the creation of conventions and standards for ad, since the usage of accessible audiovisual material in the media has been subject to the specifications of laws passed in different countries. some examples of institutions which have been involved in this process are ofcom in the united kingdom and aenor in spain. in the case of the united kingdom, the document code on television access services (2012) covers specifications for “subtitling, signing and audio description”. for spain, aenor published in 2005 a specific norm for ad: audiodescripción para personas con discapacidad visual. requisitos para la audiodescripción y la elaboración de audioguías [audio description for people with visual disability. requisites for audio description and elaboration of audioguides]. a good review of the efforts to come up with standards and regulations for ad in europe was summarized by vercauteren (2007). his analysis also intended to provide “a first possible outline of such international guidelines”. this contribution, as some above, can be found in díaz-cintas et al. (2007), a book which was also cited earlier in this article. additionally, in 2015 iso/iec published the technical specification ts 20071-21, a document entitled information technology—user interface component accessibility—part 21: guidance on audio descriptions, which provides specific guidelines for the production of audio descriptions. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 3, issue 1 84 5. summary the notion of norm has proved to be a very successful tool since its introduction in the translation studies field. even though its life cycle has not been very long so far (some four decades altogether), it has provided a sound basis for a rigorous framework, both in research and professional practice. being a theoretical, intuitive and broad notion, it has been subject to different interpretations, which have led to distinctive applications. the two basic approaches to the concept of norm are descriptive and prescriptive in nature. originally, and according to toury, descriptive research studies in translation were supposed to find regularities (or norms) in case studies, which would then help translators to solve specific problems in a distinct way. the compilation of these solutions might end up generating sets of recommendations (conventions, standards, “universals”, some sort of “best practices”) to be applied when faced with specific problems. these recommendations would have been generated by impartial, empirical and descriptive observation of real-life solutions. still, this descriptive-to-prescriptive path has not been quite followed in some specific modalities in avt. while in the case of dubbing and subtitling (older and subject to much more research) the complete path seems to have been pursued, the younger and less-researched modalities related to accessibility (mainly subtitling for the dead and hard-of hearing and audio description) have seen the publication of conventions and standards which may not have originated from descriptive studies (although these have been simultaneously going on). another key element for the notion of norm is the terminology employed, as it is always the case within translation studies. the regularities associated with potential norms may be linked with different intensities. as such, a cline for the potency of norms in the literature has been cited here. there is clearly a difference between a “norm” (a notion which can be diffuse, but descriptive, used primarily by academics), and a “standard” (a more constraining, even prescriptive term which is traditionally used in the context of av translator training and professional practices). the intention here has been to compile and review examples for both approaches, from a descriptive but also from a critical point of view. however, it may be obvious that all the efforts and initiatives mentioned stem from this theoretical concept (or notion), a key one to translation studies (and avt) since several decades. in the end, it is important to highlight that the usage of the notion of norm from different perspectives only reinforces its validity. undoubtedly, the notion of norm in avt is here to stay, and it is not unlikely that it might be open to additional new interpretations in the future, mainly due to its controversial nature. norms in avt: a dual approach to a long-lasting and fundamental notion 85 references aenor, asociación española de normalización y certificación. 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(1941). blood and sand [motion picture]. country of origin: studio. file:///c:/users/jlmar/downloads/maa_caption_quality_white%20paper_accessible.pdf http://docshare04.docshare.tips/files/23397/233971461.pdf http://www.jostrans.org/issue10/art_neves.php https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0035/179954/tv-access-services-code.pdf http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/s0531513105009817 audiovisual translation in china:a dialogue between yves gambier and jin haina 26 audiovisual translation in china: a dialogue between yves gambier and haina jin haina jin communication university of china, beijing yves gambier university of turku, finland i. kant baltic federal university, kaliningrad, russia _________________________________________________________ abstract this dialogue was conducted between yves gambier and haina jin in april and november 2017, and april 2018 in beijing, china, in order to give a panoramic view of audiovisual translation in china today, the history of which dates back to the silent film era. audiovisual translation has played an important role in cross-cultural communication, industrial development and social integration in china. vibrant audiovisual translation activities can be seen in three main directions: translating foreign audiovisual products into chinese, translating chinese audiovisual products into foreign languages and audiovisual translation into ethnic minority languages in china. in this dialogue, the three main translation directions, the status of translators, the role of associations, standards, education and training, as well as further development of audiovisual translation in china will be discussed. key words: audiovisual translation, china, directions, policies, modes, avt development  jinhaina@cuc.edu.cn  gambier@utu.fi; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1858-4281 citation: jin, h., & gambier, y. (2018). audiovisual translation in china: a dialogue between yves gambier and jin haina. journal of audiovisual translation, 1(1), 26-39. editor(s): a. jankowska & e. di giovanni received: january 22, 2018 accepted: june 30, 2018 published: november 15, 2018 funding: copyright: ©2018 jin & gambier. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license. this allows for unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1858-4281 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1858-4281 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ audiovisual translation in china: a dialogue between yves gambier and haina jin 27 dialogue begins... yves gambier (yg): in the last 20-30 years, audiovisual translation has come into its own as a recognised form of translation. what is the status of audiovisual translation in china? haina jin (hj): audiovisual translation in china has a long history of practice dating back to the silent film era. it has long been recognised as a form of translation and has played an important role in cross-cultural communication, industrial development and social integration in china. audiovisual translation in china has three main directions. one is to translate foreign audiovisual products into chinese, to be shown in cinemas, television and online channels. this direction has the longest history of practice, appearing soon after the import of foreign films in china at the end of the 19th century. a review of foreign films in 1897 published in the game newspaper showed the existence of a chinese interpreter for screening american films (tianhua chayuan guan waiyang xifa guishu suojian, 1897). the translated foreign film and television has exerted great impact on chinese society and chinese culture since then. the second direction is to translate chinese film and television into foreign languages. like in the literature circle, chinese filmmakers or film companies tend to translate their films into english or other languages to attract international audiences. in the 1920s and 1930s, chinese film companies were already adding bilingual intertitles into silent films, usually in chinese and english, to make profits in the international market and change the stereotypes of china and chinese people portrayed in western films. in recent years, china began to implement several audiovisual translation projects at national level, including the sino-africa film and television cooperation project in 2012, the contemporary works translation project in 2013 and the silk road film and television bridge project in 2014, which are patronised by the state. sponsored by these projects, a great number of chinese films, television dramas, documentaries and cartoons are translated and dubbed into over 20 languages, including swahili, hausa and russian, as a way of demonstrating chinese culture and values to international audiences and reshaping china’s image. in these statepatronised projects, english is not the dominant language for the translation of chinese film and television products. instead, a number of languages of the belt and road countries are used in response to china’s belt and road initiative. the third direction is to translate audiovisual products into ethnic minority languages in china. there are 56 ethnic groups in china, 55 of which are ethnic minorities, in addition to the han majority. the han population is 1.34 billion and represents about 91.51% of china’s total population. the population of ethnic minority groups is 133,792,200 according to the sixth population census of the people’s republic of china, which represents 8.49% of the population of mainland china (feng, cui, zhang & ye, 2012). most of the ethnic groups speak one language, with a few speaking two or even more languages. among the 56 ethnic groups, han, hui and man use mandarin chinese and 53 ethnic groups speak their own languages. linguists from china science academy estimate that 129 languages are currently in use in china (sun, hu & huang, 2007). to achieve ideological, educational journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 28 and social purposes and meet the entertainment needs of ethnic minorities, china has been translating audiovisual products into ethnic minority languages such as mongolian and tibetan since the 1950s. at present, there are 11 state-sponsored audiovisual translation centres which specialise in translating and dubbing chinese films into 38 dialects of 17 ethnic minority languages. for example, the xinjiang audiovisual translation centre for minority languages translates and dubs films into uygur and kazakh, and the qinghai audiovisual translation centre for minority languages takes dialects of tibetan, i.e. khams tibetan and amdo tibetan, as target languages. in recent years, around 800 to 1,000 chinese films were dubbed into minority languages each year. yg: i am glad to know the status of audiovisual translation in china is quite vibrant. what is china’s audiovisual translation policy today? hj: in fact, china has different audiovisual translation policies affecting different directions of audiovisual translation practices. first, in the direction of translating foreign audiovisual products, china has different policies regarding theatrical films, cinema and television products shown on television channels compared with audiovisual products shown on the internet. hollywood films used to be very popular in china before 1949. after the founding of the people’s republic of china, most western films, especially hollywood films, were publicly banned until the end of the cultural revolution in 1976. it was not until 1994 that the chinese government allowed foreign films to be shown in chinese cinemas on a revenue-sharing basis. the policy for selecting revenue-sharing films was that the films should “basically reflect the finest global cultural achievements and represent the latest artistic and technological accomplishments in contemporary world cinema” (ministry of radio and television of the people’s republic of china, 1994). between 1994 and 2002, the quota was 10 films per year; in 2002, as china prepared to enter the world trade organization, the quota was increased to 20 films per year, and in 2012, it rose again to 34 films annually, 14 of which were to be screened in 3d or imax formats (the people’s republic of china and the united states of america, 2012). apart from the revenue-sharing films, a number of foreign films can be shown in chinese cinemas as buyout films. chinese distribution companies, usually china film group corporation or huaxia film company, can negotiate a fixed price with an international film producer for local rights; after these are cleared the chinese distributor gets to keep all the revenues. the quota for buyout films is slightly flexible, but still quite limited. for example, in 2014, 33 foreign films, in 2015, 28 foreign films, and in 2016, 51 foreign films were shown in chinese cinemas as flat-fee films. for foreign films in cinema, the translation is assigned to the four stateowned film translation and productioni studios: shanghai film translation and production studio, august first film studio, changchun translation and production studio, and china film group corporation. the work is divided relatively equally among them. apart from films screened in theatre, there are foreign films and television dramas shown on television channels and the internet channels. films shown on television are mostly dubbed, while the majority of films shown on the internet channels are subtitled. for example, the movie channel of china central television, the national television broadcaster of china, imported about 400 foreign films every year since its establishment in 1996 and around 1,000 foreign films were imported through internet channels audiovisual translation in china: a dialogue between yves gambier and haina jin 29 such as youku, sohu, tencent or iqiyi yearly since the booming of the online video platforms in the beginning of the 21st century. the translation for television and online channels is not strictly limited to the four studios and is often subcontracted to private translation or post-production companies. some video websites such as iqiyi, youku and sohu use fansubbing groups to translate the foreign television products they import. as for the translation of chinese films into foreign languages, the general policies are encouraging. as stated in film industry promotion law of the people’s republic of china (2016), the state supports the translation of outstanding chinese films into foreign languages and will use diplomatic, cultural and educational resources to promote chinese films overseas. chinese film is seen by the state as an important medium to convey chinese culture, values and the achievements of contemporary china. the state-patronised projects tend to sponsor the translation of films and television products which were recently produced, and to reflect the mainstream values of chinese society. china has become a major audiovisual production country. in 2016, 772 feature films, 334 television dramas in 14,912 episodes, 120,000 minutes of television cartoons and over 10,000 hours of television documentaries were produced (zhang, 2017). as for the translation of audiovisual products into minority languages, the policy is to take it as a public welfare undertaking. the film bureau of the state administration of press, publication, radio, film and television of the people’s republic of china (sapprft) makes annual plans for film translation for ethnic minorities and chooses about 60 feature films and 20 educational films from the list created for public welfare rural screening. after films are selected by the film bureau, the 11 audiovisual translation centres for minority languages can select the films for dubbing according to the needs of the local audience and advice from local film companies and screening units. due to copyright reasons, most of the films provided for minority dubbing are chinese films, mainly feature films and educational films. in recent years, an interesting phenomenon has taken place: some ethnic groups in china share the same languages with neighbouring countries, such as korean with south korea and north korea, mongolian with mongolia, dai with laos and thailand. therefore, more and more chinese films dubbed into minority languages have also been shown in neighbouring countries. yg: that is very interesting. audiovisual translation here has transformed from a domestic tool for communication into an international communication phenomenon. what about audiovisual translators in china? are they visible to society? what is their social status? hj: most of the audiovisual translators in china are backstage heroes, as in the rest of the world, although there was a time in the 1980s and early 1990s where dubbing actors and actresses were household names and celebrities. with the popularity of subtitled films, dubbing actors do not enjoy such fame anymore. as for translators, it is hard for a good audiovisual translator to be remembered, but it is easy for him/her to receive criticism for controversial translations. audiovisual translators journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 30 in china have different working conditions: they can be full-time or part-time translators, or amateurs in fansubbing groups. the number of full-time audiovisual translators is very low and they are mainly employed by the state-owned audiovisual translation studios or centres. in recent years, the state-owned audiovisual translation studios or centres have also hired freelance translators or translation companies. many audiovisual translation practitioners are part-time or freelance translators, who can be teachers or students in universities, staff in a film company, etc. with the popularity of the internet at the beginning of the 21st century, ordinary viewers now have increasing access to foreign audiovisual products at home through various channels and have tools to create and disseminate their translations easily online. unsatisfied with the slow import and translation speeds, limited choices of audiovisual products and censorship in the official channels, fans began to translate films, television dramas or cartoons they love and to disseminate their translated works online. the activities of fansubbers reached a peak around 2014, followed by a shutdown of yyets and shooter websitesii by the chinese authorities due to copyright infringement. though deviating from established audiovisual translation conventions, fansubbing groups won the hearts of chinese viewers with their daring ways of translation and they are often portrayed as heroes of cross-cultural communication. yg: i notice that a lot of translators who translate chinese film or television products into foreign languages are chinese. what are the reasons for this? hj: it is common for translators to translate into their mother tongue. however, many translators who are engaged in translating chinese films and television products into foreign languages are chinese, as you say. i think there are several reasons for that. first, it is estimated that the foreign language learners in china exceeded 300 million (li, 2010). with the large number of foreign language learners, china tends to have more bilingual translators who can translate chinese audiovisual products. second, it is much more expensive to hire foreign translators than chinese translators for the audiovisual companies. third, chinese people are very proud of their works and fond of sharing them with the rest of the world. chinese film companies and chinese translators think it is their mission to translate chinese films into foreign languages so that chinese culture and values will be better understood. the same is true for chinese literature. most translators of chinese literature are chinese. there are foreign chinese audiovisual translators, such as linda jaivin, tony ryan, etc. linda jaivin is an australian sinologist and novelist who as translated dozens of highprofile chinese films since the 1980s, such as chen kaige’s farewell my concubine (hsu & chen, 1993), zhang yimou’s hero (zhang & zhang, 2002) and wong kar wai’s the grandmaster (ng & wang, 2013). good film translators like her are very rare and not affordable for most film and television production or distribution companies. it is more realistic for chinese film and television companies to use chinese translators to translate chinese audiovisual products into foreign languages, who will remain as the main force for translating chinese audiovisual products for the international market for a long time. there are certain disadvantages in employing chinese translators to work into foreign languages, such as the use of chinglish and the recurrence of literal translation. the translation audiovisual translation in china: a dialogue between yves gambier and haina jin 31 by chinese translators may sound unnatural to native speakers and cause communication barriers. an ideal way would be a collaboration between chinese translators and international translators. yg: in europe, there are several associations for audiovisual translation researchers and professionals, such as the european association for studies in screen translation (esist), the norwegian association of audiovisual translators (navio), and the french association of audiovisual translators/adaptors (ataa). they play a role in uniting audiovisual translators, protecting rights of audiovisual translators and facilitating the research in, and practice of, audiovisual translation. is there any similar association in china? hj: audiovisual translation is an interdisciplinary field. in china, there is a national translation association named translators association of china (tac). the largest audiovisual association is china alliance of radio, film and television (carft).iii in 2017, the communication university of china initiated the audiovisual translation and dissemination council, china (avtd china) under carft with over 20 major audiovisual translation and dissemination institutions including four state-owned dubbing studios, china radio international, startimesiv and audiovisual translation centres for minority languages. avtd china was approved by carft and sapprft at the end of 2017. its aim is to promote research and practice in audiovisual translation and its dissemination, to draw up audiovisual translation standards, to protect audiovisual translation professionals’ rights, to enhance the awareness of audiovisual translation in china, and to improve media accessibility. apart from the functions of an association, i think support from the state is also very important for the development of audiovisual translation in china. yg: in 1995, the council of europe planned to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the cinema. i wrote to them to suggest that they hosted a forum on audiovisual translation and they agreed. after that first international forum, held in strasburg in june 1995, we have had seminars or sessions in conferences on audiovisual translation every year. however, in the international conferences on audiovisual translation such as media for all and languages and the media, it is very rare to see chinese scholars. a conference named dubbing and subtitling in a world context took place at the chinese university of hong kong in 2007. what happened after 2007? do you have regular audiovisual translation conferences and workshops in china? how do you share your experience worldwide? hj: films and television dramas are seen by the chinese authorities as important means to reshape the image of china and to convey chinese culture and values. since 2015, the ministry of culture (moc) and state administration of press, publication, radio, film and television of the people’s republic of china (sapprft) have been organising the sino-foreign audiovisual translation and dubbing cooperation workshop (sfatd) in collaboration with the beijing film festival (in april) and the shanghai film festival (in june). every year, about 60 to 70 international experts in the field of translation, film and television studies and industries from different countries are invited to attend the workshops, exchange views with chinese colleagues, and visit film markets and representative journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 32 chinese film and television companies, with the aim to facilitate cooperation between china and overseas countries in both audiovisual translation research and practice. sfatd workshops certainly have given a boost to the development of audiovisual translation in china. besides, chinese scholars have better international vision and funding support today than in the past. more and more chinese scholars in the audiovisual translation field are participating in international conferences and having exchanges with international colleagues in the future. yg: does mainland china have exchanges or contacts with the film industry in hong kong? hj: the film industry in hong kong has produced enormously popular films, especially kung fu films. from 1994 to 2003, hong kong films were shown in chinese cinemas as revenue sharing or buyout films within the import quota. in 2003, the mainland and hong kong closer economic partnership arrangement (cepa) (2003) was signed between the government of the hong kong special administrative region and the central people’s government of the people’s republic of china. chinese language motion pictures produced in hong kong could now be shown in the mainland without any restriction on import quotas (the government of the hong kong special administrative region, 2003). most of the films produced in hong kong are cantonese films and when they are screened in cinemas in the mainland, they are often dubbed into mandarin chinese. after the signing of cepa, the co-production policy between hong kong and the mainland is also much more relaxed in terms of staff employment and ratio of investment. the number of co-productions increased from about 10 before 2003 to 54 in 2016, while the total number of film productions in hong kong was 68 in 2016 (hong kong trade development council, 2017). it means that most of hong kong films today are co-productions between hong kong and the mainland. yg: are there any national standards or procedures for audiovisual translation in china? hj: there are no unified national audiovisual translation standards or procedures in china yet. sometimes, one will see audiovisual products in monolingual subtitles, sometimes in bilingual subtitles and sometimes without subtitles in china. sometimes subtitles appear in one line on the screen, sometimes in two lines. the colour, size and font of the characters vary according to the different companies, though audiovisual translation standards and procedures do exist in different formats, as created by different institutions. for instance, the shanghai film translation and production studio has formed a complete translation procedure in 10 steps to translate a film. chen xuyi, the former head of the studio, summarised the requirements for translators and dubbers on the 30th anniversary of the establishment of shanghai film translation and production studio as follows: “the script translation has to reflect the flavour, and the dubbing performance has to convey the spirit.” (sun, 2008). those words are still today inscribed on the wall of the shanghai film translation and production studio as the company motto. on the other hand, all the minority language audiovisual translation centres have a uniform procedure for their audiovisual translation process, which is similar to the one used by the shanghai film translation and production studio. other institutions also have their own rules. for example, huace, audiovisual translation in china: a dialogue between yves gambier and haina jin 33 one of the largest private film and television production companies in china, has its own standard regarding colour, size, font, number and position of the characters for each line as well as the technical requirements for the subtitling format of a video. maybe with the establishment of avtd china, national audiovisual translation standards will be formed to ensure translation quality. yg: there are different audiovisual translation modes such as subtitling, dubbing and voiceover. countries have different preferences for different audiovisual translation modes. in northern europe, subtitling tends to be the most popular method, while in france and germany it is dubbing, and in russia and poland audiences seem to prefer voice-over. what is the most preferred audiovisual translation mode in china? hj: dubbing was the preferred way of translating foreign films or television dramas from 1949 to 1994. during that period, most foreign films or television dramas were dubbed into chinese and some of the dubbed lines became catchy phrases, such as “let comrade lenin go first” and “we will have bread and we will have milk” from lenin in 1918 (filipov, aron & simkov, 1939) and “yes, sir.” from garrison’s gorillas (caffey, fenady, seligman & mirell, 1967-1968). the main reasons for dubbing as the dominant way during that period of time were the low literacy rate and poor english knowledge of the majority viewers. after 1978, english became a compulsory subject in chinese middle schools. since the end of the 1980s, college students have been required by most universities to pass college english test 4v in order to graduate. more and more people understand english. after china began to screen hollywood blockbusters, many people, especially young people, tended to watch the subtitled version in the cinema instead of the dubbed version, in order to feel the original flavour of the films and even use it as a way to learn english. nowadays, when foreign films are imported into china, they are often translated into two versions: a subtitled version and a dubbed version. it is up to the cinemas to decide whether a dubbed version or a subtitled version will be screened. in order to make more revenues, cinemas will screen what viewers like to watch. as a result, the percentage showing a dubbed version of a foreign film is much lower nowadays, except for animated films. the dubbed version is often watched by children or people who cannot speak english. for cinema distribution, subtitling has become a more popular way of translating foreign films. dubbing remains the dominant audiovisual translation method for foreign films and television dramas on television channels, and subtitling is the dominant audiovisual translation method for translating foreign audiovisual products on online streaming platforms. the reasons could be that television has to cater for the whole population, while most of the viewers of online streaming of foreign audiovisual products have a fairly high level of education and a certain command of english. time and costs must be considered, too. online streaming platforms broadcast more foreign audiovisual translation products, and some programs are shown nearly simultaneously, such as saturday night live. subtitling does provide a fast and economical solution for online streaming platforms. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 34 as to the translation of chinese films, subtitling is the dominant method. most film companies are aware of the international market. when chinese films are shown in china, bilingual subtitles are already added. however, under the state-sponsored projects initiated after 2012, most films and television products are dubbed instead of subtitled. for example, for the tanzania market, the four chinese television dramas the beautiful daughter-in-law (sun, 009), jin tailang’s happy life (liu,2011), father’s wish (liu & liu, 2011) and mother’s beautiful days (cai & dou, 2013) were dubbed into swahili and broadcast by tanzania broadcasting corporation (tbc), which is the national television network for tanzania. these four chinese television dramas are all about modern urban chinese life. the reasons for using dubbing instead of subtitling for tanzania include literacy rates, the size of television screening, and the habit of communal watching in villages. the purpose of choosing tv dramas about urban life in contemporary china was to break the stereotypes of china presented in kung fu films and ancient costume dramas, while also increasing the international understanding of modern china and contemporary chinese people’s life. the beautiful daughter-inlaw was a great success. when i did an audiovisual translation training course for azam television in tanzania in 2016, i realised that tanzanian people called chinese people they met by the names of the characters in the beautiful daughter-in-law. they were really interested in the modern life of china and wanted to see it for themselves. as to audiovisual translation for ethnic minorities, dubbing is used by the audiovisual translation centres as the main audiovisual translation mode. dubbed audiovisual products can be understood by a large majority of ethnic minority viewers. besides, dubbing here is also considered an important way to preserve and disseminate minority languages. one thing worth mentioning is that subtitles are not added to the chinese films dubbed into minority languages. the reason may be that there are no written forms for some minority languages. however, only relying on dubbing can sometimes create difficulties. for instance, when written information such as names and places appear on the screen, the dubbing actors have to read the information. sometimes, their pronunciations of the names and places are mixed with the soundtrack of the dialogues, which will cause misunderstanding and confusion for the audience. hopefully, in the future, subtitles for minority languages can be added in dubbed films, which may even help ethnic minority audiences improve their command of their languages. yg: audiovisual translators require a special set of skills and knowledge. ma training programmes with audiovisual translation are provided by a number of universities in europe, such as university college london, university of leeds in the uk, and universitat autònoma de barcelona in spain. are there audiovisual translation programs provided in universities in china? hj: we do have audiovisual translation education in china. the communication university of china (cuc) is a pioneer in this field. in 2003, cuc started a ba programme in audiovisual translation, an ma programme in 2011, and a phd programme in 2016. until now, it remains the only university in china which offers degree programmes in audiovisual translation. but we also see other universities, such as the shanghai foreign studies university and the beijing foreign studies audiovisual translation in china: a dialogue between yves gambier and haina jin 35 university offering courses in audiovisual translation. apart from university education, audiovisual translation training has been provided annually by china film group corporation to minority language audiovisual translation centres since 2013. yg: we have talked about different directions and forms of audiovisual translation. what do you think are the weaknesses of audiovisual translation in china today? hj: china has many strong points in audiovisual translation, such as establishing audiovisual translation centres for ethnic minority groups and the use of audiovisual translation as a way to preserve language diversity, but there are also weak points in audiovisual translation, especially in the field of media accessibility. china has a large population of deaf and blind people. according to china disabled persons’ federation, at the end of 2010, the population of visually impaired people was 12.63 million and the population of the hearing-impaired reached 20.54 million (china disabled persons’ federation, 2012). despite the large population (about 33.17 million) in need of accessibility, the current development of media access services is not satisfactory. there are occasional audio description services for films provided by cinemas and libraries in large cities such as shanghai and beijing and occasional sign language translation services on television for people with hearing impairments. however, there are no laws or regulations for film, television and internet media providers compelling them to make their audiovisual contents accessible to people with visual or hearing impairments. i am aware that media companies are required to make their audiovisual content accessible to people with visual or hearing impairments to a certain degree in europe and the united states. china still has a long way to go in the field of media accessibility so that disabled persons can enjoy media products, too. apart from media accessibility, game localisation has been almost ignored by trainers and researchers in china. chinese game players enjoy playing foreign video games and chinese game companies also seek to expand into overseas markets. research on game localisation has great theoretical and practical significance. yg: for a number of years, accessibility was a legal and technical issue in the european union (28 countries). it took europe many years to legalise accessible audiovisual media policies and ensure audiovisual products a free and fair distribution. the situation is going to improve in china step by step. with the development of language technologies, new modes are introduced such as live subtitling, audio description and audio-subtitling (thanks to text-to-speech software). today we have better tools to achieve media accessibility. and as for the game industry, it is already greater than the film industry in terms of turnover and social impact. with time, it will attract more and more academic attention. hj: with the development of the internet and digitisation technologies, significant changes have been witnessed in the audiovisual translation field. what do you think are new opportunities and challenges in the audiovisual translation field? journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 36 yg: digitisation has caused changes in the production of media products, such as script writing, production of sounds, pictures and special stunts; but also, in the distribution and projection of audiovisual products as well as in film archiving and restoration. those changes have brought new demands and new formats to audiovisual translation. video-streaming, television on demand and podcasting services all require audiovisual translators and service providers to offer a more versatile range of services. hj: machine translation and automation technologies also have made great progress. recently, a chinese documentary named china reinvents itself (liu & xu, 2018) is claimed to be the first documentary in the world using artificial voices. the voice was cloned from the late famous voice artist li yi. even acquaintances of li yi could not tell the difference between the artificial voice and li yi’s own voice. yg: development in technologies also raises new issues for audiovisual translation, such as copyright issues. for instance, who owns the rights for synthesised voices? for subtitling, the combination of different software (compression + speech recognition + translation software) can speed up the production. it can be more economical and has a faster turnout. audiovisual translators also need to cope with the changes by adapting to new e-tools and developing postediting skills. in the past 20 years, the amount of publications on audiovisual translation has increased significantly worldwide. however, too many studies are still limited to the discussion on linguistic and cultural problems. a large number of important audiovisual issues have not been well researched, such as the interplay between images, sounds and language, and the complexity of audiovisual translation. besides, research on subtitling has been much more common than on dubbing, which may be explained by the efforts to transcribe the dubbed voice into words first. however, new technologies may help to change the situation. hj: in china, the number of academic articles on audiovisual translation has increased dramatically since the 1990s (liu, fan &wang, 2011). a number of books on audiovisual translation have been published by chinese scholars (ma, 2005; jin, 2013; tan, 2014; xiao, 2016). academic research on audiovisual translation in china has discussed various audiovisual translation topics, such as translation strategies and translation history. translation theories such as relevance theory or the skopos theory have been applied in the research of audiovisual translation in china. however, most of the research focuses on micro-level discussions. macro-level topics such as language policy and social functions of audiovisual translation need to be explored. moreover, most of the articles were written in chinese and the dialogues between audiovisual translation research in china and the international community are rather rare. hopefully, chinese scholars will participate more and more in the international discussion audiovisual translation in china: a dialogue between yves gambier and haina jin 37 on audiovisual translation in the future. in your opinion, what can bring new perspectives in audiovisual translation? yg: research in translation studies and media studies can bring new perspectives for audiovisual translation. for example, corpus-based translation studies can provide a good way to analyse audiovisual translation, such as the style of a translator or a genre of films. cognitive research methods such as pupillometry (measure of the pupil dilatation) and eye tracking are useful tools for analysing viewers’ reactions in a more scientific and accurate way. optical pauses, pace of reading, line breaks, presentation time, re-reading patterns, degrees and types of attention (active/passive, global/selective, linear/partial), depending on whether the focus is on the image (iconic attention), on the plot (narrative attention) or on the dialogue (verbal attention), can all be analysed. besides, in an era of drastic social, technological and environmental changes, oral history may shed new lights on audiovisual translation research, with interviews of audiovisual translation practitioners including translators, dubbing directors, dubbing actors, sound engineers and researchers. their memories and perceptions can provide valuable oral resources for us and future generations to better understand the complexity and development of audiovisual translation. bio notes haina jin is associate professor in audiovisual translation at the communication university of china. her research interests include audiovisual translation and translation history. she is the principal investigator of two chinese national social science funded projects on audiovisual translation and has published a monograph entitled zhongguo wusheng dianying fanyi yanjiu (1905-1949) [towards a history of translating chinese films (1905-1949)]. she is also the translator of the book film and television culture in china. yves gambier is professor emeritus of the school of languages and translation studies at the university of turku (finland) and a visiting professor at the i. kant baltic federal university in kaliningrad (russia). he is a pioneer in audiovisual translation research and has published significantly on the topic. his latest volume, reception studies and audiovisual translation, 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(1994). guanyu jinyibu shenhua dianying hangye jizhi gaige de tongzhi [notice on further deepening the reform of mechanism of the film industry]. beijing: mrt office. ng, s. (producer), & wang, k. (director). (2013) yidai zongshi [the grandmaster] [motion picture]. china: sil-metropole organization ltd. the state council of the people’s republic of china. (2005). zhonguo yuyan wenzi [chinese languages]. retrieved from http://www.gov.cn/test/2005-06/16/content_6821.htm sun, h., hu, z., & huang, x. (2007). zhongguo de yuyan [the languages of china]. beijing: the commercial press. sun, y. (2008). yige you meili de zajia [a charming jack of all trades]. in x. su (ed.), feng hua bi xu: shangyichang de sige laotouer [four gentlemen of shanghai film translation and production studio] (pp.30-36). shanghai: wenhui press. sun, y. (producer). (2009). xifu de meihao shidai [the beautiful daughter-in-law] [television series]. china: beijing hualubaina film & tv company limited. tan, h. (2014). zhonguo yizhi dianying shi [dubbed film]. china: china film press. tianhua chayuan guan waiyang xifa guishu suojian [reviews of foreign films watched in tianhua tea house]. (1897, august 16). the game newspaper, pp. 8a. xiao, w. (2016). yinghan yingshi fanyi shiyong jiaocheng [a practice guide to english chinese audiovisual translation]. shanghai: east china university of science and technology press. zhang, h. (2017. october 20). woguo zhengcong xinwen chuban yingshi daguo xiang qiangguo maijin [china is transforming from a major country to a strong country in news, publication, radio, film and television production]. people’s daily. retrieved from http://media.people.com.cn/n1/2017/1020/c14677-29599470.html zhang, w. (producer), & zhang, y. (director), (2002). yingxiong [hero]. [motion picture] china: beijing new picture film co. ii in china, the term yizhi (translation and production) is used to refer to subtitling, dubbing and postproduction. the four studios are often called four yizhi studios. ii yyets (人人影视) is the largest and most popular fansubbing group in china and shooter(射手网)is a popular subtitle portal. iii more information can be found in the website of carft: http://www.carft.cn/ iv startimes is a chinese multinational media company with strong presence in africa and a leading digital tvoperator across sub-saharan africa. by november 2017, startimes operated in 17 countries and served 10 million subscribers by providing affordable tv products (chinese embassy to kenya, 2017). startimes has an in-house team to dub chinese films and tv products into five african languages for its channels in africa. v college english test(cet) is a national english as a foreign language test for college students in china. it has two levels cet4 and cet6, which requires a proficience of 4500 and 6500 english words respectively. http://www.gov.cn/test/2005-06/16/content_6821.htm http://media.people.com.cn/n1/2017/1020/c14677-29599470.html%c2%a0 http://www.carft.cn/ communication university of china, beijing university of turku, finland i. kant baltic federal university, kaliningrad, russia abstract this dialogue was conducted between yves gambier and haina jin in april and november 2017, and april 2018 in beijing, china, in order to give a panoramic view of audiovisual translation in china today, the history of which dates back to the silent fil... citation: jin, h., & gambier, y. (2018). audiovisual translation in china: a dialogue between yves gambier and jin haina. journal of audiovisual translation, 1(1), 26-39. editor(s): a. jankowska & e. di giovanni received: january 22, 2018 accepted: june 30, 2018 published: november 15, 2018 funding: copyright: ©2018 jin & gambier. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license. this allows for unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and so... dialogue begins... bio notes references 170 the independent audio describer is dead: long live audio description! louise fryer university college london _________________________________________________________ abstract traditional audio description (ad) is giving way to integrated audio description in which media accessibility is no longer an add-on but built in from the start in collaboration with the artistic team. as directors and producers take a greater interest in making their work accessible to audience members with a sensory impairment, how are the power dynamics altered between the stakeholders? the idea of abusive forms of translation advanced by lewis (1985) and nornes (1999) is reconsidered, together with the sanctity of the source text (st). also assessed is the impact on the role and hence the training needs of the professional audio describer. using data from research projects developed by extant, the uk’s leading professional performing arts company of visually impaired people, and from the european research project adlab pro, this paper concludes that a describer’s skills and competences are still required even with the evolution of integrated ad. key words: media accessibility, audio description, visual impairment, blindness, describer  louise@utopians.co.uk; https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0302-8503 citation: fryer, l., (2018). the independent audio describer is dead: long live audio description! journal of audiovisual translation, 1(1), 170-186. editor(s): a. jankowska & p. romerofresco received: january 22, 2018 accepted: june 30, 2018 published: november 15, 2018 funding: this research was supported by the erasmus+ programme of the european union: project name adlab pro; project number: 2016-1-it02ka203-024311. copyright: ©2018 fryer. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license. this allows for unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0302-8503 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0302-8503 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ the independent audio describer is dead: long live audio description! 171 1. introduction in an era of accessible filmmaking (afm) and integrated audio description (iad), is the role of an independent access interpreter outdated? in what way do a describer’s skills need to change to reflect the shifting ad environment and how does that affect describer training? this article seeks to answer these questions in the context of adlab pro, a three-year research project financed by the european union under the erasmus+ programme key action 2 – strategic partnerships. adlab pro is charged with defining the profile of the audio description professional and outlining describer competences in order to create a course and training materials for producing more of these specialists in the future. this article also draws on two research projects organised by extant which is the uk’s leading professional performing arts company of visually impaired people. although the focus of this article is on live ad (principally theatre), aspects of subtitling and screen ad are briefly considered. 1.1. extant’s research projects the first project called enhance was based around extant’s tour of the play the chairs (ionesco, 1958) the tour programme was delivered with venue partners in manchester and birmingham and included supported attendance and development workshops, to encourage participation by visually impaired audiences, and a series of staff development workshops, to support the delivery of an improved experience for visually impaired audiences and artists (fortnum & hall, 2016, p. 2). the mainstay of the enhance programme was support for the companies to develop and deliver audiointroductions and touch tours for six productions, reflecting multiple genres of live performance from puppetry to opera. the second project the integrated access inquiry (cavallo & fryer, 2018) comprised qualitative interviews with 20 theatremakers representing 15 companies across the uk with experience of making their performances accessible to all, and responses from a small focus group of ad users. 2. accessibility greco (2016, p. 23) defines media accessibility (ma) as “the research area dealing with theories, practices, technologies and instruments that provide access to media products and environments for people who cannot, or cannot properly, access content in its original form.” issue could be taken with the word “properly” as it carries with it an implication that there is but one normative interpretation. this would seem to lie at the heart of objections to ad as it is currently practiced, which udo & fels (2009) call conventional but here is termed traditional ad (tad). discussing their creative approach to shakespeare’s hamlet in which the director and describer journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 172 worked together to produce an ad in iambic pentameter, spoken by the character horatio, udo & fels suggest “a conventional audio description would have taken a more objective, less interpretative approach, relaying factual information about the set, costumes, and characters’ actions” (2009, p.8). despite calls to the contrary (fryer & freeman, 2014; ramos, 2015) it would seem that tad is still more intent on “providing visual information than catering to the feel of the scene.” (udo & fels, 2009, p. 8). actor, ad user and researcher, amelia cavallo (2015) calls this approach occularcentric and it could be argued that a practice designed to be inclusive, becomes exclusive, by presenting information from a sighted viewpoint. this echoes what hannah thompson (2015) calls a problematic irony that “ad is designed to help give blind users independence, yet blind [people] are reliant on choices made by sighted describers” (2015, para 8). 2.1. traditional ad traditional ad is typified by five characteristics: it is exclusive; neutral; non-auteur; third-party and post hoc. as such, tad anchors one extreme of a theoretical spectrum with integrated ad at the other end of it and is unlikely to reflect ad as it is practiced in the real world. instead it captures ad as it is perceived by theatre makers and by some ad users (cavallo & fryer, 2018; lopez, kearney & hofstadter, 2018). addressing these characteristics in turn: tad is exclusive in the sense that it has to be listened to via a headset and is therefore not available to the whole audience. this contravenes one of the principles of universal design (ud), that a product should “be useable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design” (connell et al., 1997)i; tad urges describers to adopt a neutral approach to word choice and delivery that some users find dull, as one partially sighted ad user expressed it: “literal description is too boring. i don’t like boring voices, so i need emotional connection as well” (cavallo & fryer, 2018, p. 21). tad is independent in the sense that decisions about content (content selection and the choice of words to describe it) are taken by the describers in collaboration with each other, rather than with members of the artistic team (naraine, whitfield & fels, 2018). when the process is explained, doubts have been raised in users’ minds as to the reliability of this third-party source of information (lopez, kearney & hofstadter, 2018). the use of external, independent describers has led to frustration on the part of some directors. artistic director of uk disabled theatre company graeae, jenny sealey objects to “some person coming in, watching the show, writing a script, and coming back and doing it.” she asks, “where was their real understanding of the visceral process of making that theatre?” (cavallo & fryer, 2018, p. 45). it is an approach that is evidently non-auteur. it is also post-hoc, created after the event. in addition, tad is perceived to be rule bound even though guidelines largely refer to screen ad rather than the ad of live events (whitfield & fels, 2013). the adlab guidelines (remael, reviers & vercauteren, 2015, 3.4.1) devote a brief section to the description of theatre, but when it comes to scripting, these largely refer to advice for screen ad. the guidelines advocate a limited amount of collaboration yet fall short of condoning ad the independent audio describer is dead: long live audio description! 173 as an artistic process, as advocated by theatre makers such as amanda redvers rowe of liverpool’s collective encounters who worries “about traditional modes of ad getting set in stone. it’s an artistic process that needs to be interrogated.” (cavallo & fryer, 2018, p. 38). 2.2. integrated ad integrated ad (iad) comprises the opposite characteristics (fryer, 2018) having evolved in response to the perceived deficits of tad outlined above. it is conceived from the start of the creative process with the full support and involvement of the artistic team (cavallo & fryer, 2018). citing cavallo, fryer (2018) suggests that iad should be considered less as a neutral way of conveying the source text and more as a creative tool, with the aim of “connecting both audience and performer to each other and the artistic content of a piece in a positive way” (cavallo, 2015, p. 133). this was the approach taken by graeae, who describe themselves as “pioneers [of] a radical dramatic language by exploring the ‘aesthetics of access’, creatively embedding a range of tools such as audio description and sign language from the very beginning of the artistic process” (graeae.org, n.d.). for example, graeae’s wheelchair dancing troupe, the rhinestone rollers features an able-bodied caller, whose character name is studley dudley. like the dancers, he wears line-dancing gear, in his case denims, a rhinestone-studded belt and a stetson. he is very much part of the act. he is also an audio describer (willie elliott) who like many other describers turned to description after or in tandem with a career in actingii. by “calling” the dance moves studley keeps blind, as well as sighted members of the audience and indeed members of the cast, up to speed with what is going on. it is ad but in a style that is so utterly in keeping with the performance that the sighted audience is unaware that they are listening to ad. 2.3. strategies of integration the describer-as-character approach, embodied by studley dudley, took the form of adding descriptive lines for a pre-existing character in the canadian production of shakespeare’s hamlet (udo & fels, 2009) mentioned above. this shows that iad is neither limited to the uk nor suitable only for newly-devised performances but can also be used for pre-existing plays. this strategy was also adopted for a 2018 production by ramps on the moon of timberlake wertenbaker’s play our country’s good (1998). by contrast fingersmiths’ 2018 tour of john godber’s comedy up ‘n’ under (1984) inserted the describer as a supplementary character (a sports commentator) in keeping with, rather than integral to the text. in this production, the ad was still closed so that ad users listened to it via a headset, even though the describer-as-character was in full view. describer willie elliott (cavallo & fryer 2018, p. 35) explains the practical implications of describing from the stage: because it’s all about rugby there’s a conceit that i'm a sports commentator so i already have a big headset with a mic taped inside it – a radio mic – and in one of my pockets i've got journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 174 a transmitter with a mute switch so that’s on and off and on and off all through the show. and even at one point when i'm commentating with a handheld microphone in one hand to the whole audience i take it away and switch on my audio description in my pocket and i’m back and forth so it's quite complicated; it is a bit like patting your head and rubbing your stomachiii. and at the end of the piece there is a rugby match. the writer john godber was very detailed about what happens in the match, so i’ve been able to lift that and use it as commentary and just change little bits to make it in the present and change the style of the writing, so it becomes, you know-sports commentary rather than just stage directions. it is very detailed and the director has used that detail to choreograph the game. so for me it has just been a case of lifting it out. maria oshodi, ceo of extant outlines a range of ways ad has been integrated into their productions, some of them non-verbal: we’ve integrated access and audio description into scripts, so we’ve worked when we’ve been creating drafts of scripts to have an awareness that things might need to be described.iv we have done it with sound designs that reflect the lighting designs, so if we have a mood that changes in the lighting we reflect that in the sound. it’s not described as such, but it creates a sense of the atmosphere through the sound. we’ve done it through performers describing themselves, through performers describing other performers, so it’s either first or second person. we’ve done it (through) call and response with audiences and […] enlisted the audience to join in to find ways of describing things. (cavallo & fryer, 2018, p. 36) oshodi shows that one strategy used in iad is changing the tense of the description, abandoning the injunction to describe in the third person – a tense that gives an illusion of neutrality. without reopening the subjective/objective debate, suffice it to point out that as cavallo (2015) notes when describing herself in her role in the extant show burlesque “just the simple act of putting the ad into first person speech suddenly gave it a new sense of power and control.” (p. 127). a variety of tenses were used in moon, a dance/circus piece for children based on a story by hans christian andersen. the ad was created by the author with 2faced dance, a company based in hereford, uk. in this instance the ad was written by the describer with input from the dancers from the perspective of the moon, who swung in an aerial hoop above the performance space for most of the show. the moon was already scripted to speak directly to the audience at the start of the work and to exchange words with the young boy he befriends, so this was continued in the description which was created towards the end of the rehearsal process. at times the moon directs the boy, at others he reflects on the boy’s actions in the form of a running commentary. as children often use this type of self-narrative, describing what they are doing as they are playing, it was considered in keeping with the piece, as well as assisting anyone in the audience who might find it difficult to observe the action directly. a short excerpt is given below (example 1). the independent audio describer is dead: long live audio description! 175 it includes some vocabulary options so that the dancer could choose whichever term he felt best suited either his own way of speaking or that of his character. example 1. excerpt from moon. the ad was voiced by the dancer playing the moon, recorded and mixed into the soundtrack. this was to improve audibility for outdoor performances and to save the breath of the dancer for his physical feats. 3. access and power it is no accident that disabled-led companies such as graeae and fingersmiths have been leading the way in iad, as it is in the spirit of “nothing about us, without us” which was the rallying call of people with mental and physical disabilities in south africa in the 1980s and 1990s (rowland, 2004). jenny sealey, who is deaf, is explicit about the desire to regain artistic control over practices that have traditionally been delegated to access professionals: that was the beginning of graeae’s journey of exploring how you might use ad as an artistic tool, access as well, but something that was led by the art in the same way that sign language was informed by the art. it also meant we could have more control over it. (cavallo & fryer, 2018, p. 45) from a user perspective, cavallo complains that tad dictates the interpretation of how visual information should be perceived “regardless of where those receiving the service wish to place their focus” (2015, p. 127). she adds that tad “tightly controls what information is considered important and what is deemed irrelevant”. these concerns about control chime with the ideas of gal & irvine (1995, p. 995) who argue that “there is no view from nowhere, no gaze that is not positioned.” journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 176 3.1. power in translation access practices such as ad, subtitling and signing have long been recognised as forms of translation (e.g., díaz cintas & anderman 2008). fawcett (1995) suggests that “translation in all its forms is frequently the site of a variety of power plays between the actors involved” (p. 177). as szarkowska (2005, section 3) puts it “translation is often seen as a form of conquest.” access practices in the uk, and arguably latterly in europe, grew up as a result of the supreme power, the state or super state, placing legal obligations on service providers to make reasonable adjustments to make their services accessible (european accessibility act, forthcoming; un committee on the rights of persons with disabilities, 2014; uk equality act, 2010). the concerns about tad and the development of iad show that there are more stakeholders in ad from a power perspective than simply users and describers. fryer (2019) lists eight stakeholders with respect to ad quality: • ad users; the performance venue; • the law; • the venue’s funders; • the description agency; • the describer (student or professional); • adlab pro (or any course provider); • the source text (st) creator(s). for the current working practices of theatre describers, and by extension for describer training, the most significant from this list are the st creators i.e. members of the artistic team, who as demonstrated above are taking an increasing interest in how they and/or their work is described. 3.2. enhanced ad, power and partiality as stated above, one type of power that the translator wields is the ability to decide which part of a text to emphasise. tymoczko (2000) calls this partiality arguing that for literary translations, this is “often demonstrable in the paratextual materials that surround translations, including introductions, footnotes, reviews, literary criticism and so forth” (tymoczko, 2000, p. 24). both tad and iad can be partial in this sense as they expand the st by adding what extant refers to as enhanced ad with the addition of audio introductions (ais) and touch tours (totos) (fortnum & hall, 2016). extant’s research demonstrates that these are the aspects that can be provided by the company relatively cheaply, with or without direct involvement of audio describers. they are also highly appreciated by ad users (eardley-weaver, 2014; fortnum & hall, 2016). however, honig (1997, p. 15) believes that “the more a translator explains text, the less s/he can hope for a user response which is even remotely similar to that of the st [source text] the independent audio describer is dead: long live audio description! 177 user.” while both iad and tad add to the st in this way, iad goes further in actively altering the st, as in the types of integration outlined above. yet this type of interaction between the ad and the st is not necessarily negative. for his hip hop dance company, rationale, nathan geering explains how he might extend a sequence of dance moves to give the describer enough time to explain what is happening. he describes ad as “a key factor in determining our choreography” (cavallo & fryer, 2018, p. 35). is this a case of the tail wagging the dog? or is it a pragmatic response to easing the timing constraints of tad? the answer to that depends on the status accorded the st. 4. abusive translation it might be argued that tad evolved to avoid transforming the st in a manner considered to be abusive (nornes, 1999). nornes was elaborating ideas advanced by philip e. lewis (1985) in his analysis of inherent differences between the languages of english and french. lewis was frustrated by the “tendency for the translation of essayistic texts to concentrate on meaning to the exclusion of texture and materiality” (cited in nornes 1999, p. 18). discussing avt (audiovisual translation) nornes argues that subtitles are abusive because they violently transform the st. what the user receives is not a version of the original, nornes suggests but “an experience of translation” (1999, p.18). as there is no way around this, he suggests the best approach is to embrace it, aiming for a “strong, forceful translation that values experimentation, tampers with usage, seeks to match the polyvalencies or plurivocities or expressive stresses of the original by producing its own.” (lewis, 1985, p. 16) this is certainly the approach taken by iad whereby access is seen “as a catalyst for creativity” (cavallo, 2015, p. 126). given that parts of the original can only be accessed by ad users via the translation, iad aims to make that translation as engaging, stimulating or enjoyable as is the original for those who can access it directly. this marks a step change from regarding the original as sacred and not to be tampered with, to regarding the original as setting the standard and type of experience to be achieved. 4.1. suppression for subtitling, given the impossibility of reproducing every line of dialogue verbatim, nornes sees one of its greatest abuses as suppression, whereby the translator decides words to leave out. for tad, that same power is currently concentrated in the hands of the describers who do not “say what they see” but say what they have the vocabulary for, what they notice, or what they have time to mention. in the author’s experience service providers in the form of venues and producers are increasingly monitoring (with the intention of suppressing) how the describer chooses to describe characters, especially with regards to physical characteristics including age, build, skin-colour and ethnicity. this is returned to below. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 178 4.2. epochs of translation the transition from describer-led to artist-led description could be seen as inevitable; certainly it travels a well-trodden path. nornes (1999) uses the example of japanese subtitles to outline three eras of translation. he posits “the first era of subtitles brings the foreign text to the spectators on their own domestic terms” (p. 28). in the second era: the translator pretends to move toward the foreign, dwell there, and bring its wonders to the waiting crowds. this era is replete with rules designed to guarantee a translation's quality, but what this regulation accomplishes is an appropriation of the source text and its thorough domestication. the rules also enforce a territorialisation and professionalization of translation, producing stars and experts and excluding all alternatives (pp. 28-29). the concerns of the theatre makers and ad users interviewed for the integrated access inquiry (cavallo & fryer, 2018) show that it is in this second epoch that tad is perceived to reside. this for nornes, is the corrupt mode of translation, because these (translators) claim to bring their…spectators to a pleasurable experience of the foreign, but in fact they please only themselves through these impoverished translations. as for their audiences, they are kept ignorant of the conspiracy and the riches that remain hidden from the […] experience (1999, p. 29). nornes goes on to identify a third epoch, a golden age: in the third epoch … this translation does not present a foreign divested of its otherness but strives to translate from and within the place of the other by an inventive approach to language use and the steady refusal of rules (1999, p. 29). this is where iad is to be found with its emphasis on creative approaches developed in collaboration with the artistic team. in a reference to the traditional benshi whose job was to explain foreign films to japanese audiences, nornes cites tatsuo (1939, p.51) about subtitling in japan: subtitlers must strive to be like the benshi, which is to say become one with the fabric of the film, so they may speak directly to their audience in the deepest sense… above all, their subtitles should not be direct translations of foreign words, but strive for a perfect match with the japanese soul.” (nornes, 1999, p. 27). it could be argued that as part of the fabric of the production, integrated ad becomes one with the st and not separate from it, such that any alteration cannot be seen as abusive. this is the attitude taken by the small companies mentioned above. yet iad is not limited to small the independent audio describer is dead: long live audio description! 179 companies. the new wolsey theatre is a mid-scale touring venue in ipswich, uk. sarah holmes, its chief executive, agrees that ad should be seen as simply another creative tool for directors to use. she exhorts directors to: get excited about the addition that you're getting to your… i call it the palette. a creative team has a palette to work from and they've got very good at sets and costumes and lighting and then they introduced audio visual projection. that was a new thing in the palette. when you think about [ad] as one of those – it's something else for you to work with.” (cavallo & fryer, 2018, p. 45). if iad also meets the needs of people with sight loss better than tad, it is to be welcomed as perhaps an inevitable part of the evolution of translation. 5. ad and user needs qualitative interviews with artistic directors suggest that fulfilling user needs by providing access is their primary motivation (cavallo & fryer, 2018). for example, sarah holmes explains that integrated access for her company means her theatre “taking its responsibility seriously to create opportunity for everyone.” (cavallo & fryer, 2018, p. 12). while nathan geering says, “integrated access is literally just about making sure that everybody has an equal opportunity to experience our productions” (cavallo & fryer, 2018, p. 12). if everyone agrees about the primary purpose of ad, what remains contentious is the best way in which those needs can be met. while the perceived shortcomings of tad have been made clear, there is a danger that integrated approaches risk prioritising art over access (cavallo & fryer, 2018). in other words, the access baby risks being thrown out with the artistic bathwater. 5.1. describer skills and competences in iad, it is the role of the describer to preserve the access element using their knowledge of the needs of people with sight loss (psl). current ad teaching has been found to be inclusive in that many trainers involve psl in the training process and the majority of courses “also focus on accessibility issues and making students aware of the needs of the visually impaired” (adlab pro, 2017a, p.34). extant’s research suggests that venues and producers respect this aspect of describer expertise, together with describers’ understanding of how the ad fits around the st. one venue experimented with making the tad available for every performance by recording it. while the arguments for and against recording ad for live events is beyond the scope of this article, they found that members of the technical crew not trained in ad found it hard to get a feel for its requirements: journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 180 david (new wolsey theatre): …our dsm (deputy stage manager) as well as cueing lights and sound and everything else […] had to also cue the ad. and the feedback from them was […] they didn’t feel a cue. they can kinda feel there’s a lighting cue, they can feel when the scene changes happen [...] but for ad cues it is very strange. she almost didn't quite understand or have feeling for what was going so… sarah h (new wolsey theatre): so that's when we got our first professional ad team in (cavallo & fryer 2018, p. 32). 5.2. describer profile and expertise as argued above, tad, situated in the second epoch of translation, is perceived to be rule-bound. nornes points out that “the rules also enforce a territorialisation and professionalization of translation, producing stars and experts and excluding all alternatives” (nornes, 1999, pp. 28-29). so who are the describers that star in tad? finding the answer to that question has been the focus of the second intellectual output of adlab pro, the pro being short for profile definition. according to the report put together by elisa perego and her team at the university of trieste (adlab pro, 2017b), up until now “little is known about who audio describers are, and there is no clear knowledge on whether and how they received training and how training is organized” (2017b, p. 1). to that end, adlab pro circulated a questionnaire (io2) that was completed by 183 participants: 65 describers, 100 ad users and 18 service providers. perego concludes that “the majority of audio describers are professional, trained and paid workers” (adlab pro, 2017b, 2.3.1) prized for their “world knowledge” as well as for their knowledge of: the target audience; ad principles, guidelines and standards; language and linguistics; media accessibility; scriptwriting; audio visual texts and multimodality (listed in order of importance) (adlab pro, 2017b, 4.2). the particular competences that the professional, trained describers could supply to the new wolsey theatre in the example above are referred to in the io1 report as the “technical aspects” of ad. they comprise editing, timing and text compression and are ranked fourth in importance of specific ad competences by 86 existing teachers and trainers (adlab pro, 2017a, p. 6). top of the list was content selection i.e. “choosing the most relevant information to describe” (adlab pro, 2017a, p. 6). 5.3. accuracy, freedom and the describer scholars have noted that what is chosen will vary according to the function of the st (e.g. matamala & remael, 2015). vermeer (1989) suggests it is up to the translator to decide the function of the text but that the best translator will make that decision in consultation with the client. compared with tad, iad shifts the weight of that responsibility from the translator (describer) to the st creators. the artistic team is more likely to be the direct client in iad, the independent audio describer is dead: long live audio description! 181 than in tad where the describer is likely to be employed by the venue, either directly or via an agency. 5.4. describer training the current model of describer training encourages describers to see themselves as independent decision makers. for example, the adlab guidelines (remael, reviers & vercauteren, 2015) urge the describer to “determine” 89 times and “decide” 102 times as well as “choose” 7 times. in an era of iad, training should make students aware that the language of their description will be created with input from the company or the st creators, who may monitor the register of the ad so that it echoes more closely the register of the piece and reflects the sensitivities of the company’s worldview i.e. the source culture. the responsibility for language choice will not lie solely on the describer’s shoulders suggesting that soft skills such as teamwork, which is currently ranked 7th in terms of importance (adlab pro 2017a, p.30), would benefit from a greater emphasis in training. the adlab guidelines currently indicate collaboration with “audio describers, voice talents or voice actors, sound technicians and users” (remael et al., 2015, section 1). this list should be expanded to embrace members of the artistic team, in particular the director (naraine, whitfield & fels, 2017). adlab pro’s survey of current training provision (2017a) also found that soft skills such as self-development were rated as slightly more important than teamwork. this balance should shift in future courses in recognition of afm and iad. the danger posed by the prioritisation of artistic concerns over access means that the describer might need to battle for the rights of the ad users, particularly in the light of pressure for language to be made more politically correct (pc) mentioned above. marques defines “political correctness” as the avoidance of “all expressions or actions that could possibly be perceived to exclude, marginalise or insult people who are socially disadvantaged or discriminated against” (2009, p. 257). excluding “sensitive” details about body-shape, skin-colour, age and ethnicity risks reducing the amount of descriptive information available to psl compared with what is visible to the sighted audience. describers and providers were asked to rate the importance that describers be assertive in fighting for the quality of ad provision. describers ranked it fourth in terms of importance, compared with service providers who only ranked it 8th (adlab pro, 2017b, p. 30). this imbalance suggests that describers play an advocacy role that has not yet been recognised. 5.5. ad workflow another impact on practice and training comes in workflow. writing a description already takes place over a longer timespan for the ad of live events compared with screen ad. this is extended even further in iad by involving describers in the planning stage and the rehearsal process. thus, iad avoids the criticism encountered by other modes of avt as expressed by romero-fresco & fryer (2018) advocating for afm strategies. currently, as they point out “translation and accessibility journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 182 are relegated to the distribution stage of the filmmaking process and outsourced to translators who work with tight deadlines, small remuneration and no access to the creative team” (p.12). by moving accessibility into the development stage of the process, all of this changes, as translators can influence the timeline and possibly the budget. certainly, they can help the creative team think about these things in advance, taking on some of the role given to the director of accessibility and translation that has been proposed for afm (branson, 2017). another conclusion of the iai is that “the best access is tailor-made for each show. this includes casting an appropriate access professional.” (cavallo & fryer, 2018, p. 10). furthermore, there is concern that “the current pool of describers is not sufficiently diverse” (cavallo & fryer, 2018, p. 10). nathan geering clarifies that “generally audio describers seem to be in their 40s 50s and 60s” (cavallo & fryer, 2018, p. 39). this is likely to reflect the situation in the uk, where description has been practiced since the mid-1990s (fryer, 2016), rather than being more broadly applicable. however, it would nonetheless suggest that initiatives such as adlab pro are more necessary than ever. the training should also incorporate information about alternative ways of working. this might include being aware of the current guidelines so that describers understand what “rules” they are breaking and why. in addition the background and existing skillset of potential candidates might need to be reconsidered. currently adlab pro (forthcoming) recommends that potential students already possess the following competencies: • linguistic and textual skills (this includes, for instance, a perfect use of the mother tongue, a command of style figures like metaphors and similes, the ability to use language that sparks the imagination, write a coherent text etc.). • vocal skills: a clear and pleasant reading voice is required for some modules; • transferrable skills/soft skills not specific to ad: efficient work organisation and time management, ethics, self-development, teamwork, problem solving, communicative and interpersonal skills, the ability to cope with time pressure, knowing when and being willing to call for expert or peer help, dealing with feedback and working to a deadline. • computer skills: database management, word processor, etc. the evolution of iad suggests that performance experience would be of huge benefit for students training to describe live events. this would give more companies the option of placing the describeras-character on stage. the independent audio describer is dead: long live audio description! 183 6. conclusion the title of this article suggests that while the appetite for ad is strong, the role of the describer is changing. no longer is the describer autonomous and left to their own devices, with the power to decide on the purpose and style of their translation, aiming for neutrality, taking guidelines into account. instead, the description is one more creative aspect of the product, to be determined by the creative team with the impact on user experience uppermost in their minds. the expertise of the describer is recognised in terms of knowledge of their audience and selecting from the range of visual information available. describer skills and competencies are still required as ad transitions into this third epoch. acknowledgements this research was supported by the erasmus+ programme of the european union: project name adlab pro; project number: 2016-1-it02-ka203-024311. the information and views set out in this chapter are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of the european union. neither the european union institutions and bodies nor any person acting on their behalf may be held responsible for the use which may be made of the information contained therein. biographical note louise fryer, phd, was the bbc’s describer for the pilot tv audio description service (audetel), the accessibility advisor for the film notes on blindness (2016) and helps develop integrated access for film and live 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(2010). the rogue poster-children of universal design: closed captioning and audio description. journal of engineering design, 21(2-3), 207-221. un committee on the rights of persons with disabilities. (2014). general comment no. 2, article 9: accessibility. retrieved from http://daccessods.un.org/access.nsf/get?open&ds=crpd/c/gc/2&lang=e vermeer, h. j. (1989). skopos and commission in translational action. in a. chesterman (ed.), readings in translation theory (pp. 173–87). helsinki: oy finn lectura ab. wertenbaker, t. (1998). our country’s good. methuen drama. bloomsbury. london. http://shakespeare,mit.edu/hamlet/full.html http://translationjournal.net/journal/32film.htm https://www.theguardian.com/culture-professionals-network/2015/aug/03/arts-change-attitude-blindness-blind-creations https://www.theguardian.com/culture-professionals-network/2015/aug/03/arts-change-attitude-blindness-blind-creations http://daccess-ods.un.org/access.nsf/get?open&ds=crpd/c/gc/2&lang=e http://daccess-ods.un.org/access.nsf/get?open&ds=crpd/c/gc/2&lang=e journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 186 i for a further discussion of ad and ud see udo & fels (2010). ii of the 65 describers who responded to a questionnaire circulated by adlab pro (io1, 2017), more than 10 (15%) reported having been to acting school or included theatre studies in their educational background (multiple answers were possible). iii an abbreviation of an english idiomatic expression referring to two things that are hard to do simultaneously. iv an ellipsis […] has been introduced where repetition or an irrelevant word or comment has been cut from the transcription, in the manner of an edited radio interview. university college london abstract traditional audio description (ad) is giving way to integrated audio description in which media accessibility is no longer an add-on but built in from the start in collaboration with the artistic team. as directors and producers take a greater interes... citation: fryer, l., (2018). the independent audio describer is dead: long live audio description! journal of audiovisual translation, 1(1), 170-186. editor(s): a. jankowska & p. romero-fresco received: january 22, 2018 accepted: june 30, 2018 published: november 15, 2018 copyright: ©2018 fryer. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license. this allows for unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are... 1. introduction 1.1. extant’s research projects the first project called enhance was based around extant’s tour of the play the chairs (ionesco, 1958) the tour programme was delivered with venue partners in manchester and birmingham and included supported attendance and development workshops, to encourage participation by visually impaired audiences, and a series of staff development workshops, to s... the mainstay of the enhance programme was support for the companies to develop and deliver audiointroductions and touch tours for six productions, reflecting multiple genres of live performance from puppetry to opera. the second project the integrated... 2. accessibility 2.1. traditional ad 2.2. integrated ad 2.3. strategies of integration 3. access and power 3.1. power in translation 3.2. enhanced ad, power and partiality 4. abusive translation 4.1. suppression 4.2. epochs of translation 5. ad and user needs 5.1. describer skills and competences 5.2. describer profile and expertise 5.3. accuracy, freedom and the describer 5.4. describer training 5.5. ad workflow 6. conclusion acknowledgements biographical note references 64 cross-national research in audiovisual translation: some methodological considerations elisa perego university of trieste _________________________________________________________ abstract cross-national research is a research methodology that aims to make comparisons across countries. nowadays, cross-national research is growing, especially in some social science disciplines such as sociology, political science, geography, and economics. however, it has not yet steadily entered the field of audiovisual translation (avt). despite its theoretical and methodological challenges (hoffmeyer-zlotnik & harkness, 2005), cross-national research could be used successfully in avt to investigate long-debated issues. these issues include, but are not restricted to, the reception of a given avt method or strategy, and the different ways in which the translation process is accomplished in different countries. in this contribution, i will outline both theoretical and methodological debates in comparative cross-national research and apply them to avt. after that, i will briefly present the results of a cross-national study (perego et. al, 2016) designed to analyse the subtitle reception comparing the way the process takes place in different countries with different avt traditions. the discussion of the study will contribute to assessing the potential strengths of cross-national research in avt, thus offering indications on future methodological developments and enabling future and more rigorous international comparisons. key words: cross-national research, eu project, methodology, subtitling, familiarity  eperego@units.it; https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6075-4371 citation: perego, e. (2018). crossnational research in audiovisual translation: some methodological considerations. journal of audiovisual translation, 1(1), 64-80. editor(s): a. jankowska & j. pedersen received: january 22, 2018 accepted: june 30, 2018 published: november 15, 2018 funding: university of trieste research fund fra 2013 and adlab pro project. copyright: ©2018 perego. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license. this allows for unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6075-4371 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6075-4371 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ cross-national research in audiovisual translation: some methodological considerations 65 1. cross-national research: definition and applications cross-national research is a technique of analysing an event or process that takes place within a country, while comparing the way that event or process takes place across many different countries and societies. in other words, it is a research methodology that aims to compare the manifestation of particular issues or phenomena in different socio-cultural settings – using the same research instruments to seek explanations for similarities and differences – and to gain a greater awareness of a given reality (hantrais, 1995; hantrais & steen, 2007; harzing, reiche & pudelko, 2012; hoffmeyer-zlotnik & harkness, 2005; jürgen & hoffmeyer-zlotnik, 2003). the methods adopted in cross-national research are no different from those used for domestic (within-nation) approaches. however, cross-national research faces additional methodological complexities which requires special attention to establish equivalence in terms of adopted design, sample, stimuli, and measures (behr & scholz, 2011; hantrais, 1995; harzing & reiche, 2007). nowadays, cross-national research is growing, especially in some social science disciplines such as sociology, political science, geography, and economics. however, it is not yet firmly established in the field of audiovisual translation (avt). within-nation approaches to specific translation problems or translation reception questions are still favoured, as demonstrated by empirical studies that have been conducted quite extensively, especially in some countries. regarding subtitling, mono-national empirical research has been conducted widely, especially in belgium, italy, poland, spain, switzerland, and belgium (cf. the works of géry d'ydewalle and his team but also, e.g., krejtz, szarkowska, & krejtz, 2013; kruger, szarkowska, & krejtz, 2015; orrego-carmona, 2015; perego, del missier, porta & mosconi, 2010; perego, del missier & bottiroli, 2015; perego et al., 2016; szarkowska, 2010; wissmath, weibel, & groner, 2009), as well as more recently in the us (hinkin, harris, & miranda, 2014). regarding audio description for the blind and visually impaired, mono-national empirical research has been conducted in poland (krejtz, szarkowska, krejtz, walczak & duchowski, 2012), in italy (perego, 2016) and in the uk (fryer & freeman, 2012, 2013, 2014); even the first surveys and empirical studies in this area date back to the early 1990s (frazier & coutinho-johnson, 1995; peli, fine, & labianca, 1996; schmeidler & kirchner, 2001). in fact, collective research initiatives in the field of avt using a cross-national perspective do exist, and most, if not all, have been implemented in eu projects such as the pear tree, audio description: lifelong access for the blind (adlab, http://www.adlabproject.eu/home/), digital television for all (dtv4all), hybrid broadcast broadband for all (hbb4all, http://pagines.uab.cat/hbb4all/), accessible culture and training (act, http://pagines.uab.cat/act/), audio description: a laboratory for the development of a new professional profile (adlab pro, https://www.adlabpro.eu/) and interlingual live subtitling for access (ilsa, http://www.ilsaproject.eu/) projects. in the studies conducted as part of the project activities, participants from different european countries were asked to perform the same activity with data then subjected to comparative analyses to uncover similarities http://www.adlabproject.eu/home/ http://pagines.uab.cat/hbb4all/ http://pagines.uab.cat/act/ https://www.adlabpro.eu/ http://www.ilsaproject.eu/ journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 66 and differences in the way certain tasks were performed by representatives of the languages and cultures concerned. taylor & mauro’s (2012) pear tree project was carried out internationally at 11 universities in europe (france, germany, great britain, greece, ireland, italy, belgium, poland, and spain), the united states, and the republic of south africa (involving afrikaans-speaking participants). based on a research vehicle devised by chafe (1980), participants were shown a short video clip without dialogue and were asked to write down what they had seen. the project was designed with the aim of enabling an intercultural comparison of the film descriptions in order to study verbalisation modalities across languages and cultures (gronek, gorius & gerzymisch-arbogast, 2012; mazur & kruger, 2012; taylor & mauro, 2012). the dtv4all project was a european venture designed to facilitate the provision of access services on digital television across the european union. focusing, among other things, on subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing (sdh), it produced the first volume to deal specifically with the quality of sdh in europe, with contributions from the uk, spain, italy, poland, denmark, france and germany (romero-fresco, 2015). in the volume, several aspects of the reception of sdh involve populations living in different countries. the hbb4all project included 12 partners from several complementary fields (universities, tv channels and broadcasters, research institutes, and small and medium enterprises) that were experts in media accessibility. through testing in different countries and eu languages, the project examined the reactions to the delivery of tv content via pc, tablet, smartphone and tv with an array of communication solutions such as subtitling, audio description, clean audio, and many customizable features. the adlab project was designed to create effective and reliable guidelines for the practice of audio description that could be usable throughout europe. best practices and recommendations were established through research and field work, while also relying on testing with blind end-users. testing was carried out in six european countries (including belgium, germany, italy, poland, portugal and spain) using a carefully prepared questionnaire to be completed after the viewing of different ad versions of a vehicle film, inglourious basterds (bender & tarantino, 2009), chosen because of its complex content and narrative. the questionnaire matrix in english was annotated and translated to ascertain the levels of comprehension and enjoyment of different types of audio description, and were then presented to linguistically and culturally diverse blind audiences (adlab, 2013; maszerowska, matamala, & orero, 2014). based on the efficacy of the methodology employed by replicating the partnership, core activities and experimental design, currently funded avt projects in the eu have used an empirical approach encompassing a cross-national perspective which have benefitted from comparative research; three relevant instances are represented by act, adlab pro and ilsa. all projects are financed by the european union under the erasmus+ programme, key action 2 – strategic partnerships, and besides methodology, they share a strong focus on media accessibility in diverse forms. the act project aims to promote equal opportunities and accessibility to cultural events across countries. it also proposes the definition of a new professional profile of media accessibility expert/manager for the scenic arts, as well as various types of associated training activities (orero, 2017). the adlab pro (audio description: a laboratory for the development of a new professional profile) project will develop and define a curriculum cross-national research in audiovisual translation: some methodological considerations 67 for ensuring professional europe-wide ad implementation in all cultural and media sectors through the creation of training materials (perego, 2017). the ilsa project aims to design, develop, test and recognise the first training course for interlingual subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing, and to produce a protocol for the implementation of this service in three real-life scenarios (such as tv, classroom and parliament). testing or surveying in all partner countries is a key defining step of each project because it can rely on cross-national data, offer a broad and comprehensive perspective on several issues, and compare the stance of respondents within a different cultural and linguistic background. a whole intellectual output (io) – an eu-specific expression referring to a working activity to be accomplished over a precise timeframe and leading to tangible results – of adlab pro was based on comparable feedback gained by respondents from 26 countries (adlab pro, 2017b). io2 focused on setting out a list of skills and competencies needed to train audio description professionals to produce the necessary data for project partners who are in charge of designing a course curriculum and producing training materials to form the figure of the audio describer. given the international nature of this professional figure, it was important to gain as wide a perspective as possible and compare responses that came from different realities. all projects (act, adlab pro and ilsa) included an initial phase based on the collection of international and cross-national data through survey questionnaire in order to investigate current training practices in terms of accessibility, audio description and interlingual live subtitling respectively, as well as offer a snapshot of the situation in europe. the survey results represented an invaluable starting point “for obtaining a clear understanding of what is common to all training programmes and what is still required in the provision of a professional curriculum” (adlab pro, 2017a, p. 2). 2. merits and challenges of cross-national research these instances of comparative research in the field of avt bring us to the various merits of crossnational research. these include the possibility of uncovering similarities and differences when studying the same phenomenon; to come to a deeper understanding of a given product or process; to replicate experiments in countries with the desirable effect of working with greater or different population samples and therefore to generalize results; to use the same research toolkit in different countries; to strengthen research networks or to create new ones; and finally, to establish more comprehensive and coherent theoretical frameworks that explain how specific sets of phenomena work. these are all invaluable assets in the field of avt, which is still working to find its way methodologically (orero et al., 2018). a cross-national experimental design could contribute to overcoming several weaknesses or inconsistencies which have long characterized and hindered avt research, such as recruitment difficulties, particularly with vulnerable users. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 68 the main strength of the adlab report on testing (adlab, 2013) was that it involved a large group of respondents (80 people with visual impairment and 77 sighted controls), a result of the collaboration and strong commitment from the research team. this is particularly relevant because it is rarely feasible to reach such a large group of participants in avt reception studies, especially when vulnerable audiences are involved. in the case of the adlab study, a large sample of respondents guaranteed that the preferences of all groups of people with visual impairment could be considered and compared in order to gain deeper understanding of their attitude towards ad in different national contexts with different avt traditions. choosing to set up a cross-national experiment or project is also beneficial in terms of partnership. in cross-national research projects, it is crucial to choose a consortium based on a diversification principle, which allows a blend of complementary organizations that combine several academic disciplines and perspectives into one activity. by drawing on a highly diversified combination of expertise, these projects also provide an example of real cooperation and networking, thus merging the traditional research boundaries in line with the principles of interdisciplinarity. furthermore, the languages and cultures involved can be numerous, to include both widely spoken and lesser-used languages from diverse families, covering a diversified array of cultural environments and traditions. overall, in the field of avt, cross-national research is particularly important as its results could lead to the creation of flexible and shareable guidelines, instead of rigid and prescriptive ones, for each avt method. as a result, avt practices across europe could be harmonized, and the training and practice of avt professionals could be based on a shared set of best practices and the real needs and preferences of end-users. this was made clear in the scope of both the adlab and the dtv4all projects. the cross-national studies conducted so far, however, seem to confirm that the audiovisual landscape and viewers' preferences are very heterogeneous and that overcoming the existing local norms is not easy nor necessary, given the current practice of many service providers that outsource translations to a single company who use similar standards for various markets. in fact, a common core and some shared approaches still exist along with national specificities, which need to be respected (romero-fresco, 2015). however, cross-national research can also pose some challenges. from a practical perspective, it is time-consuming and based on teamwork and collaboration, which falls outside the tradition of researchers in the field of humanities. from a methodological perspective, researchers are typically worried about the translation of research material; the comparability, reliability and validity of data; the harmonization of data and experimental procedures; and the differences in research traditions and cultural interference (behr & scholz, 2011; hoffmeyer-zlotnik & harkness, 2005; hantrais, 1995; harzing, 2007). the adlab (2013) report on testing exemplifies some of the major challenges that cross-national research in avt can encounter. in particular, the authors of the report stress the fact that testing was done in the local languages of the countries where the tests were administered. consequently, respondents were exposed to a translated version of the stimuli originally prepared in english (used as a pivot language, since the original ads were developed in german and dutch) and responded to questionnaires translated into local languages (dutch, cross-national research in audiovisual translation: some methodological considerations 69 german, italian, polish, portuguese, spanish) from english. as we will emphasise in the following sections of this paper, the translation of questionnaires is a central issue in cross-national research where “both a high-quality source questionnaire and high-quality translations are central to the overall comparability of survey data” (behr & scholz, 2011, p. 158). this was why the translation of the questionnaires was carried out collaboratively — to ensure that “the translated items measure what they [were] supposed to measure and that the equivalence to the source questionnaire [was] not lost because of a flawed translation” (behr & scholz, 2011, p. 159). more applied instances of cross-national research challenges will be presented in the next section, where further methodological considerations will stem from the description of a case study specifically conducted on the reception of subtitling. 3. a cross-national study on the reception of subtitling cross-national research was the guiding principle of the university of trieste research fund fra 2013 entitled, towards an empirical evaluation of audiovisual translation: a new integrated approach. the project aimed to study audiovisual translation from a receptive perspective and used a new field approach to identify the real and supposed advantages and disadvantages of specific forms of avt. it combined theoretical and methodological contributions from different disciplines such as translation, linguistics and psychology (perego, 2014). the university of trieste was the coordinating partner of the project, which also included a network of partners from the universities of antwerp, barcelona, pavia and warsaw. aware of the merits and the challenges of cross-national research, we set up a cross-national study on subtitle reception in order to assess whether cross-national commonalities or differences existed in the way subtitled products were used, processed and enjoyed, and in the way they shaped the preferences and future choices of users, depending on the familiarity they had with subtitles (perego et al., 2016). the study was carried out in four european countries (italy, spain, poland and belgium) with different avt traditions (dubbing, subtitling and voice-over) that were representative of different distribution and familiarity patterns for avt. according to the literature, italy and spain were dubbing countries, poland was a voice-over country and belgium was a subtitling country (danan, 1991; luyken, herbst, langham-brown, reid & spinhof, 1991). this, however, did not seem to reflect accurately the current situation described in more recent sources (chaume, 2012; kuipers, 2015; media consulting group, 2007, 2011; szarkowska & laskowska, 2015) and was only partially reflected in the viewing habits of the users participating in the study. as shown in figure 1, participants were asked to mark on a 7-point likert scale how frequently they used subtitles to access foreign av material. belgians and poles were the more frequent subtitle users, especially if compared to the italian group of participants, who only used subtitles occasionally. this latter figure confirmed that dubbing was not the only avt method accessed by the italian population, even in the recent past. both recent literature and the answers from the experiment indicated that participants seemed journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 70 to confirm a slow and steady shift of usage and preference towards subtitling being experienced in countries where other avt methods were originally favoured. this shift did not change the situation dramatically; italy and spain still used dubbing and poland still used voice-over, whereas belgium always only used subtitling. however, it suggested that it was no longer possible to talk about viewers that were completely unfamiliar with subtitles. figure 1. frequency of subtitle use declared by the participants (perego et al., 2016). for different reasons, ranging from cultural to economical, subtitles had taken over across all european countries thanks to new technologies and devices such as smartphones and smart tvs, thus setting aside the long-standing popularity of other forms of avt (o'sullivan, 2015). 3.1. materials and methodology the study involved 113 participants aged in their 20s. participants were undergraduate and postgraduate students of translation and interpreting, applied linguistics and psychology: 34 italians (26 females, 19-25 years); 26 spaniards (19 females, 20-30 years); 20 poles (14 females, 18-29 years); and 33 belgians (25 females, 19-26 years). the response rate differed slightly across countries, despite the study’s attempt to maximise it, which reflected a typical challenge of crossnational research (harzing et al., 2012). incentives such as ects and financial tokens were not used to increase response rate. low response rate often represents an issue in experimental research, even more so in the field of avt (orero et al., 2018). the final number of respondents was also impacted by different university selection and recruitment policies, such as restrictions on approaching students and difficulty in recruiting participants in other departments. a careful evaluation of the recruitment principles and procedures of all institutions involved, as well as possible local constraints, are therefore crucial to ensure qualitatively and quantitatively comparable samples, and consequently, comparable results in all countries involved. setting up a shared document on subject selection, recruitment and compensation would enable the research team to follow consistent protocols from the onset of the research, and when identifying participants cross-national research in audiovisual translation: some methodological considerations 71 to join the study. in the field of avt, however, established practices are in the making and still need to be fine-tuned in this respect (orero et al., 2018). the film used in the experiment was the critically-acclaimed caramel (toussaint & labaki, 2007), and described as “both an astute cultural study, and a charming comedic drama” (rotten tomatoes, 2008). set in beirut, the film was equally distant in a cultural point of view from all the countries involved in the research. the plot was not heavily marked, and it tackled themes that could still be taboo in muslim culture, such as pre-marital sex, adultery, unaccepted ageism and homosexuality. during the experiment, participants watched the 25-minute opening scene of the film in lebanese arabic (an unknown language to all participants) with professional dvd subtitles in their mother tongue, and then answered questions assessing their comprehension of the film plot. these questions tested the following: their memory for words used in the subtitles and images they were exposed to; their appreciation of the film viewing experience; their viewing habits; and their future intentions regarding the film. this was measured by replies to these questions: would they watch the whole film; watch another film by the same director or same actors; or would recommend the film to a friend. they were also administered cognitive tests: raven’s coloured progressive matrices as a measure of fluid intelligence; letter and pattern comparison tasks as indicators of processing speed; and a vocabulary test as a measure of verbal ability (perego et al., 2015; perego et al., 2016). watching the excerpt and answering the questionnaire took approximately 60 minutes. the use of cognitive tests added interesting insight to a reception experiment, because it assessed participants' individual differences and correlated them with the results. however, since some of these tests could only be administered by professional psychologists, the appropriate way to proceed needs to be found. research teams from different countries should each include a psychologist to communicate and negotiate with the psychologists from the other teams in order to harmonize the test administration procedures, the analysis of the data, and, in some cases, decide on the selection of tests to be used. not all tests are available in all languages, and it might be important to find those which can be easily used and compared in the countries involved in the experiment. setting up the cross-national study involved the preparation of a questionnaire template with annotations in english (behr & scholz, 2011) as seen in example 1. the questionnaire was translated into the local languages of the countries involved in the experiment. the annotations were meant to guide the translator in the choice of translation procedures (direct vs. oblique) or to disambiguate the wording of the source text when necessary. they aimed at a target text that could be as close as possible to the source text in terms of conceptual equivalence and vocabulary choices. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 72 example 1. excerpt of the annotated questionnaire matrix the choice to translate the questionnaire into the native language of the respondents was based on research findings showing that in cross-national research, the use of english-language questionnaires might create a language bias (harzing et al., 2012). as the authors illustrate clearly: further research even showed that the language of the questionnaire can impact not just attitudes, but also behaviours (akkermans, harzing & van witteloostuijn, 2010). especially if both native and non-native english speakers are included in an international survey, survey translation into the respective local language appears crucial. finally, translation might also have a symbolic effect. even if respondents are comfortable with english, translation demonstrates to the respondent that the researcher has gone through the effort and expense to make responding as easy as possible. this might well influence response rates (harzing et al., 2012, p. 18). when necessary, the questionnaire was also adapted to suit different language subtitles as shown in example 2. compared to the original dialogues, the length and completeness of the interlingual subtitles differed depending on the language involved. in the cases illustrated below, italian subtitles tended to reproduce more linguistic material whereas spanish subtitles were more concise and compressed or omitted portions of text. this translation behaviour had to be taken into account when translating the questionnaire, which in some cases needed specific adaptations. cross-national research in audiovisual translation: some methodological considerations 73 example 2. different wording in the spanish and italian subtitles of the initial scenes of caramel (toussaint & labaki, 2007). a back translation is offered in brackets, under the subtitles. experimental sessions took place locally in each country after a recruitment period and pilot testing. questionnaires were administered on paper – although a convenient alternative in a cross-national setting, especially with long questionnaires and a large sample of participant per country, would be online distribution. online distribution would also enable researchers to address questionnaire accessibility issues and distribute accessible questionnaires to people with sight loss (adlab pro 2017b). finally, data was gathered, collated and analysed statistically using the spss statistics software package. from the methodological point of view, it was crucial to tackle and homogenise the ethics procedures, recruit comparable samples of respondents (which proved to be challenging), and make sure that the cognitive tests (raven’s cpm; letter and pattern comparison tasks; vocabulary test) were established and recognized in all the countries involved. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 74 a data entry template with instructions was created and shared as well as a detailed codebook (or data dictionary) telling the coder how each questionnaire was coded for data entry (example 3). this ensured that data was entered in the spreadsheet the same way by all coders. example 3. excerpt of the answer keys and data entry instructions. a further methodological issue to be tackled was the use of specific research methods such as eyetracking, electroencephalography, psychometrics and electro dermal activity, and heart rate. these methods are being used more and more often in avt empirical research to produce complementary measures that prove to be very useful in the investigation of the processing of avt products. in fact, these informative online measures allow the researcher to collect data while the participant processes the text, which can complement the more traditional post-hoc offline measures used directly after participants have been exposed to a text, such as self-reported cognitive effort scales, presence or transportation scales, comprehension or retention questionnaires, narrative reports, interviews or focus groups (orero et al., 2018). in a cross-national context, the decision to use these tools implied the need to include experts, use the same or comparable equipment, or produce the same sets of data in order for them to be comparable. in the case of this study, eye-tracking sessions were carried out in two of the four countries involved due to the lack of the necessary equipment. for this reason, eye tracking data was not included in the final data set but was used independently by researchers. to conclude, although data was collected internationally, the project was centrally controlled and most of the design was executed by only one researcher. in this section of the paper, we will provide a brief overview of the results of the study we have been examining (perego et al., 2016) and discuss a series of methodological issues related to cross-national research in avt. since the study itself and its results are not the focus of this paper, we are not including details and quantitative results. however, the major findings and observations cross-national research in audiovisual translation: some methodological considerations 75 are reported below for the sake of completeness. overall, results showed that familiarity could influence at least some aspects of the film viewing experience. in particular, they showed that subtitling was cognitively effective irrespective of familiarity. in fact, this avt method enabled full understanding of the film plot; it facilitated memory for exact wording, and was not perceived as taxing or challenging but as helpful and easy to follow. however, in spite of its cognitive effectiveness, subtitling was not equally effective from an evaluative point of view – those who were less familiar with subtitles enjoyed the film experience less, appreciated dialogues less, and appreciated the original (unknown) voices of the actors less. despite a lessened appreciation of the subtitled film, the results had interesting implications; they suggested that subtitling could be exploited more generally than it is today to enhance literacy and language acquisition (kothari, 2000; vanderplank, 2016), as well as to increase familiarity with subtitling itself. this is in fact a prerequisite for appreciating it more and enjoying its language-related benefits. regarding viewers' future intentions, results also showed that these seemed to be shaped by their having been exposed to subtitling. when confronted with the following questionnaire item: example 4. excerpt of the questionnaire. 27 italians (vs. 8), 20 spaniards (vs. 5), and 17 poles (vs. 3) claimed that they would watch the whole film with subtitles if they could choose. this suggested that familiarity patterns could be easier to change than expected. in particular, we believe that this finding could be exploited, especially in dubbing countries, to the advantage of a series of potential beneficiaries of subtitles. this includes motivated language learners, illiterate users, immigrants that must learn the language of their host country, but also elderly people with hearing loss that find themselves having to turn from dubbed to subtitles products to access av material. another interesting finding was that, contrary to earlier findings (perego et al., 2010; perego et al., 2015), subtitling seemed to interfere with the full processing of the visual track. this seemed to indicate that the eyes of the viewers spent more time reading subtitles (marleau, 1982) or that subtitle processing may require some effort after all, especially for those who are not habitual subtitle users. in particular, italians – who claimed that they use subtitles occasionally (figure 1) – expectedly showed the worst performance in visual scene recognition. however, and quite unexpectedly, the poles showed a poor performance despite their familiarity with subtitling. they claimed that they use subtitles very frequently, and this was also confirmed in literature, which considers poland a mixed country and not a stronghold of voice-over any longer (szarkowska & laskowska, 2015). the reason for the poor performance of the poles might lie in some specific methodological limitations of the study, including the fact that the sample of polish participants was smaller than the other samples; that the polish subtitles were longer than subtitles in other languages in terms of average number of characters per line; and that polish subtitles journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 76 were more numerous. these limitations, however, could easily be prevented, especially in largerscale projects. larger-scale projects would have more resources to cope with the need to manage different language stimuli and questionnaires, be able to coordinate with country collaborators, secure an appropriate sample of participants, and comply with the data collection process that requires substantially more time than domestic research (hantrais, 1995; harzig, 2007). although we opted for the use of original material, we agreed that for the sake of results, it could be useful to construct comparable stimuli and recruit larger and more homogeneous groups of participants. there still needs to be full awareness of new methodological approaches in avt to fix the current flaws and offer further exciting directions and solutions for cross-national research. 4. concluding remarks after defining cross-national research, this paper briefly illustrated the few, yet seminal, crossnational research initiatives that have been carried out in the field of avt (the pear tree project, the adlab project, the dtv4all project, the hbb4all project, and more recently the act, adlab pro and ilsa projects) and reported on the results of a reception study on subtitling that was conducted in four european countries. in doing so, it shed light on the advantages, as well as the additional requirements and complexities of cross-national research in the field of avt, where this approach was not yet established and full awareness of its methodological aspects should be developed. the avt field is still flexible and trying to set an established research framework (orero et al., 2018). within this new, more methodologically rigorous framework, avt could benefit greatly from a more aware and systematic cross-national approach to some of its core issues, especially those linked to vulnerable audience reception. knowing the preferences and the reactions of larger groups of audiences from different eu (and non-eu) countries to given avt methods, this could be exploited to maximize their quality, usability, appreciation, and distribution policies. testing specific solutions for audiences with different linguistic and cultural backgrounds would help identify universal and language specific avt strategy effectiveness and how these can be used to benefit the audience. the results of avt studies that adopted this perspective have been promising and show that cross-national research is a great opportunity also in this field. avt could benefit considerably from the development of this approach, especially due to the strong encouragement towards the interdisciplinary and international collaboration and networking required. the nature of most european project funding initiatives seem to encourage international comparisons as a way forward. strengthening and expanding the methodological awareness of avt will give it the deserved space in a wider eu framework and allow it to contribute concretely to the development of a more comprehensive and competitive research. cross-national research in audiovisual translation: some methodological considerations 77 acknowledgements preparation of this article was supported by the university of trieste research fund fra 2013 (towards an empirical evaluation of audiovisual translation: a new integrated approach) and by the adlab pro (audio description: a laboratory for the development of a new professional profile) project, financed by the european union under the erasmus+ programme, key action 2 – strategic partnerships, project number:2016-1-it02-ka203-024311, both awarded to elisa perego. the information and views set out in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of the european union. neither the european union institutions and bodies nor any person acting on their behalf may be held responsible for the use which may be made of the information contained therein. biographical note elisa perego, phd, is associate professor of english language and linguistics at the university of trieste, italy, where she teaches english linguistics and translation, translation theory, and research methodology in translation studies. her research interests and publications mainly focus on avt accessibility and reception; subtitling and audio description, which are studied mainly from a cognitive perspective; empirical and cross-national research methodology. elisa is currently the coordinator of the european project adlab pro (2016-2019) on audio description, and she is a partner in the european project easit (2018-2021) on easy to understand language in audiovisual translation. references adlab. 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(2009). dubbing or subtitling? effects on spatial presence, transportation, flow, and enjoyment. journal of media psychology, 21, 114-125. http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/caramel/ university of trieste abstract cross-national research is a research methodology that aims to make comparisons across countries. nowadays, cross-national research is growing, especially in some social science disciplines such as sociology, political science, geography, and economic... key words: cross-national research, eu project, methodology, subtitling, familiarity citation: perego, e. (2018). cross-national research in audiovisual translation: some methodological considerations. journal of audiovisual translation, 1(1), 64-80. editor(s): a. jankowska & j. pedersen received: january 22, 2018 accepted: june 30, 2018 published: november 15, 2018 funding: university of trieste research fund fra 2013 and adlab pro project. copyright: ©2018 perego. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license. this allows for unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source ar... 1. cross-national research: definition and applications 2. merits and challenges of cross-national research 3. a cross-national study on the reception of subtitling 3.1. materials and methodology 4. concluding remarks acknowledgements biographical note references 1 subtitling, semiotics and spirited away lisa sanders  university of pretoria _________________________________________________________ abstract when translating a film according to typical subtitling models, the focus is usually solely on the dialogue of the film. furthermore, the resulting translations are often impoverished to a large extent due to the constraints of the medium. the combined effects of this result in a significant loss of equivalence between the subtitles and the original linguistic and extralinguistic information. a potential method of preventing this loss is the application of a semiotic model for translation during the subtitling process. to this end, an existing model for the semiotranslation of film was enhanced and applied to the subtitling of the wildly popular japanese animated film spirited away (2001). the resulting subtitles were evaluated for equivalence with the source text (st) against the existing subtitle track that was distributed on a dvd release of the film. it was found that much more information, both from dialogue and on-screen extralinguistic content, could be conveyed by the semiotic subtitles than those created following more traditional subtitling norms. key words: audiovisual translation, subtitling, semiotics, semiotranslation, anime, japanese film, translation of japanese.  lisasanders1109@gmail.com, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0854-5916 citation: sanders, l. (2022). subtitling, semiotics and spirited away. journal of audiovisual translation, 5(1), 1–21. https://doi.org/10.47476/jat.v5i1.2022. 112 editor(s): a. jankowska received: december 19, 2019 accepted: april 8, 2021 published: march 21, 2022 copyright: ©2022 sanders. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license. this allows for unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0854-5916 https://doi.org/10.47476/jat.v5i1.2022.112 https://doi.org/10.47476/jat.v5i1.2022.112 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ subtitling, semiotics and spirited away 2 1. introduction especially in the face of “fansubbing” practices, in which subtitlers—who are typically not formally trained in audiovisual translation (avt)—create their own rules that still work, it is becoming evident that the current standards for subtitling within more formalised avt arenas are lacking in certain crucial areas. one of the significant shortcomings is the reduction of subtitles that the field seems to impose. this may result in many important aspects of the source text (st) being lost in the effort to reduce the length and complexity of the subtitles. kruger (2001) proposed a semiotic model for subtitling that would circumvent these reductions, resulting in subtitles that retain a higher level of equivalence with the st without significantly lengthening the subtitles or the amount of time they remain on screen. by expanding on this model with the inclusion of some of the standard features of fansubbing and even current trends in major film studios, a potentially-improved method of subtitling could be introduced, incorporating more of the meaning that is typically lost due to reduction. this theory was tested for this study by adapting kruger’s model with a specific film in mind—the hugely successful studio ghibli animation spirited away (2001)—and subtitling the film according to the enhanced semiotic model. before introducing this model and its application, a few aspects are discussed, namely, the existing standards for subtitling, semiotics and semiotranslation and the specifics of the film that was selected. 1.1. traditional subtitling vs fansubbing the subtitling methods that are generally accepted within the field of avt, for this study, will be referred to as “traditional subtitling”. while there is no one definitive text outlining the standards for subtitling (despite efforts by well-versed authors such as karamitroglou (1998) and díaz-cintas & remael (2007)), some rules seem to be universally adhered to across the field. there are various texts from several authors outlining some of the commonly agreed-upon rules regarding placement and other stylistic choices, line segmentation, timing, and length, as well as the actual translation of the st dialogue to the target text (tt) subtitle (díaz-cintas & remael, 2007; karamitroglou, 1998; inter alia). most of these prescriptive texts on interlingual subtitling emphasise the reduction of the tt to meet the constraints of subtitling. they strongly encourage the omission of certain words and phrases, often sacrificing meaning for shorter, more legible subtitles (kruger, 2001). in fansubbing, several features are mostly unique to the medium (nornes, 1999): “supertitles” at the top of the screen containing translation notes (which can be rather lengthy), decorative typefaces, creative use of colour and font characteristics such as bolding and italicisation, and the translation of on-screen text (often omitted in traditional subtitling norms). many features are in line with those prescribed by avt academics, such as the number of characters per line or the timing of the subtitles. journal of audiovisual translation volume 5, issue 1 3 however, this may be due more to the fact that subtitling software is pre-built with these parameters already set. 1.2. semiotics, semiotranslation and subtitling semiotics, the study of signs (something that communicates a meaning) and their interpretation, is particularly relevant in avt. films present multiple semiotic channels that convey meaning, such as the dialogue and soundtrack in the audio channel, and on-screen text and aspects like gestures, clothing, and the setting in the visual channel. optimally, all of these aspects should be taken into consideration when translating and creating subtitles. in her 1994 book semiotics and the problem of translation, gorlée outlined what she termed “semiotranslation,” a model for translating texts that retain more equivalence with the st through the use of peirce’s approach to semiotics. semiotranslation entails examining the sign – something that communicates meaning to the interpreter – that is conveyed through the st, and “translating” the sign rather than the signifier (in this case, the word or phrase in the st), resulting in what is essentially a new sign along with the target language signifier. this process is cyclical and essentially can never end, as no “perfect” translation is possible. this is because semiosis, which can be defined as “any form of activity, conduct, or process that involves signs, including the production of meaning” (peirce, 1906, p. 546), can never end due to the continually evolving nature of meaning (gorlée, 1994, p. 188). this model was later adapted by kruger specifically for subtitling (2001). outlining the nature of semiotranslation, kruger states that the translator can deviate from “…the semantic meaning of the st by creating a “new” tt which is nevertheless significationally equivalent to the original” (2001, p. 185). equivalence here refers to the interpretation of the sign being equivalent to that of the st, rather than merely equivalence between the two signifiers, i.e. the words used. this then allows for more creative ways to translate the st without sacrificing equivalence and still results in subtitles that align with the length, time, and other restrictions that the medium requires (kruger, 2001). for this study, after re-examining the translational model as outlined initially by gorlée (1994) and adapting the subtitling model proposed by kruger (2001), an enhanced model was devised by applying additional semiotic theory to the framework. the primary work selected for this was barthes’s empire of signs (1970/1982). another seminal author in the field of semiotics (or, in his case, semiology), this particular work of barthes was relevant especially in light of its subject matter – the shift in focus regarding meaning towards the “empty centre” that barthes uncovered in japan. according to him, where in the west there is always something of great import at the heart of everything, in japan, just like the forbidden void that is the imperial palace at the centre of tokyo, there is no singular sign in japanese semiosis—signs are merely whatever the interpreter interprets them as being (barthes, 1970/1982; ikegami, 1991a). a related work also incorporated into the theoretical component of the model was a compilation of essays on semiotics edited by ikegami, also subtitling, semiotics and spirited away 4 entitled the empire of signs (1991a). these essays by japanese authors focus on semiotics related explicitly to japan. two of these, in particular, were used: kawai’s essay (1991, p. 157) on japanese folk tales and ikegami’s own essay (1991b, p. 285) on the differences in the japanese language when compared with english. both essays highlight the “empty centre” in a way that is particularly relevant to the study. 1.3. spirited away the famous studio ghibli released sen to chihiro no kamikakushi (translatable as “the spiriting away of sen and chihiro”) by famed director, hayao miyazaki, produced by toshio suzuki, in 2001. it was adapted by disney/pixar’s john lasseter (denison, 2007; osmond, 2008) for the north american audience and distributed by disney and won an academy award at the 75th academy of motion picture arts and sciences academy awards ceremony in 2003 (academy awards, 2003). the film follows chihiro, a young girl who, together with her parents, is moving to a new city. along the way to their new house, their father takes a wrong turn, and they land up in what chihiro’s father believes to be an abandoned amusement park but in reality, is a gateway to the spirit world. through their greed, chihiro’s parents are turned into pigs, and chihiro is urged to seek employment at the bathhouse (where the witch in charge of the realm resides) to stay in the spirit world and figure out how to save her parents and return to her world. spirited away is rich in cultural references, many specific to japanese culture but also many references which were invented by miyazaki himself (denison, 2007; napier, 2006; osmond, 2008). many of these were ignored in both the dubbed and subtitled disney releases, particularly when the cultural references were in the visual channel and not the audio. this was the primary reason for the selection of this film for translation, along with the already challenging task of maintaining equivalence when translating japanese into english. to translate the film according to a semiotic model, kruger’s model had to be adapted to include japanese perspectives on semiotics and semiosis, referring to the empty centre discussed by the abovementioned authors, barthes, ikegami and kawai. the following section will outline how the model was adapted as well as how it was applied. the resulting subtitles will then be discussed. 2. method since the purpose of this study was to investigate whether or not the application of a semiotic model to the translation process can result in improved subtitles for a specific japanese film, this study was conducted as a case study. therefore, the focus is quite limited, and the methods involved were uniquely adapted for the translation of spirited away. journal of audiovisual translation volume 5, issue 1 5 the model and the theory behind it are discussed below, followed by outlines of the means for data collection, and finally, the limitations of the method. 2.1. a semiotic model for subtitling spirited away in her 2001 article, kruger introduces a model for subtitling based primarily on gorlée’s model for semiotranslation (1994). the model can be illustrated as in figure 1. figure 1 kruger’s model for semiotic subtitling source: kruger, 2001, p. 191. in essence, the process of semiotic subtitling as per kruger (2001) can be explained as follows: the st sign (the film’s dialogue or on-screen text, etc.) is interpreted by the subtitler as the first step of their translation process. as indicated in the diagram by the arrows, this action of interpreting and reinterpreting the sign is cyclical, as an equivalent translation in the tt has to be reached, and the subtitler has, perhaps, several choices for an appropriate translation. at this step, the process of deriving equivalence should focus on the meaning of the sign rather than the superficial dialogue or language. this results in a new sign—especially because the translation has now (in most cases with regards to subtitling) crossed from one semiotic channel (audio or dialogue) to another (writing). the viewer will then interpret this new resulting sign (or interpretant, the sign as interpreted and reconveyed by the subtitler). suppose the process was carried out with sufficient emphasis on the semiotic or significant equivalence. in that case, the viewer’s interpretation will seamlessly refer back to the st sign, and the viewer will have no difficulty in understanding the film. subtitling, semiotics and spirited away 6 as mentioned above, kruger’s model (2001) was created based on gorlée’s 1994 work which mainly focused on peirce’s semiotics (1906). to apply the model to a japanese film, the theoretical component for the model had to be adjusted and was done so using barthes’ empire of signs and its derivative works. given that the film selected for translation is of japanese origin, it was necessary to use a semiotic model that considers this “empty centre” that barthes found to be vital to japanese semiosis and understanding. therefore, the semiotic theory behind the model was adapted to include the viewpoints of barthes (1970/1982) and ikegami’s the empire of signs, especially the concept of the “empty centre,” while retaining many elements of peirce’s semiotics (1906)—such as the entire process of semiosis. numerous examples of the “empty centre” barthes introduced can be given from spirited away, but it is perhaps most noticeable in the protagonist, chihiro. many people have criticised her blandness and others have highlighted that although there is development in her character, she remains a blank slate, something of a placeholder for the viewer to experience the story for themselves (denison, 2007; osmond, 2008). she is a sign that takes on whatever meaning one attributes to her. as mentioned above, two essays in ikegami’s the empire of signs (1991a) are particularly useful for this study. these are kawai’s essay on the “forbidden chamber” motif in japanese fairy tales and ikegami’s essay on the differences from a semantic (that is, the more surface-level linguistic meaning of words) and semiotic (the actual meaning the words refer to) point of view between japanese and a language such as english. the former deals with a common core theme in japanese fairy tales: nothing essentially happens. there is no “happily ever after” in these fairy tales—the protagonist finds himself in a given situation, someone (typically a beautiful woman) appears and issues a rule or prohibition which the protagonist inevitably breaks, causing the woman to disappear and the “hero” to find himself in the same place he started (kawai, 1991). fortunately, the author offers some solace for the western reader who may be somewhat disheartened by this pattern: what has happened, then, in the bush warblers’ home? has nothing happened really? let us start by changing our attitude completely, and put positive value on the fact that nothing has happened instead of searching for that something which might have happened. in other words, nothing has happened can be interpreted as the nothingness has happened. in this way, the story may be assumed to be simply about the nothingness. lüthi’s “the situation of nothing” has a negative connotation, but one can interpret it positively. fundamentally, the nothingness is beyond negative and positive values. (kawai, 1991, p. 174) spirited away follows the pattern outlined above, but with the gender roles typical of the traditional japanese fairy tale reversed. the female chihiro trespasses into the forbidden realm of the spirit world, where she encounters the “beautiful prince” in the form of the male haku (who even disappears at the end of the film). when she leaves the spirit world, it is as if nothing happened. the bulk of the film’s plot is thus relegated to the “empty centre” category; kawai’s “nothingness,” which must be taken into account when translating the film. journal of audiovisual translation volume 5, issue 1 7 ikegami’s essay on what he terms “do” languages versus “become” languages is also pivotal to the translation of japanese into english, especially with regards to this study. according to ikegami (1991b), english is a “do” language with a clear agent (the one who carries out the action denoted by the verb in a sentence), while japanese is a “become” language, which can completely omit the agent: in yukiguni (“snow country”), one of the most celebrated novels by yasunari kawabata, the 1968 nobel prize winner for literature, the first sentence of the work reads as follows […]: kunizakai no nagai tonneru o nukeru to, border of long tunnel [obj] pass when yukiguni de atta. snow-country was an approximately literal translation of the sentence would be something like “on passing the long tunnel at the border, (it) was a snow country.” […] [the] reaction of a western reader who knows some japanese is typically that of bewilderment. he asks himself, “in the first half of the sentence, there is a verb nukeru (“pass”). but what is it that passed (the tunnel)?” the sentence makes no mention of it. also, in the second half, we are told “(it) was a snow country.” but what exactly is characterised as a “snow country” is not made explicit at all. (ikegami, 1991b, p. 288) this erasure of the agent of the action of passing the tunnel echoes the “empty centre” in barthes’ literature: the agent is “nothing;” it is not merely left out or even implied. because it is left up to the interpreter, even if it is made more explicit later, any number of interpretations of who or what is “passing the long tunnel” can be made from that brief sentence. this adds another layer to the complexity of translating japanese semiotically, even outside of avt: how is a translator supposed to reach a significant equivalent to nothing? creating new, but still empty signs is the ultimate goal for a tt that is as equivalent as possible under these conditions, although there will undoubtedly be differences when translating between japanese and english, especially in light of these highlighted issues. the almost intuitive fansubbing practices which include the use of several semiotic modes (e.g. the colours and placement of the subtitles themselves, as well as what the fansubbers choose to translate such as background text or song lyrics (pérez-gonzáles, 2013)) are also beneficial to consider when subtitling semiotically. these concepts are thus applied to kruger’s theoretical model (2001) to create an adapted model illustrated in figure 2. subtitling, semiotics and spirited away 8 figure 2 proposed semiotic subtitling model instead of attempting merely to re-interpret the sign as intended in the st and creating a new sign in the tt that can be interpreted the same way, according to this proposed model, the subtitler should choose one appropriate interpretation of the “empty” st sign and translate it semiotically (incorporating some of the fansubbing practices) to create a sign in the tt that is as equivalent as possible. in addition to this, where it is appropriate, the subtitler should try to retain the “emptiness,” allowing the viewer to interpret it again independently. 2.2. data collection and analysis in order to select scenes to translate according to the model, a close viewing of the film was undertaken with five key scenes being chosen for (re)translation and comparison to the existing subtitles. the criteria for the selection were quite broad, consisting of the scene’s overall impact on the plot, and whether it contained non-verbal information such as accents or dialects or “[v]isually transmitted verbal signs (díaz-cintas & remael, 2007, p. 47), with text appearing on-screen, as well as pedersen's extra cultural references (ecrs), which he defines as "references to places, people, institutions, customs, food, etc. that you may not know even if you know the language in question" (2011, p. 44). special attention was given to scenes with potential translation challenges and to those that had clear opportunities to apply the proposed semiotic model when translating. journal of audiovisual translation volume 5, issue 1 9 the five scenes that were selected were given arbitrary titles, and are presented with the time codes at which they appear in the film spirited away: 1. the bathhouse (00:07:24–00:14:36) 2. lin appears (00:28:36–00:33:28) 3. chihiro meets yubaba (00:34:00–00:41:08) 4. kamaji helps chihiro (01:25:40–01:31:18) 5. chihiro meets zeniba (01:45:18–01:50:25) these scenes were translated and subtitled according to the semiotic model created, following the subtitling guidelines described by díaz-cintas & remael (2007), with some deviation from these prescriptions using what nornes describes in his 1999 essay, for an abusive subtitling. these deviations, which focus primarily on fansubbing and its creation by amateur subtitlers who work almost “instinctively,” suggests overturning the conventions of subtitling practice for a favourable result. as mcclarty states, “by adopting an abusive approach and creating “thick” translations that are loaded with multiple layers of signification, we might commit violence upon the target language and culture, thus levelling the metaphorical “playing field” between the translated and the translation.” (2014, p. 599). the resulting subtitles were compiled into a corpus and compared with the subtitles included on the dvd version of the film (miyazaki, 2015) and analysed for their equivalence with the st (on multiple semiotic channels). this analysis was done mostly in reference to pedersen's strategies for translating ecrs (pedersen, 2011). his list of proposed strategies includes retention, specification, direct translation, generalisation, substitution, omission, and the use of an “official translation” (pedersen, 2011, p. 76). specific instances of subtitles that highlight the use of these strategies will be discussed in-depth and compared to the dvd subtitles. of course, while the method may now be fleshed out, its limitations cannot be ignored. there are limitations to any study, but perhaps especially a study as narrowly-focused as this. these limitations are addressed below. 2.3. limitations the main limitations of this study are a) the subjectivity of the translations within the subtitles versus their accuracy, and b) the narrow focus of the study, since it is being carried out as a case study. as is typical of translation studies, the entire process of creating these subtitles is subjective and bound to be coloured by the translator’s experience and bias; however, translations can differ widely depending on the translator yet still be accurate. further to this, as gorlée states, “a translation…is never finished and can always, however minimally, be improved upon” (1994, p. 231). thus, should another researcher attempt to improve on the subtitles that are created for this study, the product will certainly differ yet again, and will most likely be open to further improvement. subtitling, semiotics and spirited away 10 another factor that limits this study is the fact that the data is being gathered from a single source. there are many arguments for and against the use of a single case upon which to base research, but as saldanha and o’brien (2013, p. 211) point out, it is quite common in translation studies to conduct research based on a single text. however, it may be beneficial if a more general model can be developed and other films translated following the same model to test its efficacy further. the choice of spirited away itself could also be seen as a limitation of the current study, given that the film is not entirely japanese in nature, with elements being borrowed from other cultures or outright fabrications, such as the pseudo-western style of the iconic bathhouse in the film (osmond, 2008, p. 70) or the made-up monsters that miyazaki inserted, such as no-face (denison, 2007; osmond 2008). the film, however, was created by a japanese studio for a primarily japanese audience, and rather than see this as an insurmountable obstacle, this was regarded as part of the challenge of translating the film. the foreign and fictitious elements were intended to create a sense of mystery for the japanese audience (denison, 2007; osmond, 2008), and conveying this “layer” of enigma further pushes the bounds of the semiotic model being tested. despite the limitations, the data collected and new translations made provided a wealth of insight into the semiotic process of translating film. rather than discuss the results and their analysis separately, it seems more reasonable to examine these facets simultaneously due to the explorative, comparative nature of the study and the results it yielded. 3. results and analysis to collect and record data and draw comparisons between the dvd subtitles and those created according to the semiotic model, they were tabulated alongside transcriptions (in romanised japanese) of the dialogue, more literal translations which merely convey the semantic aspect, and the subtitles found on the dvd version. these were then analysed and discussed with reference to three potential translation problems that were identified after a “close viewing” of the film, namely: dialect variation, “untranslatable” cultural references, and on-screen text. 3.1. dialect variation in anime, the dialects or accents that characters use are often important stylistic devices crucial to the way a given character is defined and perceived (howell, 2007). in most subtitling guidelines, however, it is recommended to neutralise any dialectal differences by translating into a standard form of the tt (díaz-cintas and remael, 2007; howell, 2007; karamitroglou, 1998; et al.). this leads to an inevitable loss of what howell (2007) terms “colour’, a particular layer of semiotic data. in spirited away, the various characters” dialects and speech patterns were invented by miyazaki (denison, 2007; osmond, 2008), and are as much a part of their ethereal nature as other clues pertaining to their characterisation. thus, in the new tt, rather than neutralising the dialects, they journal of audiovisual translation volume 5, issue 1 11 were reflected in the subtitles to a certain extent by using non-standard english and slightly adjusting the speech patterns. the character, lin, is one of the first clear examples of this. lin speaks in a coarse, rough manner in the original japanese dialogue. this was somewhat lost in the dvd subtitles, as shown in table 1. table 1 lin's dialect char. transcription literal translation dvd subtitle new subtitle lin ningen ga icha! yabai yo, sakki ue de oo sawagi shitetanda yo!) a human is here! this is bad; they were just making a big commotion upstairs! a human! you’re in trouble! // they’re having a fit about it upstairs a human’s in here! crap, they were just freakin’ out about it upstairs! given the more casual way lin speaks throughout the film, the cruder interjection “crap” was chosen to translate “yabai yo,” a phrase that has multiple interpretations across dialects and social strata of japanese, ranging from positive (“cool!”) to a strong negative, as in this case, where in english an expletive would be the most accurate interpretation. to a lesser extent, this was applied as well to add the more colloquial “freaking out” (with a with -ing pronounced colloquially with [n] instead of standard [ŋ], common in some dialects or some informal forms of english) to the tt instead of “making a commotion.” this projects the abrupt manner in which lin speaks more clearly than the subtitles would were they translated into more neutral english, as in the dvd subtitles. the antagonist yubaba’s speech in the original dialogue also includes non-standard word endings, particles, pronunciations, etc. however, in the dvd subtitles, her speech was neutralised to a greater degree than lin's. the new subtitles attempt to convey her condescending tone. as such, her subtitles are a combination of colloquial and more proper english, along with more polite (albeit sarcastically so) phrasing. this is illustrated in table 2. subtitling, semiotics and spirited away 12 table 2 yubaba's dialect char. transcription literal translation dvd subtitle new subtitle yubaba urusai ne, shizuka ni shite o-kure. noisy, isn’t (it), be quiet you’re making a racket keep it down noisy, aren’t you? be quiet for me. the “for me” in “be quiet for me,” comes from the way the line “shizuka ni shite o-kure” is phrased in japanese. it can be loosely glossed as follows—be quiet (conjunctive) (honorific prefix) give to me (imperative): “do “being quiet” for me.” this was regarded as more nuanced than simply saying “be quiet” or “keep it down.” thus it was translated in a somewhat gentler way, although her tone of voice in the clip conveys no warmth whatsoever. of the three prominent speech patterns audible in the selected clips, kamaji’s was neutralised the most in the dvd subtitles. his speech is marked by the same old-fashioned way of speaking as yubaba’s, with the addition of more masculine ways of speaking, such as the syllable ぞ (zo) audible at the ends of his sentences. translating these elements of gendered speech into english is difficult, if not an insurmountable challenge (nornes, 1999) therefore, in both the dvd subtitles and the new subtitles, his speech was rendered mostly in the simpler, more neutral language typical of subtitling (díaz-cintas and remael, 2007; howell, 2007), as shown in table 3. table 3 kamaji's dialect char. transcription literal translation dvd subtitle new subtitle kamaji mahōtsukai ni naritai to ii otta. (he) said he wanted to become a magicuser. said he wanted to learn magic he said he wanted to learn how to use magic. kamaji washi ha hantai shitanda. i was opposed (to it). i didn’t approve… i was against it. kamaji majou no deshi nanzo rokuna koto ga nai-tte na. (i) said there are no good things from being a sorcerer’s apprentice. becoming a sorcerer’s apprentice… // a: i warned him, nothing good comes of being a witch’s apprentice. journal of audiovisual translation volume 5, issue 1 13 kamaji kikanainda yo. (he) didn’t listen. but he wouldn’t listen he didn’t listen. these dialect and speech differences warranted independent examination, but they also constitute part of the next point to be examined. 3.2. “untranslatable” cultural references a cultural reference supposedly becomes “untranslatable” when there is no target culture (tc) equivalent to the reference in the source culture (sc) – yet methods abound to circumvent these challenges, such as pedersen’s abovementioned strategies for translating ecrs (2011, p. 76). adding semiotranslation methods to models such as this could potentially allow the ecrs to be translated in a more effective manner that is readily accepted by the audience. within spirited away, three main issues considered to be untranslatable ecrs were identified: problematic monocultural references, and specific subsets of these, namely honorifics and orthography. these will be discussed in that order. 3.2.1. problematic monocultural references this challenge can best be described as a cultural reference that is so specific to the sc that translation into the tt is almost impossible, as no near equivalent occurs in the tc. one of the best examples of this challenge is found in the fourth selected clip, “kamaji helps chihiro.” the ill haku spits up a hanko (seal stamp) which is in the clutches of what appears to be a black slug. the slug attempts to escape. chihiro pursues and stomps on it, causing it to explode in a spectacular splatter of black goo. kamaji immediately calls out “engacho!” and a shivering chihiro creates a circle with her thumbs and index fingers of both hands. kamaji breaks the circle with a motion similar to a karate chop, shouting “kitta!” (“it's cut!”), as shown in figure 3. subtitling, semiotics and spirited away 14 figure 3 “engacho” source: miyazaki, 2015 engacho is a somewhat outdated ritual that was once commonplace among japanese children, performed when one child stepped in something unsavoury or did something else that could be considered to make the child dirty. if they immediately performed engacho, the dirt or bad luck would be nullified, and the child would become “clean” again; if they failed, they would be disallowed to touch the other children (asakura, 2017, p. 23). despite an insightful article by a writer by the moniker of “someguy” (2008) which indicates that the gesture “holds about as much spiritual cleansing strength as a north american child “passing cooties” by tagging another”, in the context of the scene with its implications of magic and the fantastical nature of the spirit world as a whole, the best translation was decided to be “break the curse!”. chihiro and, by extension the audience, later finds out the slug was indeed the manifestation of a protective spell, which had to be broken or it would have negatively affected chihiro since she’d touched the hanko. the dvd subtitles entirely omitted this information, and, considering the on-screen actions, the translations rendered are no more understandable to the viewer than the st dialogue. the subtitles are again compared in table 4. journal of audiovisual translation volume 5, issue 1 15 table 4 “engacho” vocabulary char. transcription literal translation dvd subtitle new subtitle kamaji engacho, sei! engacho! engacho, sen! engacho! gross, gross, sen! totally gross break the curse! sen! break it! kamaji kitta! (it's) cut! clean it’s broken! hopefully, by considering the on-screen visuals as well as the actual meaning of the engacho ritual, the new subtitles are more faithful than those on the dvd, despite the monocultural reference. 3.2.2. honorifics japanese sociolinguistic norms require the use of an extensive system of politeness and formality markers, including honorific terms that are used to indicate both the speaker and the hearer's relative status. translating into a language such as english, where the expression of politeness is not grammaticalized, can be a difficult task. two clear instances of the two distinct aspects appear in the translated clips, one in “lin appears,” and one in “chihiro meets yubaba”. in the former, chihiro and the usually rough-spoken lin run into one of the visiting kami (gods), the silent and enigmatic “radish spirit.” lin switches to honorific speech (keigo), as shown in table 5. table 5 keigo char. transcription literal translation dvd subtitle new subtitle lin o-kyaku-sama, kono erebeeta ha ue ni mairimasen. hoka wo o-sagashi kudasai. guest, this elevator doesn’t go up. please look for another. this elevator is not in service, sir please use another sir, this elevator doesn’t go up. please find another one. this is often used when speaking to customers, to show respect to them as one’s guest. typical of keigo, lin adds an honorific prefix and suffix to the word kyaku (“guest,” “customer”) and uses both kenjogo (humble speech) and sonkeigo (respectful speech) in these lines: the verb mairu is kenjogo for 'go' (its dictionary form is iku), and her phrasing of o-sagashi kudasai is sonkeigo, with an honorific subtitling, semiotics and spirited away 16 before the continuous form of the verb followed by kudasai, which indicates an honorific request. unless one adds “humbly” and “respectfully” into the tt, which is unwieldy, it is difficult to convey the distinct us/them patterns, and the coded politeness of the st reflected in the shift in diction. ultimately it was deemed best to change the register as much as possible to reflect formality as well as using english’s best equivalents of the honorifics: “sir” and “madam.” while “o-kyaku-sama” is by now a somewhat generic phrase referring to a customer, a marked instance of the usage of the honorific “-sama” occurs in “chihiro meets yubaba,” when chihiro (now called sen) is talking to haku. this is shown in table 6. table 6 honorifics char. transcription literal translation dvd subtitle new subtitle haku mudaguchi wo kikuna. watashi no koto ha, haku-sama to yobe. don’t prattle. about me, call (me) hakusama. no idle chatter // call me master haku don’t chatter. and you will call me master haku. while throughout the clips other honorifics such as the prefix owere either omitted due to difficulties translating them without adding unnecessary length to the subtitles, or, as in the case of most instances of -san and -sama, simply transliterated on the assumption that the intended audience is familiar with them, haku’s case is exceptional. in an interesting analysis of spirited away and its translation, asakura explains this quite effectively: “haku-sama” is always translated as “master haku” (direct translation of honorific + retention) in the english tts. the connotation of “sama” is highly relevant because haku is special and occupies a highly important position in the hierarchy of the bathhouse. […] the use of the word “master” shows his importance and, at the same time, distinguishes him from other bathhouse staff. (2017, p. 59–60) 3.2.3. orthography for some unknown reason, the on-screen text was never translated in the dvd version, despite there being many instances of signs and other writing appearing that could add to the plot. one of the pivotal scenes to the plot of the movie is in “chihiro meets yubaba,” when yubaba literally takes chihiro’s name from her, off the page of a contract, and replaces it with the name sen. this is how yubaba controls sen and keeps her from the real world, effectively enslaving her in the spirit realm. more to the point, this scene was also one of the deciding factors to retranslate the film, as journal of audiovisual translation volume 5, issue 1 17 there is little explanation for what is happening on screen in most translations. this leaves viewers who are not able to read japanese confused as to how the name “chihiro” can become “sen” by merely deleting some of the writing. figure 4 chihiro loses her name source: miyazaki, 2015; sanders, 2018 as can be seen in figure 4, chihiro’s name is written on the screen as 千尋 (chihiro, “a thousand fathoms”). the character 千 (meaning “thousand”) can be read as “chi,” as in chihiro, or as “sen.” the latter pronunciation is used more commonly when the character is not part of a compound. the meaning of the character which is left behind is not altered, but the pronunciation is. unfortunately, explaining this via subtitles is virtually impossible, unless resorting to fansub-style supertitles containing translation notes. it has also been noted that chihiro misspelt her family name, ogino, with the wrong kanji (asakura, 2017, p. 23; osmond, 2008) chihiro wrote “ogino” with kanji resembling 茯野, when it should, in fact, read 荻野. this has spawned several theories that chihiro deliberately did not give up her real name and thus was able to retain some memory of her former life and a level of freedom from yubaba. haku does warn chihiro earlier on in the film not to let yubaba steal her name, after all. this has not been commented on by studio ghibli or miyazaki himself, however, and so these theories are still mere speculation. nevertheless, this “mistake” was reflected in the newly-created subtitle by turning the letter g in “ogino” back to front. 3.2.4. on-screen text to continue with the final theme of the previous subsection, the translation of on-screen text was the next major issue identified in the subtitling of the film. some, such as osmond (2008) argue that the signs that appear in spirited away are “easter eggs” for those that can read japanese but add nothing to the plot and therefore do not need to be translated; however, an argument against this subtitling, semiotics and spirited away 18 would be that they help towards the world-building of the spirit realm, adding to what the same author describes as the disconcerting feeling about the town (osmond, 2008, p. 60) due to signs reading things like “three thousand eyeballs,” “grilled demon skins,” “funeral clothing” and “worms”. throughout the dvd, none of the on-screen text is translated, save for the english dubbed version which helpfully explains what the bathhouse is because of a mere single written character: the way a viewer who can read japanese can tell what the strange building is, is not by the kanji 油 (abura, “oil, fat”) on the flag billowing in the wind, but by the single hiragana ゆ (yu) on the blue curtain over the door. this character implies “hot water,” and marks the building as a bathhouse. in the dub, chihiro states “it’s a bathhouse” as the camera pans up the building. the viewer watching the subtitled version, however, is left with no explanation, although they may be familiar with the appearance of an onsen (a public bath or hot spring) given the assumed audience. in contrast to the dvd subtitles, in the new subtitles, the text on-screen was translated throughout, including all of the abovementioned kanji “abura,” which served as decoration in many places, given that it is representative of the bathhouse itself: the bathhouse is called aburaya (油屋). several interesting challenges arose while translating the signage, including the fact that some of the writing was not only written from right to left (that is, according to a now outdated mode of writing in the opposite direction to that of modern japanese) but was sometimes mirrored as well, as is illustrated in figure 5, where the latter third of the sign in the centre of the screen appears backwards. figure 5 ?rehtegot teg source: miyazaki, 2015; sanders, 2018 besides a theory posited by ewens (2016) that this was done deliberately to reflect chihiro’s uneasiness walking through the town, there is no definite explanation to be found for the meaning journal of audiovisual translation volume 5, issue 1 19 behind this mirroring, but this was nevertheless reflected in the subtitle, as there is plausibly some semiotic significance to the changes in the writing. regrettably, due to the limitations of either the subtitling software used or perhaps even the subtitler herself, some of the signs were also left untranslated in the new subtitles due to their movement as part of the panning of a scene; the subtitles could not be made to stay fixed to their location relative to the on-screen text. the decision to subtitle the on-screen text was made based on the need for consistency as well as on the intended audience; those who have an active interest in japanese culture and language would likely want to know what the writing means. the fact that in the dvd subtitles certain essential information that adds to the overall understanding of the film is withheld from a vast majority of the audience is unfortunate, and a more complete translation would not have neglected these aspects. 4. conclusion this study explored whether a semiotic model for translation could potentially yield more complete, more significantly equivalent subtitles for the film spirited away. by being provided with subtitles that somewhat more holistically capture the relevant information and semiotic signs in both the dialogue and on-screen events, viewers can have a more equivalent translation to draw on when watching films like spirited away. the subtitles created for this study endeavour specifically to bridge cultural gaps and provide a more relatable translation than the dvd version. more information is made available to help the viewer interpret the film, such as the translation of background text. however, many of these additions are directed at a particular type of audience, especially those familiar with the techniques employed in fansubbing. these subtitles break many of the tacit rules of subtitling and thus may not be suitable for a more general audience and are not intended to be accessible to those who are deaf or hard of hearing. there is potential for this to be corrected, however, given enough leeway on the prescriptions for subtitling and captioning for a broader range of audiences. it would be still more useful for this study to ask viewers to watch the clips as subtitled in the dvd version as well as the new subtitles created according to the semiotic model. a survey could then be undertaken to ascertain the level to which their understanding of the scenes is improved, if at all. due to the narrow focus of the study, there is little room to apply the model used or the findings of this study to other films. however, it may be worth noting that the semiotic model, due to its very nature, might be adapted on a case-by-case basis. by further studying and applying the understanding of semiotics from a japanese perspective such as that of ikegami (1991a) when creating a model for the semiotranslation of a japanese film, an even more accurate representation of the signs in the st could be formed; likewise, a better understanding subtitling, semiotics and spirited away 20 of japanese culture and worldviews in general than available to this author may improve the semiotranslation of this film and other japanese animations that much more. references academy awards. 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(2013). intervention in new amateur subtitling cultures: a multimodal account. linguistica antverpiensia, new series – themes in translation studies. 0(6), 67–80. saldanha, g., & o’brien, s. (2013). research methodologies in translation studies. routledge. https://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/2003 about:blank about:blank journal of audiovisual translation volume 5, issue 1 21 sanders, l. (2018). re-interpreting the spiriting away of sen and chihiro: a semiotic analysis and translation of japanese animation (master’s thesis). university of pretoria, south africa someguy. (2008, july 3). english and the spiriting away of translation anxieties. the otaku.com. http://www.theotaku.com/fanwords/view/1140/english_and_the_spiriting_away_of_transl ation_anxieties/2 about:blank about:blank 122 game on! burning issues in game localisation carme mangiron universitat autònoma de barcelona _________________________________________________________ abstract game localisation is a type of audiovisual translation that has gradually been gathering scholarly attention since the mid-2000s, mainly due to the increasing and ubiquitous presence of video games in the digital society and the gaming industry's need to localise content in order to access global markets. this paper will focus on burning issues in this field, that is, issues that require specific attention, from an industry and/or an academic perspective. these include the position of game localisation within the wider translation studies framework, the relationship between game localisation and audiovisual translation, game accessibility, reception studies, translation quality, collaborative translation, technology, and translator training. key words: video games, game localisation, audiovisual translation (avt), game accessibility, reception studies, quality, collaborative translation, technology, translator training  carme.mangiron@uab.cat; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6421-8581 citation: mangiron, c. (2018). game on! burning issues in game localisation. journal of audiovisual translation, 1(1), 122-138. editor: a. jankowska & j. pedersen received: january 22, 2018 accepted: june 30, 2018 published: november 15, 2018 funding: catalan government funds 2017sgr113. copyright: ©2018 mangiron. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license. this allows for unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6421-8581 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6421-8581 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ game on! burning issues in game localisation 123 1. introduction over the last four decades, video games have achieved a ubiquitous role in the digital society. not only have they become one of the most popular leisure options, they are also being used for purposes beyond entertainment, such as education, health, and advertising. their availability in a variety of platforms and formats has also made them more easily accessible. people play using more established platforms (pcs and consoles), but also with their phones and tablets, by themselves or against other players around the world. the global success of the game industry is partly due to localisation, that is, the process of adapting a game technically, linguistically and culturally in order to market and sell it in different territories. however, localisation is often considered a necessary evil by developers and publishers. as game technology advances and the costs of developing triple a titles (the equivalent of cinema blockbusters) soar, localisation has become essential in order to sell as many copies as possible around the world and maximise game companies' return on investment. as such, localisation has become an important process in the game industry, which cannot be overlooked by developers and publishers if they want to achieve global success. game technology has advanced over the years, introducing new challenges to the localisation of the medium. the inclusion of dialogues with audio, for example, brought audiovisual translation (avt) practices, such as dubbing and subtitling, into game localisation (mangiron & o'hagan, 2006). we have come a long way since the early days, when translation of japanese games was done by developers and contained many errors that in equal parts amused and puzzled western players. however, localisation practices have not evolved as fast as one would expect, and academic interest in game localisation has been slow to develop. the first publications on the topic were published in the late 1990s and early 2000s (mangiron, 2017; o'hagan & mangiron, 2013), but there are still several key or burning issues in game localisation, from an industry and/or an academic perspective, which merit further investigation. this paper presents a number of issues that are likely to feature prominently in game localisation research in the near future. these include the position of game localisation within translation studies (ts); its relationship with other types of translation, in particular avt; game accessibility; reception studies; translation quality; collaborative translation; the use of technology, and translator training. 2. game localisation within translation studies video games as an area of study has been tackled by several disciplines, such as computer studies, culture studies, psychology, and game studies, a discipline which started in 2001 with the launch of an academic journal specifically devoted to the study of games (aarseth, 2001). academic interest in games from a translation studies perspective initially started at a relatively low level with a few contributions appearing in the early and mid-2000s (bernal-merino, 2006; mangiron & o'hagan, 2006; ortinau, 2004; scholand, 2002). related research started to gain impetus in the early 2010s, with the publication of two monographs in english on the subject (bernal-merino, 2014; o'hagan journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 124 & mangiron, 2013), followed by three monographs in spanish a few years later (granell, mangiron & vidal, 2016; méndez & calvo-ferrer, 2018; muñoz-sánchez, 2017). although there is now a significant amount of published literature on game localisation, research to date has mainly focused on the description of its main features and the analysis of different localisation models and processes. there are also a handful of studies focusing on various aspects, such as translation strategies (fernández-costales, 2012; mangiron & o'hagan, 2006), cultural adaptation (di marco, 2007; edwards, 2011, 2012; mangiron, 2012c, 2016b) and the translation of humour, to name but a few (mangiron, 2010; lepre, 2014). however, little research has been carried out from an ontological perspective, to build a solid theoretical foundation and methodology for this genre of translation. in fact, the same issue applies to game studies, where an ontological debate to establish what a game is and how to study it (bogost, 2009) has in turn impacted on the ontology of game localisation. there is also an ongoing discussion regarding the terminology for describing this type of translation, which is often referred to as (video) game localisation and (video) game translation. in her pioneering monograph, industry expert chandler (2005) uses game localisation to consider not only the act of translation, but also other processes, including the adaptation of graphics, and legal and marketing processes. bernal-merino (2006, 2014), considers translation the most adequate term when referring to the language transfer that takes place within the broader localisation process. he also states that the term localisation is appropriate within the industry, although it would be advisable to use the terms linguistic localisation or cultural localisation when referring to language translation (2006). o'hagan and mangiron (2013) discuss different terminological options, highlighting the more widespread academic debate as to whether localisation encompasses translation, as claimed by the industry, or whether translation is a broader umbrella concept that includes localisation, a view that is shared at an abstract level by the authors (o'hagan & mangiron, 2013). they finally opt for the term game localisation to reflect industry practice, while using game translation interchangeably when referring to the textual operations performed by translators. ranford (2017) also reflects on the most appropriate term arguing that game localisation implies a reductionist approach to this type of translation, because it presents video games as products, heavily adaptable to fit user needs, and not as an art form. he concludes by opting for the term video game translation, in order to “affirm that videogames are worth the range of debate and analysis afforded to other media in ts [translation studies]” (ranford, 2017, p. 145). i would argue that game localisation is not a narrow term and by implication it encompasses the range of debate devoted to other media in translation studies. to sum up, the term game localisation and its variants seem to be consolidating in academic literature,i possibly to reflect industry practice, although further research and debate about the ontological nature of this type of translation, its scope, and object of study are still necessary. furthermore, the positioning of game localisation within the wider translation studies framework is still unclear. it has been considered by some scholars as a hybrid type of translation (munday 2008; o'hagan & mangiron, 2013; remael, 2010), because it combines features of other translation genres, game on! burning issues in game localisation 125 mainly software localisation and avt, but also literary and technical translation. video games contain language, messages, and instructions to the user similar to those found in a software programme. their translation is subject to the same constraints as software localisation, such as working with unfinished and unstable text, or without access to the original game, known as blind localisation (dietz, 2006). games also frequently contain dialogues and cinematic scenes, and their script can be dubbed, subtitled, or both. in addition, some games – particularly role-playing games (rpg) and adventure games – contain narrative and literary passages, which need to be translated while preserving the literary and poetic register. there are even games that are fully written in rhyme, such as ubisoft's child of light (2014). other games require translators to carry out a thorough investigation on the functionality and terminology of mechanical technology. as an example, a translator working on the microsoft flight simulator series (1986-2014) would require a similar level of understanding as a technical translator working on a piece about real planes. therefore, a game translator has to deal with many different game genres and text types. this requires different skills, such as documentation and terminological search; knowledge of the main features and constraints of dubbing and subtitling, and creativity, in order to provide attractive names for items – such as weapons – in their target language and to translate the numerous play-on-words and rhymes that often populate video games. however, despite the fact that there is now an important amount of literature on game localisation, there are still not enough descriptive case studies allowing researchers to establish regularities and tendencies about issues such as translation strategies, the translation of cultural references, and the translation of humour. in addition, there is little research available in areas such as terminology in game localisation (except zhang, 2014), corpus studies, and sociological and ideological issues, including censorship (with the exception of zhang, 2012 and mandiberg, 2018). the concept of agency and the active and creative role granted to game translators in comparison to translators working in other disciplines is another issue that has received a certain amount of academic attention (bernal-merino, 2008b; gaballo, 2012; iaia, 2016; mangiron & o'hagan, 2006; zhang, 2016), but has not been analysed in depth. studies analysing the game localisation process from the participants’ perspective, and in particular, the translator's perspective, can shed light on the role of the game translator, the creative processes associated with their work, their decision-making process, and their working conditions. finally, another burning issue in this area concerns research methodology, which has largely been overlooked to date. obtaining materials from games and analysing them is complex and timeconsuming, due to their interactive and non-linear nature. scholars either need to spend time playing the game and taking screen captures or using video walkthroughs recorded and uploaded by other players to viewing platforms such as youtube to access the game content. in addition, as mentioned in section 5 below, there are few experimental reception studies related to players' experience (cf. o'hagan 2009, 2016). undoubtedly, the study of research methodology in game localisation is likely to feature more prominently in the future, in order to define the most appropriate and effective methods to analyse games from the four main paradigms for research journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 126 in translation studies, as proposed by saldanha and o'brien (2013): product-oriented, processoriented, participant-oriented, and context-oriented research. 3. game localisation and audiovisual translation as video games are interactive, audiovisual, multimedia, and multimodal texts, the relationship between game localisation and avt also merits special attention. it should be highlighted that although research and training in game localisation have been embraced as part of avt studies, translation practices differ considerably in both industries. in game localisation translation is frequently implemented while the game is being developed. translators working with the script of a game usually do not have access to the original game, an important source for visual context. therefore, translators may not know whether they are required to adjust their translations to match the lip movements of the original character or not. such issues can be overcome by providing screen captures or contextual information about the scene. it would also be helpful to provide information in the game script about how characters speak, as is the case for dubbing for television and cinema. it would be particularly useful to clearly indicate all close-ups, so that translators are aware of the need to take lip-synch into consideration. some triple a games, such as mass effect 2 (2010), use ai-driven facial modelling technology to match the facial animation to the audio (o'hagan & mangiron, 2013). industry professionals black and crosignani (2014) propose the use of facial video capture when actors are recording the lines for the original version. these captures can then be used to generate 3d models which serve as reference material for translators and enable movie-quality dubbing in triple a games. however, while this approach is being used more frequently in the industry, it is still not widely adopted. therefore, the issue of dubbing in games and how to bring this process closer to dubbing practices in other avt areas remains largely unexplored. in addition, terminological variation is present in this case, as the dubbing of games is referred to in the industry as voice-over (e.g., chandler, 2005 and chandler & deming, 2012) or audio localisation (bernal-merino, 2014; o'hagan & mangiron, 2013; sioli, minazzi & ballista, 2007). subtitling in games is another burning issue in game localisation. subtitling standards applied in other media, such as television, dvd, and cinema, are often not applied in games. it is not uncommon to find one-line subtitles with 72 characters or more, small fonts, colour clashes between the subtitle and the background, bad segmentation, and lack of synchrony between the audio and the subtitle, to name but a few of the current issues (mangiron, 2012a). this can be due partially to technical considerations, as on occasion the engine of the game projects the subtitles onto the image automatically. it can also be due to the fact that developers view subtitles as in-game text and are unaware of the subtitling standards applied in other industries. in addition, there are currently no examples of subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing (sdh) in games, and some games do not contain intralingual subtitles or subtitles for all elements containing audio. this poses an accessibility barrier for deaf and hard of hearing players, game on! burning issues in game localisation 127 as explored in more detail in the next section. it should also be highlighted that for console games, game companies demand that intralingual subtitles are transcribed verbatim. this means that there can be no reduction applied to subtitles, and some players may not have enough time to read them. if we take into account that players often have to perform other tasks within a game while reading subtitles – such as fighting or driving a car – the lack of condensation may hinder the gaming experience, as players may miss some information or lose focus from the task they are performing. regarding the use of tools, game translators do not work with subtitling programmes. they work instead with microsoft excel files or translation memories, so the translation process for subtitles does not really differ from the translation of other types of assets present in a game. in addition, game translators may not have information about time codes or shot changes. therefore, the way subtitling is handled for a game is quite different to the way subtitling is done for other avt products. more research is needed on current subtitling practices in order to develop guidelines or a standard for game subtitling that considers the nature of the medium and its interactivity. to conclude this section, it should be stressed that collaboration between industry and academia is essential to improve dubbing and subtitling practices in games. there is also a pressing need to make developers and publishers aware of the importance of providing good quality dubbed and subtitled games to their audience, as this is likely to improve the gameplay experience and, in turn, the reception and sales of their games in target territories. 4. game accessibility media accessibility as a topic of study has been embraced by avt scholars and is one of the more vibrant areas of academic interest within the field, particularly audio description (ad) for people with sight loss and sdh. game accessibility has also received attention from a game design perspective by a group of scholars and game designers who are members of the international game developers' game accessibility special interest group, who produced a number of game accessibility guidelines (game accessibility guidelines, n.d.). however, accessibility relating to gaming remains an overlooked area in translation studies. the few exceptions include contributions by mangiron (2011, 2012a, 2012b, 2016a), o'hagan and mangiron (2013), fernández-costales (2014), and mangiron and zhang (2016). as mentioned previously, not all games contain intralingual subtitles and not all audio elements in a game are subtitled. for example, sound effects, which are important for gameplay in some genres – such as shooters and horror games – are not available to users with hearing loss if they are not provided via text. the ad-hoc subtitling practices applied in games, the lack of subtitling condensation, and the fact that there is often no method for character identification can present an accessibility barrier to deaf and hard of hearing players (mangiron, 2012a, 2016a). journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 128 sign language is another issue in gaming that requires attention. in general, signing is not used in video games, although there is a recent virtual reality game, moss (2018), the main character of which is a mouse who speaks using american sign language. this one game is a positive step towards raising awareness amongst hearing players and also towards fostering the inclusion of users with hearing loss in the gaming community. it will be interesting to see if and how this game is localised into other languages, as sign language varies between communities and it could imply redesigning the animation in order to comply with the sign language of the target communities. in relation to blind players, accessibility becomes an even more complex issue, due to the visual and interactive nature of the game medium. players are not only required to understand what is happening on the screen, they are also required to respond to the input provided by the game by taking an action. currently mainstream commercial video games do not provide ad, which means that players with sight loss must play games with the help of sighted users or play versions of games that have been adapted for them with modifications (called mods) or patches. blind players can play games that have been specifically designed for them, such as audio games, which are sound-based and contain no images, or games that have been designed both for sighted and unsighted players, known as 3d video-less games. available for mobile phones and tablets, video-less games are designed to provide an innovative and immersive experience to both sighted and unsighted players by using audio only in order to cause suspense and fear (mangiron & zhang, 2016), although they are still few in number. providing ad for the visual elements of games, as well as including text-to-speech technology and facilitating the use of voice commands to interact with the game, would contribute to enhancing the access of players with sight loss to games. such technology is already available, so it would be a matter of making developers and publishers aware of the need for improving accessibility practices in games. this would be beneficial for all players and, in turn, may result in more sales. 5. reception studies reception studies is an area closely related to avt transfer modes and game accessibility that can be considered another of the burning issues faced by game localisation researchers. game localisation is a functional type of translation (e.g., bernal-merino, 2014; di marco, 2007; fernández-costales, 2012; mangiron & o'hagan, 2006;), which aims to provide a similar gameplay experience to players of target versions, so they can enjoy the game like the players of the original version. it is therefore a type of user-centered translation (suojanen, koskinen & tuominen, 2014). in game localisation the emphasis is placed on the user and how to adapt the text to their needs and expectations in order to facilitate the commercial success by using localisation as part of the marketing strategy. the source text can be subject to an array of changes, not only affecting the text, but also the visual elements of the game, such as character design, the story line, game mechanics or the soundtrack, to name but a few (o'hagan & mangiron, 2013). developers and publishers expect translators to produce target versions that are as good as originals game on! burning issues in game localisation 129 in order to lead players to believe that the game has been designed specifically for them. this emphasis on the user and their experience has been pointed out by authors such as díaz montón (2010), who uses the expression emotional localisation to refer to attempts to facilitate players' immersion in the game. o'hagan uses the expression emotion engineering (2010, 2016; o'hagan & mangiron, 2013) to highlight the need to understand players’ emotional experience and replicate it for target players. lepre (2014) uses the term ludological localisation – from ludology or the study of games – to emphasize the importance of reproducing the gameplay experience of the original version for target players, even if this means redesigning the visual aspects or the story line. nevertheless, despite the fact that one of the main tenets of game localisation – both from a theoretical and practical perspective – is that localised versions should provide players with a similar gameplay experience to those playing the original version, no studies have proven whether this is actually the case. reception studies focusing on players' experience (px) of both original and target players are few, due to the complexities associated with their design, obtaining subjects, and analysing data. o'hagan (2009, 2016) has pioneered the application of experimental methodologies in game localisation research in order to study px by means of recording the player trajectory, hand movements and utterances (2009), as well as using biometric data (eye tracking, heart rate, and galvanic skin response measurements) to obtain more objective data about px and the reception of humour (2016). o'hagan (2009; 2016) also carried out post-task interviews to obtain qualitative data and triangulate it with the biometric data. a pilot experimental study (mangiron, 2016) was also carried out to assess the reception of game subtitles in video games using eye-tracking technology and questionnaires, with both hearing and deaf players. however, further investigation into the affective dimension of game localisation and its emphasis on the user is necessary in order to shed more light on game localisation theory and practice. large scale cross-cultural experimental reception studies involving interdisciplinary teams of researchers from fields such as game design, psychology, and translation studies, can help obtain data about px of both original and target users, which could in turn inform game design and localisation strategies (mangiron, 2018). in addition to experimental studies, a number of reception studies using questionnaires and focusing on players' views about localised games and their language preferences have been carried out by geurts (2015) in the dutch context, fernández-costales (2016) in the spanish context, and ellefsen (2016) in french-speaking territories. gonzález-barrionuevo (2017) provides a broader study of the reception of creative language in video games with users from different languages. undoubtedly, reception studies will feature more predominantly in future research into game localisation, as little is known about players’ preferences, such as their preferred avt mode for localised games, or their preferred localisation strategies for specific game genres or text types. to date, the localisation industry has largely tended towards adaptation and domestication, particularly when localising japanese games, but without really asking players whether they prefer such strategies or if they would rather enjoy playing games that preserve some of their original flavour. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 130 in the case of languages spoken in different territories, another issue that deserves attention is the preferred language variety for playing, as in ellefsen's (2016) study on french-speaking locales. in the case of spanish, for example, there are numerous regional variations, but the game industry tends to opt for a castilian spanish version only, a castilian spanish version for spain and a latin american spanish version for the remaining territories, which tends to be based on mexican spanish, or a neutral spanish version for all territories. however, regional varieties of spanish differ greatly, in particular when it comes to colloquial language and slang and players may not be satisfied with the available version. studies on users' preferences based on questionnaires can be triangulated with experimental reception tests to obtain data about users' linguistic preferences when playing games. this, in turn, would help the game industry to fine-tune their localisation approaches and strategies for different game types and territories. 6. quality and collaborative translation quality and how to measure it is another burning issue for the game localisation industry. little attention has been devoted by scholars to the quality assessment process in game localisation, despite the fact that detecting translation errors – arising from issues such as the lack of context – is crucial to ensuring the quality of localised games. furthermore, it would be beneficial for the industry to develop quality evaluation models, measures, and methodologies for assessing the quality of localised versions in line with related fields, such as software localisation and machine translation. this issue of quality is closely linked to another relatively recent phenomenon in translation theory and practice: collaborative translation in the form of fan translation and crowdsourcing. video game fan translation practices, which developed at the end of the 1990s, are known as romhacking, because in order to embed the translation into the original code, fan translators need to hack the original game to perform a reverse engineering process (muñozsánchez, 2007). originally, the main motivations behind fan translations were to localise japanese games for english speaking players, or to improve the quality of existing translations via mods or patches because fans were either not satisfied with the quality of official translations or desired uncensored access to the original version. interestingly, fan translators often embark on the localisation of a game because they feel that they are not able to experience the game in a similar way to the original players. thus, fan translations of japanese games tend to be more literal and more exoticising than official translations, which are sometimes criticised by fans for being too local and for removing traces of the original japanese culture. this seems paradoxical, as the main objective of game localisation is to provide target players with a similar px, and that is the reason why games tend to be heavily adapted. therefore, further research is needed in order to find out more about players' reception of fan-localised versions versus the officially localised versions of games. this in turn could help developers and publishers to tailor game on! burning issues in game localisation 131 localisation strategies, by taking into account the audience, genre, theme and cultural content of a game. in addition, analysing players' and fans' reactions to localised games on specialised websites and forums, as well as in social media, can provide interesting data about localisation approaches and their perception by players. interviews with fan translators can also provide information about their motivations as well as their working and decision-making processes. crowdsourcing is a more recent phenomenon in game localisation, both from an academic and an industry perspective. unlike fan translation, which originates from the fans and with no expectation of financial gain, crowdsourcing often originates from a call by developers for fans to translate a game, because the latter are usually passionate and knowledgeable about the games. it is often used by independent developers who have limited budgets for their projects and cannot afford professional localisation. therefore, this type of localisation is in direct competition with professional localisation. it should be mentioned that there is also the possibility of employing the services of start-up companies that use crowdsourcing as a business model and provide fast and cheap translations. translators receive little remuneration for such work but gain experience and status in the translation community if their translations are voted the best ones. even some established localisation vendors are now offering crowdsourced translation as part of their localisation services to provide fast and cost-effective translation solutions. in the case of minority languages, as developers and publishers do not consider localised versions worth the investment, fan translations may be the only option to bring the game to target players in their own languages. the quality of fan translations and crowdsourced translations varies greatly, and such translations often contain linguistic errors. this is understandable considering that many of the fans carrying out translations are not translators or language specialists. this poses interesting questions regarding quality. are there different quality standards for different purposes and different groups of users? is it better to have access to a fan-translated game even if the quality is not good, than not having the game translated at all? do players care about the linguistic quality of a game? how does it affect their overall play experience? is the quality of a game related to its language or is it related to the story and game mechanics? the japanese rpg final fantasy vii (1997) is considered among the best of its kind in the history of video games, but the quality of the early localised versions was harshly criticised. so, what do users really value? again, reception studies can contribute to answering all these questions. 7. technology despite the fact that the video game industry is technologically-driven and has advanced at vertiginous speed, localisation technology has not kept pace. for many developers, microsoft excel files are still the preferred format for translation because such files are easy to export and import, even though excel is not an application specifically designed for translation. developers who have injournal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 132 house translation departments often do not work with computer-assisted translation (cat) tools because they tend to perceive their work as a creative process, more similar to literary translation than software localisation. however, a number of developers and specialised game translator vendors use content management systems and cat tools in order to improve their productivity. there are also localisation management solutions, such as xloc (www.xloc.com), which have been specifically designed for the game localisation industry. undoubtedly, the translation of certain text assets, such as system messages – which are usually platform-specific – or the name of weapons, abilities, and objects from games in a saga can benefit from using translation memories and terminology management tools, as they tend to be repeated in different games. in addition, as assets for translation are often distributed among different translators in order to meet tight deadlines, the use of cat and terminology management tools can also contribute to maintaining consistent translation styles. more research on the different tools and technologies applied to game localisation, how they affect translators' work, and how they can optimise the localisation process is necessary and would be beneficial for the industry. another technological issue that is likely to have an effect on game localisation practices is the increasing use of augmented reality (ar) and virtual reality (vr) in games. this will have an impact at a terminological level, with new terms requiring translation into different languages. in addition, in the case of vr there are particular challenges regarding the placement of text, such as the text that appears in the user interface and the subtitles, which is essential to guarantee accessibility for deaf and hard of hearing players. finally, a technology-related topic that is increasingly attracting game industry attention is the application of machine translation to game localisation. while machine translation may not work with all kinds of game genres and text assets – especially those that are contain more creative and idiomatic language –, it could work with the more technical text types present in games, such as system messages and tutorials. it may also work on certain game genres which rely more heavily on terminology than on creativity, such as sport games or flight simulator games. as machine translation can help reduce the time and cost of the game localisation process, this area can be expected to attract more interest both from academia and the industry in the coming years. 8. training game localisation training is another important issue for the industry and academia. since 2003 spain has been one of the countries pioneering the training of game translators, particularly at postgraduate level. the growing demand for game translators in the industry and the popularity of this type of translation among students has resulted in the proliferation of training courses. due to its hybrid nature, game localisation can be found in the curriculum of master's degrees in specialised translation, avt, translation technologies, and multimedia game on! burning issues in game localisation 133 translation.ii a number of authors have looked at the didactics of game translation – such as bernalmerino (2008a), granell (2011), and o'hagan and mangiron (2013) – focusing on issues such as competencies and curriculum design. vela-valido (2011) examined the history of game localisation teaching in spain, and carreira and arrés (2014) conducted a survey of courses that include some game translation at undergraduate level, but more research is needed in this area. one of topics often debated is whether a game translator needs to be a gamer. most job advertisements looking for localisation specialists (the term often used in the industry) require them to be gamers or at least have some knowledge about video games. however, the author of this paper has met many game translators who were not gamers. being a gamer is certainly an advantage when translating blind-folded, without access to the original game, as one's intuition can help decide which of the possible translations for a string is the most appropriate. for example, is the string open a button or is it a sign for a shop window? or if it is a dialogue line, is it addressed to one or more characters? while translators who are gamers may find it easier to identify the most likely function of a given string, non-gamer translators who have received training in game localisation should be able to make educated guesses as well. the difficulty in obtaining training materials due to the confidential nature of the industry should also be highlighted. because of this, trainers have to manually transcribe the text from the game or work with open source games which are freely available. one of the pending issues in this area is to establish a fruitful collaboration between industry and academia so that companies can provide trainers with localisable assets of older games. this would also allow for the implementation of smallscale localisation projects which replicate all the steps of a professional localisation project, including quality assessment of the localised game. collaboration in the form of internships and mentoring programmes can also be beneficial for both parties and is another avenue to explore. more research will be needed to keep up to date with the latest developments in the industry in terms of localisation practices, the use of technology, and the competences and professional profile required for the role. consideration also needs to be given to the incorporation of such information into the training of future professionals to meet the industry needs. 9. conclusions game localisation is a bourgeoning type of translation that is increasingly attracting the attention of scholars due to its hybrid nature. it shares features in common with other types of translation, mainly avt and software localisation, but also technical and literary translation. despite the growing interest in this field there are still several burning issues requiring further scholarly attention. as discussed in this paper, these include: the most appropriate term to refer to this type of translation; its positioning within the wider translation studies framework and the methodology most appropriate to carry out research in the field; its relationship with other translation genres, in particular avt; game accessibility; reception studies; quality assessment; collaborative translation; journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 134 the impact of technology on localisation practices, and translator training. in order to overcome all these issues and keep advancing the field collaboration will be essential, not only among researchers from different disciplines such as translation studies, game studies and psychology, but also between academia and the industry. numerous exciting challenges lie ahead for researchers willing to overcome these burning issues and bring research and practice in this area to the next level. the game is not over yet. biographical note carme mangiron, phd, is a lecturer and a member of the research group transmedia catalonia at the universitat autònoma de barcelona (uab). she is also the programme director of the ma in audiovisual translation at uab. carme has extensive experience as a translator, specialising in software and game localisation. her research interests include game localisation, game accessibility, audiovisual translation and media accessibility. she has published extensively in international journals and participated in several national and international research projects. she is co-author of game localization: translating for the global digital entertainment industry (o’hagan and mangiron, 2013), one of the editors of fun for all: translation and accessibility practices in video games (mangiron, orero & o'hagan, 2014) and the organizer of the fun for all: translation and accessibility in video games conference, which started in 2010 and runs every two years. references aarseth, e. 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(2007). audio localization for language service providers. multilingual localization: getting started guide, october–november 2007, 18–23. retrieved from https://multilingual.com/all-articles/?art_id=1004 suojanen, t., koskinen, k. & tuominen, t. (2014). user-centered translation. london & new york, ny: routledge. vela-valido, j. (2011). la formación académica de los traductores de videojuegos en españa: retos y propuestas para docentes e investigadores [academic training of video game translators in spain: challenges and proposals]. trans. revista de traductología, 15, 89-102. retrieved from http://www.trans.uma.es/pdf/trans_15/89-102.pdf zhang, x. (2012). censorship and digital games localization in china. meta: journal des traducteurs, 57, 338-350. retrieved from https://www.erudit.org/revue/meta/2012/v57/n2/1013949ar.pdf zhang, x. (2014). terminology management in video games localisation. in c. mangiron, p. orero & m. o'hagan (eds.), fun for all: translation and accessibility practices in video games (pp. 197-215). bern: peter lang. zhang, x. (2016). key actors in the network of game localisation in china (unpublished doctoral dissertation). university of vienna, austria. i a quick search in google scholar at the time of writing this article reveals that the predominant term is game localization, with us english spelling, with 677 results, and 322 results for game localisation, its uk english equivalent. "game translation", on the other hand, appears in 345 results. ii for example, in the spanish context, there is the ma in specialised translation by the universitat de vic (barcelona); the ma in audiovisual translation and the ma in translation technologies at the universitat autònoma de barcelona; the ma in multimedia translation at the universidade de vigo, the ma in translation and new technologies at the universidad internacional menéndez pelayo and the instituto superior de estudios lingüísticos (istrad) and the ma in audiovisual translation from the universidad de cádiz and istrad. in the british context, the university of roehampton offers game localisation in the postgraduate courses in specialised translation and audiovisual translation, and the university of bristol in the ma in chinese-english translation. university college london also offers a three-month course on game localisation. in the italian context, the università di bologna also offers game localisation in their ma on specialised translation. http://www.fti.uab.es/tradumatica/revista/articles/mscholand/mscholand.pdf http://www.trans.uma.es/pdf/trans_15/89-102.pdf https://www.erudit.org/revue/meta/2012/v57/n2/1013949ar.pdf universitat autònoma de barcelona abstract citation: mangiron, c. (2018). game on! burning issues in game localisation. journal of audiovisual translation, 1(1), 122-138. editor: a. jankowska & j. pedersen received: january 22, 2018 accepted: june 30, 2018 published: november 15, 2018 funding: catalan government funds 2017sgr113. copyright: ©2018 mangiron. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license. this allows for unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source ... 1. introduction 2. game localisation within translation studies 3. game localisation and audiovisual translation 4. game accessibility 5. reception studies 6. quality and collaborative translation 7. technology 8. training 9. conclusions biographical note references 81 from old tricks to netflix: how local are interlingual subtitling norms for streamed television? jan pedersen stockholm university _________________ abstract ________________________________________ like other translation norms, interlingual subtitling norms for television volve over time, influenced by technology, mediascape development nd other trends. originating in cinema subtitling norms, tv subtitling orms began to develop at national public service broadcasters. later, orms became international with the rise of the dvd nd the proliferation of commercial tv in europe. these days, the most nfluential force driving subtitling norms is arguably the global video on emand (vod) providers. this paper investigates the subtitling uidelines of vod giant netflix, in search of the question: how local are nterlingual subtitling norms for streamed television? the results show hat there is little variation in the initial guidelines, but that they are ontinually becoming more varied, as they are localized using input rom users. e a n n a i d g i t c f key words: subtitling, norm development, television, video on demand, netflix  jan.pedersen@su.se; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9189-0330 citation: pedersen, j. (2018). from old tricks to netflix: how local are interlingual subtitling norms for streamed television? journal of audiovisual translation, 1(1), 81-100. editor(s): a. jankowska & j.-l. kruger received: january 22, 2018 accepted: june 30, 2018 published: november 15, 2018 copyright: ©2018 pedersen. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license. this allows for unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. mailto:jan.pedersen@su.se https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9189-0330 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9189-0330 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 82 1. introduction norms guide most aspects of human behaviour, and translation, in this case in the form of subtitling, is no exception. subtitling norms for television started to develop early and grew organically as they followed the development of technology and the needs of viewers and subtitlers. there are a few points in time or identifiable events when innovations or dramatic changes to the mediascape have caused subtitling norms to change more dramatically than would otherwise have been the case. one such event was the beginning of the computerised use of the electronic time code, another was the development of the dvd and the boom in commercial television in the 1990s. the most recent such event has been the explosive growth of streamed television content via video on demand (vod). for each of these events, subtitling norms have become ever more global, guiding the creation of content that is disseminated globally. to summarise, then, in the early days, subtitling norms were national, developed mainly by public service television providers. with the rise of the dvd and the boom in commercial television, they became international, and in the era of streaming, they are becoming global. but just how global are they and to what degree do they still reflect the local? this paper charts the development of interlingual subtitling norms for television in the past 70 years, and investigates how this development is mirrored in the subtitling norms of today. in order to answer the question of how local current interlingual subtitling norms for streamed television are, this paper presents an analysis of the local language guidelines of the global vod giant netflix. the structure of the paper follows that of the norm development, in that it starts by giving insights from public service television, mainly in scandinavia (section 4.1), zooming out onto the european mediascape (section 4.2), and then finally shifting its focus to the global arena in section 5. 2. a brief note on norms broadly speaking, translation norms can be either prescriptive or descriptive. prescriptive norms are based on an authority who decrees or offers advice on how to translate; in other words, such norms prescribe what translation should be like. descriptive norms describe actual practices, based on observation of translations and translators; in other words, such norms describe what translation is like. descriptive norms can then be used prescriptively, e.g., by being included in textbooks for students and guidelines for practitioners. thus, for the learner (and also for the practitioner) it can sometimes be hard to tell the two kinds apart, as descriptive norms also exert regulatory force, be it in textbooks and guidelines or through peer pressure. however, both prescriptive and descriptive norms are organic entities that develop over time (cf. chesterman, 1997), and this will be described below (in section 4), with a focus on interlingual subtitle norms. from old tricks to netflix: how local are interlingual subtitling norms for streamed television? 83 according to gideon toury (1995), translation norms can be found by studying textual sources (i.e. translations) or by studying extratextual sources (such as statements about translations). he warns, however, that extratextual sources are secondary and there may be gaps and even contradictions between textual and extratextual sources (1995). this is so because translators do not always do what they say they do, or what they are told to do. even so, this paper uses a form of extratextual source by investigating current subtitling norms for streamed television as they appear in subtitling guidelines (section 5). 3. on avt choice broadly speaking, european countries have long been considered as dubbing, subtitling or voice-over countries (cf. e.g., pedersen, forthcoming). this division is based on which way those in power, be they legislators, dictators, cinematographers or distributors, decided to go once the spoken dialogue films, or talkies, arrived in the late 1920s and early 1930s. before that, when silent movies were all there was (which is an obvious retronym; they were just called movies at the time), audiovisual translation (avt) was fairly simple. it basically just meant cutting out the source language (sl) intertitles and replacing them with new ones in the target language (tl) (ivarsson, 2002). in the early days many countries experimented with various modes of avt before getting set in their ways. some tried voice-over, some resisted the talkies by removing the sound and inserting intertitles, while others tried dubbing or had translations written into leaflets that the audience could read along. for instance, swedish cinemas tried dubbing and live voice-over as well as translation leaflets before settling on subtitling (natzén, forthcoming). thus, in the early days there was a mix of methods before countries settled (or were ordered to settle; ivarsson & carroll, 1998) on their preferred mode of avt. the choice of avt became more entrenched when television became a serious reality in the early 1950s. after initial experimenting (e.g., with voice-over on danish television; gottlieb & grigaravičiūtė, 1999), many countries made the same choice for the small screen as they had for the big screen. however, in some countries of central and eastern europe, different modes prevail in different media to this day. for instance, poland, bulgaria, latvia and lithuania favour voice-over for television and subtitling in cinemas, while slovakia, the czech republic and hungary mainly use dubbing on television and subtitling in cinemas (media consulting group, 2007). apart from small differences based on practical considerations (dubbing and voice-over being the only practical choice for children’s content, even in the scandinavian countries where subtitling is entrenched), there seems to have been stability in the national choice of avt until the mid-1990s. the introduction of the dvd meant that for home audiences, there was a choice of several dubbed and subtitled versions. today, when streamed content is gaining ever more market shares, avt choice can hardly be said to be a monolithic national choice, but rather is the choice of individual journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 84 viewers. these days, viewing habits are many and diverse, and the services offered by online vod stores, streaming platforms, social media etc. do their best to facilitate this by providing avt for people to watch whatever they like, whenever they like. so, avt has gone from being a national choice to being an individual choice. it is thus not entirely correct to talk about subtitling and dubbing countries any more. however, people are creatures of habit, and they tend to be faithful to the avt mode to which they are accustomed. this means that we can still use these labels as long as we define subtitling country as shorthand for a country that has historically used subtitling as the main form of avt for television, even though the choice is no longer national and there is great individual variation. this is therefore how that term is used in this paper, and the same goes for the labels dubbing country and voice-over country. for a further discussion about avt choice, the reader is referred to pedersen (forthcoming). 4. historical overview of interlingual subtitling norms in this section, a historical overview of the development of norms governing the production of interlingual subtitles for television in europe is presented. the technical development of subtitling will not be presented here, as that has been done elsewhere (cf. e.g., ivarsson, 2002), the only exception being when technology influences norms. it should be pointed out, however, that the technical norms influence translation norms a great deal because they dictate how much space and choice a subtitler has to work with when translating. 4.1. the public service era in most subtitling countries, the television market was once dominated by public service broadcasters, such as the bbc in the uk, dr in denmark, yle in finland, and so on. these broadcasters employed their own in-house subtitlers, and the norms they followed often developed organically as subtitlers developed their practice. the norms were taught to new people who joined the profession, and after a while these norms were written down in in-house guidelines (e.g., ivarsson & kumlien, 1982). there were some international contacts made when subtitlers met at conferences and discussed aspects of their profession (e.g., mathiasson, 1984; nordisk språksekretariat, 1989). despite this, there was not much international cooperation, and the subtitling norms developed fairly independently in the various broadcasting houses. this comparative isolation accounts for odd differences in national norms, such as the fact that danish subtitles require a blank space after the so-called speaker dash, whereas swedish norms, for no apparent reason, do not (pedersen, 2007). local traditions and tastes developed, such as the danes having more and shorter subtitles, to respect cuts in the audiovisual material, whereas swedes have tended to favour full two-liners, at the cost of disrespecting some (soft) cuts. from old tricks to netflix: how local are interlingual subtitling norms for streamed television? 85 the introduction of personal computers in the 1980s, and particularly the use of electronic timecode that allowed subtitlers to cue subtitles in advance, revolutionised subtitling norms. the fact that subtitlers no longer had to be present to cue subtitles manually when the content was broadcast meant that subtitles could be cued much more precisely. this led to shorter and more precise exposure times, which in turn allowed for higher reading speeds (often expressed in characters per second, or cps). also, at this time, text became more proportional to letter size rather than identical for all letters, as was the case in the teletext era, which meant that the number of characters per line (cpl) could be increased. in sweden, for instance, line lengths went from a maximum of 28–32 cpl in the 1980s to 35–37 cpl in the late 1990s (pedersen, 2007). the combination of these two factors, i.e. higher reading speeds and longer lines, meant that the need for condensation dropped drastically. there, the condensation rate (i.e. the number of words “lost in translation”) dropped from almost half to a third (pedersen, 2007). these technical innovations were introduced at different times by different broadcasting houses − quite early in greece and denmark (pedersen, 2011) − and it took some time for (conservative) subtitlers to adjust to them. this means that european subtitling norms probably varied the most in the 1980s and early 1990s, while subtitlers adjusted to their new tools. 4.2. the commercial tv and dvd era many subtitling countries thus entered the 1990s with their own different subtitling norms which were mainly developed at the various public service broadcasters. at this time, however, in many countries, the monopoly of the public service broadcasters was challenged by commercial television stations, which were broadcasting internationally. this led to an unprecedented increase in the number of television channels available to europeans. gambier (2003) has shown that the number of television channels increased by a factor of 32 in a space of 13 years (between 1989 and 2002). many of these new channels, first available via cable or satellite, with some later becoming terrestrial were international, broadcasting the same content in many countries. an example of this is viasat, which runs several near-identical channels with very similar content in all of the nordic and baltic countries. to these multinationals, it makes sense to cooperate with international subtitling companies and to acquire subtitles in all the languages in which they broadcast. similarly, for distributors of dvds with many language options, it is also easier and cheaper to outsource their avt needs, rather than to set up their own translation units or to ask public service broadcasters for assistance. thus, the development of multinational commercial television companies was accompanied by the growth of international subtitling companies, such as sdi-media or bti studios. public service broadcasters normally only produced one subtitled version of televised content in one language, whereas the international subtitling companies produced subtitles in several languages for the same content. in order to maximise this process, these companies started to develop synergies between language versions. the most obvious one was the introduction of master template journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 86 files. these are first-generation translations that are used as templates for second-generation translations, where the subtitlers only have to translate the contents and not spend time on the rather time-consuming segmenting and spotting tasks (for a further description see, for example, georgakopoulou, 2009). similarly, the translation of dvds was often based on so-called genesis files, pre-spotted subtitle files in the source language (georgakopoulou, 2009). however, if the international companies were to benefit from these labour-saving processes such as using the same templates, they could not adhere to varying national norms. so, in the 1990s, the commercial companies harmonised the technical norms, but the national subtitling norms were left a great deal weaker for it (pedersen, 2007). as the public service broadcasters began to outsource (part of) their subtitling, the new international norms started to affect public service subtitling norms as well. an example of how the subtitling norms became more standardised is that swedish and danish subtitling norms went from being very different in the 1980s to becoming so similar that the only significant difference between them at the start of the new millennium was a slightly higher number of subtitles in the danish versions (pedersen, 2007). there was some initial reluctance to this norm change, particularly from those downstream in the template flow, so to speak (pedersen, 2007). however, in the early 2000s, it could be safe to say that, at least when it comes to technical norms such as reading speeds, condensation rates, exposure times and line lengths, most of the european subtitling countries subscribed to the same norms. there are, however, still variations such as in punctuation. the introduction of the dvd meant that even in traditional dubbing countries such as spain, germany, italy and france, the option to use subtitles became available. this led to subtitles becoming common in these countries even though, presumably, most viewers preferred to watch the dubbed versions. the dubbing countries tended to import the norms that were present in the genesis files, which meant mainly american intralingual subtitling norms. these norms prescribe a higher pace of subtitles, with more subtitles per minute, higher reading speeds and less condensation. georgakopoulou (2010) and sokoli (2009) have shown that there is more omission and reading speeds are lower in greek dvd subtitles than in spanish ones, which illustrates this point. in many ways, this is at odds with the best interests of the viewers, as viewers in dubbing countries are less used to reading subtitles, and presumably need more time to do so. summing up the historical overview, we find that subtitling norms have gone from being national and mainly developed by public service broadcasters, to becoming international and determined by market forces. allowing for national variation in minor issues such as punctuation, the main dividing line has gone from national norms to subtitling norms for subtitling versus dubbing (and voice-over) countries. in the case of subtitling countries, norms have evolved via what could be called coerced harmonisation of national norms. in dubbing countries (and voice-over countries, though this seems to be less well researched), norms tend to be based on norms imported from american genesis files. that was, broadly speaking, the situation in europe at the dawn of the era of video on demand. from old tricks to netflix: how local are interlingual subtitling norms for streamed television? 87 5. how local are interlingual subtitling norms in the era of video on demand? in this section, we will look at the development of subtitling norms in the era of vod, by investigating netflix guidelines. netflix is possibly the most dominant stakeholder in the vod world, even though there are other major streaming services such as hbo, viasat and amazon video. in 2016, netflix had a presence in all countries in the world, except north korea and syria (fetner, kreeger & smith, 2016). furthermore, the company does not only distribute content, but also produces a great deal of very successful original content, such as house of cards (willimon, 2013-), orange is the new black (kohan, 2013-) and the crown (morgan, 2016-). netflix is not only a huge company, but it also takes on various roles when it comes to language localisation. in one way, it can be compared to traditional public service companies in that it provides in-house guidelines. netflix also uses a recruiting process for freelancers via the hermes test system (test.hermes.nflex.io), who then work directly for the company. however, it also acts like commercial television stations in that it commissions a great share of its subtitles from independent subtitling companies, such as bti studios and sdimedia (cf. section 4.2). lastly, it is similar to dvd distributors in that it sometimes buys used subtitle files from other distributors (known as assets; cf. georgakopoulou, 2010) and commissions english template files, a practice which is synonymous to the use of genesis files (cf. section 4.2) in the dvd industry. these files are then used for local language versions (ch. saka, personal communication, february 2018). regardless of which path the commissioning takes, all subtitlers are required to use their guidelines, which they call timed text style guides (ttsgs), whether they work for netflix directly or for an intermediary. it can therefore be argued that the netflix guidelines exert a great deal of pressure on the subtitlers’ behaviour and are thus expressions of strong norms. since netflix is such an influential stakeholder in the vod world and since these norms are expressed prescriptively in the ttsgs, an investigation of these may provide a good example of strong subtitling norms in the age of vod, even though other companies may employ (and enforce) other norms. the instructions for making the english template file come in a document called english template timed text style guide (netflix, 2018c). this document stipulates norms about line length (42 cpl), duration, reading speed (17 cps for adult programmes and 13 for children’s programmes), line treatment, frame gaps, file format, timing, credits, titles, etc. there are then 36 localised language versions (as of february 2018, including english subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing, or sdh), and these will be investigated here. to begin with, all the ttsgs also refer to a five-page document called timed text style guide: general requirements (netflix, 2018k). there is a great deal of overlap between the content of this document and the template ttsg, and also some overlap with the local language ttsgs. all ttsgs are available online and provided with a button marked “provide feedback on this style guide”, where subtitlers (and presumably other users) can comment on the content. this feedback is then used to update the ttsgs and is recorded in a change log. the main focus of this investigation is on the ttsgs. in order to answer the question posed in the title of this paper, all 36 versions were analysed quantitatively, by investigating length, number of subsections, the change log, and whether target language examples are used. nine ttsgs journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 88 were then analysed qualitatively to determine whether there are any differences that may be due to influence from dubbing, voice-over and subtitling traditions. 5.1. quantitative analysis in this section, all ttsgs are studied and compared to guidelines from four other subtitling companies. first, printed length in pages will be reported, then the number of subsections, the change logs and last, some findings about target languages. the ttsgs do not vary very much in length, with one exception. the japanese ttsg is twice the length of the average ttsg. as it turns out, this is due to it being two guidelines combined – japanese and japanese sdh. it is not clear why this should be so. in comparison, there are two separate guidelines for simplified chinese and traditional chinese. apart from the japanese ttsg, they vary between four and six pages in printed format, with five being the most common. this can be seen in figure 1 below. from old tricks to netflix: how local are interlingual subtitling norms for streamed television? 89 figure 1. guideline size in printed pages (excluding change log) figure 1 shows the number of printed pages of netflix ttsgs, excluding the change log, compared to local guidelines of four other commercial companies that operate internationally: zoo digital, titelbild, sdi-media and bti studios. the comparison may be seen as somewhat unfair, journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 90 as netflix subtitlers are also supposed to consider the general requirements document (netflix, 2018k). however, even if the five pages of that document were to be added to each individual ttsg, they would also still be considerably briefer than those of the other companies, and there would be some overlap in content. the number of subsections varies between the ttsgs, from 16 (for indonesian) to 25 (for japanese), 20 (14 ttsgs) and 21 (11 ttsgs) being the standard number of subsections. it is hardly surprising that there is a correlation between length and number of subsections, even if it is not 1:1. most subsections are the same for all ttsgs, but some have additional subsections, for unexplained reasons. the content of the ttsg subsections is discussed in section 5.2, content analysis. updates to the ttsg can be tracked through the change log, which lists the number of times a ttsg has been changed over the last two years, and how many changes have been made on each occasion. the average number of times a ttsg had been updated as at 2 february 2018 was 1.3 times, with 10 ttsgs not having been updated in the two years prior (if at all). figure 2 below shows how many changes (in total) had been made to each ttsg at that point in time: from old tricks to netflix: how local are interlingual subtitling norms for streamed television? 91 figure 2. number of changes to ttsg, according to change log figure 2 demonstrates that there is also a correlation between the number of subsections and the number of updates to a ttsg, although not all this correlation does not always hold. the russian and traditional chinese ttsgs have 21 changes but only 20 subsections each, for instance. conversely, the japanese ttsg, with 25 subsections, only has two added subsections in the change log. this suggests that ttsgs may have a slightly different number of subsections from the outset or that they had been updated before the records in the change log. it can be presumed that more updates are made in the most common target languages, because there would be more active users providing feedback for those. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 92 all ttsgs except two (turkish and indonesian) are supplied with target language examples. this is the most obvious example of active localisation in the ttsgs. interestingly, netflix has mainly divided the world into languages, rather than countries, if one accepts simplified and traditional chinese as two (written) languages. the french ttsg also makes reference to canadian french on one occasion. another example is that castilian spanish and latin american spanish share the same ttsg. this indicates that the company focuses more on linguistic differences than on national norms. this is particularly interesting since latin america has a stronger subtitling tradition for commercial tv (d. orrego-carmona, personal communication, august 2017) than spain has, which uses strictly dubbing. the system is not without exceptions, however, as brazilian portuguese and european portuguese each have a ttsg. 5.2. content analysis in this section, a closer look is taken at the ttsgs of nine languages, in order to determine what netflix norms actually look like, and whether any consideration has been given to traditions in the choice of avt. first, three languages with a strong tradition of subtitling have been selected: swedish, danish and dutch. second, three typical dubbing languages have been selected: german, french and italian. last, three languages spoken in countries where there is a strong tradition for voice-over on television have been selected: russian, polish and bulgarian. the rest of this section will compare the content of the various subsections of the ttsgs, focussing on differences that are due to localisation. the first two subsections are called “abbreviations” and “acronyms”. whilst the second subsection on acronyms is identical in all ttsgs (no periods should be used in acronyms), the list of abbreviations varies a great deal between the ttsgs. this is an area where localisation has taken place, and it indicates source vs. target orientation as the list of abbreviations contains forms of address (e.g., mr. and mrs.), and indicates whether source or target forms are used. for french, for instance, only tl forms are used, whereas for swedish there is a mix. however, in traditional swedish subtitling, only sl forms are normally used (e.g., broadcast text stockholm ab, 2004). danish lists only tl forms, whereas the practice there is normally also to use sl forms, particularly for english (lindberg, n.d.). this subsection is inexplicably absent from the russian ttsg. the next ttsg subsection contains information about “character limitation”, i.e. maximum characters per line. it is identical for all (42 cpl), except for russian, which has 39 cpl. this may be due to russian using the cyrillic alphabet, but then bulgarian (and serbian) also have a 42-character limit. curiously, the french ttsg is alone in having a subsection on “brand names”, which are normally to be generalised (this does not apply to canadian french). from old tricks to netflix: how local are interlingual subtitling norms for streamed television? 93 “character names” are treated very much the same across ttsgs. these should not be translated unless they are meaning-bearing nicknames. also, official equivalents should be used for historical/mythical characters. the russian (but not the bulgarian) ttsg also includes a point about transliteration here. the subsection on “continuity” tells the subtitlers not to use dashes or periods to indicate that a sentence continues across more than one subtitle, not even for languages that have this tradition for television, such as swedish and danish. the practice of not marking continuity is, however, fairly common in the dvd industry (e.g., estrup, 2002). the dutch, interestingly, are told to use three periods to indicate continuity. the only film or programme genre that gets its own subsection is “documentary”, where subtitlers are told how to present speakers. these instructions are the same across languages, except that the russian and polish ttsgs have one less bullet point. the subsection on “dual speakers” instructs on how a dual-speaker subtitle is to be treated. this varies a little as to whether both speakers should be indicated by a speaker dash (not for russian and dutch) and whether there should be a blank space after the dash. swedes and danes are told not to use a blank space, even though danes traditionally have used one (pedersen, 2007). the subsection on “font information” is identical for all: white arial is to be used. the rather curiously headed subsection “forced narratives” instructs the subtitlers what to do with text on screen. this subsection is rather similar and lengthy (5–6 bullet points) and this could be the source of the netflix trend that has been the subject of much discussion, namely to elevate subtitles whenever text appears on screen, even if the ttsgs do not expressly say so. the subsection on “foreign dialogue” has three bullet points that say that foreign dialogue should only be translated if meant to be understood, that spelling should be verified, and that foreign words should be italicized if left untranslated. the next subsection, “italics”, lists when these should be used, and it is very much the same across languages, except for dutch, where italics are not used to mark speech or other sounds that are distant (e.g., voices on tv, telephones, pa systems). this is a clear case of adherence to local norms (vercauteren, personal communication, february 2018). the russian and bulgarian ttsgs then have a subsection on “line treatment” (maximum of two). why this is a special subsection, and why it is not included for other languages, which presumably also follow this rule, is unclear. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 94 the subsection on “numbers” gives five to eight bullet points that begin fairly similarly. the subsection then may or may not include instructions on weights and measures, time, and decimalisation. it is hard to see a pattern in what type of information is included here, beyond the first few points. this could be an indication that norms are under development and continuously being localised. the subsection on “punctuation” is absent from about half the ttsgs investigated here. when it is there, it mainly tells subtitlers when to use blank spaces. the subsection on “quotes” is quite lengthy and very similar for most ttsgs, except for the russian one, where the use of chevrons is included. the subsection on “reading speed” gives the same instructions for all ttsgs: 17 cps for adult programming and 13 cps for children. this seems to be the same for all alphabet-based ttsgs, regardless of language. it is higher than for traditional television norms, and similar to the dvd industry norms. the subsection on “repetitions”, which is inexplicably absent from the swedish ttsg, tells subtitlers not to subtitle these. the subsection on “songs” includes seven bullet points about the treatment of these. there is some localisation here in that the italian and german ttsgs prescribe quotation marks for song titles and the russian and bulgarian ttsgs lack two points about album and song titles. “titles” – this is also a subsection about text on screen, but it only deals with text about main, episode and film titles. the instructions appear to be identical throughout. the subsection on “special instructions” is the most interesting one from a localisation perspective. the subsection starts off with three identical bullet points about not censoring taboo language (albeit not in the russian ttsg), that dialogue pertinent to the plot should be translated rather than background dialogue, and that errors in the source text should not be replicated. these points are not special in the sense of being language-specific. what then follows is a hold-all of major and minor points that are mainly language-specific. for instance, the german ttsg prescribes using “new german spelling rules” (emphasis removed), and the italian ttsg has one bullet point with instructions on how to spell “ok” and another for the spelling of “beh”. the ttsgs (netflix, 2018a, 2018j) of all three subtitling languages have a bullet point that reads: in order to better meet the expectations of a danish [or swedish or dutch, depending on ttsg] audience, a condensed translation style is required. subtitles should be merged as much as possible whenever a character’s dialogue extends over several subtitles. character names should be left out once they have been clearly established. from old tricks to netflix: how local are interlingual subtitling norms for streamed television? 95 this is clearly an attempt at accommodating the tradition of lower reading speeds, common in subtitling countries. the penultimate subsection is entitled “speaker id/sound effects for sdh versions” and it contains six bullet points that expressly deal with subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing. it instructs subtitlers on how to identify speakers and how to reproduce sound effects intersemiotically in subtitles. the russian and bulgarian ttsgs contain five extra bullet points that instruct subtitlers to include as much of the original dialogue as possible and to use a reading speed of 20 cps for adult programming and 17 cps for children, plus some other details. the higher reading speed for sdh viewers is possibly problematic compared to that for hearing viewers as “deaf viewers are typically slow readers” (neves, 2008). the final subsection directs the subtitlers to various standard “reference” works on language and style, “for all language-related issues not covered in this document”. the bulgarian ttsg lacks this subsection, but the other ttsgs list one to four such works. the results of this qualitative analysis are that the “abbreviations”, “brand names” (french only) and ”reference” subsections are genuinely localised. there are eight subsections that show varying degrees of localisation: “special instructions”, “numbers” “speaker id / sound effects for sdh versions”, “songs”, “italics”, “continuity”, “punctuation” (where present) and “dual speakers”. the localisation in the last few is only slight, however. the twelve subsections that remain are identical or near-identical. thus, when it comes to content, not very much localisation has gone into the ttsgs, at least not when compared to the differences that can be found between subtitling and dubbing countries. 5.3. discussion on the localisation of netflix subtitling norms the findings in the previous sections show clearly that netflix ttsgs are different from those of other companies. not only are they shorter and less detailed, but they are also structured differently. other guidelines, like those of broadcast text (bti) or titelbild, have clear structures that group the content into domains such as spotting (titelbild, 2004) or translation problems (broadcast text stockholm ab, 2004). netflix ttsgs have a less rigidly organised structure. there is no apparent reason for the inclusion of some subsections, for example why brand names have their own very small subsection in the french ttsg instead of being included in the “special instructions” or “character names” subsection, or why the “repetitions” subsection is missing from the swedish ttsg. it could also be argued that the instructions about cpl and cps would logically be juxtaposed, but they are not, and the same goes for the subsections relating to punctuation. or indeed why the ”forced narratives” subsection should be given as much space as the instructions for sdh subtitling, or why sdh is awarded six pages in the japanese ttsg but only six bullet points journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 96 in other ttsgs. the impression that emerges is that the ttsgs are a work in progress that is continually being developed further via the input from users, as recorded in the change log. this is also where localisation comes in. whenever a user makes a remark on local practice, and that is accepted into the ttsg, the guidelines become more localised (and presumably more descriptive of local norms). this can be seen particularly in the “special instructions” subsection, which is a subsection that often recurs in the various change logs. one area in which it is particularly fruitful to discuss norm development and variety is reading speeds. not only is this something that is discussed in guidelines, it is also something that is fairly well researched, both from the perspective of the subtitlers and that of the viewers. eyetracking research has shown if viewers are to spend less than half of their attention on the subtitles, the reading speed should be at 12 cps (jensema, 1997; romero-fresco, 2015). at a reading speed of 17 cps, viewers spend on average more than 80% of their time reading subtitles (romero-fresco, 2015), or start skipping them (caffrey, 2012; lång & mäkisalo, 2013). in 2016, szarkowska carried out two large-scale online surveys on subtitle presentation time (i.e. reading speed) and line breaks in interlingual subtitling, aimed at professional subtitlers (2016a) and subtitling companies (2016b). her results showed that subtitlers reported a great deal of variation, particularly in reading speed, from 9 to 17 cps, depending on country and medium (2016a). the pattern is that countries with a long subtitling tradition, such as the scandinavian countries or the netherlands, have a lower reported reading speed, whereas others, such as the uk, poland, france and brazil, have higher reading speeds (szarkowska, 2016a). her surveys verify the difference between anglophone, dubbing and voice-over countries on the one hand and subtitling countries on the other hand, with the latter being towards the lower end of that span (2016a). this difference is not reflected in the ttsgs. there is, however, an attempt at localisation there, as the special instructions for the “subtitling languages” swedish, danish and dutch instruct subtitlers to condense the content. this is presumably included in order to respect local norms. however, since the reading speed remains the same for all languages, there is very little incentive for subtitlers to actually carry out much condensation, as this is arguably not only “one of the most time-consuming elements of the job” (szarkowska, 2016a, p. 14) but also a cognitively taxing task. norms vary culturally as well as linguistically. an example of cultural differences is that traditionally, the norms for swedish in sweden and in finland (where swedish is an official language alongside finnish) differ, for example when it comes to punctuation. this is not at all reflected in the swedish nor the finnish ttsg. linguistically, typology makes it problematic to use the same templates for all languages. the long words of some heavily affixed languages, such as finnish and russian (szarkowska, 2016) call for special attention in line and subtitle breaks. similarly, german grammar, which requires a verb-final word order in subordinate clauses, means that if there is high subtitle density (which implies many short subtitles rather than fewer long ones), the viewers may have to wait for the next subtitle to appear before they will know what the verb of the clause is. this is not at all reflected in the german ttsg. from old tricks to netflix: how local are interlingual subtitling norms for streamed television? 97 the contents of the netflix guidelines appear to have developed from a set of prescriptive norms, which are still common to all guidelines. the prescriptive norms are then continually developed via the input from users. other companies also continually update their guidelines, of course, to reflect norm development and technical development. the difference here is mainly that, particularly for the public service broadcasters, this started as descriptive norms that grew out of inhouse practice. the great similarity among the ttsgs shows that netflix is basically rebooting subtitling norms, by prescribing the use of the same norms across the board (albeit with local language examples) and then gradually adapting them to local norms via updates. in a way, it could have been useful to have been influenced more by local norms from the outset, as that would have given the viewers in different countries the kinds of subtitles they were used to. considering the very rapid expansion of vod in general and of netflix in particular, it is quite understandable that the company has chosen another approach. when there was suddenly a huge and urgent need for subtitling into many languages, it was probably too time-consuming to research local norms. this must have prompted the use of the one-size-fits-all solution of norms, influenced by dvd norms, which could then be modified as you go along, so to speak. one question remains, and that is whether the ttsgs are actually representative of practice, as pointed out in section 2. the editors of bti studios (ch. saka, personal communication, february 2018), who use them for netflix content, claim that the norms are in fact followed. a brief scan of some netflix original series in the languages available in sweden seems to corroborate this. pending further investigation, the norms expressed in the ttsgs seem indeed to be reflected in the actual subtitles. 6. summary and conclusion compared to the development in the 1990s, where the subtitling norms of many countries were homogenised, the development that can be seen for vod is even less sensitive to local norms. here, new norms are imposing a one-size-fits-all system, which is then adjusted post hoc. whereas the early development was that of descriptive norms that then became increasingly prescriptive as the practices that developed in the public service companies were codified in guidelines, the development of netflix norms seems to be heading in the opposite direction. initially prescribed norms, set out with the general requirements and in the various language versions, are currently being localised by adding local norms describing local practices. so, instead of descriptive norms developing into prescriptive ones, these are prescriptive norms that are starting to incorporate descriptive norms. the answer to the question “how local are interlingual subtitling norms for streamed television?” will have to be: not very, but they may become so eventually. it would be interesting to see similar extratextually based studies on other vod companies, such as hbo or viasat. above all, however, we need to find out to what degree the actual texts follow journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 98 the prescriptions of the extratext. in other words, we need to find out to what extent subtitlers working for netflix (or other vod companies) do as they are told, and to what extent their subtitles follow other norms. biographical note jan pedersen was educated at the universities of stockholm, copenhagen and uppsala. he received his phd from stockholm university in 2007 and was made an associate professor in translation studies there in 2015. his dissertation is entitled scandinavian subtitles, and it is a comparative study of tv subtitling norms in the scandinavian countries. jan's research interests include translation studies, translation theory, audiovisual translation, pragmatics and comparative linguistics. he is the former president of the european association for studies in screen translation (esist), member of the european society for translation studies (est), founding member of the nordic network for translation studies (tranor) and co-editor of journal of audiovisual translation and benjamins translation library, and former co-editor of perspectives – studies in translation theory and practice. he is a frequent presenter at international conferences and his publications include the 2011 monograph subtitling norms for television, as well as several articles on subtitling, translation and linguistics. he also worked as a television subtitler for many years, subtitling shows like late show with david letterman, the simpsons and nikolaj og julie. jan is an associate professor at stockholm university, where he holds posts as deputy head of the department of swedish language and multilingualism and as director of the institute for interpretation and translation studies, where he also researches and teaches audiovisual translation. references caffrey, c. 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(1989). nordisk tv-teksting: rapport fra en konferense på schæffergården ved københavn 25.—27. november 1988 [nordic tv subtitling: report from a conference at schæffergården near copenhagen november 25–27 1988]. oslo: nordisk språksekretariats rapporter 12. pedersen, j. (2007). scandinavian subtitles: a comparative study of subtitling norms in sweden and denmark with a focus on extralinguistic cultural references (unpublished doctoral dissertation). stockholm university: stockholm. pedersen, j. (2011). subtitling norms for television: an exploration focusing on extralinguistic cultural references. amsterdam & philadelphia: john benjamins. pedersen, j. (forthcoming). foreign voices and what to do with them: an interdisciplinary analysis of avt choice. in a. baszkowska (ed.), proceedings from the first inatra conference. romero-fresco, p. (2015). final thoughts: viewing speeds in subtitling. in p. romero-fresco (ed.), the reception of subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing in europe (pp. 335-343). bern: peter lang. sokoli, s. (2009). subtitling norms in greece and spain. in j. díaz cintas & g. anderman (eds.), audiovisual translation: language transfer on screen (36-48). basingstoke & new york: palgrave macmillan. szarkowska, a. (2016a). report on the results of an online survey on subtitle presentation times and line breaks in interlingual subtitling – part 1: subtitlers. retrieved from http://avt.ils.uw.edu.pl/files/2016/10/sure_report_survey1.pdf szarkowska, a. (2016b). report on the results of an online survey on subtitle presentation times and line breaks in interlingual subtitling – part 2: companies. retrieved from http://avt.ils.uw.edu.pl/files/2016/12/report_survey2_sure.pdf toury, g. (1995). descriptive translation studies – and beyond. amsterdam & philadelphia: john benjamins. willimon, b. (creator). (2013-). house of cards [television series]. united states: netflix. https://backlothelp.netflix.com/hc/en-us/articles/216787928-polish-timed-text-style-guide https://backlothelp.netflix.com/hc/en-us/articles/216787928-polish-timed-text-style-guide https://backlothelp.netflix.com/hc/en-us/articles/216787928-polish-timed-text-style-guide https://backlothelp.netflix.com/hc/en-us/articles/215346638-russian-timed-text-style-guide https://backlothelp.netflix.com/hc/en-us/articles/215346638-russian-timed-text-style-guide https://backlothelp.netflix.com/hc/en-us/articles/215346638-russian-timed-text-style-guide https://backlothelp.netflix.com/hc/en-us/articles/216014517-swedish-timed-text-style-guide https://backlothelp.netflix.com/hc/en-us/articles/216014517-swedish-timed-text-style-guide https://backlothelp.netflix.com/hc/en-us/articles/216014517-swedish-timed-text-style-guide https://backlothelp.netflix.com/hc/en-us/articles/215758617-timed-text-style-guide-general-requirements https://backlothelp.netflix.com/hc/en-us/articles/215758617-timed-text-style-guide-general-requirements http://avt.ils.uw.edu.pl/files/2016/10/sure_report_survey1.pdf http://avt.ils.uw.edu.pl/files/2016/12/report_survey2_sure.pdf stockholm university abstract like other translation norms, interlingual subtitling norms for television evolve over time, influenced by technology, mediascape development and other trends. originating in cinema subtitling norms, tv subtitling norms began to develop at national pu... citation: pedersen, j. (2018). from old tricks to netflix: how local are interlingual subtitling norms for streamed television? journal of audiovisual translation, 1(1), 81-100. editor(s): a. jankowska & j.-l. kruger received: january 22, 2018 accepted: june 30, 2018 published: november 15, 2018 copyright: ©2018 pedersen. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license. this allows for unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source ... 1. introduction 2. a brief note on norms 3. on avt choice 4. historical overview of interlingual subtitling norms 4.1. the public service era 4.2. the commercial tv and dvd era 5. how local are interlingual subtitling norms in the era of video on demand? 5.1. quantitative analysis 5.2. content analysis 5.3. discussion on the localisation of netflix subtitling norms 6. summary and conclusion biographical note references 36 feasibility, quality and assessment of interlingual live subtitling: a pilot study hayley dawson  university of roehampton _________________________________________________________ abstract intralingual respeaking has been widely practiced since 2001 (romerofresco, 2011); however, interlingual respeaking (from one language into another) is yet to take off. interlingual respeaking is a hybrid form of subtitling and interpreting and calls upon skills used in both professions. to consolidate this mode of audiovisual translation (avt) within media accessibility (ma), a programme must be created to train future interlingual respeakers. this paper presents the results of the first ever study on interlingual respeaking, in which 10 participants interlingually respoke three short videos using a language combination of english and spanish. the main areas of research in this project are feasibility, quality and training. before expanding training in this area, interlingual respeaking must be deemed feasible and an effective method of assessment must be in place to determine its quality. the ntr model is a quality assessment model for interlingual live subtitles, of which an accuracy rate of 98% or above indicates acceptable live subtitles. the average accuracy rate of the study is 97.37%, with the highest accuracy rate reaching the 98% threshold with 98.50%. the initial results point to interlingual respeaking as feasible providing a training programme is put in place to build upon existing task-specific skills and develop new ones to ensure interlingual live subtitles of good quality are produced. key words: interlingual live subtitling, quality, ntr model, training, respeaking, media accessibility (ma).  dawsonh@roehampton.ac.uk, https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7156-1233 citation: dawson, h. (2019). feasibility, quality and assessment of interlingual live subtitling: a pilot study. journal of audiovisual translation, 2(2), 36–56. editor(s): g.m. greco & a. jankowska received: april 04, 2019 accepted: november 19, 2019 published: december 31, 2019 copyright: ©2019 dawson. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license. this allows for unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7156-1233 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7156-1233 about:blank about:blank feasibility, quality and assessment of interlingual live subtitling: a pilot study 37 1. introduction respeakers use speech recognition software to repeat or paraphrase what is heard from an audiovisual text through a microphone while enunciating punctuation and adding special features, such as colours to identify the speakers. the software turns the spoken utterances into text on screen, which are cued as live subtitles (romero-fresco, 2011). although intralingual respeaking has become an established practice within the industry, interlingual respeaking is yet to take off. intralingual respeaking has been widely practiced since 2001, when it was first used in the uk as a method to provide live subtitles for the bbc world snooker championships (romero-fresco, 2011). interlingual respeaking mirrors a similar process: a respeaker listens to an audiovisual text in its original language and respeaks it into another. the respeaker essentially simultaneously interprets what they hear, enunciates punctuation and endeavours to correct errors and add special features for a deaf and hard-of-hearing audience before cueing the subtitles. the shift in language adds a layer of complexity to interlingual respeaking. it is not widely practised and must be researched before better quality live subtitles can be produced. many aspects of intralingual live subtitling have been researched, such as sociolinguistic approaches to respeaking (eugeni, 2008), training (arumí ribas & romero-fresco, 2008), (romero-fresco, 2012); and quality and audience reception (romero-fresco, 2012, 2015, 2016; fresno, 2019). such research has successfully informed the field of the challenges that lie ahead for intralingual respeaking. broadcasters have increasingly used the ner model (romero-fresco & martínez, 2015) due to a rise in focus on the quality of live subtitles. the model analyses the extent to which errors affect the coherence of the subtitled text or modify its content. as a next step towards improving quality in intralingual respeaking, respeaking certification has begun with lirics (live reporters international certification). lirics aims to set and maintain high international standards in the respeaking profession, which is a step in the right direction to highlight respeaking as a qualified profession (romero-fresco et al., forthcoming). interlingual respeaking is considered a new discipline within the realm of avt and ma. the ilsa project (interlingual live subtitling for access) is a large-scale project, which aims to design, develop, test and validate the first training course for interlingual respeaking. the project has become a starting point for research to take place and has explored the complex nature of the task including: research into understanding who live subtitlers are (robert, schrijver, & diels, forthcoming), the taskspecific skills required for interlingual respeaking (pöchhacker & remael, forthcoming) and what interlingual respeaking performance means for training in interlingual respeaking (dawson & romero-fresco, forthcoming). smart (davitti, sandrelli, & romero-fresco, 2018) is a similar pilot study carried out at the beginning of 2018 and aimed to compare the interlingual respeaking performance of trainees with previous experience in interpreting, subtitling and respeaking. the research conducted for this study (in february 2017) and the smart pilot study (in january 2018) has already shed light on the feasibility and quality of interlingual respeaking and the task-specific skills required. comparisons have been made with this pilot study journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 2 38 and the smart study throughout this article. although there is a small number of participants in this study, it is the first step towards launching and informing the practice of interlingual respeaking. the results have already successfully informed the main experiment of intellectual output 2 of the ilsa project. the service of live subtitles has mainly been provided intralingually and is primarily for those with a hearing impairment but also caters for a hearing audience when sound cannot be used on the television such as in gyms, cafes and libraries. over the past few years, an interest in interlingual respeaking has grown, which is prospective of revolutionising ma. interlingual respeaking could heighten social impact as it not only caters for those with a hearing impairment. it also caters for foreign audiences, which demonstrates the potential to aid the integration of foreigners into society. interlingual respeaking gives those access to a text, which, due to a language barrier, they would not usually be able to access in its original form. this mirrors the idea that ma can be an effective tool to foster human rights for all citizens, not only for those with disabilities (greco, 2016). shaping the training of interlingual respeakers is essential in implementing sturdy theory and techniques on how respeakers work in the uk and abroad. this is the key to contributing to the broadened scope of ma. most importantly, it ensures that a dhoh (deaf and hard of hearing) and foreign community can fully access media products and events in a different form and with live subtitles of good quality. training in respeaking has been included in avt modules in universities across europe (university of antwerp, autonomous university of barcelona, university of leeds, university of roehampton, and zurich university) and has typically focussed on intralingual respeaking with an introduction to interlingual respeaking included at the end of the module. training in interlingual respeaking has now begun with the first known course, which was delivered online by the university of vigo to seven students from january to june 2019. the course included three modules: simultaneous interpreting (english > spanish), intralingual respeaking (spanish > spanish) and interlingual respeaking (english > spanish); indicating that current professionals and students have started to take interest in the most recent mode of translation and interpreting. this article, firstly, endeavours to present relevant data outlining the feasibility of interlingual respeaking and how quality has been measured using the current working ntr model (romerofresco & pöchhacker, 2017) (defined in section 3). secondly, qualitative results on participants’ perception of their performance, the task-specific skills and best-suited professional profile for an interlingual respeaker will be presented. then, a brief evaluation on the effectiveness of the ntr model will be given. finally, initial thoughts on training will be presented as a step towards producing interlingual live subtitles of good quality. the findings of this study aim to inform the design of a largescale study of around 50 participants, which will seek to identify the task-specific skills and bestsuited professional profile for an interlingual respeaker. the outcomes will eventually inform a training model for interlingual respeaking. feasibility, quality and assessment of interlingual live subtitling: a pilot study 39 2. methodology the methodology of the pilot experiment took a train, practise and test approach. participants filled out a pre-experiment questionnaire, a short session on respeaking was delivered, participants completed a respeaking test and filled out a post-experiment questionnaire. finally, participants contributed further by answering some questions and making observations about their experience of respeaking. quantitative data was collated in the form of analysis of the respoken subtitles and qualitative data in the form of questionnaires. individual performance was recorded with screencast recording software and analysed separately. 2.1. the participants this study took place in the language computer laboratory at the university of roehampton. participants received face to face training and the researcher was present to lead the training and experiment. ten participants took part in the study. however, due to technical issues the data from participant 5 is not available and there is not enough data from participant 10 to carry out a meaningful analysis. of the remaining eight participants, seven were female and one was male. their average age was 32, the youngest being 23 and the oldest 48. there were seven native spanish participants and one native english (participant 7). two participants were professionals, one being a translation lecturer and another a speech-to-text interpreter. six participants were postgraduate students in translation, two of whom also worked in translation and teaching while studying. table 1. details of participants’ previous experience background participant 1 subtitling, interpreting and intralingual respeaking participant 2 subtitling and respeaking participant 3 subtitling participant 4 subtitling and interpreting participant 6 subtitling and intralingual respeaking participant 7 subtitling and interpreting participant 8 interpreting and intralingual respeaking participant 9 subtitling journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 2 40 2.2. data collection participants respoke three video clips interlingually: a narration, a speech and a news story. due to two sets of language combinations (english into spanish and spanish into english) video clips of similar genres were made available in both spanish and english. only two participants respoke the news clip so the results have not been included in the quantitative analysis. table 2. details of video clips used during the pilot experiment language combination genre description duration words per minute (wpm) es > en narration wildlife documentary 2 mins 24 secs 73 wpm es > en speech presidential speech 2 mins 24 secs 131 wpm es > en news rtve robot museum 1 min 58 secs 191 wpm en > es narration desperate housewives, opening scene 2 mins 33 secs 102 wpm en > es speech presidential speech 2 mins 4 secs 101 wpm en > es news bbc can a robot do your job? 2 mins 9 secs 173 wpm the video clips used were chosen to represent a variety of content that would usually be respoken in a real-life scenario. the narration and speech videos had one speaker and the news videos had multiple speakers. the narration videos were chosen to allow participants to carry out interlingual respeaking exercises with low speech rates and long pauses. the wildlife documentary clip covered animals which inhabit the sahara and a clip from the opening scene of desperate housewives gave insight into a character’s life before the show began. although the genres are different, these clips were chosen as they were both delivered by a narrator and did not include specialist terminology. the two speech and news videos were chosen to replicate content in the form of a live event (speech) and live television (news). the english speech was of former president barack obama delivering his farewell speech for the american news channel nbc. the spanish speech was of president mariano rajoy announcing former king juan carlos’ abdication of the throne. the english news clip covered the public’s views on robots carrying out professional jobs and the spanish news clip covered the opening of a robot museum in spain. it was hoped that slightly varying speech rates would allow for further analysis of participants’ performance when respeaking at different speeds, which has been considered during analysis. participants were given the option to watch each video before respeaking it and attempt each one more than once. only the first attempts were analysed for this pilot study. participants were given one hour to work on the tasks and respeak each video into their native language through feasibility, quality and assessment of interlingual live subtitling: a pilot study 41 a microphone attached to the speech recognition software, dragon naturallyspeaking. since no subtitling software compatible with dragon was available, participants were advised to place a reduced size window of dragonpad underneath the video. dragonpad is similar to a word document and it allowed participants to make a text box underneath the video to simulate the effect of live subtitles. screencast software captured each attempt, which recorded the mouse and keyboard movements on screen and audio from the microphone. participants completed a pre-experiment questionnaire before any training was given. the questionnaire was composed of the following sections: biographical information, language skills, training, competence, subtitles and respeaking. closed questions served to determine the demographic of the sample and for participants to rate their own competence in subtitling and interpreting. in the training, competence and subtitles sections, most questions were multiple choice to reflect the limited options for response. the respeaking section was composed of openended questions allowing participants to express their current perceptions of respeaking and how they thought they might perform. after the interlingual respeaking tests, participants completed a post-experiment questionnaire composed of the following sections: level of difficulty, expectations, performance and skills. level of difficulty and performance required participants to rate their performance and share the most difficult elements of the exercises. expectations and skills allowed participants to reflect in detail upon what happened during the exercises and note how they perceived their own performance. participants’ perceptions on the skills and best-suited profile for an interlingual respeaker were sought before and after the test. 3. quality assessment1 intralingual respeaking has been practised in the uk since the bbc tested it in april 2001 with the world snooker championship (romero-fresco, 2011). it is evident that the focus has indeed been on extending quantity rather than improving quality. the ner model considers the number of words in the respoken text (n), the number of edition errors caused by strategies applied by the respeaker (e) and the number of recognition errors that are usually caused by mispronunciations, mishearing or errors with the speech recognition technology (r). these errors can in turn be classified as minor, standard or serious. the threshold for a set of intralingual live subtitles to be considered acceptable is 98%. the need for human intervention is highlighted through the two additional elements of the model: correct editions (ce), which account for editing that has not caused a loss of information, and the final assessment, in which the evaluator can comment on issues such as speed, delay and flow of the subtitles. 1 this section draws heavily upon quality assessment in interlingual live subtitling: the ntr model (romerofresco & pöchhacker, 2017) journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 2 42 the ntr model (romero-fresco & pöchhacker, 2017) considers the number of words in an interlingually respoken text (n), the translation errors (t) and the recognition errors (r) to calculate the accuracy rate. thus, the ntr model uses a ner-based formula and accounts for the shift from intralingual to interlingual live subtitling by replacing edition errors (e) with translation errors (t). the latter are in turn subdivided into content (omissions, additions and substitutions) and form (correctness and style) errors. as in the ner model, errors are also classified according to three degrees of severity (in this case minor, major and critical) and the minimum accuracy rate required is 98%. 3.1. applying the ntr model respoken texts must meet an accuracy rate of 98% to be suitable for broadcast. the user must compare the original audiovisual text with the target text of subtitles to identify each translation and recognition error and effective edition:  translation errors must be identified with the error sub-types listed above and then penalised depending on their severity. three categories of severity highlight the error as either recognisable (minor, -0.25), causing confusion or loss of information (major, -0.5), or introducing misleading information (critical, -1).  recognition errors must be identified and penalised depending on their severity as outlined above.  differing text that has condensed information or has introduced synonyms is not penalised, rather highlighted as effective editions (ee). the ntr model was applied for the first time in february 2017 to calculate the accuracy rates for this pilot study. an extract of how the model has been applied to the analysis of a respoken text can be seen in table 3. examples of translation and recognition errors are highlighted in red and effective editions are highlighted in yellow. once the criteria above had been applied to all changes between the original audiovisual text and the respoken subtitles, sums of translation and recognition errors were totalled and the ntr formula was applied to calculate the accuracy rate of the respoken text. an example of this can be seen in table 4. feasibility, quality and assessment of interlingual live subtitling: a pilot study 43 table 3. extract of ntr analysis of the narration text for participant 2 original text (transcribed audio) respeaking-based subtitles errors my name is mary alice young. when you read this morning's paper you may come across an article about the unusual day i had last week. normally there is never anything news worthy about my life, but that all changed last thursday. of course, everything seemed quite normal at first, i made breakfast for my family, i performed my chores, i completed my projects, i ran my errands. me llamo mary alice young. cuando lees (leas) (1) el periódico de esta mañana, quizá te encuentres un artículo sobre 10 en (el día) (2) inusual que tuve la semana pasada. normalmente, no hay nada nuevo en mi vida, era (pero) (3) todo cambió el juez (jueves) (4) pasado. no (todo) (5) era normal al principio, (hice) (6) el desayuno para mi familia, hice mis tareas domésticas, completé mis pequeños proyectos, y e hice mis recados. la verdad, me pasé 1. minr (0.25): incorrect tense but it does not impact comprehension. 2. majr (0.5): the target text becomes incoherent and as the error is strange the viewer would not be able to identify the source text. 3. minr (0.25): this slightly deters from the meaning of the text. 4. minr (0.25): the source text could still be recognised, given the idea has been mentioned previously. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 2 44 table 4. extract of ntr assessment of the narration text for participant 2 accuracy rate mint: (4 x 0.25 = 1) (cont-omiss) x 1 (cont-sub) x 1 (form-corr) x 2 majt: 0 critt: 0 total: 1 minr: (5 x 0.25 = 1.25) majr: (2 x 0.5 = 1) critr: (1 x 1 = 1) total: 3.25 ntr accuracy rate n = 243 (209 + 34) 243 – 1 – 3.25 --------------------x 100 = 98.25% (5/10) 243 ee: 3 assessment the quality of the subtitles is acceptable. the translation is good (only four translation errors, one regarding content and two regarding style) and perhaps too many recognition errors (10), of which two cause the viewers to lose information and another one introduces misleading information. still, most errors are minor and therefore do not have significant impact on comprehension. 4. quantitative results an accuracy rate was calculated for each respoken text of the pilot study. below, a breakdown of errors is provided for each participant and displayed as follows for translation errors: t (mint – majt – critt); and for recognition errors: r (minr – majr – critr). it should be noted that the participant who respoke from spanish into english is participant 7. “video 1: narration” had an average score of 6.2 translation errors and 9.3 recognition errors per participant. the overall average accuracy rate is 97.35% (3/10). the most common errors were content omissions with an average of 9.5 per text, followed by content substitutions (2), form correctness (1.9), form style (0.4) and content addition errors (0.1). feasibility, quality and assessment of interlingual live subtitling: a pilot study 45 table 5. translation and recognition errors per participant for video clip 1 translation errors recognition errors accuracy rate participant 1 (1–0–0) (8–5–0) 97.98% (4/10) participant 2 (4–0–0) (5–2–1) 98.25% (5/10) participant 3 (4–0–0) (8–6–0) 96.93% (2/10) participant 4 (3–0–0) (10–3–0) 97.87% (7/10) participant 6 (4–1–1) (4–4–0) 97.38% (3/10) participant 7 (2–4–0) (3–5–0) 96.42% (1/10) participant 8 (9–3–1) (0–1–0) 97.45% (3/10) participant 9 (8–2–2) (3–1–0) 96.50% (1/10) average (4.4–1.25–0.5) (5.8–3.4–0.1) 97.35% (3/10) “video 2: speech” had an average score of 6.5 translation errors and 4.5 recognition errors. the overall average accuracy rate is 97.38% (3/10). this clip was deemed the easiest clip to respeak. the most frequently made error was content omissions with an average of 3.6 per text, followed by content substitutions (1.1), form style (0.8), form correctness (0.6) and content addition errors (0.1). table 6. translation and recognition errors per participant for video clip 2 translation errors recognition errors accuracy rate participant 1 (1–1–0) (7–5–0) 97.86% (4/10) participant 2 (4–0–0) (3–1–0) 98.75% (6/10) participant 3 (4–2–2) (4–1–0) 97.17% (2/10) participant 4 (5–0–2) (1–3–0) 97.86% (4/10) participant 6 (7–2–1) (0–1–0) 97.58% (3/10) participant 7 (3–1–0) (1–0–1) 96.09% (0/10) participant 8 (5–6–0) (0–1–0) 96.99% (2/10) participant 9 (4–1–1) (2–2–2) 96.73% (1/10) average (4.1–1.6–0.8) (2.3–1.8–0.4) 97.38% (3/10) participant 2 performed exceptionally well compared to the others and had a previous training background in subtitling and respeaking. participants 1 and 4 performed very well in comparison to the others. participant 1 had a background in subtitling, interpreting and respeaking and participant 4’s background was in subtitling and interpreting. participants who scored between 95%–97% are not considered to have performed well, as the threshold for live subtitles of good quality is 98%. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 2 46 table 7. overall individual performance with translation and recognition errors translation errors recognition errors accuracy rate participant 1 (2–0–0) (15–10–0) 97.92% (4/10) participant 2 (4–0–0) (8–3–1) 98.50% (5/10) participant 3 (8–2–2) (12–7–0) 97.05% (2/10) participant 4 (8–0–2) (11–6–0) 97.86% (4/10) participant 6 (11–3–2) (4–5–0) 97.48% (3/10) participant 7 (5–5–0) (4–5–1) 96.26% (0/10) participant 8 (14–9–1) (0–2–0) 97.22% (3/10) participant 9 (12–3–3) (5–3–2) 96.61% (1/10) the average accuracy rate for the smart pilot study was 92.78% (0/10), compared to the average accuracy rate for this pilot study being 97.37% (2/10). it would be unfair to compare the two as the videos for this pilot study were approximately 2 minutes long, while those for the smart study were around 7 minutes. smart participants were trained for a total of 8 hours, whereas the participants in this study were trained for 2 hours. this may further highlight the impact that speed had on the accuracy rates. in this study, participants would not have experienced much fatigue and had breaks in between respeaking the videos, which could be a contributing factor to higher accuracy rates. 4.1. translation and recognition errors the most common translation errors were content omissions with an average of 6.6 errors per text, followed by content substitutions with an average of 1.6 errors, form correctness (1.3), form style (0.6) and content additions (0.1). this suggests omissions should become a focal point in interlingual respeaking training. a high number of omissions may indicate that participants either struggled to keep up with the speed of the text or did not know how to translate some parts of the text and resorted to making omissions. a strategy to keep up with the text is to edit or condense it. however, in the case of live subtitling and if editing is not performed correctly, it may cause loss of information for the viewer and in turn lowers the accuracy rate of the text. an average of 5.8 minor omissions and 0.75 major omissions were made per text, suggesting that participants were omitting pieces of information but they managed to keep the main idea of sentences. as per the ner and ntr models, the loss of a dependent idea unit is the omission of part of a sentence containing information about the “where”, “what”, “when”, “who” and “why” piece of information and is usually scored as a minor translation error. in some instances, feasibility, quality and assessment of interlingual live subtitling: a pilot study 47 the participant has missed a verb so the what piece of information from the sentence is missing. an omission of an independent idea unit is the omission of a whole sentence and is usually scored as a major translation error as it causes substantial loss of information. most of the time, enough information has been displayed and the viewer can follow what is happening, however, they can still miss information that a hearing audience would have access to. results of the smart study show that content omission and substitution errors were the most common errors, followed by form correctness, form style and finally content additions. participants also found omissions and substitutions difficult to manage when respeaking. this highlights that managing speed, multitasking and dealing with dense information should be developed within a training programme. the results from the smart study also point to interlingual respeaking as feasible and ambitious but not unattainable (davitti, sandrelli, & romero-fresco, 2018). for this pilot study, participants made on average 6.3 recognition errors in each text, with 8.3 errors in the narration and 4.3 for the speech. for the smart study, the average number of recognition errors was 5.4 errors per text and more omissions, substitutions and form correctness errors were made than recognition errors. participants in the smart study could have made fewer errors as they received more dictation and intralingual respeaking practice. such practice would have allowed participants to train their voice profiles before beginning interlingual respeaking exercises. participants in this study made on average 4.2 minor errors, 1.4 major errors and 0.6 critical errors per text, suggesting they were able to manage the severity of errors. these results suggest more dictation practice is needed to train the user voice profile, dictate at a steady pace and volume and make regular pauses to release words on screen. participant voices and on-screen actions can be observed in the screencast clips. some clips show that poor pace and dictation caused recognition errors. for future studies, more dictation practice is required to allow those who are good live translators not to underperform due to poor dictation or using an untrained voice profile. participants did not pause enough to release the respoken words on screen. therefore, they did not have the opportunity to monitor their respoken output and attempt to correct recognition errors live. again, this points to the importance of building upon and developing new software skills within a training programme. participant 1 made the most recognition errors with an average of 12.5 per text and the least amount of translation errors, suggesting they focussed on translation but in turn compromised recognition. in contrast, participant 8 made on average 1 recognition error and 12 translation errors per text, demonstrating they focussed on dictation and compromised translation. there is no doubt that interlingual respeaking is a complex task. trainers and students must find a happy medium between translation and recognition errors and explore strategies and techniques to overcome both types of error to produce interlingual live subtitles that meet the quality standard. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 2 48 4.2. translation vs. recognition errors those who achieved 97% or above have an average of 8.5 minor errors, 4 major errors and 0.7 critical errors (penalisation of -4.7). those who achieved below 97% have an average of 13 minor errors, 8 major errors and 3 critical errors (penalisation of -10.25). this suggests the best respeakers from this experiment were able to keep critical errors to a minimum and managed to have half the number of major errors. for instance, in the case of omissions this means participants managed to omit part of the sentence instead of the full sentence on twice as many occasions. translation errors can be controlled by the respeaker, whereas recognition errors tend to be uncontrollable when not caused by pronunciation or dictation issues, as they can also be caused by software or hardware malfunction. therefore, to a certain extent, recognition errors can also be put down to luck. the comparison between translation errors and recognition errors shows another interesting pattern. the four best respeakers collectively made more recognition errors (63) than translation errors (36), whereas the respeakers who didn’t reach 97% collectively made more translation errors (64) than recognition errors (39). the best respeakers of this experiment have very good skills for live translation, as they have fewer and less severe translation errors. most of the errors these participants have are recognition errors, which means that their scores could have been considerably higher had they received thorough software training. of the bottom four respeakers, the number of translation errors (64) suggests that live translation was their main weakness, which could perhaps be remedied with extensive language and interpreting training. 5. qualitative results after completing the exercises, participants were asked to rate their level of difficulty on a scale of 1–5 (1 being easy and 5 being difficult). participants’ self-perception of their performance does not appear to match their actual performance. those who rated themselves as “satisfactory” scored higher than those who rated themselves as “poor”, except for participant 3. this suggests participants were aware of their performance. for example, some reported they felt the software was giving them instant feedback in the form of recognition errors as they respoke. some participants found this difficult to deal with while trying to perform well. the table below shows the average score of level of difficulty is 4, which shows that interlingual respeaking is perceived as a complex task. it must be noted that students would not have been aware of what score constitutes as poor, good etc. due to a lack of knowledge of the ntr model. in the post-experiment questionnaire two participants stated the respeaking tasks were linguistically difficult, seven found the speed difficult and one deemed the content comprehension difficult. other comments included: dealing with long sentences, fear of missing information, their feelings as a respeaker and monitoring their own output. feasibility, quality and assessment of interlingual live subtitling: a pilot study 49 table 8. participants’ self-rated performance compared with their actual performance level of difficulty perception of overall performance actual overall performance participant 1 5 satisfactory 97.92% (4/10) participant 2 4 satisfactory 98.50% (5/10) participant 3 3 satisfactory 97.05% (2/10) participant 4 4 satisfactory 97.86% (4/10) participant 6 3 satisfactory 97.48% (3/10) participant 7 4 poor 96.26% (0/10) participant 8 4 poor 97.22% (3/10) participant 9 5 poor 96.61% (1/10) in the post-experiment questionnaire, participants stated that an interlingual respeaker would likely come across the following challenges: the speed of the source text, remembering to enunciate punctuation, using the software, recognition errors, paying attention to the interpretation, subtitles appearing on screen, linguistic knowledge and multitasking. participants noted linguistic knowledge and multitasking as the two main challenges for an interlingual respeaker, thus suggesting that an advanced level of the working languages is essential to produce interlingual live subtitles. multitasking was highly regarded by participants as a skill. this perhaps indicates a requirement for experience of simultaneous interpreting to listen in one language while speaking in another, not forgetting the added element of working with software to correct errors and cue subtitles. participants identified various skills that interlingual respeakers would require to improve performance. overall, these skills were noted in both questionnaires indicating participants correctly predicted the skills deemed necessary to perform well. the following required skills were noted: a strong level of comprehension in the source language, a strong level of expression in the target language, communication, speed, multitasking, listening, software knowledge, memory, segmentation and reformulation. the following qualities were noted as being useful for an interlingual respeaker: ability to work under pressure, ability to keep pace, and focus. after completing the exercises, six out of eight participants identified that an interpreter would be the best-suited profile for an interlingual respeaker. two added simultaneous interpreting as the specific mode of interpreting, one noted it should be an interpreter with training in respeaking and another noted an interpreter that can work with the software. two suggested a translator would be ideal and nobody noted a subtitler as the best-suited professional profile. some participants noted more than one best-suited profile. although this experiment yields interesting results on the feasibility of interlingual respeaking, further research is needed to draw meaningful journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 2 50 conclusions. experience in translation or subtitling along with experience of respeaking are clearly an advantage, but interpreting skills are expected to be the main feature of interlingual respeaking. 6. training given the hybrid form of the task, a training model for interlingual respeaking should be centred around the skills necessary for subtitling, interpreting and intralingual respeaking. a practical proposal for intralingual respeaking was put forward by arumí ribas and romero-fresco (2008), who note that identifying skills is a fundamental first step for designing a respeaking course. a similar taxonomy of skills may be required to highlight the skills required for interlingual respeaking to inform training. pöchhacker and remael (forthcoming) describe interlingual respeaking as a threestep process including pre-process, peri-process and post-process tasks. dividing skills as per the processes that make up interlingual respeaking would clarify why each skill is necessary. interlingual respeaking is about providing a service to heighten access. therefore, it is important that training is made accessible for trainees. trainees may be current undergraduate or postgraduate students aiming to learn a new skill, others may be already well-established translators, subtitlers and interpreting professionals. the demographic of participants that took part in this pilot study is likely to be representative of future interlingual respeaking trainees (current postgraduate students and language professionals). an online training programme would cater to the need for accessibility and allow students to work at their own pace. this would not only foster greater flexibility, but also empower students to take control of their own learning, which university students and already established professionals may be more inclined to participate in. from a social constructivist approach, kiraly (2000) proposes that translator education should be a dynamic, interactive process. a process that is based on learner empowerment and encourages interpersonal collaboration in which teachers serve as guides, consultants and assistants. a training model based on this approach, as explained by kiraly, would build a sense of responsibility toward their own learning and future profession. a list of criteria must be drawn up to base the training model upon. criteria will be guided by the results of both this pilot study, the large-scale study, questionnaire responses and by taking industry training requirements into account. it will also be informed by the ner and ntr models, which outline criteria for quality assessment models. a brief example of criterion is to ensure the model is adaptable and considers language combinations, fast paced change in working environments, industry needs, audience needs and the evolution of interlingual respeaking. once results of the large-scale study have been examined, other concepts and models for interpreter and translator training must also be considered extensively. gile’s effort models of interpreting (2015) outline a set of models that explain the difficulty of interpreting, which facilitate the development of strategies for better interpreting performance. a set of three main efforts are identified: listening and analysis, speech production and short-term memory. these theoretical concepts can be taught feasibility, quality and assessment of interlingual live subtitling: a pilot study 51 to allow students to identify difficulties in interpreting and develop strategies to alleviate such difficulties. due to the similarities between simultaneous interpreting and interlingual respeaking, skills such as listening, source text comprehension, speech production and short-term memory are required for both tasks. therefore, existing research on interpreting pedagogy and the training of intralingual respeakers can both be applied to research and training in interlingual respeaking. a sequential model of translation (gile, 2015) details the translator or interpreter’s progression from the source language to the target language. the model focusses on the comprehension loop and the reformulation loop to verbalise a translation. gile explains that although translators may have days to find translation solutions, simultaneous interpreters would only have a few seconds. the concepts of this model can be practically applied to interpretation; therefore, such concepts may also be applied to interlingual respeaking given the similarity of the tasks. data on translation and recognition errors from this pilot experiment is valuable for deciding on material and resources for further training and experiments. participants struggled more with content errors than they did with form errors. content errors are easier to make and refer to the broader content of the text, but form errors refer to the grammar and register of the text, which for many comes naturally. a training programme for interlingual respeaking should focus on the sub-types of translation errors, with an extra focus on managing speed to deal with omissions and managing the content of the text to deal with substitutions. audiovisual materials of different genres, topics, speed and content must be selected for a training course. if chosen carefully and set in order of difficulty, they could contribute to students’ progress. processing and reformulating information are necessary in between listening and speaking and are skills that can be built up over time and with each interlingual respeaking exercise. starting off with videos with a reduced speech rate and long pauses would allow students to grasp the initial skill required to listen and speak at the same time. then, allowing the speech rate to increase with each respeaking exercise would give students a sense of progress and would allow them to master recognition errors with speed, which are far easier to grasp than translation errors. a course could begin with documentaries, as the slow pace, long pauses and visual images on screen may aid beginners to focus on producing a live translation without feeling rushed. slow speeches with nonspecialised content could also be used, such as those that can be sourced from the eu speech repository for interpreting practice. then, move on to working with more complex speeches, sports, the news and weather and eventually chat shows with a very high speech rate and multiple overlapping speakers. this pilot study has identified areas to be targeted within training to master and combat recognition errors. participants only had a brief intralingual dictation practice of 10 minutes to familiarise themselves with the speech recognition software. however, more extensive practice is required to train the user voice profile and allow students to monitor and correct recognition errors. a unit dedicated to dictation practice would give enough time for students to work on intralingual dictation, interlingual dictation (sight translation) and develop skills in reading in one language journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 2 52 and respeaking in another. this could be considered as an initial step to take before approaching exercises with audiovisual texts. being able to manage the speech recognition software (including dealing with technical issues, training dragon with vocabulary, creating macros and error correction) and required hardware (use of the microphone, knowledge of how much the computer can handle at the same time) are also important factors. 6.1. applying the ntr model to continue some thoughts on training with regards to the ntr model, its primary function is to assess the quality of interlingual live subtitles. however, the model could also be used within a training programme to raise awareness of how live subtitles are assessed. the ntr model could allow students to assess each of their respoken texts, identify errors and categorise their severity. this may provide further understanding of how and why translation and recognition errors are made. it could give students a space to reflect on their performance with different types of audiovisual text and pave the way for students to develop techniques to manage the severity of errors or avoid them altogether. there may also be room for peer review within training to reduce the subjectivity of students analysing their own texts. peer review may be an effective way of receiving feedback, which could be a turning point in training. like the ner model, the ntr model allows for an overall qualitative assessment, which could prove insightful for critical peer review exercises between trainers and students alike. a text that has reached an accuracy rate of 95% could be almost unintelligible but those not familiar with the model could misinterpret accuracy rates. an acceptable accuracy rate for both intralingual and interlingual live subtitles is 98%. to mitigate against any confusion, the ntr model offers a recalculation of the accuracy rate on a 10-point scale. this would serve as another benefit of using the ntr model within a training programme to highlight the actual quality of respoken texts from an early stage in a course and allow students to grasp the concept of accuracy rates quickly. subjectivity in scoring has been noted as a minor concern of the ntr model. when assessing translation errors and distinguishing between them, subjectivity could potentially threaten accuracy and consistency. however, previous testing of ten evaluators using the ntr model has already proven to be successful with a low average discrepancy of 0.3 on a scale from 1 to 10 (romerofresco & pöchhacker, 2017). the average discrepancy of the analysis of this pilot study is 0.38. the author of this article served as the first marker of the texts and a co-creator of the model served as the second. most discrepancies were due to the content of translation errors, which could be due to the first marker translating out of their mother tongue. if, in an ntr analysis, a minor error has been scored as a major error it will have little impact on the final accuracy rate. for this pilot study such discrepancies minimally increased accuracy rates by an average of 0.12%, which changed the overall score by one point out of 10 only 12% of the time. feasibility, quality and assessment of interlingual live subtitling: a pilot study 53 this pilot study was conducted in february 2017, so it is believed to be the first experimental study to have applied the ntr model for the analysis of interlingual respoken texts. a total of 18 texts were produced and analysed throughout this pilot study. the model was applied to a small volume of short texts of different types and proved to provide a simple and thorough method of assessing translation and recognition errors. the average number of words for each respoken exercise in this study was 261 words. texts that achieved 97.50% or above took on average 21 minutes to analyse with the ntr model and texts that achieved 97.49% or less took on average 33 minutes to analyse due to the extra errors that had to be identified, categorised and scored. the simplicity and thoroughness of the ntr model allows for it to be flexible in its application to texts produced by different means i.e. by respeaking and automatic speech recognition; as well as supporting training in interlingual respeaking to analyse the accuracy of interlingual dictation (sight translation) to support the early training of interlingual respeakers. 7. conclusions the results presented in this article demonstrate that interlingual respeaking is feasible. challenges could be overcome by developing task-specific skills through a training programme for interlingual respeakers to build upon skills used in subtitling, interpreting and respeaking. for subtitling, knowledge of sdh, segmentation, reformulation and edition is required. developing short-term memory, speed and multitasking all highlight the requirement for elements of training to mirror simultaneous interpreting. specific skills for respeaking would be software related and should include the unlearning of skills, such as speaking in a pleasant voice due to the importance of dictation and enunciation. live translation skills are essential for interlingual respeaking as is the ability to dictate accurately to the speech recognition software. results from this pilot study have shown that an awareness of omissions and recognition errors should be incorporated into a training programme. omissions have proved to have an impact on overall accuracy rates and cause loss of information for the viewer. causes of recognition errors highlight dictation as an essential part of respeaking training as many errors were due to participants over-dictating by pronouncing individual syllables of words and causing misspellings of short words. managing the error severity is an essential aspect of interlingual respeaking. participants with good live translation skills can control the severity of translation errors by keeping major and especially critical errors to a minimum, even at the expense of increasing minor errors. the severity of recognition errors cannot always be controlled. this emphasises the need for extensive dictation practice and developed software skills to minimise such errors. participants who are not strong live translators may find it difficult to reach the minimum accuracy threshold of 98%, even if their dictation is good. the ntr model has proved to be an effective method of assessment for the quality of interlingual live subtitles. it has the potential to be incorporated within a training programme for students to journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 2 54 understand the differences between each sub-type translation error and become aware of what each of their translation choices mean within the overall quality of interlingual live subtitles. measuring quality during training could prove to be a turning point in training by raising awareness of students’ output and the impact it has on the quality of a text that a viewer receives. more research is required to determine the best-suited professional profile for an interlingual respeaker. the qualitative data suggests an interpreter would be the best-suited. however, the quantitative data shows the highest performing participants did not have previous interpreting training, which may give some hope for subtitling skills to be maintained in training. at this stage, it would be fair to conclude that interlingual respeaking is feasible. this is providing a suitable training programme is produced to train interlingual respeakers to produce quality subtitles and ensure interlingual respeaking becomes a common practice to cater for a dhoh audience and to aid the integration of foreigners into society. now that this article on the feasibility of interlingual respeaking has been completed, a forthcoming article will focus on the next stage of this project and present the results of a large-scale study. the large-scale study delivered short online training courses to mainly spanish natives in the uk and spain. data, which is in the final stages of analysis, has been gathered for 50 participants from subtitling and interpreting backgrounds. it aims to identify the task-specific skills and best-suited professional profile for an interlingual respeaker. it is hoped that a final article based on the last stage of this project will present a researchinformed training model based on the data of the large-scale study. reporting on the individual stages of research aims to thoroughly document each one, which allows the results to be suitably shared and ensures accurate progression of interlingual respeaking as the most recent mode of avt. acknowledgements my thanks go to the students and academic staff for participating in this pilot study, without whom this research would not have been possible. i would also like to thank the organisers of the understanding media accessibility quality (umaq) conference held in barcelona in 2018, where the first version of this paper was presented. my deepest gratitude goes to pablo romerofresco, lucile desblache and aline remael for their insightful comments and feedback on 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(2018). are interpreters better respeakers? interpreter & translator trainer, 12(2), 207–226. retrieved from https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/ritt20/current https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/ritt20/current 53 creative audiovisual translation applied to foreign language education: a preliminary approach noa talaván universidad nacional de educación a distancia _________________________________________________________ abstract creative dubbing and subtitling are presented in this article as didactic resources to improve integrated foreign language (fl) skills (specifically oral and written production). the increasing attention that the application of audiovisual translation (avt) to fl learning has been receiving in the last two decades calls for further exploration into the potential benefits of modern avt modes, such as funsubbing and fundubbing, understood as the creative translation of an audiovisual text, be it into subtitles or through the production of a new audio track. after considering the educational power of creative avt and providing the corresponding theoretical justification, the article will present a methodological proposal on how to use these avt modes in online environments. finally, preliminary data derived from a short-term trial will be analysed and discussed. key words: audiovisual translation, creative subtitling, creative dubbing, foreign language learning, integrated skills enhancement.  ntalavan@flog.uned.es, https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5881-5323 citation: talaván, n. (2019). creative audiovisual translation applied to foreign language education: a preliminary approach. journal of audiovisual translation, 2(1), 53–74. editor(s): p. romero-fresco & a. jankowska received: november 26, 2018 accepted: september 6, 2019 published: november 30, 2019 funding: this article presents the main findings derived from the create project (creative dubbing and subtitling: new resources in language learning) sponsored by the uned as an official teaching innovation project of the teaching innovation group arena (accessibility, audiovisual translation and language learning) during the year 2017–2018. copyright: ©2019 talaván. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license. this allows for unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5881-5323 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5881-5323 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 54 1. introduction the didactic applications of audiovisual translation (avt) can be traced back to the 1980s, when authors such as vanderplank (1988) or holobow, lambert, & sayegh (1984) started to analyse the potential benefits of the use of subtitles in foreign language (fl) learning. a good number of studies followed, initially focused on the use of subtitles as a support (summarised in vanderplank, 2010), but with the turn of the century, further studies increasingly centred on the use of avt as an active tool in fl education, i.e., students directly subtitling, dubbing, etc. specific video clips in order to enhance various language skills (talaván, 2013; lertola, 2019), as will be detailed in the following section. nowadays, the revolution produced in the modern audiovisual modes of production and consumption seems to be calling for more innovative reinventions of the didactic applications of avt studied up to this point. hence, the present article offers a new perspective on the use of subtitling and dubbing as pedagogical tools in the fl context, while adding a creative component to the task. the focus of the methodological proposal included herein involves students producing fake subtitles and fake dubbing tracks through the manipulation of the original dialogues with a comedic effect in mind. the idea is to make further use of the increasingly common forms of avt present in cyberspace, i.e., funsubbing (or fakesubbing) and fundubbing (also known as gag dubbing or bad lip reading). in today’s society, internet habits have changed and expanded avt as we had previously known it, so when we ask fl students to create subtitles or dubbing tracks to be shared online, we should need to start to focus our attention on the idea cybersubtitling and probably cyberdubbing. here follow some features of the former: similarly to carnival, cybersubtitling escapes the official furrows and, in this sense, opens up the possibility of enacting a utopian freedom to some extent. festivity and inventiveness become some of its defining features and being unique and creative is widely encouraged in an attempt to attract the audience’s attention or to gain their empathy. (díaz-cintas, 2018, p. 142) our students live in this new type of popular culture and obtain and share information through similar dissemination mechanisms; they also suffer the effects of new audiovisual consumption tendencies, such as the so-called binge-watching (pérez & díaz, 2017). so why not integrate this reality when learning an fl through avt? hence, the present article presents a preliminary project that attempts to assess the benefits of creative subtitling and creative dubbing in cyberspace, understood as the creative manipulation or adaptation of the original text into a fake translation (into subtitles or dubbing tracks) that produces some kind of humoristic effect on the audience. through these activities, fl students are expected to improve integrated skills of writing (through the production of the subtitles and the creative writing of the new dubbing script) and speaking (through the recordings of the revoicing tracks they need to synchronise with the video), apart from the obvious listening (to the original), vocabulary and grammatical enhancement (through reception and production), and cultural awareness (depending on the video extract selected). in order to recognise creative audiovisual translation applied to foreign language education: a preliminary approach 55 this potential pedagogical power, this article will first provide a theoretical justification for the use of creative avt in fl contexts. it will then proceed to describe and analyse the teaching innovation project undertaken, the aim of which was to assess the value of these didactic tools, and finally, it will offer a series of relevant preliminary conclusions that call for urgent further research in this exciting niche of didactic avt, i.e., the pedagogical application of avt to fl education. 2. theoretical background although the present teaching proposal has chosen to name the techniques applied ”creative dubbing” and ”creative subtitling”, today’s terminological situation in the field of avt, derived from the digital revolution that has radically changed the way we consume and produce audiovisual products, certainly calls for further explanation in this regard. in an attempt to redefine the concept of equivalence in translation to allow for the new forms of avt that we encounter in the digital era, chaume (2018) writes about three different types of fun avt techniques: fundubs, funsubs and funads.  fundubs refer to creative revoicing made by individuals who wish to manipulate the original to create a humorous effect in the new (transcreated) version. this practice is also referred to as gag dubbing. a perfect example of this trend can be seen in the youtube channel bad lip reading, which includes a good number of famous video clips from well-known films, music videos and tv excerpts where the use of fundubbing produces new and often humorous creations (https://www.youtube.com/user/badlipreading).  funsubs are creative subtitles produced with the aim of distorting the original message to create a clear parodic effect. díaz-cintas (2018) uses the term fakesubs to refer to those subtitles “that are usually distributed by social media and openly offer false information with the ultimate objective of entertaining the viewer” (p. 135). sometimes included within the category of fansubbing (alì, 2015), there are plenty of examples on the internet, as well as several sites, such as https://www.captiongenerator.com/, which contain ready-made examples and provide a very fast and simple online software programme which allows users to create these types of subtitles for any youtube video.  funads refer to creative audio descriptions (ad). according to chaume (2018), “funads are funny audio descriptions intended to make fun of any scene, described by means of sexual, humoristic or parodist comments, puns and double meanings” (p. 87, emphasis in the original). literal versions of music videos (commonly known as literal music videos where the images are described along with the music to substitute the lyrics), are the most commonly found example of this type of creative ad at present. a wellknown instance of this is the music video of a famous song by james blunt, available online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoli5qiq-9g. https://www.captiongenerator.com/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoli5qiq-9g journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 56 the terms creative dubbing and creative subtitling have been chosen here instead to make the didactic proposal more neutral in pedagogical terms and more easily understandable for students new to avt. although the allusion to creative subtitles has been frequently applied to changes in the positioning of the text on the screen (brooks & armstrong, 2014; mcclarty, 2014), in terms of creative displacement of subtitles, in the fl context creative subtitling may be used to refer to the creation of funsubs from scratch. students can achieve this by manipulating (to a greater or lesser extent) the original dialogues in order to create the desirable parodic effect through the subtitles. as to creative dubbing, to the author’s knowledge, this term had not been used before except in specific software programmes in the professional realm. this creative approach to revoicing seems to be a good solution to the pressure involved in normal dubbing when applied to the fl context, where there is an original track to imitate (when intralingual dubbing is used) and students need to synchronise their voices with the characters’ mouth movements. in the educational context, creative dubbing allows students to adapt the original to fit their level of proficiency and their own wishes and interests, while lip synchrony is not necessarily of paramount importance anymore. besides, if teachers allow learners to choose their own videos to dub (as is the case in the methodological proposal described below), students will be able to “make all of the choices regarding genre, vocabulary, proficiency level, because they can select among the virtually limitless number of easily accessible videos” (wakefield, 2014, p. 160). we should not forget that when students dub a video clip, they can apply dramatic techniques to the fl learning environment, even more so if the aim is to create a parodic effect. according to maley and duff (1983), such techniques can be used to foster aspects such as motivation, self-awareness and confidence, and may contribute to overall improvement in integrated fl skills. 2.1. didactic subtitling and didactic dubbing since there does not seem to be any literature regarding the didactic applications of creative dubbing and subtitling in the fl context (understood as creative manipulation of the original audio track into either a new revoiced audio track or written text on screen), the present theoretical foundation will summarise the main advances in the field of didactic avt, both in terms of subtitling and dubbing, two areas which have received increasing attention, both from avt scholars and fl educators alike, during the past two decades (alonso-pérez & sánchez-requena, 2018; lertola, 2019). leaving aside the research on subtitles as a support,1 the didactic use of subtitling (active, on the part of the students) has been studied more extensively and steadily than that of didactic dubbing. since williams and thorne (2000) started to prove the potential of interlingual subtitling as a task to learn welsh by creating interlingual english subtitles for welsh video clips (to improve listening 1 it is worth mentioning, though, the recent upsurge in related research that takes cybersubtitling to the didactic realm, such as the study by bolaños (2017) on the use of fansubs as a support in fl education. creative audiovisual translation applied to foreign language education: a preliminary approach 57 comprehension, vocabulary, l1 writing, punctuation skills, cultural and historical awareness and motivation), several studies have continued to expand this field of research. among others, the first studies that need to be highlighted are sokoli (2006), who presented a new software specifically designed to use subtitling as a didactic tool (lvs, learning via subtitling); bravo (2009), who delved into the potential of interlingual subtitling for idiomatic expression retention and recall; talaván (2010), who assessed its potential to improve listening comprehension skills; and incalcaterra mcloughlin and lertola (2011, 2014), who established a preliminary framework for a methodological model based on subtitling to then set the foundations for the integration of didactic subtitling in the fl curriculum. afterwards, research in the field began to specialise further with studies on the possibilities of developing particular skills, such as vocabulary acquisition (lertola, 2012), intercultural awareness (borghetti & lertola, 2014), pragmatic awareness (lopriore & ceruti, 2015), content integrated language learning or clil (bianchi, 2015; fernández-costales, 2017), or languages for specific purposes (kantz, 2015), and on the use of other combinations of subtitling, such as interlingual reverse subtitling to improve writing skills (ávila-cabrera, 2018; talaván, ibáñez, & bárcena, 2017; talaván & rodríguez-arancón, 2014), intralingual subtitling to improve both listening and writing skills (talaván, lertola, & costal, 2016), or even the creation of fansubs (tonin, 2013). one of the greatest advances in the field to date was the creation of the platform clipflair, clipflair.net (sponsored by the european research project clipflair), which contains online software specifically designed to use avt in fl education through both captioning and revoicing, as well as hundreds of ready-made activities and videos in several languages (sokoli, 2018). although the literature available regarding the pedagogical potential of dubbing seems to be far less common when compared to subtitling, interest in the former predates interest in the latter. as early as the 1990s, authors such as barbe (1996) or kumai (1996) advocated for the use of this avt mode to enhance translator training and fl skills respectively. however, it was several years before more complete and thorough proposals were published. burston (2005), for example, found dubbing not only useful for improving listening, reading, writing and speaking skills, but also helpful in fostering advanced grammar and vocabulary acquisition. other authors should also be mentioned, such as danan (2010), who evaluated the didactic effects of dubbing for vocabulary acquisition, speaking fluency and pronunciation; chiu (2012), who focused on how to use this avt mode to avoid mispronunciation and improve fluency and intonation; he and wasuntarasophit (2015), whose emphasis was placed on pronunciation enhancement; or sánchez-requena (2018), who centred her attention on general speaking skills, including spontaneous speed, intonation and pronunciation. other studies have offered innovative variations such as the combination of interlingual reverse dubbing and subtitling to improve pragmatic awareness (lertola & mariotti, 2017) or integrated speaking and writing skills (talaván & ávila-cabrera, 2015), the use of intralingual dubbing to enhance both speaking and writing skills (talaván & costal, 2017), or even the practice of dubbing via an ad-hoc mobile app (zhang, 2016). as to creative dubbing per se, two authors introduced this aid within their own related proposals: wakefield (2014), who supported this technique but stated that “not all students are able and willing to create or modify scripts” (p. 160); http://www.clipflair.net/ journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 58 and burston (2005), who even differentiated between two dubbing options, namely, “simple video dubbing” and “scenario creation” (p. 82–83). while the former focused on normal revoicing (substituting the actors’ voices with the students’), the latter involved students creating their own script for a muted video, thereby introducing creativity in the dubbing process. 3. methodology in order to assess the pedagogical potential of creative dubbing and subtitling (intralingual in this case), an innovative teaching project entitled create (creative dubbing and subtitling: new resources for language learning), and sponsored by the uned (universidad nacional de educación a distancia) in spain, was undertaken in 2018. the methodological proposal of this project relies on the assumption that there are potential benefits in the combination of dubbing and subtitling as didactic tasks in fl learning (lertola & mariotti, 2017; talaván & ávila-cabrera, 2015), including higher levels of motivation that the addition of such a creative approach can bring to the fl learning context. in terms of creative dubbing, for example, an added benefit of this type of activity is that it can be less intimidating for students than role-plays, as it is not a live performance but a recorded one, and that they are free to create new content and add humour to their final product. additionally, since the final video clip will be available to share online in social networks and beyond (provided that the original video had no copyright restrictions), learners will likely make an extra effort to reach an acceptable output. this is possible because learners can re-record as many times as needed until they feel satisfied with the result, monitoring their oral performance and their speech speed within a controlled setting, something impossible to achieve in oral exchanges during class. following burston (2005), “the greater the audience, the greater the stimulus to put on a good public performance” (p. 80); this adds a great boost of motivation to this type of didactic task. 3.1. context, participants and procedures the create project took place online, within the virtual platform available at the uned, the national distance university in spain. to understand the sample and the departure point of the project, a prequestionnaire (https://tinyurl.com/y8bjs7ms) was distributed. a total number of 8 participants completed the project, all students from the ba degree of english studies enrolled in a module on general translation. from the answers to the pre-questionnaire, it was derived that the subjects were all adults (30 years old was the average age), 80% female, all native spanish speakers (with the exception of one romanian), with a level of english of b2+ (they were currently studying c1). however, when asked about their proficiency in terms of the various specific fl skills, their perceptions differed; they felt less proficient in speaking, followed by writing, than in the two receptive skills, as shown in figure 1. https://tinyurl.com/y8bjs7ms creative audiovisual translation applied to foreign language education: a preliminary approach 59 figure 1. students’ perception of fl skills in the pre-questionnaire this point of departure is relevant given that the productive skills (speaking and writing) were to be assessed in terms of improvement through the practice of creative avt tasks, as will be explained later in the paper. therefore, the skills with the lowest perception in terms of proficiency were the very skills expected to benefit the most from these types of activities. also from the pre-questionnaire, we could gather that most participants were familiar with the use of audiovisual materials in their language learning process, and they affirmed to be much more familiar with subtitling (75%) than with dubbing (25%). in fact, 30% of the subjects confirmed having created subtitles on their own with specific subtitling software. finally, even if none had ever recorded his/her voice synchronised with a video (and they did not seem in any way familiar with the concepts of creative dubbing or creative subtitling), most of them wrote the word “fun” in the last question (the only open item), when asked about what they expected from their participation in the project. it was a reasonable deduction on the part of students given that the activity had been announced outlining the types of tasks they were expected to perform. later, in the presentation of the activity to the subjects, the word fun was more clearly explained so that participants could face the project from the perspective of motivation enhancement, as the following extract from the presentation clearly shows: 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% reading speaking writing listening b2 c1 c2 journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 60 why fun? because creative dubbing deals with substituting the voices of the characters with the students’ own voices but using a completely different script. bad lip readings are clear examples of creative dubbing in which amateur and professional actors recreate voice scenes of short video clips for parodic purposes. creative subtitling is also a reinterpretation of the original and your own use of creativity will make the experience as fun as you wish. this is an example of creative dubbing available at the ‘bad lip reading’ channel on youtube, and here is a well-known sample of creative subtitling. the project lasted six weeks. it was announced in advance so that students from the translation subject of the degree of english studies at the uned could voluntarily sign up. a total of 20 students volunteered but only 8 completed the activity, in line of the dropout rate typically inherent to distance education settings (lassibille & gómez, 2008). a virtual platform was created to host the project and there the students who had registered found the introduction to the project, a detailed list of the different steps to follow (summarised in table 1), and the description of the creative avt tasks they would have to undertake (as seen in table 2). table 1. summary of create procedures stage task week 1 presentation of the project, pre-questionnaire and pre-tasks weeks 2, 3 & 4 video selection, creative dubbing and creative subtitling (two videos) week 5 finish up and peer-review week 6 teachers´ feedback, post-questionnaire and post-tasks therefore, after completing the pre-questionnaire and the pre-tasks (ad-hoc writing and speaking activities), students started to work on the videos. they had to first select two videos, one for creative dubbing and the other for creative subtitling, and then proceed to work on them. finally, they had to provide peer-to-peer feedback before receiving the teachers’ assessment, and also complete a post-questionnaire as well as a final set of post-tasks designed to assess their improvement in terms of writing and speaking skills after the project. the task descriptions provided to students were extremely detailed (they are summarised in table 2), and included steps to follow when selecting the video, dubbing and subtitling guidelines, and specific software recommendations and tutorials. in online settings, it is of paramount importance to include sufficient information to compensate for the lack of face-to-face interaction. https://goo.gl/vvejqg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-4rhjo6xyg&t=62s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2dvyodgn2c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2dvyodgn2c creative audiovisual translation applied to foreign language education: a preliminary approach 61 table 2. creative avt tasks description summary task description video selection videos (originally in english) from youtube (1 to 4 minutes long). participants were advised to avoid using videos with more than two speakers/voices or videos in which dialogues overlapped. freeware recommendations for downloads (and video edition if necessary): a tube catcher and 4k video downloader. creative dubbing students were told to watch the video clip and compose a new script in english including a hint of humour. they were suggested to write down the original script to use as the basis for the new invented script so they could calculate the duration of each line that they would later have to revoice. two video tutorials and various recommendations (as regards humour, synchrony, credibility, etc.) were provided. the suggested software was windows movie maker for windows and garage band for mac. as a final step, subjects needed to upload their final video to their youtube channel (instructions in this regard were also provided). creative subtitling learners were offered a video tutorial on how to subtitle along with several key concepts to bear in mind when subtitling related to synchrony, number of characters per line, time on screen, line divisions, etc. the suggested subtitling editors accompanied by the corresponding tutorials were aegisub, subtitle workshop, and amara. after reminding students of the creative and humoristic elements which needed to be added to their subtitles, they were asked to upload the final versions to youtube. an explanation of how to upload (and edit) subtitles to youtube was also included. peer review learners were asked to follow a peer-to-peer review process in the forums, during which they would upload the link to their final videos and provide feedback to at least two of their classmates’ videos following an ad-hoc rubric, including comments, if any, on what would need to be changed or improved according to them. an overview of the rubrics which both learners and teachers used to assess the creative dubbing and subtitling tasks is included in table 3; there were two separate rubrics, one for creative dubbing and the other for creative subtitling, though most items coincided, the ones that did not are marked below with d for dubbing and s for subtitling. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 62 table 3. creative avt assessment rubric poor (5%) adequate (10%) good (15%) excellent (20%) total synchrony pronunciation (d) / grammatical correctness (s) characterisation (d) / presentation of subtitles (s) humour creativity the various criteria were described in detail. for example, in terms of creativity, the rubric stated: “creativity refers to the originality of the final product. it can be said to be poor when there is very little change from the original; adequate when there is some but not much; good when the new version is somehow different from the original; and excellent when the final product shows a completely new storyline.” 3.2. data analysis, results and discussion the data to be analysed herein was collected from various tools and resources: the language proficiency preand post-tasks (to assess both writing and speaking skills enhancement), the postquestionnaire (to gather the students’ feedback on skills development and general feedback on the experience), and observation (of the progress of the activity, the work in the forums and the creative avt performance of the participants). therefore, the results combine complementary quantitative and qualitative data within a quasi-experimental design that triangulates data collection tools and outcomes to compensate for the reduced number of participants, aiming at providing a greater value and reliability to the final conclusions. the writing production and the speaking production tasks were designed ad-hoc so as to assess both the departure point in terms of fl proficiency before creative dubbing and subtitling were introduced in the students’ learning process, and the enhancement acquired after a month and a half of work with these online educational resources. such tasks contained the instructions accompanied by related pictures and are included in table 4. creative audiovisual translation applied to foreign language education: a preliminary approach 63 table 4. writing and speaking assessment tasks pre-task post-task writing create a short story or a piece of ‘fake’ news where humour must be the leitmotif; imagine it has been commissioned by an online newspaper or blog. although the topic is free, you need to draw some inspiration from the pictures below. write approximately 200 words. create a humorous monologue as if you were preparing a stand-up comedy performance. you need to include at least three of the following topics: mothers-in-law, the perfect couple, a blind date, (un)faithfulness, openminded vs. conservative personalities, love is blind. write approximately 200 words. speaking nationality stereotypes have the function of generalising particular idiosyncrasies in a funny way. think of a nationality-related stereotype (you can choose any country/nation/region). write a few notes on a piece of paper so that you can organise your ideas. speak in english for a minute describing the stereotypes you have chosen (try to add a little humour to it if possible) and record it by using the following website (https://vocaroo.com). then send your voice recording to the teachers via email. in couples, there are things that males do that females hate and the other way around. think about things males/females do that aren’t welcome by their partners. write a few notes on a piece of paper so that you can organise your ideas. speak in english for a minute describing the gender you have chosen and record it by using the website vocaroo. then send your voice recording to the teachers via email. the results gathered from the comparison of the preand the post-tasks outlined above showed a clear improvement in terms of speaking and writing, two related skills which are both directed to language production. these tasks were evaluated by the teachers-researchers involved in this project; each task was assessed by two different teachers and the average mark was calculated to ensure a greater degree of reliability in the results. while students create subtitles or write the creative dubbing script to be recorded later, they practise a series of skills relevant to writing proficiency: rephrasing, summarising, guiding the addressee through the message, cohesion, coherence, vocabulary, grammar, register, style, etc. speaking skills are particularly put into practice while dubbing, since learners need to work diligently in order to sound as accurate as possible in terms of pronunciation, intonation, and speech speed. the results suggest that the participants of create improved these skills throughout the duration of the project, as figures 2 and 3 show. figure 2. create effect on writing skills. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 64 figure 2. create effect on writing skills figure 3. create effect on speaking skills as figures 2 and 3 show, the improvement took place in the two primary areas of focus (writing and speaking), although the former improved by a greater margin, likely due to the fact that writing skills were utilised in both subtitling and dubbing activities, while speaking was only utilised in the dubbing activity. a comparison between the development of both skills is illustrated in figure 4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 pre-task 4,5 4 6,5 5,5 5 7 6 7,5 post-task 8,5 9 8,5 7,5 8,5 8,5 9 10 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 m a rk ( 0 -1 0 ) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 pre-task 5 5 5,5 4,5 7 5 5,5 4,5 post-task 6 5,5 7 7 6 5 6,5 4,5 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 m a rk s (0 -1 0 ) creative audiovisual translation applied to foreign language education: a preliminary approach 65 figure 4. speaking and writing progress compared the general improvement in terms of average marks before and after the use of creative avt tasks can also be seen in table 5. table 5. quantitative data regarding fl skills progress speaking writing pre-test average mark 5.25 5.75 post-test average mark 5.94 8.69 st. deviation 1.14 / 0.66 0.75 / 0.84 first of all, the average mark improvement is clearly evident, particularly in writing production. this improvement is even more pronounced if we bear in mind that the time span between the preliminary and the final measurement was just six weeks. additionally, the standard deviation is in all cases rather low and consistent, which is a positive reflection of the normal distribution of fl proficiency of the population under assessment. pre-task post-task 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 writing speaking pre-task post-task journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 66 these results are then optimistic and, in this respect, correspond to the students’ own perception of their improvement in both skills, as expressed in the post-questionnaire (https://tinyurl.com/yaa2xdss). however, the participants’ impressions point towards the opposite tendency, i.e., speaking being more enhanced than writing due to creative avt practice (see figure 5). the reason behind this may be due to the subjects’ slightly lower point of departure as far as speaking proficiency was concerned (as seen in figure 1), which may have led them to consider their advancement higher in this regard. figure 5 also includes the students’ self-reports regarding their improvement in terms of listening comprehension. this skill was not assessed quantitatively (through preand post-tasks) given the greater difficulty of doing so in distance learning environments. however, since it was assumed to be an important fl skill to consider within this setting, the subjects’ perceptions of enhancement in this area needed to be observed. finally, as expected, all the progress related to the various skills also adds up, resulting in a clear advancement in terms of general fl skills. figure 5. qualitative data on self-reported fl skills enhancement this fl skills progress (not a single student rated it as ”nearly none” in any of the aspects analysed) was also confirmed in another section of the questionnaire where the participants were asked whether the project had met their expectations in terms of fl skills enhancement, and their unanimous answer was once again positive. another element included in figure 5 also points towards an increase in creativity. given the challenge involved in measuring creativity in an objective or quantitative manner, a decision was made to include it in the post-questionnaire, so as to allow participants to freely provide relevant feedback in this regard. as expected, all participants 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 writing speaking creativity listening general l2 1 (nearly none) 2 3 4 (very high degree) https://tinyurl.com/yaa2xdss creative audiovisual translation applied to foreign language education: a preliminary approach 67 considered their creativity to have significantly improved. this aspect was confirmed when the data gathered from the post-questionnaire was triangulated with the researchers’ observation of the development of the project. within this observation, one relevant aspect to analyse was the quality of the final avt products, as creativity was one of the five assessment criteria: one video creatively dubbed and one creatively subtitled per student. figure 6 shows the marks of the final videos given by the researchers. it is evident how, even if subtitling resulted in slightly better marks (probably because it does not involve the speaking and dramatisation components), most students earned adequate or higher marks in both avt modes, even allowing for the fact that this was the first time most of them worked on this type of tasks. figure 6. creative dubbing and creative subtitling final marks (teachers’ assessment) apparently, according to the post-questionnaire answers, the subtitling tasks took the subjects longer to complete than the dubbing tasks, and this fact seems to correlate with the information presented in figure 6 regarding the slightly better marks obtained in this particular task. also, 62.5% of the participants enjoyed subtitling more than dubbing (the latter was only chosen as the preferred task by 3 out of 8 subjects). it should be noted that participants were more familiar with subtitles (30% having tried subtitling before), therefore this may also be one of the reasons why dubbing as a new practice seemed slightly less attractive to them in this project; besides, as it had been mentioned in previous experiences (talaván & rodríguez-arancón, 2018), individual character traits could also have played a role in this regard since, unlike subtitling, dubbing involves the use of acting skills and shy learners may thus find it more intimidating. the answers in the post-questionnaire also showed that half of the subjects found the project technologically challenging, although all of them noticed an improvement in their computer skills thanks to create, and that the project had met their expectations as far as icts skills enhancement was concerned. similarly, although it apparently took them all around one hour to select the videos, 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 dubbing 95 60 60 70 55 65 80 80 subtilting 70 70 65 85 60 70 85 75 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 m a rk s (0 -1 0 0 ) journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 68 it is important to note here the relevance of the answer to one of the items of the post-questionnaire, where most subjects found the personal video selection process motivating, while only two of the participants would have preferred to have the videos selected for them; a fact which illustrates the positive effect of autonomous work on the part of the learner. finally, all the subjects’ expectations were evidently met throughout the evolution of the project, and their degree of satisfaction was high in all cases; all participants (with one exception) confirmed their interest in participating in similar projects in the future. figure 7 shows the specific avt modes mentioned by the students as possible preferences for future work. figure 7. didactic avt modes participants would choose to work on in the future. interestingly enough, one can see that subtitling, creative subtitling, and subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing are the preferred options, as confirmed in the related data mentioned above. following this trend, the researchers’ observation of the progress of the project also tended to confirm most of the previous data (including enhancement of fl skills – writing and speaking in particular), and added an interesting element of the perception of high degrees of motivation and enthusiasm derived from the type and number of forum entries, email messages and phone conversations with the participants involved in this short-term teaching innovation experience. the virtual platform statistics show 5,773 visits to the forums (701 minutes in total). considering that there were only 8 participants in this six-week project, and that the participants only shared their videos and assessed their classmates’ final tasks in the forums, one can appreciate the great amount of time devoted to the entire project. throughout the peer review process, a series of differences could be observed between the peerassessment and the assessment made by the teacher, as can be seen in figures 8 and 9, based on the evaluation of one of the participants chosen at random. 87,50% 50% 75% 50% 62,50% 12,50% 12,50% subtitling dubbing creative subtitling creative dubbing sdh voice-over narration creative audiovisual translation applied to foreign language education: a preliminary approach 69 figure 8. sample of teacher and peer assessment of one subtitling task the corresponding marks of the various criteria of the rubric compare the various evaluators’ assessment (one teacher and 4 peers). it is evident how synchrony is the most difficult aspect to master, and how the teacher is more severe to mark it given her/his knowledge and expertise. another feature to highlight is the unanimous high marks as far as creativity and humour (particularly the former) are concerned, which confirms once again the successful outcome of the project. as to the presentation of subtitles, this is obviously a more technical skill that would improve with practice (recalling once again that for most students this was their first-time subtitling). finally, grammatical correctness is almost perfect, as expected, because students had sufficient time to prepare and revise their final text before uploading their subtitled videos to youtube. figure 9. teacher and peer assessment of the dubbing task. 5 20 15 15 15 15 20 15 20 20 10 15 15 20 20 10 20 20 15 20 20 20 20 20 20 synchrony grammatical correctness presentation of subtitles humour creativity teacher peer 1 peer 2 peer 3 peer 4 5 20 15 10 10 10 15 20 10 15 15 20 20 15 15 20 15 15 20 15 15 20 20 15 20 sychrony pronunciation characterisation humour creativity teacher peer 1 peer 2 peer 3 peer 4 journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 70 this second comparison shows the bigger challenge dubbing presented, confirming, once again, the previous discussion on the preference of subtitling over dubbing by the subjects involved in this project. in this case it is not only synchrony (which is, once again, marked more severely by the teacher), but also creativity and humour, which seem to be affected by the greater challenge involved in dubbing. when learners prepare a script to be dubbed, they are less free to create new dialogues because they need to adapt these dialogues to the characters’ mouth movements, and so the parodic aspect is also affected. fortunately, the graph also shows how all assessors, on the contrary, considered pronunciation and characterisation to a greater extent, an observation that confirms and complements two of the results discussed above: speaking skills improvement (assessed quantitatively through the language assessment tasks) and creative skills enhancement (assessed qualitatively in the post-questionnaire), both derived from the didactic use of creative avt as explained in the present paper. 4. conclusions this article has presented a proposal for a new fl learning methodology that makes use of avt tools in online settings. while students produce new reformulations for pre-selected videos, be it through creative subtitling or creative dubbing, they develop their digital skills within a familiar environment (audiovisual and internet contexts) and enhance their fl skills, specifically writing and speaking production. the create project has merely attempted to introduce the didactic applications of creative dubbing and subtitling into the fl context. the small sample and the short duration of the project call for further study within a longer-term experience in which a larger number of learners should be involved. this would allow for more thorough research design and analysis (including statistical measurements), which would be expected to complement and confirm the conclusions presented herein from a more solid, objective, and reliable perspective, which may produce a relevant impact on the field of avt. avt today is of paramount importance given the need to translate and make accessible the innumerable audiovisual products available on the internet and beyond (digital tv platforms, videogames, etc.). all those translations are performed through one or more avt modes (dubbing, subtitling, audiodescription, videogame localization and voice-over, among others); this is another important reason why the academic and professional field of avt has experienced an impressive increase in both quantity and quality in the course of the last two decades (chaume, 2018; díazcintas, 2018). such an important area of expertise – one that is so embedded in our daily lives – needs to become a bigger part of education as well. it should be exploited as much as possible, bearing in mind its already proven potential in the fl context. the addition of the creative component to didactic avt tasks can provide greater flexibility which can enable students to exploit the videos and may also enhance the pedagogical benefits in various educational avenues, as the create project creative audiovisual translation applied to foreign language education: a preliminary approach 71 has presented. familiarity with current digital trends and the creative and intrinsically 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(2016). mobile english learning: an empirical study on an app, english fun dubbing. international journal of emerging technologies in learning, 11(12), 4–8. 27 reverse subtitling in the esp class to improve written skills in english: a case study josé javier ávila-cabrera  universidad complutense de madrid ______________________________________________________ abstract the improvement of foreign language (l2) skills is of paramount importance in the university context, and a considerable number of students lack linguistic proficiency in their oral and written communication skills. this lack of proficiency needs to be properly addressed and methodologies employed in order to help students improve such skills. there are many cases in which international students, whose cultural background is either european or asian, need to improve their oral and written production in english as an l2. this paper presents a study conducted at the universidad complutense de madrid throughout the 2017–2018 academic year, in which a number of undergraduate students enrolled in english for specific purposes (esp) used reverse subtitling, from spanish or chinese into english, as a learning tool. the main focus of this case study was to enable students to improve their written skills in english through the combined use of business english and reverse subtitling in accordance with the course content and expectations. a mixed method was used in order to gather and evaluate quantitative and qualitative data. this study therefore aims to bring to the fore the potential of using reverse subtitling in the esp class. key words: english for specific purposes (esp), foreign language learning (fll), international students’ needs, reverse subtitling, undergraduate students.  josejaav@ucm.es, https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5338-3584 citation: ávila-cabrera, j.j. (2021). reverse subtitling in the esp class to improve written skills in english: a case study. journal of audiovisual translation, 4(1), 27–49. https://doi.org/10.47476/jat.v4i1.2021. 22 editor(s): p. romero fresco. received: october 18, 2018 accepted: october 22, 2020 published: march 30, 2021 copyright: ©2021 ávila-cabrera. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license. this allows for unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. mailto:jjavilacabrera@flog.uned.es https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5338-3584 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5338-3584 https://doi.org/10.47476/jat.v4i%601.2021.22 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ reverse subtitling in the esp class to improve written skills in english: a case study 28 1. introduction the use of audiovisual translation (avt) as a didactic tool in foreign language learning (fll) is gaining more and more importance in the university context, considering the vast body of research as well as the numerous studies conducted in this field in the last decades (díaz-cintas, 1995; talaván, 2006a; gambier, caimi, & mariotti, 2015). the improvement of skills in the foreign language (l2) class is a necessity which not only concerns students, but also teachers and researchers. in the context of the spanish university system, some l2 students present a lack of proficiency in english which deserves attention (dafouz & camachomiñano, 2016). this fact may encourage lecturers to employ methodologies used in the fll setting, and participants may be more inclined to use them to improve their skills. this study presents an experiment within the avt scope as it makes use of reverse subtitling as a potential pedagogical instrument capable of assessing and enhancing undergraduate students’ written production in english. the validity of avt as a tool for the l2 class can be said to be currently well-established and acknowledged. numerous scholars have put this tool into practice and investigated its potential in the last few years (díaz-cintas, 2012; incalcaterra-mcloughlin & lertola, 2011; lertola, 2012; talaván, 2010, 2012, 2013; talaván & ávila-cabrera, 2015). as for the type of subtitles, talaván and rodríguezarancón (2014) refer to reverse subtitling as an active type of subtitling in which the students subtitle from their mother tongue into an l2. this type of subtitles is the focus of interest here. in this paper, attention is paid to the manner in which students write in english by assessing a number of compositions written in this language while simultaneously practising subtitling in an active way (sokoli, 2006; talaván, 2006a). by making use of a multi-strategy design in the form of quantitative and qualitative data, this experiment presents a series of activities which account for the potential of reverse subtitling when several languages are used within a spanish university context. 2. research on subtitling in the fll context it is well known that translators usually transfer texts from a source language (sl) into a target language (tl) and in most cases, these are translated into their mother tongue. when putting this into practice in the fll context, it can be surmised that if students subtitle from their mother tongue into an l2, they will be more fully exposed to the tl. this practice will help them improve their l2 written skills given that “translation facilitates foreign language encoding” (danan, 1992, p. 497). however, there is a challenge in this type of practice as the tt may not always sound as idiomatic as the one produced by a native speaker, especially when this type of l2 pedagogical tool is used by students. díaz-cintas presents the conventions of subtitling as part of a teaching technique (1995), discusses how the audiovisual media can be used in fll (1997), and deals with the importance of subtitling in journal of audiovisual translation volume 4, issue 1 29 the l2 class (2012). among some of the studies conducted on subtitling, talaván (2006b) looks into the potential of subtitling presented as a technique to improve business communicative skills. talaván (2010) also presents a theoretical-practical account of the pedagogical applications that emerge from subtitling in the teaching of an l2 (2013). she has also conducted experimental studies in collaboration with other authors on reverse subtitling in a collaborative and online context (talaván & rodríguez-arancón, 2014), intralingual captioning for the improvement of writing and vocabulary skills (talaván, lertola, & costal, 2016), the benefits of combining subtitling and dubbing for the improvement of both oral and written skills (talaván & ávila-cabrera, 2015), and collaborative reverse subtitling activities in english as an l2 (talaván, ibáñez, & bárcena, 2017). as can be inferred, the possible combinations and types of subtitles in the fll setting are many. the benefits of reverse subtitling for incidental vocabulary acquisition are explored by lertola (2012) and also how subtitling as a task can be best used by teachers of languages (2015). furthermore, lertola and mariotti (2017) analyse reverse dubbing and subtitling involving italian learners of english as an l2, which proved that a combination of different avt modes can be optimal for the improvement of different skills, both oral and written. ávila-cabrera (2018) presents a practice guide which enables secondary education teachers to use engaging subtitling activities to help students improve their written skills in different language combinations. the study conducted by alonso-perez and sanchez requena (2018) highlights the presence of avt modes in fll, which benefit different learning areas such as production and comprehension skills and intercultural awareness, among others. it is important to mention that students can use subtitling in a passive or active way. the aforementioned studies concern the latter, that is, participants undertaking subtitling tasks, and it could therefore be highlighted as a practice that offers more benefits in writing skills to learners of foreign languages given the exposure of the participants to the l2 in its written form. with regard to more recent terms used in the literature of subtitling, díaz-cintas (2018) presents a taxonomy of subtitles in accordance with the new forms which are emerging nowadays. these include ”cybersubtitles” (divided into ”fansubs,” ”guerrilla subtitles” and ”altruist subtitles”). they can also be regarded as ”genuine subtitles” or ”fakesubs”. chaume (2018), on the other hand, gives an account of the new changes in the subtitling types by resorting to the term ”creative subtitles” to refer to those which do not follow the traditional screen positions, size, orthotypographic conventions, etc., as it is the case with multilingual programmes for example. as can be observed, new terminologies are currently gaining an established position in the avt panorama. finally, it is important to note the number of recently published manuals and books which delve into the techniques and strategies used in avt, mainly with english-spanish combinations such as those documented by bartoll (2015) and talaván, ávila-cabrera, and costal (2016). these authors present a general approach to avt, and avt accessibility respectively. rica peromingo (2016) deals with technical and linguistic aspects in avt. roales ruiz presents an avt teaching proposal (2017) based on linguistic and technical conventions of subtitling, and also another on how to learn to subtitle reverse subtitling in the esp class to improve written skills in english: a case study 30 thorough the subtitling editor lrn-2sub (2018), of his own creation. the aforementioned publications can provide lecturers and practitioners with useful linguistic and technical tools to use in the fll setting. the paper aims to contribute to the state-of-the-art research on subtitling in the fll setting, as summarised in this section, through a detailed study of the benefits obtained by l2 students of esp through the use of active reverse subtitling. by conducting a preliminary study that evaluates this avt mode, we intend to present an analysis of this tool through a discussion of its results in order to promote its uses in the classroom. 3. the experiment this study1 was conducted during the first semester of the 2017–2018 academic year by the author at the universidad complutense de madrid. the participants were undergraduates from the second course of the degree in commerce who were enrolled in an english for specific purposes (esp) course, and who worked exclusively from an international course book on business english at the b1–b1+ level. with the aim of obtaining data from the students, two groups were chosen, each composed of 25 participants. the experimental group (eg) consisted of those who completed the following: two composition tasks (see appendix 1 and 2), vocabulary and grammar tests, reading comprehension exercises, listening exercises, along with a reverse subtitling task (as the tool used for the purpose of this study), and a composition in the written exam (see appendix 3); in addition, the control group (cg) comprised another 25 students, who completed the same exercises, with the exception of the subtitling task. in an attempt to obtain data that could be analysed and compared in more equal terms, each of the groups included 5 native speakers of chinese, i.e. 20%. the eg students were given a number of basic instructions on subtitling conventions to guide them in their task of subtitling a video of their choosing, the topic of which had to be related to business, trade or finance. the task of reverse subtitling included audio in spanish or chinese (the mother tongues spoken by the students under analysis) to be subtitled into english. in order to obtain quantitative data, the students were asked to submit two compositions in english to verify the improvement of their written production skills throughout the semester; the subtitling task was completed between the first and second composition. having finished these tasks, the students completed a questionnaire (see appendix 4) about their opinion of this avt practice, which was then explored and evaluated to elicit qualitative information. 1 it must be noted that in the original experimental design there was only an experimental group, which revealed an important flaw. several changes were implemented at a later stage, such as the introduction of a control group, thanks to the reviewers’ constructive comments. although this group had not been included initially, the data collected during the research allowed for the materialisation of such a noteworthy change, later approved by the reviewers. journal of audiovisual translation volume 4, issue 1 31 the students used a video subtitling platform called amara2 and were given the opportunity to contribute to the accessibility of online videos by uploading these subtitles to youtube. this practice can be said to be related to a newfound respect defined as “social subtitling,” which was referred to by talaván and ávila-cabrera (2016, 2017) as “the voluntary collaboration to promote media accessibility at the university and other settings where there is not sufficient funding to hire professional subtitlers to cover the vast needs created by the information and communication society” (2017, p. 287). in this sense, the subtitles produced by the participants in the study could be considered altruistic when being shared on platforms and websites such as amara and youtube. audiovisual materials are therefore made accessible from the university context to different types of viewers who may not be competent in the languages presented in the audio of the videos. when talking about media accessibility, we need to bring to the fore greco’s (2016, 2018) proposal in the field to extend the definition and scope of media accessibility beyond people with sensory disabilities in order to include those who for diverse reasons cannot access audiovisual content in its original form. regarding this case study, media accessibility would then be understood as the latter account, that is, making videos comprehensible to users through subtitles in english with the aim of overcoming linguistic barriers. 3.1. research design the mixed method (robson & mccartan, 2016) was adopted as a means to gather quantitative data, which included compositions submitted by the students throughout the semester together with the subtitling practices and the composition of the final written exam. further qualitative data was gathered in the form of a questionnaire containing questions on the practice itself. the author made use of the methodology implemented with the groups he was teaching and was able to conduct the study on the basis of the eg’s and the cg’s written outcomes, for which reason the research design cannot be said to be randomised. however, the selection of the participants in each of the groups was random in order to avoid biased results. triangulation allows researchers to observe a phenomenon from different perspectives. in this case, triangulation was to be achieved through the analysis of quantitative and qualitative data as explained above. as for the data analysis, the sequential explanatory design was implemented in the following manner: observations were made about the quantitative data, then the qualitative data was analysed in an attempt to verify or refute the findings (creswell, 2003). a further aim of this study was to assess the validity of subtitling from spanish or chinese into english, while addressing these specific nationalities of students in the classes under study. there were also students from other european countries, but they were not considered for the purposes of analysis as they did not have spanish or chinese as their mother tongue. ultimately, the goal of this study was 2 https://amara.org/es/ https://amara.org/es/ reverse subtitling in the esp class to improve written skills in english: a case study 32 to provide further evidence in support of active subtitling (talaván, 2012) as a tool for the improvement of written production in english in the esp class. the research question at the core of the methodology can be seen as follows: is reverse subtitling a valid tool for the written skills improvement in an l2? in order to address this question, observation was focused on the progress made by the students in the eg when writing in english, including subtitling activities, which were used as a means to achieve the goal. the cg’s results were also compared with those of the eg with the aim of addressing this question and discussing the possible differences encountered. in addition, the eg’s answers to the questionnaire were analysed in order to determine whether or not the quantitative results could be corroborated by their opinions following their participation in the experiment. 3.2. timeline the varying tasks were designed to ensure that the gathering of data was in accordance with the dates seen in table 1. table 1. timeline dates tasks october 2017 introduction to avt mock test: composition november 2017 practices on amara 1st composition december 2017 practices on amara subtitling task january 2018 2nd composition post-questionnaire as for the evaluation criteria of the esp subject, all tasks submitted by the students accounted for 10% of the final mark. additionally, an oral presentation (10%) and active participation in class (10%) were also assessed. last, the final written exam, which represented 70% of the final mark, included a composition as the object of study. this writing task was also evaluated to verify or refute any journal of audiovisual translation volume 4, issue 1 33 positive enhancement of the eg students’ writing skills in english, and was also compared with the cg’s results. 3.3. procedures before the students started subtitling on amara, an introduction to avt and subtitling (díaz-cintas, 2001; díaz-cintas & remael, 2007) was presented at the beginning of the course. while most students generally knew what subtitling is, they had to learn some basic concepts on the technical restrictions and linguistic considerations of this avt mode. the following pieces of information were given to the students. table 2. avt and general subtitling conventions – definition of avt and subtitling – subtitling conventions: ▪ subtitles should appear on screen for a minimum of 1 second and a maximum of 6. ▪ one-line subtitles should have a maximum of some 35 characters and two-line subtitles some 70. ▪ only the gist (the most important information both linguistic and paralinguistic) should appear in the subtitles. ▪ segmentation or line breaks: subtitles must be semantically and syntactically properly segmented (1 or 2 lines), that is, the division of the subtitle should not split the phrases between the lines. – for further information please read the bbc subtitle guidelines: http://bbc.github.io/subtitleguidelines/ source: díaz-cintas & remael (2007) regarding segmentation, a sample with a correct and incorrect line break was provided so the students could have a clearer idea of this essential concept as shown in table 3. http://bbc.github.io/subtitle-guidelines/ http://bbc.github.io/subtitle-guidelines/ reverse subtitling in the esp class to improve written skills in english: a case study 34 table 3. sample of segmentation segmentation / line break i am going to get a new smartphone i am going to get a new smartphone ✔ x as shown in the above table, the correct subtitle shows the noun phrase a new smartphone in the lower line, while the wrong segmentation splits the noun phrase by leaving the indefinite article a in the upper line and placing the adjective and noun smart phone in the lower line alone. once the students became familiar with the platform, a sample3 of the hateful eight (quentin tarantino, 2015) trailer, with audio in spanish and subtitles created in english by the author, was uploaded to moodle, the virtual platform used by the university. in addition, some aspects of subtitling conventions, segmentation, etc. were again revised in class. next, the students were provided with a series of steps on moodle on how to proceed with the activity. 3 https://goo.gl/qyqpjc https://goo.gl/qyqpjc journal of audiovisual translation volume 4, issue 1 35 table 4. steps to follow when using amara steps to follow with amara 1. create and account in amara. https://amara.org/es/ 2. watch the introductory video ”watch the video.” https://amara.org/es/ 3. click on subtitling platform, then watch the video tutorial. https://amara.org/en/subtitling-platform/ 4. click on get started. https://amara.org/en/videos/create/ it’s time for you to subtitle a 3–5-minute video. go to youtube and look for a video (it should concern business english to a certain extent) in spanish/chinese to be subtitled in english. you could use trailers for this subtitling activity. 5. once you decide on the video to subtitle, copy the link of the website and paste it on ”subtitle a video.” https://amara.org/en/videos/create/ 6. select the source language of your video (spanish/chinese) and the language to be subtitled (english), then click on continue. 7. now you can start subtitling… pay attention to the keyboard controls on the upper left side of the screen. 8. follow the steps on the upper right side of the screen (as shown on amara). 1. type what you hear 2. sync timing 3. review and complete / publish! source: https://amara.org/es/ it must be noted that this was the first time these students were required to subtitle videos, as it will be shown later on in the discussion of the questionnaire results. moreover, they were not familiar with translation strategies or techniques (talaván, 2017) given that their studies were not related to translation. thus, very general instructions were given to them regarding how to subtitle. it was also made clear that professional quality results were not expected. https://amara.org/es/ https://amara.org/es/ https://amara.org/en/subtitling-platform/ https://amara.org/en/videos/create/ https://amara.org/en/videos/create/ https://amara.org/es/ reverse subtitling in the esp class to improve written skills in english: a case study 36 4. data analysis and discussion quantitative and qualitative data were gathered and analysed for the purposes of this experiment as shown in the following sections. in addition, a discussion on the analysis of data and results is presented here. 4.1. written production assessment throughout the course, the students submitted several compositions about business, trade and finance topics that were produced with the aid of online dictionaries so that their real written production could be assessed and feedback provided. this gave the students the opportunity to improve their skills before the final written test, in which no dictionary is allowed in accordance with the esp final assessment guidelines of the facultad de comercio y turismo (faculty of commerce and tourism) of the universidad complutense de madrid. a mock composition was corrected at the beginning of the study, although this did not count as a mark for the course. in this case, the mock writing served as a guide for the students so that they knew what was expected from their writing production tasks. following this assignment, they submitted composition 1, completed the subtitling activity, submitted composition 2 and, finally, wrote the composition of the final written exam, which was also assessed as part of the data for this study. for the correction of the compositions, a rubric4 based on the b1 assessment scale (which assesses content, communicative achievement, organisation, and language) by cambridge english was used. the reverse subtitling practice was done in different sessions and with the help of online dictionaries to be able to condense the tt as much as possible. in order to assess this task, a subtitling rubric was used (based on talaván, ibáñez, & bárcena, 2017). table 5 shows the items assessed. 4 http://www.cambridgeenglish.org/images/231794-cambridge-english-assessing-writing-performance-atlevel-b1.pdf http://www.cambridgeenglish.org/images/231794-cambridge-english-assessing-writing-performance-at-level-b1.pdf http://www.cambridgeenglish.org/images/231794-cambridge-english-assessing-writing-performance-at-level-b1.pdf journal of audiovisual translation volume 4, issue 1 37 table 5. subtitling assessment rubric name/surname group item excellent good sufficient insufficient accuracy 5 errors (4–3.5 points) 6–10 errors (3.4–2.5 points) 11–15 errors (2.4–1.5 points) over 15 errors (1.4–0 points) condensation 100%–– 80% (4––3.5 points) 79–– 60% (3.4––2.5 points) 59–– 50% (2.4––1.5 points) below 50% (1.4–0 points) segmentation 100%–– 80% (1 point) 79––60% (0.75 points) 59––50% (0.50 points) below 50% (0.25–0 points) synchrony 100–– 80% (1 point) 79––60% (0.75 points) 59%––50% (0.50 points) below 50% (0.25–0 points) grand total source: talaván, ibáñez, & bárcena (2017) with the aim of addressing the needs of a large number of students from abroad, chinese native speakers subtitled from chinese into english. given the researcher’s inability to understand chinese, this entailed a limitation to this study given that the evaluation of chinese students’ subtitles had to be based on the tt rather than on the transfer from the st to the tt. however, this aspect did not affect the chinese students’ composition assessments, which were the main focus on the study. as can be seen in table 5, the different aspects under analysis are the following: (1) accuracy concerns the linguistic and punctuation marks conventions. the spanish students subtitled a video from spanish into english. accordingly, chinese native speakers subtitled from chinese into english. in order to avoid a drawback when analysing the data (considering the author could not understand chinese and their accuracy was centred on the tt linguistic features), the same number of chinese students in the eg was also included in the cg, that is, 5 in each group in order to have more homogenous groups in terms of their mother tongue. all in all, both native speakers of spanish and chinese were assessed, although not in the same terms. (2) as for condensation, the scale shows how condensed the subtitles in the tt were. (3) a proper syntactic and semantic segmentation was also evaluated, as well as (4) synchrony between the sound and the subtitles. these last two aspects were evaluated, but their value was reverse subtitling in the esp class to improve written skills in english: a case study 38 lower than that of accuracy and condensation, considering that these students are not enrolled in university degrees in which translation is learnt in detail and practised regularly. regarding the rubrics used for both the composition and the subtitling task, they have different features, considering that they are aimed at the assessment of two different tasks, although both of them deal with written production in english. most importantly, it must be pointed out that while the improvement of written production in english in the form of compositions is the object of study, reverse subtitling as an aid in improving these skills. thus, the subtitling task is the instrument employed to determine whether or not the goal can be accomplished. regarding the assessment of the eg’s and cg’s compositions, the results obtained can be seen in figure 1. figure 1. eg’s and cg’s composition assessments paying close attention to the data shown above, an improvement was observed in the eg students’ written production considering the rise of the average, which was 6.39 points (median 6 and mode 5.5) in the first composition, 6.72 points (median 6.5 and mode 5.5) in the second and, finally, 7.41 points (median 7.5 and mode 9) in the composition of the final written exam. thus, an improvement of +1.02 points was observed from the beginning of the course to the end. the subtitling activity could not be compared with the composition in equal terms, as it was an anecdotal datum. the results revealed that the average mark, median and mode (all of which accounted for 7.14 points, 7.5 and 8 respectively) were higher than the results obtained in the first and second compositions of the eg, but below the average mark of the exam composition. this could be explained as the students were given more sessions in which to complete the subtitling task and 6.39 5.52 6.72 5.81 7.41 6.18 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 eg cg composition assessments composition 1 composition 2 exam composition journal of audiovisual translation volume 4, issue 1 39 might have found subtitling a more dynamic and entertaining activity. the final results obtained in the exam highlighted the quantitative improvement as shown in figure 1. as for the cg, in their first composition, the average was mark 5.52 points, the median 5 and the mode 4 respectively. in the case of their second composition, they obtained a mark of 5.81 points, a median of 5.5 and a mode of 6.5. focusing on their exam composition, the improvement can be seen in an average mark of 6.18 points, a median of 6 and a mode of 6.5. in this case, the cg showed an improvement in their average mark of +0.66 points. it can be observed that the eg exhibited an improvement in their written skills in english throughout the semester, as already discussed (see figure 1). in addition, it was also revealed that the eg’s final results (average 7.41 points) were considerably higher than those of the cg (average 6.18 points), who completed the same tasks with the exception of the subtitling practice. the difference in their improvements positions the eg +0.36 above the cg. it can be seen that the result showed more positive outcomes by the students who practised their written skills throughout the semester with reverse subtitling as a tool used to improve their writing skills. it can be argued that having the opportunity of practising one’s skills in a more recurrent manner should benefit participants in their outcomes. in addition, we cannot ignore the fact that the eg’s compositions were marked higher than the cg’s and this could lead us to consider that the higher the level of the students is, the quicker their progress is. with the aim of using a more thorough statistics formula, the independent sample t-test and the one-way analysis of variance (anova) were also applied to analyse the quantitative results of the means of the three tasks. one the one hand, the results of the t-tests show that the t-value (2.11) is slightly higher than the critical value (2.01) and that p-value (0.04) is significant at p < 0.05, so it seems plausible to reject the null hypothesis and claim that the means of two independent groups are significantly different. on the other hand, anova returns a statistically significant result given that the statistical value of the analysis (f= 4.46) is considerably distinct from 1 and the p-value (0.03) is lower than the significance level of 0.05. given these data, it seems reasonable to accept the alternative hypothesis that the eg’s and cg’s means are statistically significantly different from each other. in view of the results provided by the two tests, we could assume that there is a direct relationship between the two variables, namely the improvement of the eg’s written production and the reverse subtitling task, used as a tool for the enhancement of written skills. in conclusion, it can be stated that, within the parameters and context of this study, students’ learning did not develop independently of the use of a particular teaching methodology. reverse subtitling in the esp class to improve written skills in english: a case study 40 4.2. questionnaire qualitative data was gathered in the form of a questionnaire in which the students of the eg were asked about certain aspects of their linguistic profile as well as their experience on this subtitling practice. their answers are discussed below. although, up to 37 students practised with the subtitling task, we only analysed 25 random answers from the eg since we could only gather 25 participants of the cg who had completed all tasks of the course with the exception of the subtitling practice. however, in other experimental studies, different numbers of participants can be found in the eg and cg. non-native speakers of spanish or chinese were excluded in the sample so that the results were not jeopardised. the participants were aged 20–22, and 64% were female students and 52.7% were male. the students’ mother tongues were two: 20 students were native speakers of spanish (80%) and 5 were native speakers of chinese (20%). within the group of native speakers of spanish, the nationalities involved were varied: 14 students were from spain (56%), 2 from colombia (8%), 1 from equatorial guinea (4%), 1 from argentina (4%), 1 from paraguay (4%), and 1 from peru (4%). hence, the two main languages spoken by all participants were the languages chosen for the transfer from spanish or chinese audio into english subtitles. as for linguistic questions, the most significant data were that only 4% considered themselves to have an advanced level of english including writing and speaking skills, 20% stated that they could have an upper-intermediate level, 36% accounted for an intermediate level, and the remaining 40% situated their skills at a lower-intermediate and beginner level. it can be observed that the predominant group exhibited a lower-intermediate and beginner level in accordance with their own views. however, these data cannot be considered in scientific terms since no proof of a language certificate was required of the students. the purpose of this question was, rather, to observe how the participants felt about their linguistic proficiency in english. for the question regarding the improvement of reading skills, a likert scale was used on the basis of 4 responses in an attempt to avoid a neutral choice: 1 (not at all), 2 (slightly), 3 (very much), and 4 (extremely). accordingly, the participants were asked if they believed their reading skills in english had improved: 4% indicated that they did not improve at all, 28% improved slightly, 60% improved very much and 8% extremely, answer 3 being the most common. if we add the percentages of the students who felt a positive enhancement of their skills, we obtain 68%, which can be said to be recurrent in the majority of participants. thus, this positive opinion seems to be predominant. the most important question, which sheds light on one the main goals of the study, can be seen in figure 2. journal of audiovisual translation volume 4, issue 1 41 figure 2. improvement in writing skills in english based on the above figure, those students who considered themselves to have improved in their written skills when subtitling from spanish or chinese into english account for 56%, 48% having chosen very much, and 8% extremely. by contrast, the percentage of students who indicated only a slight improvement was 40%, and those who considered no improvement at all was 4%. the results discussed here indicate a positive tendency of the improvement of writing skills. accordingly, it could be claimed there is a direct relationship between writing and reading in the same language as both skills are involved in the production of the former. thus, triangulation of data can be said to corroborate the quantitative (with positive outcomes in writing skills of the eg) and qualitative results (a positive view) discussed here. other questions concerned the improvement of speaking skills with the following results: 4% indicated that they did not improve at all, and 52% slightly; by contrast, 40% stated to have improved very much, and 4% extremely. these data indicate a more negative tendency regarding the fostering of this oral production skill, which can be explained by focusing on the conventions of reverse subtitling as all the participants of the eg subtitled from audio in their mother tongues into written text in english. as far as the listening skill is concerned, the data are not relevant here since the audio was in the students’ mother tongues. to illustrate the subtitled videos submitted by the eg, the following example is an excerpt with audio in chinese subtitled into english, which presents news segments on the asian company alibaba broadcast by tvbs news: 4% 40% 48% 8% 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 1. not at all 2. slightly 3. very much 4. extremely how much do you think your writing in english may have improved? reverse subtitling in the esp class to improve written skills in english: a case study 42 figure 3. chinese to english subtitling sample source: https://goo.gl/nhx2dd the following video has audio in spanish and is subtitled into english. here victor küppers talks about motivation in the clip xxiii convención grupo expofincas (13th grupo expofincas convention). figure 4. spanish to english subtitling sample source: https://goo.gl/jdhv25 last but not least, the students were asked if they would like to continue subtitling with amara. it is true that this was the first time participants subtitled videos, but we aimed to observe the way the students felt about using this platform. 96% indicated that they would like to continue subtitling with it and among the responses obtained were: “yes, because it is easy to work with this platform”, “this webpage has helped me a lot, it’s very easy to use and a very innovative way to learn english”, “yes, because it is fun”, and “subtitling helped me read more fluently in english, everyday expressions can be easily learnt.” in general terms, they stated to have enjoyed editing the subtitles and learning how to synchronise the text with the audio, that amara was a user-friendly platform, as well as the fact that reverse subtitling was a good way to improve english written skills. some responses concerned accessibility, as can be seen in the following: “yes, i think it’s a very good idea to make videos journal of audiovisual translation volume 4, issue 1 43 accessible to everybody”, “yes because you can learn new vocabulary and you can help other people to understand other languages that they don’t know”. it would be interesting to conduct further research on the promotion of linguistic accessibility to audiovisual content in these types of studies. to summarise, positive outcomes were reported by the participants. it could therefore be inferred that this was a rewarding activity for the students. 4.3. discussion the data gathered in this study is directly related to the students’ performance in written english by using reverse subtitling, in an active way, as an l2 learning tool. the research question established is shown and answered as follows. • is reverse subtitling a valid tool for the written skills improvement in an l2? in order to address this question, observation was focused on the progress made by the students when writing in english, including the subtitling tasks and the composition of the final exam as a means to reach the goal. if we observe the quantitative results from the eg, the data show an improvement of +1.02 points. as for the subtitling practice, the average mark was higher than the first and second compositions under analysis. it could therefore be inferred that although the subtitling activity cannot be directly compared with the numerical data obtained from the composition assessments, the subtitling task was acknowledged by the students to have been a positive practice as indicated in their answers in the questionnaire. in addition, reverse subtitling was an innovative tool for them, hence the positive results that could be related to this fact. on the other hand, the average marks obtained by the cg were lower than any of the previous quantitative marks obtained by the eg. this group, nonetheless, showed an overall improvement of +0.66 points. accordingly, the difference between the eg’s and the cg’s improvement was +0.36 points in favour of the former. after applying the statistical formulas of the t-test and anova, it could be said that the improvement in the participants’ written skills in english with the use of this reverse subtitling tool is not accidental. triangulation of data can be said to have been achieved by observing this quantitative improvement in the eg’s results, along with the participants’ positive views regarding the way their written skills could have improved by making use of reverse subtitling. based on the responses obtained from the questionnaire, the students mentioned that they believed their reading skills had improved: 68% indicated that they felt that they had improved very much and extremely. this observation could concern the necessary operations to transfer an audio in an l1 into subtitles in an l2, that is, in english in this case. speaking and listening skills were not considered by the students given the features of this subtitling task. reverse subtitling in the esp class to improve written skills in english: a case study 44 regarding the participants’ opinions on the benefits of reverse subtitling, it must be mentioned that they indicated that they found the platform user-friendly, learnt new expressions, and found this activity to be an innovative manner in which to practise their skills in english. the benefits of making videos accessible to more users was also mentioned, but not explored in depth. however, this first step is essential given that the majority of participants expressed their willingness to use this platform in the future, which might lead to further research in which the importance of accessibility of audiovisual content can be one of the goals of studies of avt in the fll context. 5. conclusions this paper has attempted to support claims by scholars who have investigated the potential of avt modes in the fll context and has also shown how important it is for undergraduate students to use reverse subtitling or active interlingual subtitling as a means to improve written skills in foreign languages. both lecturers and researches need to consider methodologies that can be beneficial to students as learning aids, but also attractive to them as 21st-century learners. it has been shown that the participants in this particular study tended to welcome activities that contained audiovisual content and avt. the potential of subtitling as a tool for the esp class has been described and assessed. thus, the goals established in the research design have been addressed. this study investigated whether or not reverse subtitling can be employed as a tool for the improvement of written skills in english, and what other benefits its active use can entail. given the results obtained and the small number of students under analysis, it can be said to provide evidence of a case study. focusing on the average marks that the students in the eg obtained through the evaluation of their written production tasks, the improvement of their writing skills in english materialised in +1.02 points. the students from the cg obtained a higher average mark in their exam composition, but their improvement (+0.66 points) was lower than the eg’s. based on the statistical formulas, there could be a high probability that a correlation between the subtitling tasks and the final outcomes of the eg exists, making reverse subtitling a pedagogically valid tool in the fll context. as for the qualitative data explored, it can be noted that reverse subtitling was positively received by the eg, as an l2 tool in the esp class, as the majority of participants indicated a willingness to use amara in the future. the research question was triangulated when students stated to have improved their written skills and when comparing the quantitative results. as for the questionnaire responses, the students mentioned they had also improved reading skills and the importance of helping other viewers consume audiovisual programmes whose audio tracks are not in their mother tongue. this idea therefore supports the fact that although the participants’ cultural backgrounds were different, with spanish and chinese being the native languages involved, subtitling in the university context and amateur subtitling can help in overcoming the linguistic and cultural barriers present in communication. journal of audiovisual translation volume 4, issue 1 45 as for the limitations in this study, the reduced number of participants might have, in one way or another, had a direct influence on the quantitative results. in addition, more assessments of written production and subtitling activities can offer researchers more thorough results when assessing the potential of a pedagogical tool. the researcher’s lack of proficiency in chinese also affected the manner in which the subtitling tasks of the native speakers of chinese were evaluated. however, this fact did not directly affect the quantitative analysis of the results of the composition tasks submitted by these students. thus, the main goal of this study has aimed to prove how in this case study the use of reverse subtitling may have benefitted the participants’ written skills in english in the esp class. aiming for the promotion of using reverse subtitling in the fll setting, a future research avenue might be to observe whether or not the students reflect on the importance of making videos linguistically accessible to other users, as supported by “social subtitling.” all in all, this preliminary case study helped shape an innovative teaching programme conducted in the same university for the 2018–2019 academic year within the innova-docentia programme, under the name subespskills (subtitling tasks in the english for specific purposes class to improve written production skills) (ávila-cabrera & rodríguez-arancón, 2021). a group of lecturers from different spanish universities (as well as two undergraduate students to help with the chinese transcripts) designed a number of subtitling activities for the improvement in written english in the esp class. it is hoped that the participants’ enthusiasm and completion of tasks can provide the researchers with fruitful results that can contribute to the literature on avt 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(2014). the use of reverse subtitling as an online collaborative language learning tool. the interpreter and translator trainer, 8(1), 84–101. https://doi.org/10.1080/1750399x.2014.908559 http://www.ugr.es/~portalin/articulos/pl_numero6/talavan.pdf https://ojsspdc.ulpgc.es/ojs/index.php/lfe/article/view/170/154 https://doi.org/10.24310/trans.2012.v0i16.3209 https://doi.org/10.1017/s0958344016000197 reverse subtitling in the esp class to improve written skills in english: a case study 48 appendix 1 composition 1 write a composition (150–200 words) on the following topic. you are attending a networking event because you want to make new contacts and connections. describe yourself saying what you do in your company, its organization and the details included below: job, company, reasons for attending the event (professional, personal, interests) appendix 2 composition 2 write a description (150–200 words) of a traditional supply chain in which you include the following concepts: supplier > manufacturer > distributor > retailer > customer you can choose any company that you want as an example. appendix 3 exam composition think about a clever product that can be marketed and made profitable. give a formal oral presentation of the product, including its description, price and potential customers. 150–200 words. journal of audiovisual translation volume 4, issue 1 49 appendix 4. questionnaire (2017–2018 subtitling practice) the questions below are related to what you think about subtitling after having subtitled a video clip with amara. please, fill in this form with honesty, and click “send” when you finish. thank you for your collaboration, your answers are very valuable to us. surname(s) name(s) age * country of origin * gender * native speaker of * spanish catalan basque galician english chinese another: 1. how would you describe your proficiency in english? * native advanced upper-intermediate intermediate lower-intermediate beginner another: 2. how much do you think your reading skills in english have improved? * 1 not at all 2 slightly 3 very much 4 extremely 3. how much do you think your writing skills from spanish/chinese to english have improved? * 1 not at all 2 slightly 3 very much 4 extremely 4. how much do you think your listening skills in english have improved? * 1 not at all 2 slightly 3 very much 4 extremely 5. how much do you think your speaking skills in english have improved? * 1 not at all 2 slightly 3 very much 4 extremely 6. how much do you think your subtitling skills have improved? * 1 not at all 2 slightly 3 very much 4 extremely 7. how many videos did you subtitle? can you please indicate the titles? * 8. can you please include the link to your subtitled video(s)? * 9. would you like to continue subtitling with amara or any other software? why? why not? * 1 ad hoc screen translation in soviet estonian film clubs: negotiating boundaries tiina hoffmann university of tartu / inalco _________________________________________________________ abstract in soviet estonian official cinemas, foreign films were always dubbed into russian with estonian subtitles. founded at the end of the thaw, film clubs and other semi-official screening locations became popular as part of the alternative scene and unauthorised discourse. they screened uncensored original western european and hollywood films and thus the works of forbidden film directors and cinema movements from the west were introduced to a limited audience of film enthusiasts. compared to other soviet socialist republics, estonia was in a privileged geographical and linguistic position to be able to access the films of the west via finland. film clubs looked beyond the iron curtain and opened up a cultural dialogue between the west and soviet estonia. this article analyses the repertoire of foreign films and different translation modes, social relations and the agency of the interpreters, and it looks at their interpretative act from theoretical perspectives discussed by juri lotman and naoki sakai. key words: film clubs, boundaries, interpreters, simultaneous interpreting, in-betweenness, heterolingual address, semiotics of culture.  tiinapollu@gmail.com, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5467-601x citation: hoffmann, t.. (2023). ad hoc screen translation in soviet estonian film clubs: negotiating boundaries. journal of audiovisual translation, 6(1), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.47476/jat.v6i1.2023. 129 editor(s): j. pedersen received: june 11, 2021 accepted: december 1, 2022 published: july 10, 2023 copyright: ©2023 hoffmann. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license. this allows for unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5467-601x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5467-601x https://doi.org/10.47476/jat.v6i1.2023.129 https://doi.org/10.47476/jat.v6i1.2023.129 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ad hoc screen translation in soviet estonian film clubs: negotiating boundaries 2 1. introduction to soviet estonian audiovisual translation estonia has been a subtitling country since 1950 when olga lauristin, the minister of cinema of the estonian ssr, made the necessary arrangements to start subtitling into estonian. the post-war efforts to dub soviet film productions into estonian were costly and time-consuming: estonia had no proper dubbing equipment and dubbings were made in leningrad (in lenfilm studio). subtitling of foreign films in soviet estonia tended to be an exception rather than the rule in the ussr where only russian dubbings or voice overs for foreign film productions were shown in official soviet cinemas. almost all foreign films were re-cut to fit the rigid soviet matrix of film length. western euro-pean and hollywood films, censored with different strategies, underwent visual and verbal manipulations during the dubbing process (hoffmann, 2021). this was the case in the so-called first screen or soviet kinoprokat1 that was the network of official cinemas. the distribution scene was divided into three sectors: the official cinemas, film festivals, and film clubs, the latter being the semi -closed third setting, counterbalancing the first screen’s repertoire by screening uncensored original films with simultaneous ad hoc translation. regarding the general practice of audiovisual tr anslation (avt) in the ussr, soviet estonia was exceptional in three aspects. as for the official network of cinemas, estonia was the only ssr which had set and also achieved the goal to subtitle into the local language all films that came with russian audio2. secondly, in two main estonian universities there was a distinct film club culture, boasting of a versatile and liberal repertoire coming from finland. thirdly, northern estonia had access to finnish television that could be qualified as a illegal “f ourth channel”. the present paper is focused on the last two aspects, charting the film distribution and translation in soviet estonian film clubs in the context of general soviet avt practices. this article provides the first analysis of its kind into alternative oral screen translation practices of the semi -illegal foreign films that could be viewed in soviet estonia. although film clubs were a wide-spread phenomenon in the ussr, the estonian case clearly represents an exception with its liberal and versa tile repertoire. in addition to the introduction, methodology and historical context in sections 1 to 3, the paper analyses the specific situation of soviet estonia as a translation hub on the soviet periphery and its more or less liberal cultural environment through different political periods. the paper thus discusses two topics in two parts: the emergence of film clubs in soviet estonia and film translation and translators in the estonian film clubs. in the last two sections i analyse the close affiliati on be-tween estonia and finland and intense translation activity that made it possible to establish an active 1 russian: главкинопрокат. the soviet estonian kinoprokat, run by ahto vesmes in 1970–1988 (taevere, 2010), was a governmental quasi-corporation operating under the supervision of the ussr ministry of culture (levitsky, 1964, p. 42). in a broader sense, kinoprokat encompassed the whole network of official cinemas in cities, regions, and villages. the number of film prints circulating in kinoprokat was limited. a print moved from the first screen, where it was officially released, to the second, and eventually to the third screen, which meant that different cinemas started showing the same films at different times. 2 this statement, not being the topic of this article, is supported by a substantial personal archive of around 3,500 pages of manuscripts from the popular television broad cast jupiter that introduced new films and was hosted by ahto vesmes (hoffmann, 2021). journal of audiovisual translation volume 6, issue 1 3 cultural dialogue. this article argues that translation activity in the soviet estonian film clubs was not triggered solely by resistance to the ideology of a totalitarian regime but also, and perhaps largely, by estonia’s fortunate geographical position on the border of the ussr and tight connections with finland that opened up a socio-cultural dialogue with the west. finland itself, with a strong communist neighbour, was not the “classic” west, being under direct political pressure from the ussr, and yet it tried to keep good bilateral relationships during the cold war. the dialogue with the west was facilitated by other factors, like linguistic si milarities between the estonian and finnish languages and the initiative of the finnish government to broadcast their national television and hence many western european and hollywood films also in northern estonia. 2. methodological considerations and sources semiotic research into audiovisual translation practices in film clubs provides illuminating insights into soviet avt translation practices. paradoxically, the discursive controversy, liberty, and heterogeneity of avt practices were actively promoted under the totalitarian regime of the ussr, but only on the second and third screens. avt used in content distributed via the official channel usually included straight cuts and manipulations of ideologically unorthodox visual and verbal material (albera, 2017, p. 11) as an integral part of the dubbing process. but this was only one side of the coin. the soviet dubbing practice also provided manifold educational possibilities for cinema professionals (see, e.g., barr, 2019, p. 96) and moreover it addressed the problem of multilingualism in a straightforward way – in the long run, homo sovieticus should master the russian language. soviet film clubs balanced this rigid monolingual approach (cf. section 5). studies of soviet film clubs need applicable concepts to describe the often contradictory and noncoherent social, ideological, cultural, and political aspects of avt. in the case of soviet estonian film clubs, different kinds of gaps appear in this area: we are missing knowledge, context, theories, methodologies, and canonical literature. the gaps in related academic research are hard to identify, as there are no published avt history papers about the film clubs that surely existed in the other baltic states. besides research into general avt studies (pérez-gonzález, 2019; gambier & ramos pinto, 2018), oral avt history (for instance sullivan & cornu, 2019; díaz-cintas, 2019), and interpreting (carbonell i cortés & monzó-nebot, 2021), perhaps the closest related avt topics are covered by the descriptive and historiographic articles discussing screen translation at gosfilmofond’s cinema theatres (razlogova, 2014) and soviet film festivals (razlogova, 2014, 2015, 2020), as well as soviet estonian interpreting practices in general (sibul, 2018) and live theatre translation (sibul, 2017). for the present article, previously undiscovered archival materials have been identified and ana lysed, informants were interviewed, and new theoretical approaches were explored. regarding film clubs, tiit merisalu, the founder of the leading film club in tallinn, has shared valuable information via interviews and his personal archives concerning the repertoire, screening information pro grammes and all relevant details regarding, e.g., lecturers, interpreters, club membership, sta tistics ad hoc screen translation in soviet estonian film clubs: negotiating boundaries 4 and press cuts from tallinna polütehnik, the bi-monthly magazine of tallinn technical university, which covered various film club activities. the personal diaries of the film club organiser silvi tenjes, located in the archive of the university of tartu museum, give details about the film club’s activities in tartu in the 1980s. considerable leverage is provided by postcolonial theories that relativize the relationship between the coloniser and the colonised. when analysing translation practices in totalitarian societies from a postcolonial perspective, monticelli and lange criticised the use of streamlined binary dichotomies such as censorship-resistance as “stereotypical historiographic dichotomies dating back to the cold war era” (monticelli & lange, 2014, p. 96), stating that historiographic approaches relying on streamlined dichotomies have been criticised in both soviet studies (yurchak, 2006) and translation studies (tymoczko, 2007). from the theoretical perspective, juri lotman, a persecuted soviet scholar who found a haven in tartu, formulated a theory of semiosphere (lotman, 1984/2005, 1990), which represents an insider perspective and is therefore relevant for post-colonial approach. the semiosphere is a model of the semiotic space as a complex structure with a core and periphery and the border composed of bilingual belts that separate the semiosphere from the extra -semiotic space. juri lotman’s cultural semiotics can explain the liberty in repertoire and translation activity visible in soviet estonian film clubs. lotman coined his central concept of the semiosphere in 1984 to model the cultural meaning-making process as an interaction between the semiosphere and the nonor extra-semiotic space surrounding it (lotman, 1984/2005), and he conti nued developing the concept as part of cultural semiotics until his death in 1993 (lotman, 1990, part two). the semiotic boundary (or border, russian: граница) is the most active area in a sign process, as it is “represent-ed by the sum of bilingual translatable ‘filters’, passing through which the text is translated into another language (or languages), situated outside the given semiosphere” (lotman, 1984/2005, p. 208 –209). the notion of a “sum of filters” already suggests translational activities on diff erent levels. inside the semiosphere, in the present context it would be the ussr, lotman also distinguished interplay and communication between the core and the active periphery – in our case, soviet estonia. lotman’s theories provide a deeper insight into complex translation activities in combination with naoki sakai’s critical theories of cartographic translation models (sakai, 2009; 2010a; 2010b). sakai defines translation as a “heterolingual address” (sakai, 1997, pp. i –xii), designating a situation in which one addresses oneself as a foreigner to another foreigner. this does not necessarily imply an interlinguistic communication act. sakai emphasises the ambiguity inherent to the translator’s position: who is the translator and where they are in relati on to the source and target texts? (sakai, 2009). when analysing the position of film interpreters in film clubs, we can see that their state of “in-betweenness” can be assumed on two distinct levels, as “the translations are positioned be tween the utterance that gave rise to them and the response they are intended to evoke” (monti celli & lange, 2014, p. 102). sakai underlines the temporality of the translator’s position, being at different moments of time both the addresser and the addressee. in relation to the source text, the translator is the addressee, but also the addresser, because “the addressee of the enunciation is not located where the translator is” (sakai, 2009, p. 174), as the target audience of the text are not a priori the translators of the text. in relation to the source text, the film club interpreter was both the journal of audiovisual translation volume 6, issue 1 5 addressee (obviously the receiver of the text), and the addresser (the author of the enunciation). the transformative role of the interpreters (in the sense of tymoczko, 2007) i n the process of building a dialogue is further investigated based on the example of the interpreters aleksander kurtna and ferdinand kala. 3. soviet estonia as a translation hub subtitling and dubbing of films into local languages was officially encourage d but left to the discretion of the ssrs who had to organize the process locally. soviet estonia was one of the few ssrs taking an active stand in this respect. right after the end of the war in 1944, the first estonian dubbings of soviet productions were made in lenfilm studio, after 1946 also in tallinna kinostuudio. this costly practice lasted until 1950, totalling 50 estonian dubbings (hoffmann, 2021, p. 71–72). from the 1950s onwards, only children’s cartoons were continued to be dubbed into estonian, as according to olga lauristin decree, estonian subtitles became obligatory for all foreign and soviet film productions. the first screen subtitling was organised by ensv mn riikliku kinematograafia komitee filmilaenu tuse ja reklaami valitsus, the estonian national film lending and distribution office. this institution organized the estonian subtitling process and became the main subtitling hub for the whole ussr, doing also subtitles in russian and even for the deaf and hard of hearing. the subtitlers in this institution worked solely based on the post-production scripts of the russian dubbings or voice overs without seeing the film they were translating (revisers, though, could correct the subtitles during pre screenings). furthermore, they could not consult the original scripts despite requesting them from moscow (liivaku, 1985, p. 15). the shift to subtitling in 1950 coincided with the emergence of live screen translation in soviet estonia; theatrical productions in estonia have been simultaneously inter preted regularly since 1952 (sibul, 2018, p. 258). in soviet estonia, non-subtitled films were rarely screened: generally during rare film festivals (usually the festivals were held in bigger cities, as was the case with moscow international film festival, asian and african film festival in tashkent, etc.), cultural events and other festive occasions when a foreign language could be heard (this created “great excitement in town”, according to the principal subtitler uno liivaku (personal communication, october 12, 2018). during such events, simultaneous interpreting was provided in cinemas. the real booster for oral screen translation was the founding of film clubs. at the end of the khrushchev thaw in mid-1960s, a group of students and professors initiated an alternative film club movement. although the clubs acquired many films from filmikontor (including before their official release; personal communication with merisalu, 2020), they compensated the scarcity of original uncensored films, inventing ad hoc solutions to show and translate the films from their original languages in a short preparation time to reach the highest possible number of spectators without receiving any unwanted attention from censorship agencies. ad hoc screen translation in soviet estonian film clubs: negotiating boundaries 6 it is interesting to note that the soviet third screen or distribution channel included, besides film clubs, also spontaneous screenings in churches, railway stations, cellars, even on planes (gusarov, 2020) or educational screenings at the premises of professional organisations, creative union s of writers, composers and other liberal professions, kolkhozes, factories, works, hospitals, etc., but also the gerasimov institute of cinematography (vgik) in moscow. in essr, the cinema union and soviet estonian kinoprokat organised actively closed screenings of uncensored films in tallinn. the general mindset in estonia favoured translations: it was partly due to the fact that a big per centage of estonians had poor command of russian, partly because estonia was the smallest re public and had always had the necessity and flexibility for different translation activities in many cultural domains. besides that, the official soviet rhetoric referred often to estonia, and to the bal tic states in general, as the “soviet ‘abroad’” (gorsuch, 2011, p. 56; risc h, 2015, p. 65). especially estonia was frequently referred to in the soviet tourist brochures, newsreels, and media as “our west” (gorsuch, 2011, p. 33). this mythological concept dating back to the russian empire had many lives and was resurrected during the soviet rule by stalin until 1953, flourished mainly during the khrushchev thaw until the mid-1960s, and was put on hold during the era of stagnation in the 1970s under brezhnev to be later revived again in 1980 when estonia hosted the olympic regatta. the thaw was a prolific era in soviet estonian cultural and subcultural life (allaste, 2013): in literature (hiedel, 2006), arts (helme, 2000), music (radsin, 2005), theatre (saro, 2019) and cinema. the founding of film clubs formed an integral part of a liberal cultural environment in soviet estonia in the 1960s that lasted until the beginning of 1970s. at the same time, on the first screen, the distribution quota s became very rigid, limiting the number of the so-called capitalist films (hoffmann, 2021, p. 176). regarding literature and translations from foreign languages, in 1973 the ussr joined the universal copyright convention, after which all translations from foreign languages started to be closely monitored and censored. the era of stagnation was characterized by the intense sovietization on socio-cultural and linguistic levels. it lasted until the beginning of glasnost in 1986. nevertheless, the stagnation is way too general a concept to describe those 15 years it encompassed. it should be pointed out that despite severe censorship and restrictions, many liberal translation activities in soviet estonia were achieved using a strategy that peeter torop calls “dissimilation via assimilation”, the introduction of unauthorised and forbidden discourse via authorised discourse (torop, 2009). one example is that film clubs reached the height of their popularity exactly during the era of stagnation, celebrating the unauthorised discourse. 4. the emergence of an alternative to official cinemas the first film clubs were founded in soviet estonia at the end of 1960s at two leading estonian universities in tallinn and tartu. these semi-closed clubs with limited membership proved extremely popular among students, intellectuals, and film enthusiasts during the era of stagnation (1966–1985) and later until the dissolution of the soviet union in 1991. film clubs screened original films from western europe and the us that were otherwise screened in official cinemas either in limited journal of audiovisual translation volume 6, issue 1 7 numbers, censored versions, or entirely forbidden altogether. the club members could hear original foreign language with a simultaneous oral translation into estonian – in official cinemas, the films were all dubbed into russian. film clubs in soviet estonia were part of a broader phenome-non that emerged in the soviet union in the mid-1960s. the aim was to provide a professional thematic overview of contemporary cinema and classical masterpieces, with discussion evenings and meetings with film critics and specialists from the industry, like directors and actors. estonian film clubs had close connections with finland and other film clubs, especially in leningrad and the embassies in moscow. those resources helped counterbalance the rigidity and monovalence of official cinemas and supported cinema education. 4.1. historical background of film clubs throughout the soviet period, northern estonia had direct access to the west thanks to its geographical location. after finnish president urho kekkonen visited estonia in 1964, the fir st regular ferry line between helsinki and tallinn (served by the georg ots) was opened (tart, 2010, p. 96). in 1971, the finnish government launched a powerful new tv transmitter in the town of espoo; half of its total capacity was directed to the gulf of finland, and it reached northern estonia. on the estonian side, numerous illegal antennas began to rise on the rooftops. because of its wide audience in estonia, we could ironically call the finnish television the “fourth screen” of the soviet un -ion. in early 1974, despite strong objections from the soviet estonian communist party, finnish television (suomen televisio) became widely accessible in estonia (siiner, et al., 2017, p. 87). finnish television and the maritime connection with finland played a vi tal role in the liberation movement (see, e.g., lõhmus, 2001) and opened estonia to the west, as contacts between estonian and finnish citizens became closer. the estonian and finnish languages are closely related fin-no-ugric languages, so communication on some level is possible even without learning the language. movies from the west were introduced to estonians by the legendary finnish film critic martti savo, who was of russian origin and whose real name was modest savtschenko (1918–1995); he was the film review editor of the finnish communist daily newspaper kansan uutiset, which was the only finnish magazine authorised in the soviet union. tiit merisalu, having worked as a tour guide in helsinki, could interpret fluently from finnish and english, and he recalled how he was inspired to start interpreting foreign films when watching finnish television in the lobby of the tallinn university of technology (hereinafter tpi) student dormitory (t. merisalu, personal communication, december 15, 2019). complete filmographies of semi-banned or unknown directors, such as ingmar bergman, jean-luc godard and françois truffaut, were distributed on finnish television along with the complete overview of the french new wave films, accompanied with commentaries by peter v on bagh, a famous film connoisseur. many masterpieces from hungary, poland, and czechoslovakia were shown, of which only a few were distributed in official soviet estonian cine -mas. merisalu translated simultaneously from finnish subtitles; his translations became highly popular: 20–25 students usually watched the screenings every evening (t. merisalu, personal communication, december 15, 2019). ad hoc screen translation in soviet estonian film clubs: negotiating boundaries 8 in august 1966, a few months after the legendary illiuzion theatre of the gosfilmofond3 was opened in moscow (march 1966), aleksandr garšnek, tiit merisalu, and professor georg golst founded the first film club in soviet estonia at the tallinn university of technology. this club subsequently became known as “tpi film club”, estonian: tpi kinoklubi). in 1969–1970, the state university of tartu founded a film club run by jaak lõhmus (later known in estonian as trü filmiklubi). by 1988, the number of film clubs in soviet estonia participating in the union of estonian film clubs had reached as many as 45 (merisalu, 2017, p. 97), totalling nearly 11,000 members. soviet film clubs had a clear pedagogical orientation and were active in schools and other educational establishments (fedorov & friesem, 2015). film clubs existed all over the soviet union and were united under the union of film clubs in moscow, but the soviet estonian film clubs were part of a more significant cultural phenomenon in soviet estonia and engaged in an active dialogue with the finnish and also other soviet clubs. 4.2. film club repertoires – dissimilation via assimilation films from the west that were considered for purchase by the soviet kinoprokat were first closely studied for (prospective) compliance (hoffmann, 2021, p. 113). first, the screened films had to be commercially successful and fulfil the budget and planned economy targets. another vital factor was whether they expressed ideological ideas that supported the socialist-communist worldview. these two principles had to balance each other: box office profits could compensate for compromises ma de on the ideological battlefield (zhokhova, 2007). film club repertoires originated partly from the local kinoprokat. some popular films were repeatedly screened, while some were screened first in the clubs and shortly afterwards in official cine -mas with proper subtitling. estonian film clubs and other film screening places had, in addition to the officially released re-edited and dubbed films, three primary sources of prints: (a) gosfilmofond’s original uncensored prints that were not officially released – the gosfilmofond lent out both original and censored prints, depending on the demand and availability of the print, but they preferred originals. (t. merisalu & e. razlogova, personal communication, september, 2020); (b) films acquired via friendly cooperation with the cultural institute of the french embassy, as well as other embassies in moscow, such as those of poland and east germany. the 3 illiuzion was a cinema theatre, not a film club, but was nevertheless classified as a third screen. the gosfilmofond had two cinemas in moscow, including the famous illiuzion, one in st petersburg and one in tbilisi, georgia. vladimir soloviev, gosfilmofond’s primary researcher, has characterised the cinema’s liberal repertoire as walking on a knife edge, keeping illiuzion perpetually on the verge of being shut down (ar tem’ev & soloviev, 2008). journal of audiovisual translation volume 6, issue 1 9 embassies began sending films to estonia via the kinematographe and kity film clubs in leningrad (nerman, 2004; merisalu, 2017); and (c) semi-illegal sources – prints received from personal archives from finland (helsinki, espoo, kotka), as well as hungary, poland, and other countries. as soon as copies of foreign films received from finland arrived in tallinn, censors took custody of the prints at the port and delivered them to the cinema committee of soviet estonia for inspection (t. merisalu, personal communication, december 15, 2019). the prints were then screened as soon as possible (usually within a couple of days) at tallinn film club, then sent to tartu and then on to latvia and lithuania, meaning that the prints remained in estonia for only a few days (t. merisalu, personal communication, december 15, 2019 ). films received from moscow or leningrad had to be returned (silvi tenjes’ archives, 1986/1987), leaving little time to prepare for screening. the distribution marsroute of the prints was irregular and chaotically recorded, but the aim was to reach as many film clubs as quickly as possible. soviet cinemas seldom screened western european films, especially rare were hollywood commercial films (hoffmann, 2021, p. 175). nevertheless, many forbidden films were screened in film clubs. the repertoire of the clubs was often considered subversive and in violation of the official soviet film distribution principles. soviet viewers were unfamiliar with the works of french new wave and european films d’auteur. films by jean-luc godard, agnès varda, ingmar bergman, andrzej wajda, rainer werner fassbinder, volker schlöndorff, werner herzog, wim wenders and pier paolo pasolini were generally unknown, as was also the case with countless us directors (meinert, 1988). in film clubs, the complete overview of the french new wave (unavailable through the official channel of “the first screen”), was screened several times, just as other new wave movements in europe. although the exact percentage of movies from western countries is unknown, the main difference from other soviet film clubs concerned the tpi club’s repertoire, whic h was bold, focused on the intellectual author cinema of the west and was even provocative. several film clubs in leningrad and moscow encountered major problems, including the closure of certain clubs: for example, the screening of jean-luc godard’s so-called maoist film la chinoise (1967) at the film club of the moscow state university led to the closure of the club the next day; meanwhile, the tpi film club was able to screen the same films without any problems (merisalu, 2017, p. 84). although soviet estonian film clubs were under the control of cinema agencies, they operated within the unauthorised discourse and contributed to cultural resistance in estonia, especially at the end of the 1960s. they walked the thin, ever-changing line between the permitted and the for-bidden. moscow’s cinema control agencies probably did not pay close attention to these practices, and even if this semi-subversive screening practice had been noticed in moscow, cultural policies considered estonia too small and irrelevant: a republic that was too peripheral to be sanctioned or repressed (zubkova, 2009). although after the thaw, artistic life in soviet estonia in general was under severe pressure due to stagnation and sovietisation, varying degrees of cultural liberty “[…] suggest that sovietisation practices in this region were not only diffuse but dependent on local par -ty and state ad hoc screen translation in soviet estonian film clubs: negotiating boundaries 10 officials who implemented policies and decided what was bourgeois ‘nationalist’, ‘alien’ or ‘anti soviet’” (risch, 2015, p. 77). the soviet censorship system was ambiguous with many loopholes and the intelligentsia sometimes managed clever ways to circumvent the moscow rules (saro, 2019). paradoxically, estonian censorship agents were rather liberal regarding film club activity in tpi where many of them had studied or worked: for instance, georgi golst who was the representative of the communist party in the tpi, himself founded and organized the film club. indrek toome, a communist party official, was also a former tpi student and a film club acti vist. reet ristlaan, the daughter of rein ristlaan who was the ideology secretary of the communist party and the highest-ranking censor in 1980–1988. uncensored foreign movies formed part of unauthorised discourse “crawling in” via different loop holes using different strategies and channels. one of the main strategies used was “dissimilation via assimilation” (torop, 2012): to screen something semi -illegal, a way had to be paved before. this also applies to literary translation (hiedel, 2006). according to peeter torop, to publish works of unauthorised speech, such as books by juri lotman, officially a persona non grata in the soviet union, one had to publish the works of mikhail bakhtin first. but since he, too, belonged to the category of unauthorised speech, translations of two books representing authorised speech had to be published beforehand (torop, 2011, p. 143). tiit merisalu recalls that during the era of stagnation, which started in soviet estonia around 1973, the tpi film club had to show some soviet masterpieces and invite soviet lecturers to comment on films, etc., which meant a long process necessitating compromises and sacrifices. the practice only survived because of years of meticulous diplomacy and keeping up good relations with various agents of censorship and cinema organisations (t. merisalu, personal communication, december 15, 2019). the censorship system became less rigid after 1986 (saro, 2019, p. 284), and many cinema goers recall popular italian cinema sessions with the works of federico fellini and pasolini in 1986–1988. 5. ad hoc screen translation other soviet estonian film clubs were usually not as well organised and well equipped as the one in tallinn, which managed to provide original sound with simultaneous interpreting in the native language of the audience, mainly estonian and russian. interpreters at tpi operated from a separate interpreting booth equipped with headphones and microphones; loudspeakers rendered the estonian version over a turned-down original soundtrack. in tallinn, such a booth also existed in the cinema house (kinomaja). other screening venues were usually not so well equipped. razlogova described kira razlogova’s first interpreting job in 1966, a screening of truffaut’s the 400 blows (1959) at a house of culture for workers on the outskirts of moscow: in a theatre with four hundred seats, without headphones or a microphone, screaming over the soundtrack, which could not be muted because she had to hear it from the loudspeakers to translate (razlogova, 2014, p. 172). audio equipment used at tpi was built in-house and was one of the best in the soviet union; the same equipment had also been used for high-level conference interpreting since 1968 (sibul, 2018, journal of audiovisual translation volume 6, issue 1 11 p. 225). advanced equipment facilitated various and often surprising translation practices used in simultaneous film translation of foreign films. mixed screen translation modes used in estonian film clubs mainly included the following: • direct simultaneous interpreting from the original language into estonia n (or at the same time into estonian and russian); • relay translation of the original films via another language (other than russian) from subtitles or post-production scripts; • simultaneous interpreting from russian dubbing into estonian as indirect transla tion; and • russian dubbing with estonian subtitles with no oral intervention. even if there was only one person among the audience who could not understand estonian interpreting, simultaneous translations into two different target languages were offered. ru ssian speakers received a headset while others listened to the interpreted version from the loudspeaker. after estonia regained independence, its cinemas took over this heterolingual translation mode, and most of the films shown in theatres come with both estonian and russian subtitles. because of ambiguous semantics, the traditional terms “interpreting” or “interpretation”, as well as “voice-over” are not apt strictu sensu for describing this translation practice. i suggest terming this particular form of translation “live ad hoc screen translation”, as in soviet film clubs, long -term planning of screenings was usually impossible, due to the number of factors to be accounted for. when films arrived, the translation solutions (precise mode of translation, interpreter(s), technical means, etc.) had to be quickly and flexibly organised on the spot and from scratch. this made translation a spontaneous, time-bounded performative act that had no fixed format. it combined both translating directly from the film and/or from dialogue lists (could be basically in any language) into estonian or both into estonian and russian. there was no ready-made translation to be read out or over: the translation was made up on the spot based on initial impressions. tight schedule a nd spontaneity were crucial; there was usually insufficient time for preparation and no pre -screenings for the interpreter, although exceptions were occasionally made upon request (sootak, 2011). the term prima vista or sight translation is one of the primary modes of interpreting where the interpreter is provided with the original text and is expected to instantly and smoothly deliver the contents at a speed appropriate for natural oral production4. alternatively, prima vista screen translation could be used in film club translation for translating dialogue lists or subtitles (when no available interpreter mastered the original film language). estonian official cinema organs often received foreign prints from moscow or leningr ad accompanied by a russian interpreter and sometimes even a lecturer who provided commentaries and introductory lectures (kanter, 2014). a film lecturer was used during screenings at the cinema committee, the local filmikontor, cinema house, on television and elsewhere. soviet estonian 4 definition from the handbook of translation studies (2010, pp. 320–323). ad hoc screen translation in soviet estonian film clubs: negotiating boundaries 12 lecturers included õie orav, veste paas, and other estonian film scholars who had graduated from the vgik (the gerasimov institute of cinematography) in moscow. igor vinokurov and especially ûrij šujskij from leningrad often visited tpi film club. lecturers were often dispatched by the gosfilmofond or invited by tamara huik from the propaganda bureau of the soviet film art. merisalu recalls a case when a cinema lecturer from moscow visited the tallinn film club and gave a lec ture on censored materials from andrei tarkovsky’s banned film andrei rublev (1966, screened in tpi in 1972 with major cuts). the lecturer also became a sort of a translator, an “official interpreter”, presenting the audience with the ideologically “correc t” way to understand the film. meanwhile, the estonian interpreter acted as the translator of unofficial discourse. 5.1. film interpreters: in-betweenness two legendary professional interpreters were employed in tallinn on a regular basis: ferdinand kala (1920–1997) and aleksander kurtna (1914–1983). in tallinn, they were the main interpreters for two decades: both came from bilingual families and covered more than 20 languages between them. they did not work together during the screenings, rather covering each other whenever the other was occupied. ferdinand kala mastered more than eight languages; his mother was french and she also worked as a translator. kala was more specialised in simultaneous interpreting: in 1972, he interpreted for persia’s shah pahlavi during his official visit to the soviet union and estonia, replacing professional official interpreters who had specifically travelled to tallinn from mos -cow for this purpose (sibul, 2018, p. 214). kala also worked as a stenographer and translator for some organs of the estonian communist party where he was a member. he died in poor health and complete poverty; he could not professionally survive in the transformed avt market after 1991 when film clubs dissolved. aleksander kurtna, being russian on his mother’s side, was also a prolific and highly esteemed literary and film script translator: thus, he produced brilliant translations of luchino visconti’s rocco and his brothers (1960) and federico fellini’s amarcord (1973) in 1981. during the second world war, aleksander kurtna was engaged in espionage for the soviet union and later for germany in the vatican city (erelt, 2010). kurtna made no secret about his past. in 1935, he received a scholar -ship to study at the vatican and pursued preparatory studies at the university of lviv. in 1936, he studied at the pontifical college of russicum, and in 1939, he received a scholarship from the president of the republic of estonia, konstantin päts, to research the vatican archives. when his estonian scholarship was interrupted in 1940, kurtna got funding by the ussr academy of sciences in exchange for joining the soviet spy network. from the summer of 1941 to june 1942, however, he lacked funds and started working for the germans. on 30 june 1942, kurtna was arrested by the soviets and court-martialled. from 1944 to 1954, he was imprisoned in norilsk, siberia. after his release, kurtna managed to restore his reputation in the eyes of the authorities while unofficially remaining a critic of the soviet system. serving several masters, he deceived them all – he liked this great game of strategy (erelt, 2010). journal of audiovisual translation volume 6, issue 1 13 kala and kurtna were not neutral but rather emotional interpreters and sometimes even impro-vised acting by assuming different roles and attempting to imitate the intonation and accent of the actors. regarding the target text, the interpreters took different stands, both as the addresser (being the creator of the translation text, the ‘i’ who speaks coincides with the ‘i’ of the interpreter) and the addressee (the subject of the enunciated translation, with a personal stake and attitude). aleksander kurtna showed his attitude by deeply sighing during his interpretation whenever he personally disagreed with the character’s utterance or found it somehow peculiar. thir d, in relation to audience response, the interpreters were also both the addressee (receivers of the feed-back) and the addresser of the reaction, by provoking it. moscow film interpreters also used audience reactions to perfect their craft: a translation that evoked emotions was deemed successful; if it failed to provoke the expected level of laughter, they used different expressions and idioms (razlogova, 2014, p. 170). although in some screenings in estonian film clubs, censors were sitting among the audience to learn about their reactions, the relationship with those censors was more or less liberal in estonia. as sherry (2012, p. 63) points out, a 1959 discussion published in a cultural and political newspaper literaturnaya gazeta on the position of (russian) translators in the union portrays their role as explicitly ideological, stating that translators stood “on the ideological front”. such a statement is undoubtedly valid for the interpreters of authorised discourse, i.e., in our case, the official russian dubbing actors and film lecturers. estonian interpreters had no stake “on the ideological front” and strived to deliver the messages from the other side of the iron curtain. unlike literary translators, film interpreters in soviet estonian film clubs, as well as subtitle translators, did not work in restricted conditions, meaning that their work did not have to pass through the main censorship organ glavlit (главное управление по охране государственных тайн в печати при совете министров ссср) (hoffmann, 2021, p. 375). 5.2. negotiating boundaries as a dynamic translation hub, estonia represented a geopolitical as well as a socio-cultural boundary of the ussr, but not only that: to be more precise, it was also a boundary between the russianspeaking core area of russian sfsr5 and the occupied territory that needed integration, thus forming an area of intense double polarity. the spatial (or “cartographic”) concept of translation as a filter between two distinct spaces is a popular metaphor that was critically developed by naoki sakai in his “translation as a filter” (2010). in sakai’s theory, a filter, in order to divide space, is unidirectional; however, in lotman’s view, filters in the semiosphere are bidirectional. sakai claims that descriptions of translation activity should not overestimate the spatial dimension, emphasising instead its temporality and social relations, terming 5 being unofficially known as soviet russia (independent state 1917–1922 and as a soviet republic 1922– 1991), where russians formed the largest ethnic group. ad hoc screen translation in soviet estonian film clubs: negotiating boundaries 14 translation a “heterolingual address” (described above cf. section 2). that aspect makes it possible to dislocate translation. lotman says that “[t]he structural heterogeneity of semiotic space creates reserves of dynamic processes” (lotman, 1984/2005, p. 214), referring thereby to the readiness for dialogue and translation, and “[t]he possibility of dialogue simultaneously suggests both heterogeneity and homogeneity of elements” (lotman, 2005, p. 220). returning to sa -kai, estonian viewers visiting film clubs were addressed in two dialogic and yet distanced ways. first, they were addressed heterolingually by the film lecturers in the “assumed homogeneity of the soviet nation” as the “other” belonging to “our” space, on the precondition that the “other” fi rst had to address itself as “other” (similar to sakai’s homolingual address, naming oneself is considered an integral part of self-description by lotman (see madisson, 2016)). second, estonian film interpreters acted in recognised heterogeneity of the translation act by using the heterolingual address. both types of heterolingual address during screenings in estonian film clubs enlarge the definition of screen translation, serving as bachmann-medick points out, “as an anti-essentialist and anti-holistic metaphor that aims to uncover counter-discourses, discursive forms and resistant actions within a culture, heterogeneous discursive spaces within a society” (bachmann-medick, 2006, p. 37). the relationship between estonians and finns – two finno-ugric nations speaking similar languages, separated by the iron curtain – provides fertile grounds for applying both the heterolingual address model and the lotmanian model of the dynamic translation taking place on the boundary of the semiosphere. the lotmanian boundary simultaneously belongs both to the semiosphere of the “own” (similarity) and the “other” (difference) and the translation process is inexhaustible and bidirectional. one might ask, what did the finns gain in return for this intense dialogue between finland and soviet estonia? soviet estonian film clubs had not much more than a warm handshake to give in return for the countless films they received: estonians could not even send original estonian-language film productions to finland – the finns had to order them from gofsilmofond dubbed in russian. nevertheless, because of the shared past (finland had also lost territories to the ussr, the so-called karelian question), the quaint everyday life of soviet estonia was undoubtedly an intriguing topic of discussion in finnish media. but the boundary has yet another function in the semiosphere: it is the area of accelerated semiotic processes which always flow more actively on the periphery of cultural environments, seeking to affix them to the core structures, and to displace them (lotman, 1984/2005, p. 212). when the soviet estonian film clubs became free in 1991 and started functioning like the clubs in the “real west” did, they also started to lose their appeal. one of the reasons was that the new digital era made access to any film easy for the audience. the other reason was that they had lost their original raison d’être. from the semiotic lotmanian point of view, film clubs and their interpreters shift-ed the boundaries of the iron curtain. their function was to expose soviet estonian film enthusiasts to western cinema and culture behind the iron curtain; from a broader perspective, they also helped to prepare estonia for the restoration of independence in 1991. film interpreters negotiated the boundaries on many levels, addressing the audience from the other side. journal of audiovisual translation volume 6, issue 1 15 6. conclusions what triggered the unusual form of translation activity in soviet estonian film clubs was not the censorship-resistance relationship but rather, first of all, the favourable geographical location with a good maritime connection and the socio-linguistic capacity to engage in dialogue with the “other side”, paradoxically continuing throughout the deepest era of stagnation. dialogue with finland was made possible mainly due to liberal cultural processes that took place during the thaw, to the similarities between the estonian and finnish languages and the accessibility of finnish television in northern estonia. soviet estonian film clubs, owing much to the connection with finland, could circumvent authorised discourse with a strategy called “dissimilation via assimilation”, meaning that unauthorised and forbidden films could be shown as part of a continuous effort in diplomacy and negotiations with state officials. the unofficial film repertoire acquired legitimacy through the screenings of soviet classics and the provision of official interpretations by film lecturers participating in film screenings and discussion evenings. the spontaneous, time-bounded, dialogic, and social nature was an important aspect of the film club ad hoc translation activity, based on heterolingual address. ad hoc film translations gave rise to the first school of estonian film interpreters who had transformative powers in dislocating the translations over the boundaries of the iron curtain. the interpreters, negotiating many boundaries between the source text, target text and response to the translation, transformed the understanding of western cinema and culture in soviet estonia. references albera, f. 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[les films du carrosse]. tymoczko, m. (2007). enlarging translation, empowering translators. st. jerome publishing. visconti, l. (director). (1960). rocco e i suoi fratelli [rocco and his brothers] [film]. [titanus]. yurchak, a. (2006). everything was forever, until it was no more. the last soviet generation. princeton university press. zhokhova, a. (2007, december 3). ошибки в сценарии [errors in the script]. forbes. https://www.forbes.ru/forbes/issue/2007-12/11261oshibki-v-stsenarii zubkova, j. (2009). baltimaad ja kreml 1940–1953 [the baltic states and the kremlin 1940–1953]. varrak. https://www.forbes.ru/forbes/issue/2007-12/11261-oshibki-v-stsenarii 75 the dubbing of wordplay: the case of a touch of cloth lana camilli  dublin city university _________________________________________________________ abstract this paper examines the dubbing of the british comedy series a touch of cloth into french. building on existing descriptive theory regarding wordplay translation – particularly the model of translation techniques laid out by delabastita (1993) – translation patterns are identified. a corpus of instances of wordplay is established, correlations are identified between particular types of wordplay and particular translation results, and a case-by-case examination is undertaken to determine how different factors impacted these results. a wide range of factors are found to contribute to the way wordplay is translated, notably: the languages at hand, the nature of the joke, and the audiovisual features the joke brings into play. conclusions are then drawn regarding the technique likely to be employed on a given occasion and why, as well as how closely the translation can be expected to reflect the original segment. key words: audiovisual translation, dubbing, humour, wordplay, puns, translation techniques, french, a touch of cloth.  lana.camilli3@mail.dcu.ie, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2000-555x citation: camilli, l. (2019). the dubbing of wordplay: the case of a touch of cloth. journal of audiovisual translation, 2(1), 75–103. editor(s): p. romero-fresco & a. jankowska received: october 15, 2018 accepted: october 17, 2019 published: november 30, 2019 copyright: ©2019 camilli. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license. this allows for unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2000-555x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2000-555x https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 76 1. introduction wordplay – owing its effect to the structure of the language in which it originates (delabastita, 1996, p. 127) – presents a particular challenge to translators (chiaro, 2010; delabastita, 1993, 1996; schröter, 2004). this challenge is further complicated in the case of audiovisual wordplay, whereby the translator must also take into account the specific features of the audiovisual text (gottlieb, 1997; schröter, 2004). in this paper, the singular challenge of translating wordplay in an audiovisual context is addressed, by means of a case study – the dubbing of the british comedy show a touch of cloth into french. building on delabastita’s (1993) model for the translation of wordplay, a framework of translation techniques is established, and an attempt is made to identify correlations between these techniques and particular types of wordplay, as well as determining how closely different types of wordplay tend to be rendered in the target text (tt). based on these observations, an in-depth analysis is undertaken as to the factors influencing how different types of wordplay are translated, allowing several conclusions to be drawn regarding the audiovisual translation of wordplay as a whole. the growing prominence of audiovisual translation (avt) has called for a re-evaluation of what it means to translate a text (gambier, 2008, pp. 22–24). this paper aims to contribute to this process, applying existing theoretical ideas to the audiovisual realm. in particular, this study aims to contribute to existing research on the translation of wordplay by expanding theoretical ideas founded on the study of written wordplay – notably those laid out by delabastita (1993) – to account for the characteristics of the audiovisual text. indeed, the application of his hypotheses to the realm of television comedy is a direction of study suggested by delabastita himself (p. 343). gambier (2008) notes that a wide range of studies surrounding translational issues such as humour have focused on interlingual subtitling, often applying their findings to the characterisation of avt as a whole (pp. 16– 18); however, this paper focuses on the medium of dubbing. an analysis is made of the ways in which this medium’s particular characteristics – substituting source text audio with audible speech in the target language, while maintaining all of the original text’s visual features – come into play in the translation of wordplay. 2. literature review 2.1. the concept of wordplay the notion of wordplay denotes “every conceivable way in which language is used with the intent to amuse” (chiaro, 1992, pp. 1–2). as delabastita (1993) explains, instances of wordplay consist of “textual phenomena” whereby two or more formally similar structures, with differing meanings, are made to clash by being (near-)simultaneously co-present in the text (p. 57). the dubbing of wordplay: the case of a touch of cloth 77 similarly to wordplay, the pun is described as speech establishing “elusive relations” between language and concepts (delabastita, 1993, p. 55) so that single (or multiple similar) utterances can be made to refer to differing contexts (de vries & verheij, 1997, pp. 72, 74). delabastita (1993, pp. 79–80) – along with scholars such as gottlieb (1997, p. 210) and de vries and verheij (1997, pp. 72– 76) – identifies four types of pun, based on the types of formal similarity which may occur between its components:  homonymy: identical spelling and pronunciation (e.g. bank ‘financial establishment’ and bank ‘edge of a river’); this includes polysemy – “the same word in different meanings” (de vries & verheij, 1997, p. 72) (e.g. picture (n.) and picture (v.))  homophony: identical pronunciation but different spelling (e.g. right and write)  homography: identical spelling but different pronunciation (e.g. use (n.) and use (v.))  paronymy: near-identical spelling and pronunciation (e.g. collision and collusion) in addition, delabastita (1993) identifies a variety of ‘punoids’ (p. 88) – “borderline cases that have clear affinities with wordplay” (p. 56), including:  “speech-act ambiguity”: the purpose of speech is toyed with (e.g. the purpose of the question “can you pass the salt?”, which may be a request or a question about literal, physical ability)  “referential vagueness”: the vagueness of a reference is toyed with (e.g. the verb come when the mode of transport is not specified);  “referential equivocality”: the meaning of a deictic expression (e.g. it) shifts, so that it may have multiple referents while delabastita (1993) excludes these phenomena from the concept of wordplay (p. 88), scholars such as schröter argue that the notion extends beyond puns to include such cases (schröter, 2004, p. 157; schröter, 2010, p. 55). on top of these linguistic categories, a number of scholars have identified types of wordplay based on their construction. these include: “name-giving” wordplay, whereby the author creates some “ambiguity between common noun and proper noun” (de vries & verheij, 1997, p. 84); “modified expressions”, whereby recognisable formulations are “altered in unexpected ways” (schröter, 2010, p. 139); and “idiom-based wordplay”, whereby the meaning of an idiom is transformed based on its contextual use (veisbergs, 1997, p. 156). 2.2. the translatability of wordplay zabalbeascoa (1994) notes that the translation of humorous content is a distinctly problematic task. as he explains, this process involves navigating a number of “recurring restrictions” inherent to the realm of humour, such as differences in the source and target audiences’ background journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 78 knowledge, values, customs and traditional joke themes (p. 96). beyond humour in general, wordplay, in particular, has long been seen as a ”special” obstacle for translators (chiaro, 2010, p. 2; delabastita, 1993, pp. 153, 173–177; schröter, 2004, p. 157). drawing attention to its own form, wordplay highlights, by extension, the specific characteristics of its language of origin (davis, 1997, p. 23), making the process of translation a complex task. indeed, in a study examining the translation of different forms of humour, jankowska (2009) found that, second to humour hinging on culturespecific references, language-dependent jokes were the least likely to be successfully rendered in the tt, with only 70% of instances being successfully rendered. accordingly, translators dealing with wordplay often resort to techniques whereby the text is heavily modified, such as omission or substitution with new wordplay (chiaro, 1992, p. 98; delabastita, 1993, p. 188; schröter, 2010, p. 142). however, in an empirical study on the dubbing of american comedy series the simpsons into spanish, martínez-sierra (2009) observed that significant changes in the form and content of an instance of humour did not necessarily result in a reduction of its “humorous load”, which may in fact be increased through the creative use of translation techniques (p. 294). as zabalbeascoa (1994) explains, the aim of the translator in the case of humour should be ‘comic equivalence’, whereby the humorous effect of the source text (st) is maintained – and this may be either at the level of the single joke, or the text as a whole (p. 96). a key contributor to the categorisation of techniques for wordplay translation is dirk delabastita (1993). he identifies nine techniques for the translation of puns, with no order of preference (pp. 191–218): 1. pun>pun: the pun is replaced by another pun; if the two are highly similar – involving the same linguistic feature, formal structure and semantic meaning – this is referred to as a congenial translation, or a congenial rendering; 2. pun>non-pun: the punning aspect of the segment is removed; 3. pun>punoid: the pun is replaced by a punoid; 4. pun>zero: the segment containing the pun is omitted; 5. direct copy: the pun retains its original form; 6. transference:1 the tl text adopts values set up in the sl; 7. non-pun>pun: a pun is added; 8. zero>pun: a segment containing a pun is added; 9. editorial techniques: a second level of communication is employed (e.g. footnotes). several scholars have indicated that the way wordplay is translated often depends on the languages at hand. for instance, delabastita and gottlieb highlight the abundance of french homophones, facilitating the translation of homophone-based puns into french (delabastita, 1993, p. 231; gottlieb, 1997, p. 217), and delabastita notes a similar abundance of french homonyms, of which english 1 an example of this would be the creation of the english term “yoo” (“yellow-or-orange”) as a translation solution for the equivalent navaho term (delabastita, 1993, p.212). the dubbing of wordplay: the case of a touch of cloth 79 has incorporated many (p. 231). indeed, often members of a same language group share many linguistic properties, making it easier to translate wordplay, thanks to parallel cases of features such as polysemy (delabastita, 1993, p. 182). indeed, newmark (1988) argues that “[p]uns are most easily translated if they are based on graeco-latinisms that have near-equivalents in the source and target languages, particularly if they simply contrast the material and the figurative sense of the word” (p. 211). additionally, according to kristal (2014), languages with a history of close contact are likely to have increased “translatability”, due to their tendency to borrow vocabulary and concepts from one another (p. 30). upon analysing a corpus of shakespearean wordplay translations, delabastita (1993) makes a number of conjectures regarding the translatability of different types of wordplay (pp. 233–247):  phonetic puns are likely to find congenial renderings if the languages are historically related;  paronymic puns are more likely to find congenial renderings than homonymic puns;  the likelihood of polysemic puns finding a congenial rendering is slightly increased if the languages are genetically related;  the cultural closeness of the linguistic communities increases the likelihood of reproducing a pun;  phonetic or polysemic puns are likely to find congenial renderings if interlingual borrowing takes place;  puns involving multiple linguistic features are less likely to find congenial renderings than those involving a single feature. additionally, chiaro (1992) – examining the translation of several british comedy series into italian – notes that cases of verbal humour which incorporate culture-specific elements present a further obstacle to the translator, often resulting in less successful outcomes than those hinging on more global themes, such as social class (pp. 6–7). 2.3. the audiovisual context the notion of translation takes on a particular meaning when applied to avt, wherein the “text” is redefined as a multimodal object, made up of a variety of visual and acoustic elements (gambier, 2008, p. 22). chiaro (2010) describes this polysemiotic characteristic as the “main setback” to the translation of audiovisual texts (p. 4). indeed, certain immutable elements of the st, such as visual information, are unavoidably incorporated into the tt (gambier, 2008, p. 22), and chiaro (2010) notes that humour which combines both verbal and visual features is especially challenging to translate (p. 5). thus, avt, like wordplay, has gained a ‘special’ status as a particularly challenging form of translation (yau, 2014, pp. 493–494). it has been recognised that the combination of the challenges surrounding wordplay translation and those surrounding avt can make for an exceptionally difficult translation (delabastita, 1993, p. 288; schröter, 2004, p. 157). indeed, journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 80 in an empirical study on the translation2 of wordplay in british audiovisual comedy, schröter (2004) found that roughly one third of original instances of wordplay were lost through the process of translation (pp. 165, 167). the medium of dubbing is further limited, particularly in close-up shots, by issues such as isochrony, lip synchronisation and kinesic synchrony, as dialogue renderings must simultaneously be consistent with characters’ duration of speech, lip movements, and gesticulations, as well as any other contextual information (chaume, 2012, pp. 66–69). however, certain features of this medium may, on occasion, prove advantageous in the translation of wordplay. for instance, with the audience unable to hear the st dialogue, a dubbing team may omit a joke if a suitable translation is not found, or even introduce new wordplay (schröter, 2004, p. 167). 3. theoretical framework and methodology 3.1. theoretical foundation this study takes a descriptive approach. one of the key contributors to the descriptive analysis of wordplay translation is delabastita. in his empirical study of shakespearean wordplay translations (1993), he attempts to draw generalisations regarding wordplay translation more broadly, adopting toury’s (1995) three-step approach: ‘situate’ the text in its target culture, determining its acceptability; analyse the relationships between corresponding segments of the st and tt; and attempt to make generalisations based on the patterns observed. the present study also adopts this model, aiming to build on the work undertaken by scholars such as delabastita by expanding it to account for the audiovisual realm. in section .2, the audiovisual text under examination is introduced and ‘situated’ within its target culture, determining its representativeness. subsequently, in section 3, a summary is provided of the types of relationship encountered between corresponding st and tt segments. in section 4, these relationships are examined using a qualitative analysis, whereby individual segments are analysed in detail. finally, in section 5, several generalisations are put forward based on these findings, regarding the way different factors influence the translation of particular types of audiovisual wordplay. this study examines not only puns, but also the wider spectrum of wordplay phenomena referred to by delabastita (1993) as ‘punoids’. thus, the techniques identified by delabastita were adapted as follows: 2 instances of both dubbing and subtitling were examined. the dubbing of wordplay: the case of a touch of cloth 81 1. wordplay>wordplay, including: pun>pun; pun>punoid; punoid>punoid or punoid>pun; 2. wordplay>non-pun, including: pun>non-pun and punoid>non-pun; 3. wordplay>zero, including: pun>zero and punoid>zero; 4. direct copy; 5. transference; 6. non-wordplay>wordplay, including: non-pun>pun and non-punoid>punoid 7. zero>wordplay, including: zero>pun and zero>punoid; 8. editorial techniques 3.1.1. corpus creation a corpus of instances of wordplay was drawn from the british comedy television show a touch of cloth (atoc), and its dubbed french version, close case: affaires closes. this show, written by charlie brooker and daniel maier, and parodying the crime thriller genre, follows the detective work and private lives of characters dci jack cloth – a grieving widower with an abrasive personality – and dc anne oldman – a struggling alcoholic – as they solve a series of murders. atoc relies heavily on verbal humour, and visual elements are often employed to produce humorous twists on characters’ words. this programme, emanating from the mainstream british television channel sky one, was dubbed and broadcast on a mainstream, national french television channel, france 4, indicating its acceptability – that is, its conformity to the standards and norms of audiovisual texts translated for a french audience (munday, 2012, p. 173). additionally, it was deemed a representative example of a british television show translated for french television, given britain’s well-established history of exporting television comedies (chiaro, 2010, p. 9) and france’s tendency to dub such imported material. the show was also considered to be representative of wider trends in these countries’ audiovisual material, with crime dramas being one of the most popular television genres among european audiences, and much transnational importation of such shows taking place between these different countries (hansen, peacock & turnbull, 2018, pp. 1–2). three seasons of the series were aired between 2012 and 2014, with two 45-minute long episodes per season. two episodes were selected for analysis: the first episode, the first case: part one (brooker & maier, 2012) – referred to as ‘episode a’ –, and the final episode, too cloth for comfort: part two (brooker & maier, 2014) – ‘episode b’. together, these episodes make up a third of the content of this series. every instance of wordplay across these episodes was numbered, and the key features of its st and tt versions were recorded, as demonstrated in figure 1. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 82 figure 1. example of a joke card for each linguistic feature at play, the different meanings associated with its components were identified as ‘m1’ (meaning 1) and ‘m2’ (meaning 2). the components in question were underlined, and where further components came into play, these were emboldened. the same presentation is employed in this report. the term “joke” is employed herein to refer to any instance of wordplay. a single “instance” or joke is considered to equate to the portion of text needed to understand and recognise the humorous nature of the wordplay. the linguistic features identified as sources of wordplay in atoc were: homonymy; homophony; paronymy; speech-act ambiguity; referential equivocality; and referential vagueness. often, multiple features were found to interact within a single joke; these were considered “puns” if they incorporated the features of homonymy, homophony, or paronymy (along with any other features), and “punoids” if none of these three features were present. overall, 157 instances of wordplay were identified: 108 puns and 49 punoids. of these 157 instances, 67 incorporated the feature of homonymy, 23 incorporated homophony, 18 incorporated paronymy, 37 incorporated speech-act ambiguity, 20 incorporated referential equivocality, and 12 incorporated referential vagueness. 4. quantitative results through an examination of the techniques applied to different cases of wordplay in atoc, correlations were observed between particular types of wordplay and particular translation techniques, as well as how closely the st wordplay was rendered in the tt. a quantitative summary of these correlations is provided in this section, while in the following section, these results are analysed, and individual instances of wordplay are examined in detail, in order to gain an understanding of the reasons behind the approaches applied to different types of wordplay. the dubbing of wordplay: the case of a touch of cloth 83 table 1 provides an overview of the techniques employed to translate instances of wordplay in atoc, and the percentage of the overall translation process each technique accounts for. as shown, almost 90% of all instances of wordplay were rendered using the wordplay>wordplay technique, and over 40% resulted in congenial renderings of the original wordplay. the majority of the remaining instances were translated using the wordplay>non-wordplay technique, whereby the wordplay was removed. table 1. summary of translation techniques used episode a episode b total percentage wordplay>wordplay 77 63 140 89,17% congenial rendering 41 27 68 43.31% wordplay>non-wordplay 9 2 11 7.00% direct copy 4 1 5 3.18% humor retained 1 1 2 1.27% humor lost 3 0 3 1.91% other: wordplay>non-wordplay (spoken) direct copy (written) 1 0 1 0.64% total instances 91 66 157 100% the linguistic features which came into play within a given instance appeared to considerably influence these outcomes. on occasion, multiple linguistic features were found to overlap within a joke;3 thus, the results for each feature recorded below are not mutually exclusive. in the case of punning elements, the pun>pun technique was applied to over 85% of instances incorporating homonymy and almost 80% of those involving paronymy (see tables 2 and 3 respectively), and a slightly lower majority of around 70% of instances involving homophony (see table 4). in all such cases of puns involving paronymy, and the vast majority of those involving homonymy, these linguistic features were retained, whereas the feature of homophony was retained in only half of its pun>pun renderings. where the pun>pun technique was not employed, the presence of wordplay was occasionally maintained (particularly for homonymy-based puns) by using the pun>punoid technique. in the majority of the remaining cases, the pun>non-pun technique was employed, and it is worth noting that, where, on occasion, the direct copy technique was used, this did not always result in a humorous outcome, as shall be explored in the following section. 3 a case in point is example 9 (see section 6.2.2), which combines homonymy and referential equivocality. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 84 table 2. translation techniques used for puns involving homonymy episode a episode b total percentage pun>pun 29 28 57 85.07% homonymy retained 28 23 51 76.12% congenial rendering 10 9 19 28.36% pun>punoid 1 2 3 4.48% pun>non-pun 5 1 6 8.96% direct copy 1 0 1 1.49% humor retained 1 0 1 1.49% humor lost 0 0 0 0.00% total instances 36 31 67 100% table 3. translation techniques used for puns involving homophony episode a episode b total percentage pun>pun 9 7 16 69.57% homophony retained 7 1 8 34.78% congenial rendering 6 0 6 26.09% pun>punoid 1 0 1 4.35% pun>non-pun 2 1 3 13.04% direct copy 2 0 2 8.70% humor retained 0 0 0 0.00% humor lost 2 0 2 8.70% other: pun>non-pun (spoken) direct copy (written) 1 0 1 4.35% humor retained 0 0 0 0.00% total instances 15 8 23 100% the dubbing of wordplay: the case of a touch of cloth 85 table 4. translation techniques used for puns involving paronymy episode a episode b total percentage pun>pun 9 5 14 77.78% paronymy retained 9 5 14 77.78% congenial rendering 1 1 2 11.11% pun>punoid 0 0 0 0.00% pun>non-pun 2 0 2 11.11% direct copy 1 1 2 11.11% humor retained 0 1 1 5.56% humor lost 1 0 1 5.56% total instances 12 6 18 100% little difference was observed between the results for the three remaining linguistic features. in each case, the vast majority of jokes were rendered using the wordplay>wordplay technique. over 90% of puns incorporating speech-act ambiguity (see table 5), and 100% of those involving referential equivocality or referential vagueness (see tables 6 and 7 respectively) were rendered this way, while all punoids were rendered using this technique. additionally, in the large majority of cases, these linguistic features were successfully retained. punoid translations tended to retain a stronger faithfulness to the st than pun translations, with the number of congenial renderings for punoids featuring each linguistic feature ranging between 70% and 80.77%, and those for puns ranging between 0% and 36.36%. table 5. translation techniques used for wordplay involving speech-act ambiguity episode a episode b total percentage puns: pun>pun 7 3 10 90.91% speech-act ambiguity retained 7 3 10 90.91% congenial rendering 3 1 4 36.36% pun>non-pun 1 0 1 9.09% total instances 8 3 11 100% punoids: punoid>punoid 17 8 25 96.15% speech-act ambiguity retained 16 8 24 92.31% journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 86 congenial rendering 14 7 21 80.77% punoid>pun 0 1 1 9.09% speech-act ambiguity retained 0 0 0 0.00% total instances 17 9 26 100% table 6. translation techniques used for wordplay involving referential equivocality episode a episode b total percentage puns: pun>pun 2 2 4 80.00% referential equivocality retained 2 2 4 80.00% congenial rendering 0 1 1 20.00% pun>punoid 1 0 1 20.00% referential equivocality retained 0 0 0 0.00% total instances 3 2 5 100% punoids: punoid>punoid 8 7 15 100.00% referential equivocality retained 8 6 14 93.33% congenial rendering 7 5 12 80.00% total instances 8 7 15 100% table 7. translation techniques used for wordplay involving referential vagueness episode a episode b total percentage puns: pun>pun 1 0 1 50.00% referential vagueness retained 1 0 1 50.00% congenial rendering 0 0 0 0.00% pun>punoid 0 1 1 50.00% referential vagueness retained 0 1 1 50.00% total instances 1 1 2 100% punoids: punoid>punoid 4 6 10 100.00% referential vagueness retained 4 6 10 10.00% congenial rendering 3 4 7 70.00% total instances 4 6 10 100% these quantitative results indicated a number of tendencies in the way certain types of wordplay were translated in atoc, providing the basis for an investigation into the factors influencing these translation choices. the dubbing of wordplay: the case of a touch of cloth 87 5. qualitative analysis 6. the impact of the source and target languages unlike in the findings of schröter (2004),4 the vast majority of the wordplay in atoc was reproduced in the tt. this may, to some extent, be attributed to the high level of historical and cultural closeness between the english and french languages. 6.1. historical closeness as predicted by delabastita (1993), due to the abundance of homonymy that both english and french exhibit, the vast majority of puns based on this feature were closely rendered in the tt. thus, in the following example, both versions incorporated an expression whose polysemous components could act as both verbs and nouns: example 1. joke context st tt a42 jack cloth and his team are examining a murder victim’s body. let’s talk to the wife, see if she can light some shed. voyons si sa femme peut lanterner notre éclair. [gloss: ‘let’s see if his wife can “lanterner” our “éclair”.’] st: m15: “shed light”: provide clarity (fig.). m2: light up a shed, or set a shed on fire (lit.). tt: m1: “éclairer la lanterne” [literally, “light the lantern”]: provide clarity (fig.). m2: waste a moment of progress (fig.).6 4 schröter’s study dealt with translations from english into multiple languages. only one translation into french was included in the sample set, along with two translations into german, two into swedish, one into danish and one into norwegian, thus giving a more general, non-language-specific view of the translation of wordplay. 5 ‘m1’ and ‘m2’ refer to the different meanings associated with the words at play. 6 ‘lanterner’: to waste time; ‘éclair’: a moment of aptitude. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 88 the close rendering of many puns involving homonymy can also be explained by the numerous parallel cases of latin-based polysemy resulting from the two languages’ shared indo-european roots, and long history of interlingual contact. this was particularly common among jokes hinging on the conflict between literal and figurative meanings, as in the following case: example 2. joke context st tt a40 the team are examining the victim of a brutal murder. what kind of animal would do this? holding the weapon required opposable thumbs, so almost certainly a homo sapiens. quel genre d’animal pourrait faire ça? tenir une arme requiert des pouces opposables, sûrement un homo sapiens. [gloss : ‘what kind of animal could do this? holding a weapon requires opposable thumbs, most likely a homo sapiens.’] m1: a cruel person (fig.). m2: a living creature (lit.). https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/cruel https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/person the dubbing of wordplay: the case of a touch of cloth 89 6.1.1. cultural closeness similarly, the cultural closeness of modern-day french and english linguistic communities was found to promote close renderings of st wordplay. indeed, as words are often given similar collocations across these languages, close reproductions were often possible for wordplay involving figurative speech, such as idiom-based wordplay or modified expressions. indeed, for the following example of idiom-based wordplay, a congenial rendering was achieved, as the figurative meaning of “breaking a few eggs” is identical across both languages: example 3. joke context st tt a44 a murder victim’s widow discusses his abundance of enemies, which she attributes to his successful career. you can’t build a restaurant empire without breaking a few eggs, inspector. on ne construit pas un empire de restaurants sans briser quelques œufs, inspecteur. [gloss: ‘one doesn’t build a restaurant empire without breaking a few eggs, inspector.’] m1: causing negative effects (fig.). m2: physically breaking multiple eggs (lit.). additionally, interlingual borrowing was found to be the source of several close renderings of st wordplay. the following example demonstrates how the popular adoption of english terms by french speakers allowed for a direct translation of certain jokes: journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 90 example 4. joke context st tt b1 two characters are about to watch the recording of a police interrogation. show’s about to begin. is it geordie shore? le show va commencer. c’est un télé-crochet? [gloss: ‘the show is about to begin. is it a talent show?’] m1: spectacle. m2: television programme. 6.2. the impact of the nature of the joke tendencies were also observed in the way wordplay was translated depending on the characteristics of the joke at hand. notably, it was found that the linguistic aspects of a joke heavily influenced its translation, as well as its complexity and cultural specificity, which often inhibited close renderings in the tt. 6.2.1. linguistic characteristics correlations were observed between the way instances of wordplay were translated and the linguistic features in play, as well as the types of speech forming the basis of the joke. it has been shown above that punoids were given close renderings much more frequently than puns. indeed, these linguistic features, tending to play on ambiguous phrasing and deceptive contextual cues, were found to be less tied to the formal features of the sl. thus, often, a literal, congenial translation was possible, as in the following case involving referential vagueness: the dubbing of wordplay: the case of a touch of cloth 91 example 5. joke context st tt b6 one character is sitting in a toilet stall, while another is standing outside. could you get me some more paper? a3 or a4? vous pourriez me chercher d’autre papier? a3 ou a4? [gloss: ‘could you get me more paper? a3 or a4?’] m1: toilet paper. m2: writing paper. in the case of puns, it was found that instances of wordplay involving homophony rarely received close renderings in atoc, with this feature rarely being retained. indeed, gottlieb (1997) argues that wordplay hinging on homophony is often lost in translation, as two languages rarely “present identical-sounding […] expressions in (nearly) the same semantic fields” (pp. 211–212). thus, in many cases, the original wordplay was abandoned, as in the following case, where homophony was replaced with homonymy: example 6. joke context st tt a43 a widow is being interviewed about the last time she saw her husband, on the day of his death. he asked me to pop out to the shops to buy some herbs. time? coriander. il m’a demandé d’aller au magasin, acheter de l’herbe. marijuana? de la coriandre. [gloss: ‘he asked me to go to the shop, to buy “de l’herbe”. marijuana? coriander.’] st: m1: “time”: the time at which the widow left the house. m2: “thyme”: a herb. tt: m1: marijuana (slang). m2: herbs. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 92 however, the loss of homophony was often found to result from active choices made by the translator. for example, in the majority of cases, this feature was used in name-giving wordplay. in these cases, while a congenial rendering was generally possible (for instance, translating the surname “oldman” as “vieilhomme”, a homophone for “old man” in french), often, a seemingly active choice was made to introduce the element of paronymy, in order to add further humorous effect. this can be observed in the following case, in which a character mispronounces oldman’s name: example 7. joke context st tt a8 oldman arrives at cloth’s home without giving prior notice. why are you here, oldman? pourquoi vous êtes là, vieillepomme ? [gloss: ‘why are you here, “vieillepomme”?’] st: m1: name of the character. m2: elderly gentleman. tt: m1: “vieilpomme”: mispronunciation of the name “vieilhomme”. m2: “vieille pomme”: “old apple”. meanwhile, gottlieb argues that paronymy and homonymy allow their components to be easily modified, facilitating their translation (gottlieb, 1997, p. 212). this may explain why puns involving these two features tended to retain these elements in atoc. while instances involving homonymy were often translated literally, in the case of paronymy, a tendency was observed towards modifying the components at play to better suit the tl or target culture.7 this is exemplified in the following case of a modified expression: 7 this may explain the lack of congenial renderings for puns involving paronymy (see table 4). the dubbing of wordplay: the case of a touch of cloth 93 example 8. joke context st tt b22 jack reacts to the shocking news that the latest body discovered is the body of his expartner. the victim, who is he? [...] it’s your ex, sir. it’s deborah, sir. sweet valley high! la victime, c’est qui ? [...] c’est votre ex, chef. c’est deborah, chef. grands dieux du stade! [gloss: ‘the victim, who is it? ...] it’s your ex, boss. it’s deborah, boss. great gods of the stadium!’] st: m1: “sweet jesus!”: expression of shock. m2: sweet valley high: american book and television series. tt: m1: “grand dieu!”: expression of shock. m2: dieux du stade: yearly calendar featuring nude photos of a parisian rugby team. 6.2.2. wordplay composition in addition to the linguistic characteristics of instances of wordplay, certain other aspects of these instances were found to heavily impact their translation. notably, two recurring obstacles were found to engender renderings which involved heavy modification, or even removal of the st wordplay: joke complexity and cultural specificity. firstly, it was found that complex jokes were unlikely to receive a faithful rendering. indeed, jokes incorporating multiple linguistic features were rarely given congenial translations, and, on occasion, only one feature was retained. in the following example, the st incorporates both homonymy (as a play is made on the literal and figurative meanings of the phrase to carry something out”) and referential equivocality (as the word “this” is used to refer to two different referents). the pun>punoid technique was employed, whereby these features were substituted by speech-act ambiguity alone (whereby only the purpose of the statement is toyed with): journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 94 example 9. joke context st tt a20 jack and a forensic pathologist are discussing a gruesome murder, looking at the victim’s corpse. only a maniac could carry this out. [jack turns to shout to his team] let’s find a maniac to carry this out! il n’y a qu’un fou pour tuer comme ça. [jack turns to shout to his team] cherchons un fou pour tuer comme ça! [gloss: ‘only a maniac could kill like this. […] let’s find a maniac to kill like this!’] st:  “carry this out”: m1: perform an activity. m2: literally carry something out of a room.  “this”: m1: the brutal murder. m2: the corpse. tt: m1: expressing disgust at an act which could only have been undertaken by a maniac. m2: expressing the need to acquire a maniac to undertake the task. another characteristic which was found to affect the rendering of st wordplay was cultural specificity. as shown in certain examples above (examples 4 and 8), cultural references were generally substituted in order to be familiar to the target audience. on occasion, cultural references constituted the components at play within the joke, making the wordplay impossible to render. thus, in the following example, the pun>non-pun technique was applied: the dubbing of wordplay: the case of a touch of cloth 95 example 10. joke: context: st: tt: a19 at a crime scene, a member of cloth’s team is examining a bloodstained vinyl record. any prints? only purple rain. des empreintes? il y a une espèce de liquide sur toute la surface. [gloss: ‘any prints? there is some sort of liquid all over the surface.’] m1: “prints”: fingerprints. m2: “prince”: musician. 6.3. the impact of the audiovisual context finally, a number of features of the audiovisual realm were found to influence the way wordplay was translated in atoc. while, on occasion, these features engendered a lack of faithfulness to the st, or even a loss of humour, it was found that, at times, the characteristics of dubbing allowed for a creative freedom which promoted the retention, or even introduction of wordplay in the tt. 6.3.1. audiovisual constraints a number of constraints pertaining to the audiovisual realm were found to complicate the translation process for atoc, resulting in loss of humour on several occasions. firstly, the combination of visual and verbal elements appeared to present a particularly challenging translation task. in the following example, a gesture was combined with speech to create a pun in the st. in the tt, jack cloth’s surname was replaced by a creative alternative (“close”, the passed participle of “clore”, meaning “to close” in french), allowing for many name-giving wordplay opportunities in the tl. however, on this occasion, the inevitable incorporation of the st’s visual features made a play on this new name infeasible, resulting in a pun>non-pun rendering: journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 96 example 11. joke context st tt a57 jack arrives at the mortuary, where the forensic pathologist, natasha, is examining a body. [cloth walks into the room] natasha. cloth. [someone off-camera throws a cloth to natasha] [cloth walks into the room] natasha. close. [someone off-camera throws a cloth to natasha] m1: name of the character. m2: piece of fabric. additionally, it was found that a key factor in the rarity of pun>pun translations for homophonybased puns was the fact that they often employed written text, rather than speech. in such cases, the original image had to be incorporated into the tt, so that a direct copy rendering was inevitable. often this meant that the joke’s humorous effect would be lost on most viewers, as in the following example: example 12. joke context st tt a1 the camera pans across a housing estate in a visibly rundown state, showing its inhabitants displaying improper behaviour such as violence and public sexual activity. [camera pans in on a sign at the entrance to the estate] “rundowne estate” [camera pans in on a sign at the entrance to the estate] “rundowne estate” m1: “rundowne estate”: the name of the estate. m2: “rundown estate”: a description of the estate. often, audible speech and visible text were combined, and made to clash for humorous effect in the st. due to changes to characters’ speech in the tt, and the inability to change the visible text accordingly – such jokes were often lost in the tt. for example, in the following homophony-based pun, the spoken utterance is changed completely using the pun>non-pun technique, while the written text is unavoidably subject to the direct copy technique: the dubbing of wordplay: the case of a touch of cloth 97 example 13. joke context st tt a31 cloth and oldman question a youth about an associate of his, who is a suspect in their case. where does he hang out? dat dere yute club. [scene cuts to a building displaying a sign saying "datdere yute club”] oú est-ce qu’il passe son temps? au local, là-bas ! [scene cuts to a building displaying a sign saying “datdere yute club”] [gloss: ‘where does he spend his time? that building over there!’] m1: phrase “that there youth club” pronounced in a strong london accent. m2: “datdere yute club”: name of the club. thus, this retention of the written text from the st led to a rendering which lost its humorous effect. the audiovisual context was therefore found to imply a loss of humour not only in cases of wordplay>non-wordplay translations, but also, occasionally, through the imposed use of the direct copy technique. 6.3.2. advantages of dubbing despite the above constraints, at times, the characteristics of the medium of dubbing were found to assist the translation process, allowing jokes to be modified and therefore maintained through the wordplay>wordplay technique. in effect, without the audience being able to hear the original dialogues, it was possible to heavily modify certain jokes to better suit the tl – or even to build on the original joke. in effect, as demonstrated by example 7 example 7 above, the feature of homophony was substituted with paronymy in certain instances of name-giving humour, adding an extra layer to the wordplay surrounding a particular name, and arguably increasing its humorous load. similarly, this freedom to stray from the st occasionally allowed the translator to insert new wordplay into the tt. thus, eight instances of the nonwordplay>wordplay technique, and one instance of zero>wordplay, were identified. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 98 for example, at the beginning of episode a, as an elderly man enters his home and greets his cat, a youth is heard shouting the following from outside: example 14. st tt shitty old man got a cat! tu vois, il a une vieille chatte! [gloss: ‘see, he has an old “chatte”!’] m1: cat. m2: female genitalia. thus, this utterance received a non-pun>pun translation, adding to its humorous effect. it may be theorised that additions such as this constituted a form of compensation for instances of st wordplay which were unable to be rendered in the tt. indeed, on one occasion, this compensatory property seems evident. in the following case, a play on two british cultural references in the st resulted in a pun>non-pun rendering: example 15. joke context st tt a76 two police officers approach an ice cream van. couple of 999s. deux cornets, s’il vous plaît. [gloss: ‘two ice cream cones, please.’] m1: “99”: an ice cream cone, m2: “999”: the telephone number of the emergency services. the dubbing of wordplay: the case of a touch of cloth 99 however, moments before this, the zero>pun technique was employed, during a sequence in which the character speaking has his back to the screen. in the tt, he makes a reference to a recent murder, describing how chilling it is: example 17. st tt [cloth and oldman walk away from a crime scene, towards a nearby ice cream van] [no speech] [[cloth and oldman walk away from a crime scene, towards a nearby ice cream van] ça me glace. [gloss: ”it ’glace’ me.”] m1: third person singular of “glacer” (to scare). m2: ice cream. the semantic and temporal closeness of these two st and tt jokes (respectively) suggests that the latter is used to compensate for the absence of the former. this was made possible by the fact that the character’s mouth could not be seen – avoiding the limitations of lip synchronisation and isochrony – and the (lack of) st dialogue could not be heard, as per the conventions of the medium of dubbing. thus, while the text’s audiovisual nature and the characteristics of the dubbing medium often resulted in renderings which differed considerably from the st, at times, this was the result not of the medium’s limitations, but rather its advantages, and the creative flexibility they imply. 7. discussion and conclusions the aim of this study was to determine the different factors influencing the translation techniques selected, and the degree of faithfulness to the st, for instances of dubbed wordplay. the factors influencing the selection and application of particular techniques were found to come in various forms, and interact in complex ways. correlations were observed between the languages at hand, linguistic features, joke content, and joke formats – or combinations thereof – and the technique selected, as well as how closely the original wordplay was rendered. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 100 firstly, it was found that an important factor influencing the translation of wordplay is the particular source and target languages at hand. while schröter (2004), studying the transfer of wordplay from english into various languages, found an overall considerable loss of instances through translation, it was found that in this case, the closeness of the english and french languages often resulted in a high degree of faithfulness to the st. jokes hinging on the homonymy of a word – a feature common in both english and french, as observed by delabastita (1993) – were often found to be translated using the pun>pun technique, and to be closely reproduced. as predicted by both newmark (1988) and delabastita (1993), often this was due to the word in question stemming from a shared latin root, and presenting a parallel polysemy between its literal and figurative meanings in both languages. additionally, as in delabastita’s findings (1993), the cultural closeness of the linguistic communities in question was found to promote close renderings in the tt, as, for example, metaphorical speech was often found to be shared across the two languages, allowing for many congenial renderings of cases such as idiom-based wordplay. similarly, much vocabulary was found to have been borrowed from one language to the other, allowing for it to be rendered in its original form in the tt, as predicted by kristal (2014). meanwhile, it was found that the nature of the joke at hand, in terms of the linguistic characteristics at play and the joke’s overall composition, often impacted how closely it was reproduced in the tt. it was found that the vast majority of punoids – less closely tied to the structure of the sl than many puns – could be translated using the wordplay>wordplay technique, often receiving congenial translations. meanwhile, despite the abundance of french homophones highlighted by delabastita (1993) and gottlieb (1997), it was observed that puns hinging on his feature could rarely be closely rendered – a result corroborated by gottlieb (1997), who noted the difficulty in retaining this feature through translation. thus, it was found that, on occasion, the feature of homophony was substituted by other features in order to further the humorous effect of the tt, supporting the argument of martínez-sierra (2009), that instances of humour could be heavily modified in order to increase their humorous load in the tt. the feature of paronymy, on the other hand, employing flexible, often arbitrary structures, such as pun-based names or modified expressions, was generally found to allow the translator a high degree of flexibility, allowing the pun>pun technique to be used creatively, and the element of paronymy retained. additionally, it was found that instances of wordplay with a complex construction were less likely to result in close renderings than simpler jokes, with those incorporating multiple features rarely maintaining each of these elements, causing a considerable disparity between their st and tt renderings, as predicted by delabastita’s findings (1993). lastly, as predicted by chiaro (1992), it was found that jokes whose components incorporated culture-specific features rarely resulted in close renderings, and were often unable to be rendered through wordplay, therefore being subject to the wordplay>non-wordplay technique. finally, a key factor found to limit the translatability of wordplay in atoc was the audiovisual context. as indicated by chiaro (2010), it was found that jokes which combined visual and verbal elements often could not be retained in the tt, resulting in wordplay>non-wordplay translations. meanwhile, due to the nature of the medium, cases of visual wordplay had to be rendered through the direct copy technique, often resulting in a loss of humorous effect. nonetheless, it was found the dubbing of wordplay: the case of a touch of cloth 101 that the medium of dubbing tended to promote the use of the wordplay>wordplay technique. as argued by schröter (2004), the flexibility associated with the medium often allowed wordplay to deviate considerably from the st where this was beneficial, and even allowed for a number of additions to be made, through the use of the non-wordplay>wordplay or zero>wordplay techniques. the use of such techniques appeared to serve as a form of compensation for the various cases in which a loss of wordplay had occurred. thus, the dubbing context was often found to enable what zabalbeascoa (1994) described as ”comic equivalence”, whereby techniques which heavily modified the st wordplay could be used in order to maintain its humorous effect, either at the level of the specific joke, or over the course of the text as a whole. thus, this study’s findings echo the predictions of various scholars’ regarding the translation of particular types of wordplay. however, this analysis, applying delabastita’s (1993) model of translation techniques to the case of an audiovisual text, identified some potential gaps in its formulation. delabastita’s work, dealing purely with written texts, failed to account for cases whereby the direct copy technique resulted in a loss of humorous effect. similarly, in atoc, the presence of wordplay employing both written and spoken words led, on one occasion, to the application of two different translation techniques to a single instance – a possibility delabastita did not consider. thus, the inevitable incorporation of elements from the st into an audiovisual tt presents a clear need for delabastita’s model to be re-examined when applied to audiovisual media. due to the time limitations of this project, the sample, consisting of 157 instances of wordplay from a single source, has limited generalisability. while delabastita points out that the analysis of wordplay in a single text remains worthwhile (delabastita, 1993, p. 251), it would be of value to expand on the findings established herein by applying a similar approach to further, and indeed larger, samples of wordplay translation. furthermore, while this study focused on two closely related languages, it was found that this could considerably impact the results; thus, it would be of interest to perform a similar examination with two vastly disparate languages, or to undertake a comparative analysis on wordplay translation for close and more distant language pairs. considering the largely inductive nature of this research, the conclusions drawn are not final, and should be tested through more deductive research. additionally, as delabastita points out, the notion of wordplay is “relative and changeable” (delabastita, 1993, p. 344); thus, there is a continued need for investigation into the intricacies surrounding its translation, particularly as it applies to the continually developing text forms introduced by technological advances, such as audiovisual texts. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 102 references brooker, c., & maier, d. 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(1994). factors in dubbing television comedy. perspectives: studies in translatology, 2(1), 89–99. 1 trainers’ and employers’ perceptions of training in intralingual and interlingual live subtitling: a survey study isabelle s. robert  iris schrijver  ella diels  university of antwerp, trics research group _________________________________________________________ abstract over the past decade, intralingual live subtitling (intrals) has become a professional practice backed up by academic research. interlingual live subtitling (interls), in contrast, is still in its infancy. although the demands for interls are growing, a competence profile and a subsequent curriculum design are yet to be developed. the ilsa project aims to bridge this gap by describing the profile of the interlingual live subtitler (interls-er) and by developing and validating a training course for this new professional. this article reports on the initial stage of that project: the assessment of the current practice and training of intrals and interls. three surveys were disseminated among practitioners, trainers, and broadcasters and service providers. this article focuses on the responses from the latter two groups. the trainers were mainly asked questions about the content of the courses they teach. the employers, i.e. the broadcasters and service providers, were asked about the workflow at their company and the training of their staff members. the responses demonstrate that an all-encompassing training programme for interls is still lacking. this finding confirms the idea that research projects like ilsa are needed in order to train future interls-ers and to improve future live subtitling. keywords: interlingual live subtitling, training needs, professional practice.  isabelle.robert@uantwerpen.be; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8595-0691  iris.schrijver@uantwerpen.be; https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6091-024x  ella.diels@uantwerpen.be; https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6170-0252 citation: robert i.s., schrijver, i., diels, e. (2019). trainters' and employers' perceptions of training in intralingual and interlingual live subtitling: a survey study. journal of audiovisual translation, 2(1), 1–25. editor(s): j. pedersen & a. jankowska received: april 1, 2019 accepted: october 17, 2019 published: november 30, 2019 copyright: ©2019 robert, schrijver & diels. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license. this allows for unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8595-0691 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6091-024x https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6170-0252 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8595-0691 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6091-024x https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6170-0252 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 2 1. introduction subtitling, dubbing, voice-over, subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing (sdh), surtitling, audio description, live subtitling… the spectrum of audiovisual translation forms has grown substantially over the last few decades, and its purposes too. while audiovisual translation was initially conceptualised as a means to provide access to linguistic and cultural information, it has become a driver of social inclusion and integration by providing accessibility to audiovisual content for persons with a sensorial disability and for the elderly (remael, orero and carroll, 2012), leading to a series of eu-funded projects (dtv4all1, adlab and adlab pro2, hbb4all3, act4). one of the most recent forms of audiovisual translation and media accessibility is interlingual live subtitling (interls), i.e. the provision of subtitles for live content (such as news and public events) in another language than the language in which the utterance is pronounced. interls is a rather recent phenomenon, having emerged only in the last ten years. in contrast, its intralingual counterpart originated in the 1980s when live content was first subtitled for the deaf and hard of hearing. as romero-fresco (2018) explains, the techniques that are used to produce subtitles in both intrals and interls are the same: fast typing or stenography, dual keyboards and respeaking. due to the expensive nature of stenotyping (given the extensive training that is needed to become a proficient stenotypist) and technological advancements in speech recognition (sr) software, respeaking has gained momentum since the turn of the century and is now the go-to method to produce live subtitles in many countries. respeaking is: a technique in which a respeaker listens to the original sound of a (live) programme or event and respeaks it, including punctuation marks [...], to a sr software, which turns the recognised utterances into subtitles displayed on the screen with the shortest possible delay. (romerofresco, 2011, p. 1) according to romero-fresco (2018), respeaking was introduced as a profession in europe in 2001, when it was first tested by the bbc and introduced at the same period in flanders by the vrt. other european countries, such as france, italy and spain, followed this trend some years later, primarily thanks to new legislation that made subtitling of 90% or even all television programmes obligatory, including live programmes. not only is the professional practice of interls new, so is research into this form of audiovisual translation and media accessibility. the handful of studies that have examined interls so far often follow the insights gained in previous research on intrals and/or examine interls in conjunction with its intralingual counterpart. to date, the research foci concern quality assessment in interls (robert 1 http://www.psp-dtv4all.org/ 2 http://www.adlabproject.eu/ 3 http://pagines.uab.cat/hbb4all/ 4 http://pagines.uab.cat/act/ http://www.psp-dtv4all.org/ http://www.adlabproject.eu/ http://pagines.uab.cat/hbb4all/ http://pagines.uab.cat/act/ trainers’ and employers’ perceptions of training in intralingual and interlingual live subtitling 3 & remael, 2017; romero-fresco & pöchhacker, 2017) and the cognitive respeaking process. a ground-breaking project in this respect is a polish project named respeaking – process, competences, quality, conducted at the university of warsaw, and funded by the polish national science center from 2014 to 2017. in that project, eye-tracking, electroencephalography and screen recording were used to examine the cognitive load associated with intralingual and interlingual respeaking. the project led to several publications by the members of the project, with thoughtprovoking results. for example, it was shown that interlingual respeaking was perceived as more cognitively demanding than intralingual respeaking (szarkowska, krejtz, dutka, & pilipczuk, 2016). the team further examined respeaking among respeakers with different competence profiles: interpreters and translators. whether interpreters make for better respeakers than translators or vice versa still remains to be seen. szarkowska et al. (2016) reported not having found prominent differences between interpreters and translators across all categories of cognitive load, although interpreters stated having experienced lower cognitive load in some categories, particularly in selfreported mental demand. similarly, chmiel, szarkowska, korzinek, lijewska, dutka, brocki and marasek (2017), focusing on ear-voice span and pauses in respeaking, suggest that interpreters are not necessarily more predisposed to become respeakers than translators. however, more recently, szarkowska, krejtz, dutka and pilipczuk (2018) found that interpreters achieved higher quality ratings in respeaking, but they refined these findings by pointing at the strong link that was found between respeaking quality and working memory capacity: “people who have a high wmc performed consistently better as respeakers, regardless of whether they are interpreters or not.” (2018, p. 223). finally, chmiel, lijewska, szarkowska, and dutka (2018) come to a similar conclusion in a study on paraphrasing for respeaking by interpreters, translators and bilinguals, in which they found no clear and straightforward advantages of any of the participant groups. in this paper, we will address a research aspect that is related to the previously discussed studies: the competence profile of interls-ers. although live subtitling using fast typing and respeaking has been carried out in professional practice for quite some time, primarily in the intralingual mode, much is still unknown on what kind of knowledge, skills and attitude it actually takes to perform interls. remael and pöchhacker (forthcoming) hypothesize that it requires translating, subtitling and simultaneous interpreting skills, but empirical research is still lacking. insight into the competence profile of interls-ers is necessary to inform training programmes. in-house training at live subtitling service providers has existed since the emergence of the respeaking profession in 2001, but “respeaking courses at university level are still few and far between” (romero-fresco, 2018, p. 101). the demand for interls-ers by broadcasters and political institutions is growing and hence the need for insight into the competence profile of these new professionals, which can inform subsequent curriculum design and assessment parameters. this is precisely what the erasmus+ project ilsa5 aims to do: design, develop, test and validate the first training course 5 2017-1-es01-ka203-037948; 2017–2020 journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 4 for interls and provide a protocol for the implementation of this discipline in different real-life scenarios, such as tv and live events. this paper will report on the very first step of the ilsa project: the assessment of the current landscape of intrals and interls training and practice. for this assessment, we collected data from three stakeholder groups: (1) trainers, (2) practitioners, and (3) broadcasters and service providers. in this article, we will report on the insights provided by two groups, that is, trainers on the hand, and broadcasters and service providers on the other hand. in addition, we will compare our findings to results related to practitioners, which have been reported in another study (robert, schrijver, diels, forthcoming). 2. methodology 2.1. study design: survey we designed a comprehensive online questionnaire in qualtrics to collect data on the current training and practice of intrals and interls in a systematic manner. we disseminated this questionnaire among trainers, practitioners, broadcasters and service providers in the spring of 2018. in line with our previous study on live subtitling training and practice (robert et al., forthcoming), the term ‘survey’ will be used to describe the study design, and ‘questionnaire’ refers to the data collection instrument used, in correspondence with saldanha and o’brien’s stance (2013). according to saldanha and o’brien (2013), questionnaires have the advantage of allowing researchers to collect structured data on a large scale and in less time than other instruments and methods, such as individual interviews, require. however, they may be plagued by four types of errors. as explained in our previous study (robert et al., forthcoming), the first type of error is the coverage error: a particular segment of the targeted population may not be included in the survey. to avoid this error, all four academic partners of the project (university of vigo as project leader, and the universities of antwerp, warsaw and vienna) disseminated the survey to more than 80 potential respondents. to reach a population as wide as possible, these respondents were encouraged to disseminate the questionnaire further. although we obtained 126 valid responses from practitioners, only five trainers and 21 broadcasters and service providers completed the survey properly. however, as said before, respeaking courses at university level are still infrequent, which means that we could not expect a high number of respondents in that group. trainers come from five different countries (belgium, poland, uk, spain, and germany), three of which are the countries of the project partners. the responding broadcasters and service providers come from eight countries (austria, australia, canada, denmark, new zealand, spain, switzerland and the uk), three of which are countries of the partners. unfortunately, four responding broadcasters and service providers did not detail their country. trainers’ and employers’ perceptions of training in intralingual and interlingual live subtitling 5 the second type of error is the sampling error: some parts of the population have a higher probability of being included in the survey. it was indeed the case that more austrian, belgian, spanish and polish trainers filled in the questionnaire, but more variety was observed among responding broadcasters and service providers: 39% of the respondents were austrian, followed by 17% from the uk, 11% from australia, 11% from switzerland and 5.5% from spain, canada, denmark and new zealand. the survey reached 27 countries in total. the third error is the nonresponse error: members of the sample do not answer the questionnaire at all or answer only some questions. the drop-out rate for our questionnaire aimed at the first target group, i.e. trainers, was rather high: 18 people started filling in the questionnaire, but when asked whether they were teaching (or had taught in the past) intrals, interls or both, only 10 people answered the question. they might have thought that the survey was about subtitling and realized that it focused only on live subtitling. of these 10 people, only six filled in the whole survey. in other words, the drop-out rate for the trainers is 40%. moreover, 1 participant did not use respeaking in his/her teaching and was thus excluded from the results. consequently, the results related to the trainers are based on 5 respondents. the fourth error type is the measurement error, which occurs when the actual response differs from the ‘true’ response. although we cannot exclude that risk, we do not think this applied to our questionnaire, since it was anonymous and online. 2.2. questionnaire design the questionnaire design was a collaborative project between all four partners of the ilsa project, with different rounds of feedback and a pilot testing in qualtrics. for the content, research on training in respeaking and live subtitling has also been consulted, e.g., arumí-ribas and romero-fresco (2008), remael and van der veer (2006) and romero-fresco (2012). different types of questions were formulated: closed (one answer or multiple answers, plus the possibility to add a comment), open, and likert-scale questions. the full survey questionnaire will be available on the ilsa project website in 2020.6 the questionnaires for trainers on the one hand and broadcasters and service providers on the other hand consisted of three parts. the first part, called “demographics”, contained questions related to age, gender, country, education, etc., but also to regulations for broadcasters and service providers. the second and third parts were dedicated to intrals and interls, respectively. trainers could choose to answer both parts, if they worked or had worked as both trainers in intrals and interls, or only one part if applicable. the broadcasters and service providers also had to select the type of subtitling 6 http://www.ilsaproject.eu/project/ journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 6 that they produce. part 2 and part 3 each consisted of 22 questions for the trainers, which were similar for both intrals and interls. broadcasters and service providers had to answer 35 questions maximum, since some questions were only shown depending on the answer to a previous question. in both surveys, the focus was on training, and in particular on aspects such as course prerequisites, focus and structure of the course, mode of delivery and assessment. in addition, respondents were asked about the importance of formal training and/or practical experience in specific disciplines, such as interpreting or subtitling, for successful live subtitling with sr. 3. results and discussion in this section, we will present the results of the surveys in several subsections: section 2.1 will focus on demographics and regulations, section 2.2 on trainers, section 2.3 on broadcasters and service providers. when appropriate and relevant, we will compare our results to those related to practitioners (robert et al., forthcoming). 3.1. demographics and regulations in total, as indicated before, we were able to gather valid answers from five trainers and 21 broadcasters and service providers. trainers as well as broadcasters and service providers are rather young: 33.4 years old on average for trainers, 37 for representatives of broadcasters and 47 for representatives of service providers. contrary to practitioners, who were predominantly female (66%), four out of five trainers were male. 57% of the broadcasters and service providers were men too. there is also a difference regarding the level of education. in our previous study, we observed that live subtitlers are highly educated, with 33% holding a bachelor degree, 50% holding a master’s degree, and 3% even a phd. the same can be said of trainers (4 masters and 1 phd), although a majority of the respondents from broadcasting and service provision companies (67%) have a ba degree, with “only” 17% having a master’s degree, 5% a phd and 5% a secondary education diploma. they almost all occupy a supervising and/or management position (team leader, head of unit, etc.). similarly, the trainers all combine their position with another job or activity, such as subtitler for the deaf and hard of hearing, researcher, interpreter, audiovisual translator, etc. the questionnaire’s demographics section for the trainers ended with a section related to their own training. two respondents were self-taught, one had taken a vocational course, one a course at a higher education institution (hei), and one a combination of in-house and hei training. broadcasters and service providers, in turn, were asked about legal obligations in their country to provide intrals and/or interls. three respondents (no country specified) answered negatively, whereas 18 respondents answered positively. respondents from australia were unanimous, one of them saying that “there is a legal obligation to caption all content between 6 a.m. trainers’ and employers’ perceptions of training in intralingual and interlingual live subtitling 7 and midnight, and all news programming outside of those hours.”7 some of them even referred to the official website of the australian government,8 on which the information is refined: “there are some exceptions from the basic rule. for example, television programs that are not in english are not required to be captioned.” the respondents from austria mention an obligation, but only for public service broadcasting. although there is no fixed percentage, one respondent explained that “since 2010 intralingual subtitling should be increased annually; approx. 70% at the moment.” one respondent from canada claims that there is a 100% obligation for intrals, but not for interls. the same can be said for denmark: one respondent says that they are obliged to provide danish intrals on their main channel to all live programmes, except for sports, trailers and commercials, although there is no fixed percentage. in spain too, intrals is required: “90% public television and 75% for private broadcasters.” in switzerland, the legal obligation used to be 33% of the programmes in 2012, but 80% should be reached by 2022. all respondents for the uk answer similarly: ofcom regulations state that the bbc channels (excluding bbc parliament) are required to subtitle 100% of their programme content. the corresponding targets for itv1 (including both the regional and national licensees) and channel 4 are 90% and for five and s4c1 80%. other channels have varying targets. i can't find any specific rules for live subtitles. in sum, there are obligations in all cited countries, but the question remains whether there is a difference in regulations between live and pre-recorded subtitling. 3.2. trainers in intrals and interls9 as said before, only five trainers completed the survey for trainers. three respondents only completed the part of the survey dedicated to intrals, and two answered both parts. in other words, the results for training into intrals are based on the answers from five respondents, whereas the results for training into interls are based on the answers from two respondents. 3.2.1. use of technology the first question related to the type of software trainers use in their teaching. all five trainers (intrals and interls) use a sr system (e.g., dragon naturally speaking or newton dictate for polish) and a subtitling software (e.g. wincaps, fan subtitler live). the trainers in intrals have been using a sr software in their course for one year (n=2), or two years (n=2), although one respondent stated 7 comments from the questionnaires that are represented in this article retain the original wording, including linguistic errors. 8 https://www.acma.gov.au/citizen/tv-radio/television/captioning 9 since the results are based on 5 respondents, we will generally report the absolute numbers. https://www.acma.gov.au/citizen/tv-radio/television/captioning journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 8 to have used sr software for the last 11 years. the two trainers in interls have been using sr in their course for one year (n=1) or two years (n=1). trainers were also asked for how long they had been teaching intrals and/or interls. the results are exactly the same, in other words, they have been teaching intrals and/or interls since they have introduced sr in their course. with the exception of the more experienced trainer (teaching for 11 years, with some 700 students for intrals), trainers have taught in average some 20 students so far (intrals) and some 18 students in average for interls. 3.2.2. training description the next series of questions related to the level of the course, the number of hours, weeks, and ects. all courses have been or are being taught at master level (master in interpreting, master in audiovisual translation, master in applied linguistics), with the exception of one respondent teaching a vocational course. three of the five intrals courses were self-contained (e.g. “audiovisual translation: live subtitling through respeaking”) and two were parts of a module (e.g. “media accessibility”). both interls courses were self-contained. the number of ects, contact hours and weeks of training varies and depends on the course type (self-contained or part of a larger module). unsurprisingly, the trainer responsible for the vocational course in intrals did not answer the question regarding the number of ects, but reported 40 to 44 weeks of training, with a varying number of contact hours. the two hei trainers in intrals responsible for a self-contained course report 3 ects, 15 weeks and 30 contact hours in total. the other two, who teach intrals within a module, report 10 and 20 ects for the whole module respectively, corresponding to 12 and 11 weeks respectively, and 36 and 3 hours respectively, although it is not clear whether the number of contact hours is meant to be per week, of for the whole course within the module. for interls, one trainer reports 3 ects, 15 weeks and 30 contact hours in total, the other 6 ects, 30 weeks, 60 contact hours in total, knowing that both intrals and interls is offered in one and the same course. in other words, it seems that in general, a training in intrals consists of around 30 contact hours. in the next question, trainers were asked for what context they teach intrals and/or interls. they could select (1) television, (2) live events and (3) others. the vocational trainer in intrals selected live events and added “educational sector, work, sports, politics, media, and further public events in different areas”). out of the four hei trainers in intrals, two trainers selected television only and two both television and live events. finally, as far as interls is concerned, one trainer selected television only, the other one both television and live events. as a result, television seems to be the main context for training. trainers were then asked about prerequisites for their course. students who want to enrol for a course in intrals are expected to have a relevant ba (for example, in translation) (n=2), to be enrolled in a master in interpreting programme (n=1) or to have completed a course in subtitling or interpreting (n=1), although in this case, the trainer does not mention whether the course in subtitling or interpreting is part of the ba or ma programme. for the vocational course, trainers’ and employers’ perceptions of training in intralingual and interlingual live subtitling 9 the prerequisites are broader: “people active in the fields of communications and texting, logopedist [speech and language therapist], pastoral care, inclusion, accessibility, media, interlingual and sign language interpreting.” as far as prerequisites for interls are concerned, one trainer explains that the students of interls have to be enrolled in the master’s programme in interpreting, whereas the other trainer says that “as a prerequisite, students have to complete one of the following courses in the previous semester: audiovisual translation: subtitling, theory of interpreting and/or consecutive interpreting.” in other words, interpreting seems to be an important prerequisite, in both disciplines, but even more so in interls. the next series of question addressed the focus of the course, its structure and learning outcomes. we will first report on intrals. three trainers in intrals explicitly mention the theory of respeaking as the focus of their course, whereas the others refer to respeaking techniques or skills. as one of the respondents explains: some theory is covered each week and the content is designed to complement and situate the practical work: topics include why respeaking is needed (in the context of ofcom), respeaking practice in the uk, challenges implicit in respeaking, and accuracy in respeaking (including the ner model). four out of five trainers also explicitly indicate the use of a sr software as a focal point. two of them stress the importance of error detection and “understanding how sr software works, what are the sources of errors and how to avoid the errors” and “setting up and managing profiles, adding and training in vocabulary, using macros, dictation skills, understanding why errors have occurred and how to avoid them.” another common focus are respeaking skills, described by one of the respondents as “developing dual focus (on listening and speaking), building respeaking stamina, consideration of what words might be edited out, respeaking different genres,” and for which one of the respondents also stresses the importance of “cultivating split attention.” finally, subtitling skills, editing, dictation and correct enunciation are also indicated as main course foci. we find approximately the same focus for interls, with the explicit mention of interpreting skills. all trainers in intrals seem to structure their course in a similar way, for which example 1 below is rather representative.10 trainers generally start with a theoretical introduction on live subtitling and sr. three out of four hei intrals trainers also include interls at a later stage. 10 the exception is the vocational course, which has no specific structure but a “face-to-face session/individual online coaching each month.” journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 10 example 1:  first two classes: explaining what speech recognition software have the students make their own speech recognition profile and experiment with it.  classes three and four: have the students add words to their lexicon and train their reflexes with written texts. make them be inventive with problematic situations. teach them how to stop speaking if they misspeak.  classes five and six: start respeaking with easy speeches i read to them, at a slow pace. the students learn how to listen, speak and dictate punctuation marks, without correcting.  classes seven and eight: learn how to work with quantum (or the subtitling software you would work with). keyboard shortcuts are very important. the students respeak easy speeches (dutch and belgian royals) and afterward they correct them in quantum (correct spacing).  classes nine and ten: first respeak a speech and then correct the speech while the video is playing a second time.  classes eleven and twelve: work in teams. one student respeaks, the other one corrects. importance of communication between the respeaker and his corrector. importance of summarizing.  classes thirteen to sixteen: respeaking and correcting their own work while the video is playing. importance of summarizing and quick correcting skills.  classes seventeen and eighteen: interlingual respeaking. respeaking without correcting and correcting while the video is playing a second time. or one group waits outside while the first group respeaks, then the second group comes in and corrects the first group's subtitles while the video is running. (this way, they haven't heard the speech the first time). useful for open caption interlingual subtitling in a team.  classes nineteen and twenty: interlingual respeaking. respeaking and correcting at the same time. useful for closed caption interlingual subtitling (by yourself). learning outcomes (los) are in line with the structure of the courses and can be very succinct, such as: “the students should be able to respeak and correct any given speech (intralingual). the students should be able to apply interlingual respeaking techniques.” more elaborate los are also found, such as illustrated by example 2. trainers’ and employers’ perceptions of training in intralingual and interlingual live subtitling 11 example 2: knowledge:  after completing the course, the student knows different methods used to create live subtitles and is familiar with professional live subtitling standards. the student also understands technical aspects and limitations related to live subtitling and their influence on the translation process.  the student knows various speech recognition systems and their limitations.  the student knows the basic rules of how to create an easy to read text.  the student understands the role of live subtitling within wider scope of accessibility for persons with disabilities.  the student knows quality assessment models ner and nert. skills:  the student can create intralingual live subtitling in polish and interlingual live subtitling (from english into polish). the student can also prepare intraand interlingual live subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing.  the student is able to choose the most appropriate speech recognition system depending on the possibilities, needs and the topic of the event or live audiovisual show which is to be subtitled live.  the student can predict terminological issues and can prepare for them in advance by adapting the system dictionary, using templates or macros.  the student is able to identify errors in live subtitling, differentiates between recognition, edition and translation errors and is able to weigh their importance taking into account the effect on the audience. the student is able to perform quality analysis using ner and nert models. social competences:  the student knows different types of target groups using live subtitles and understands their needs.  the student understand which types of errors in live subtitling have the greatest effect on the audience.  the student is able to educate the audience and other stakeholders on the benefits of live subtitling as well as certain limitations and technological requirements that live subtitling entails. the two trainers in interls start with intrals and therefore apply a similar structure and have comparable los. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 12 the next series of questions was related to the mode of delivery of the course, the set-up trained in the course (see below) and assessment. all courses, be it intrals or interls, involve a face-to-face part, generally combined with an online part and/or an internship. as far as the set-up for intrals training is concerned, trainers could select (1) individual respeaking without correction, (2) individual respeaking with self-correction, (3) individual respeaking with parallel correction by a corrector, (4) other. the vocational trainer focuses on set-ups 2 and 3, that is, individual respeaking with selfcorrection and individual respeaking with parallel correction by a corrector. two hei trainers only train individual respeaking with self-correction, whereas the two others combine set-ups 1, 2 and 3, or only 1 and 2. regarding interls, one trainer focuses on individual respeaking with parallel correction by a corrector, whereas the other combines set-ups 1, 2 and 3. assessment is in all cases continuous, or a combination of continuous assessment and a final exam or an internship. the accuracy rate (e.g. ner) is used in the assessment for intrals by three trainers (vocational trainer included). for interls, the accuracy rate is only used by one of the two trainers. 3.2.3. prerequisites for successful intrals or interls with respeaking at the end of the questionnaire, respondents were asked about the importance of prerequisites for successful intrals or interls with respeaking (using a likert-scale question from 0 to 4, with 0 being not important and 4 very important). they had to rate the following prerequisites: formal training and/or experience in consecutive interpreting, simultaneous interpreting, subtitling and translation. as shown in figure 1, they rate formal training and/or practical experience in simultaneous interpreting and subtitling as rather important (at least 3 on a scale of 4), whereas consecutive interpreting and translation are not considered as important. however, caution is warranted in interpreting these results: they are based on five respondents for intrals and two for interls, and the importance of translation, for example, seems to be less important for interlingual than for intralingual, which is counter-intuitive. trainers’ and employers’ perceptions of training in intralingual and interlingual live subtitling 13 figure 1. trainers’ perception of the importance of core prerequisites for successful intrals or interls with respeaking (mean) the trainers were also asked about additional prerequisites. as shown in figure 2, there are a few skills that are considered very and equally important, such as the interaction with and the technical aspects of the sr software and multitasking. only one skill is rated less important (below 2), i.e., it competences for interls. but overall, all suggested skills are regarded as important prerequisites for successful live subtitling with sr. figure 2. trainers’ perception of the importance of specific prerequisites for successful intrals or interls with respeaking (mean) journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 14 these findings are very much in line with the data collected among practitioners who were trained at a hei (robert et al., forthcoming). for example, almost all practitioners said that they were trained at master level, either in interpreting, in audiovisual translation, or in translation and/or interpreting. practitioners also reported having a bachelor degree, preferably in translation or a language-related discipline, as a course prerequisite. the duration of the courses, again, seems similar to what the trainers report but varies considerably too. as far as the focus of the course is concerned, a majority of the practitioners reported a strong focus on practice, with some theoretical introduction. the practical part generally consisted of software use and profile creation, dictation practice and then respeaking practice. the most frequent set-up for respeaking training was individual respeaking with self-correction, although many respondents reported a combination of set-ups: individual respeaking without correction, with self-correction or with parallel correction. again, this is quite analogous to the trainers’ responses. the same applies to modes of delivery and assessment. 3.3. broadcasters and service providers as explained before, the second target group of the survey were representatives of broadcasting companies (n=6) and service providers (n=15).11 3.3.1. profile, technology, context and workflow the first series of questions focused on the positions held by the respondents at their company, the types of subtitles they produce and the technology they use. all respondents from broadcasting companies have a management position, such as “chief technical officer”, “head of access services”, “head of the subtitling department”. the same holds for respondents from service providers, with only one “live subtitler”, the others having a management position, such as “supervisor”, “ceo”, etc. in terms of the type of subtitles they produce, results show that 18 respondents (the 6 broadcasting companies, plus 12 service providers) produce only intrals (86%), two (both service providers) only interls (9%) and one respondent (a service provider) produces both (5%). in other words, results related to intrals will be based on 19 answers, and results on interls will be based on 3 answers. according to the answers, the respondents producing interlingual live subtitles all appear to be service providers. respondents were asked for how long they had been providing intrals and/or interls. three broadcasters report one or two years, the other three report respectively 10, 15 and 33. the service providers have been producing live subtitles for 16 years in average (min. 2 years, max. 42 years for intrals), and 12 years in average for interls (min. 4 years, max. 20 years). 11 sometimes, a question remained unanswererd. trainers’ and employers’ perceptions of training in intralingual and interlingual live subtitling 15 as far as the technology is concerned, respondents could select one or several of the following options: speech recognition (sr), automatic sr, stenography, velotype, dual keyboard and standard keyboard. results for both intrals and interls together (broadcasters and service providers taken together) (see figure 3) reveal that sr is actually used by 95% of the respondents, since only 5% (1 respondent) reports using only a standard keyboard. automatic sr does not seem to be used yet among our respondents. figure 4 shows the results for each target group separately. interls is produced by sr, except for one respondent, using only a standard keyboard. as far as subtitling software is concerned, a majority uses wincaps, swift and fab. figure 3. type of technology used to produce live subtitles (intrals and/or interls, broadcasters and service providers taken together figure 4. type of technology used to produce live subtitles (intrals and/or interls, broadcasters and service providers taken separately) journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 16 next, broadcasters and service providers were asked about the context for which they produce live subtitles. as far as intrals is concerned, broadcasters (n=6) all answered tv, although one broadcaster also added live events and another one added video on demand. four service providers reported tv only, six selected tv and live events, and four selected tv, live events and others, i.e. streaming or an educational setting (see figure 5 for both groups taken together, in percentages). for interls, one respondent says that they are still testing interls, but not using it yet. another one mentions education, meetings, courts, hospital; the third one did not answer the question. figure 5. context for production of live subtitles in the next question, an open question, respondents were asked to give a detailed report of their workflow and workflow “participants” (or “actors”), to allow for a comparison with the training setup reported by trainers (see section 2.2.) and practitioners (robert et al., forthcoming). we will first report on intrals. for intrals for tv, two broadcasters describe a workflow with three actors, such as “a respeaker interprets, a corrector next to him corrects errors and a broadcaster broadcasts the subtitles”; one broadcaster reports a workflow with a respeaker and a corrector, and the other 3 broadcasters describe a workflow or set-up generally consisting of two respeakers working in pairs, alternating when the programme is long, but taking care of the respeaking with self-correction or no correction, while the other respeaker prepares additional subtitles or is on stand-by. the workflows seem slightly different at service providers. they generally work with just one respeaker (n=7) or two respeakers working in pairs, alternating (n=5).12 in other words, whereas broadcasters prefer to assign the different tasks (i.e. respeaking, correcting and broadcasting) to different people during one and the same task, service providers favour a workflow with just one respeaker combining the different tasks, or two respeaking alternating. 12 not all service providers answered that question. trainers’ and employers’ perceptions of training in intralingual and interlingual live subtitling 17 for live events for which service providers provide intrals, 3 out of 10 service providers work with just one respeaker, 4 work with a respeaker and a corrector, and 3 with a respeaker or both a respeaker and a corrector, depending on the event. in other words, although service providers tend to prefer working with one respeaker for tv, for live events, they tend to work with two (see example 3). example 3: depending on the nature of the event, either a solo captioner or a pair of captioners will respeak using dragon into our ai-stream program, which transmits captions to viewers either logged in to a client program or on a webpage. the captioner respeaking live has the ability to edit their output within a certain character limit, and if there is a second captioner they also have the ability to edit captions within a separate, larger character limit. any changes made will show up in real-time. as far as interls is concerned, only one service provider gave a description of the workflow for tv, i.e., a set-up with two or three actors (respeaker + broadcaster; respeaker + corrector + broadcaster). for live events, the same service provider gave the same description, and another one reported a setup with “one interpreter and two subtitlers working together at the same case using text-on-top software to present the text on screen or on a remote computer.” we can conclude that the training reported by trainers (section 2.2) and by practitioners (robert et al., forthcoming) prepare them well for the types of workflows in which they can play a role, since all workflows are covered in the training. 3.3.2. staff, recruitment and in-house training the next series of questions was related to staff and staff recruitment. the number of staff members that work as live subtitlers for the broadcasters and service providers varies from 7 to 100 for intrals (mean = 48), and from 2 to 12 for interls (mean = 5). however, it has to be noted that 74% of the respondents said that their intrals-ers combined that function with another one, such as subtitling, team leading or transcription. the same applies to interls-ers, who combine that function with intralingual or pre-recorded subtitling in two thirds of the cases. when they have to find new staff for intrals, 74% of the broadcasters and service providers train their own staff, 21% hire externally trained staff and 5% do both. taken separately, the results for both target groups are slightly different, with 50% of the broadcasters training their own staff and 50% hiring externally, whereas these figures are respectively 84% and 8% for service providers (the remaining 8% work both ways). for interls, service providers seem again to prefer training their own staff (n=2), or work both ways (n=1). journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 18 next, respondents were asked to rate the importance (from not important to very important, on a scale of 0 to 4) of formal training and practical experience in four different disciplines when hiring new staff: subtitling, live subtitling (intrals), interlingual live subtitling (interls), and (simultaneous) interpreting (si). when hiring intrals-ers, it seems that broadcasters (n=6) and service providers (n=15) seem to favour a background in intrals and subtitling (formal training or practical experience), before a background in interpreting or interls. broadcasters consider a background in subtitling or intrals much more important than a background in interpreting or interls whereas the difference in rating is more subtle among service providers (figure 6). figure 6. importance of formal training and practical experience when hiring intrals-staff the picture is different when service providers have to hire new interls-staff: they rate a background in subtitling, intrals, interls and interpreting much higher than when they have to hire new intralsstaff (figure 7). however, the results are based on 3 answers. trainers’ and employers’ perceptions of training in intralingual and interlingual live subtitling 19 figure 7. importance of formal training and practical experience when hiring interls-staff regarding the hiring procedure, 63% of the broadcasters and service providers report that new candidates always have to take aptitude tests (n=2 for broadcasters, n=10 for service providers). 32% say they generally use such tests (n=3 for broadcasters, n=3 for service providers), whereas 5% report that there is no test (only 1 broadcaster). all but one respondent specify that this test is a grammar and spelling test (94%), combined with either a respeaking test (82%) or a subtitling test (18%). some respondents also mention an interview. tests for interls, in contrast, include a speed writing test (min. 450 strokes/minute) (stated by the respondent using a keyboard, no respeaking), or a translation test. the use of the latter was explained as follows: “generally we feel the respeaking process can be trained reasonably easily but the core translation skills must be there from the start.” again, these results are based on 3 answers. in a subsequent series of questions, respondents were asked whether they offered an in-house training in intrals and/or interls and if yes, they had to answer questions about the content, the duration, prerequisites, focus, structure, modes of delivery, set-up and assessment. 74% of the respondents offer in-house training in intrals (broadcasters, n=3; service providers, n=11). those who do not (broadcasters, n=3; service providers, n=2), have an external service or hire a company for subtitling. broadcasters and service providers who do offer in-house training have been doing so for a few years (2 to 15 years; m=9.6 for broadcasters; m=8 for service providers). the rate at which training is organized differs. the three broadcasters offering an intrals in-house training report a week, a few weeks or a month, respectively. a majority of service providers (n=9) report a few weeks, two of them specifying "15 periods of 2 or 3 hours" and "4-6 weeks, but only 12 hours a day, as they work on non-live subtitling the rest of the time" respectively. the two remaining service providers who also offer an in-house training in intrals report a duration of one a day, or a few hours, respectively. all broadcasters (n=3) organize the in-house training only when needed, which is also the case for 36% of the service providers (n=4). the others provide journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 20 a training a few times a year, but not every month (n=6, i.e. 55%) or offer an individual programme for each new subtitler (n=1). broadcasters say that in average, 85% of their staff members working as live subtitlers have taken the in-house programme, for service providers, the percentage is slightly higher, at 87%. for training in interls, very few data were collected: one respondent said that they were still in a test phase, another one just mentioned that they “look for people with the core language skills and train them in respeaking,” and the last one, who gave many details, does not use respeaking in the workflow. consequently, in the following paragraphs, the answers related to training focus, structure, mode of delivery, set-up and assessment will only involve training in intrals, as reported by 3 broadcasters and 11 service providers. in all cases, the focus of the training is on using software (sr and subtitling) and on respeaking skills. 57% of the respondents also explicitly mention editing. in the description of the structure of the training, 42% of the respondents explicitly mention a theoretical part, devoted to the theory of respeaking. in general, the training is structured around respeaking with sr software, captioning or subtitling (e.g. using q-live), hybrid captioning (i.e., alternating between pre-recorded and live subtitling) and error correction. all skills are trained with an increased level of complexity, going from shadow sessions to live work. example 4 gives a good idea of the structure of training programmes. example 4: the first week of training focuses on captioning theory and developing respeaking practice through awareness and familiarity with dragon software. these overarching concepts are built upon throughout the entire training program. the second week introduces the trainees to broadcast subtitling software, and introduces various strategies that can be used to improve respoken output. editing speed, standards and accuracy is introduced in the second week. week three introduces hybrid captioning, and trainees learn about the captioning software in which we prepare blocked captions. they also learn about the programs we access to find scripts for news content. weeks four, five and six elaborate on all learned processes and introduce more complex captioned content, such as sports captioning and panel shows. trainees are also informed about general administrative processes and company culture. over this period, they start to gain experience in working with experienced captioners and sending captions to air in different contexts. similar to data collected from trainers and practitioners, the mode of training delivery is generally face-to-face (64%), a combination of face-to-face and online (29%) or online only (7%). trainers’ and employers’ perceptions of training in intralingual and interlingual live subtitling 21 the trained set-ups are varied, as shown in figure 8, but no respondent reports a training consisting only in individual respeaking with no correction. figure 8. training set-up in intrals in-house training at broadcasters and service providers assessment is systematic, either in the form of compulsory weekly tests, or in the form of performance analysis and feedback from the trainer. the ner model or a simplified version is often used in the assessment process (65%). when asked what they would change in the training if they could, respondents make a variety of suggestions, such as more one-to-one training and feedback, more editing, more online modules, a longer period of training. 3.3.3. prerequisites for successful intrals or interls with respeaking finally, as for trainers, we asked broadcasters and service providers to rate the importance of prerequisites for successful intrals and interls with respeaking. for intrals, respondents rank formal training and/or experience in subtitling higher, followed by simultaneous interpreting (si), translation and consecutive interpreting (ci) (see figure 9). it has to be noted that only subtitling scores higher than 2, on a scale from 0 to 4. for interls, the ranking is similar, but both subtitling and simultaneous interpreting score higher than 2. these findings are consistent with the ones we obtained from the trainers. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 22 figure 9. broadcasters’ and service providers’ perception of the importance of core prerequisites for successful intrals or interls with respeaking (mean) compared to trainers, broadcasters and service providers rank prerequisites for intrals and interls differently, although the same trends can be observed: a strong focus on multitasking and perfect command of the source and target languages (figure 10). figure 10. broadcasters’ and service providers’ perception of the importance of additional prerequisites for successful intrals or interls with respeaking (mean) trainers’ and employers’ perceptions of training in intralingual and interlingual live subtitling 23 3.3.4. quality control, demand and remuneration regarding quality control, 80% of the respondents say that they apply the ner model for assessing intrals, either internally of by an external contractor, but this kind of evaluation is often combined with ad-hoc review and feedback. as far as demand for intrals is concerned, 65% of the respondents say that there is currently a high or increasing demand of live subtitling for programmes such as news and sports, but also for live events or education, for live-streamed online video for example. others describe the demand as good, medium, static or flat, since it is a regulatory requirement. with respect to future demand, more than 80% expect an increase, mentioning regulations, a higher demand from universities and for live streaming. one respondent says that the demand will continue to rise if quality remains a priority, otherwise, automatic sr could take over. other respondents, in contrast, remain neutral regarding the future of intrals. as far as interls is concerned, one respondent says that there is “no steady demand yet, but it seems to pick up, mainly for conferences.” this is confirmed by the respondent not using sr, who says that “the demand is rising,” although the “service is not very well known with the hard of hearing persons.” another one indicates that “it seems as though there are a lot of broadcasters considering this service, particularly for live events which are broadcast in different territories in english, although fewer committing to it.” they all expect a growing demand in the future, explaining, for example, that “broadcasters will adopt interlingual live subtitling for big one-off events or gain market penetration in new territories.” finally, with regard to remuneration, 56% of the respondents think that remuneration for intrals as compared to pre-recorded subtitling will be higher, compared to 44% who expect it to remain the same or even be lower, due to, for example, the “implementation of artificial intelligence and other it techniques.” for interls, one respondent expects the same, the other states that they “expect costs to be higher as there are either additional resources (translator + respeaker) or more skilled respeakers required. this would be reflected in what we need to charge.” in short, broadcasters and service providers see a bright future for interls, but emphasize the need for quality control. conclusions in this article, we have reported on a survey study among trainers and representatives of service providers and broadcasting companies of the current training and practice of intrals and interls. in total, five trainers and 21 employers completed the survey. the profile of these trainers and employers differed from the profile of intrals and interls practitioners (robert et al, forthcoming): in contrast to the practitioners who are mostly women, trainers and employers are predominantly men, and in their thirties and forties. three of the five trainers only teach intrals; the other two teach both intrals and interls. this finding seems to reflect current professional journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 24 practice, in which demand for intrals is still higher than for interls. it also demonstrates that the practice is relatively new as most trainers have only started teaching the course recently. all trainers work with a speech recognition (sr) and a subtitling software and all the courses are taught at malevel, except for one vocational course. the intrals courses are mostly focused on live subtitling, respeaking techniques, subtitling skills and the use of the sr software, but they end with a (short) introduction on interls. the interls courses also focus on interpreting skills. this is the case for both hei trainers and in-house training organised at broadcasters and service providers. trainers consider formal training and/or experience in simultaneous interpreting an important prerequisite for successful intrals with respeaking, even more so for interls, where simultaneous interpreting scores the highest. however, formal training and/or experience in subtitling is considered equally important too, more than consecutive interpreting and translation and this is true for intrals and interls. when we compare these results to the responses of the intrals and interls practitioners (robert et al., forthcoming), there are quite a few parallels, suggesting that the courses that the practitioners took are very similar to the ones organized at heis. broadcasters and service providers rank formal training and/or experience in subtitling higher than in simultaneous interpreting, for both intrals and interls. formal training and/or experience in consecutive interpreting and translation receive lower scores. in other words, their ranking is very similar to that of hei trainers. however, the scores given for intrals are lower than the scores given interls, meaning that formal training and/or experience in subtitling and simultaneous interpreting for example is considered less important for intrals than for interls. in contrast, hei trainers give similar scores to subtitling and simultaneous interpreting, be it for intrals or interls. in terms of general skills, multitasking is one of the most important prerequisites, as well as interaction with the sr software, for hei trainers, broadcasters and service providers. in other words, trainers, practitioners and employers are generally on the same page. the small number of respondents in this study makes it difficult to draw conclusions for the profession in general. however, the limited number is probably representative of a small population and as such demonstrates the novelty of the practice. this is particularly true for the trainers and confirms the idea that courses on live subtitling at hei level are still quite rare. in light of the current increasing demand for intrals and expected increase in demand for interls reported by broadcasters and service providers, we think that designing, developing, testing and validating the first training course for interls is more than timely. trainers’ and employers’ 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(2018). are interpreters better respeakers? the interpreter and translator trainer, 12(2), 207–226 http://www.intralinea.org/%20specials/article/real-time_subtitling_in_flanders_needs_and_teaching http://www.intralinea.org/%20specials/article/real-time_subtitling_in_flanders_needs_and_teaching 126 the translation of substitution and ellipsis in arabic subtitling sattar izwaini dept. of arabic and translation studies american university of sharjah, uae hafsa al-omar  urban planning sector department of urban planning and municipalities, uae _________________________________________________________ abstract this paper investigates the trends in translating cohesive devices while subtitling english-speaking films into arabic through examining a corpus of 20 films. it looks at how translators deal in particular with substitution and ellipsis and how their approaches serve the cohesiveness of the subtitles. the paper also looks at the translation shifts resulting from those approaches. the study is based on halliday and hasan's model of cohesion (1976). the analysis has found a considerable number of shifts occurring while dealing with the cohesion of the target texts. repetition stands to be the most dominant cohesive tie that is used as a counterpart of substitution and ellipsis in the english originals, making explicitation the main strategy in translating such ties in arabic subtitles. substitution comes second while ellipsis and reference are found to be marginal. in their tendency to avoid ellipsis, translators opt for repetition or substitution as cohesive devices in arabic subtitles. key words: arabic subtitling, cohesion, ellipsis, substitution, translation shifts.  sizwaini@aus.edu, https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1656-4321  hafsah.alomar@gmail.com citation: izwaini, s. & al-omar, h. (2019). the translation of substitution and ellipsis in arabic subtitling. journal of audiovisual translation, 2(1), 126–151. editor(s): j-l. kruger & a. jankowska received: october 11, 2018 accepted: january 31, 2019 published: november 30, 2019 copyright: ©2019 izwaini & al-omar. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license. this allows for unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank the translation of substitution and ellipsis in arabic subtitling 127 1. introduction cohesion refers to the overt inter-sentential relationships and it occurs when the text is connected together by means of linguistic and semantic markers. it “occurs where the interpretation of some elements in the text is dependent on that of another. the one presupposes the other, in the sense that it cannot be effectively decoded except by recourse to it” (halliday & hasan, 1976, p. 4). de beaugrande (1980) argues that cohesion includes “the procedures whereby surface elements appear as progressive occurrences that their sequential connectivity is maintained and recoverable” (p. 19). baker (1992) defines cohesion as the network of lexical, grammatical, and other relations which provide links between various parts of a text, for instance by requiring the reader to interpret words and expressions by reference to other words and expressions in the surrounding sentences and paragraphs (p. 180). the present paper investigates cohesion in arabic subtitles. the analysis is based on halliday and hasan’s model of cohesion in english (1976). according to brown and yule (1983), this model “is by far the most comprehensive treatment of the subject and has become the standard text in this area” (p. 190). in discussing cohesion within textual equivalence, baker (1992) describes halliday and hasan’s model as “the best known and the most detailed model of cohesion available” (p. 180). according to halliday and hasan, cohesion is a semantic relation realized through the lexicogrammatical system. their approach to cohesion is based greatly on the concept of tie. according to their model, cohesion is a relation that occurs between two lexical items referred to as members. this leads to the conclusion of the intricacy of cohesion, as any sentence may have more than one tie and the presupposed item can be identified through an immediate cohesive element. halliday and hasan propose two main categories of cohesion with six subcategories: grammatical cohesion (substitution, ellipsis, reference, conjunction), and lexical cohesion (collocation and reiteration). the current paper focuses on substitution and ellipsis. this study examines cohesion as a phenomenon in subtitled texts. by investigating cohesion in subtitling, the study attempts to contribute to a less-researched area of audiovisual translation. it provides an analysis of examples of substitution and ellipsis in the source text (st) and the way translators deal with these cohesive devices in the target text (tt). the analysis aims at offering insight about the trends prevailing when translating into arabic subtitles. the main research questions are: how have substitution and ellipsis been changed in arabic subtitling?; what are the translation strategies employed by translators in dealing with these two cohesive devices?; and what are the main trends of translating substitution and ellipsis in arabic subtitling? journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 128 2. substitution and ellipsis in english substitution is the relation between elements such as words or phrases; “since substitution is a grammatical relation […] the substitute may function as a noun, as a verb, or as a clause” (halliday & hasan, 1976, p. 90). there are three types of substitution: nominal, verbal, and clausal. 1. nominal substitution means having the substitute one and the plural ones function as the head in the nominal group, and can substitute only an item that is itself the head of a nominal group: your phone is obsolete. you must get a new one. 2. verbal substitution takes place when the verb do or does substitutes a lexical verb functioning as the head of the verbal group, and its position would be final as in: (a) shall i make the announcement? (b)you can do now (halliday & hasan, 1976, p. 116). 3. clausal substitution occurs when the clausal substitute so and the negative form not operate on the entire clause, i.e., they presuppose the entire clause not just a noun or a verb: (1) a. are you attending the symposium? b. i think so. c. is it going to rain today? d. i hope not. ellipsis is normally an anaphoric relation like substitution. it is a relation within the text, and the presupposed item is present in the preceding text. halliday and hasan distinguish between three types of ellipsis: nominal, verbal, and clausal. 1. nominal ellipsis takes place when the head of a nominal group is omitted. the function of the head is taken by one of the other elements (deictic, numerative, epithet, or classifier), e.g. would you like to take this card? i have two more. the head of the nominal group, card, is omitted with the numerative two functioning as a head. 2. verbal ellipsis operates in the verbal group, and when it takes place, the structure does not express its systemic features fully; it necessitates to be recovered by presupposition. for example, in joan brought some carnations and catherine some sweet peas (halliday & hasan, 1976, p. 143), the structure of the second clause lacks a verb. this verb is presupposed to be provided by the preceding clause. the translation of substitution and ellipsis in arabic subtitling 129 there are two types of verbal ellipsis: lexical ellipsis and operator ellipsis. any verbal group that does not contain a lexical verb is elliptical: (2) a. is he going to come? b. he might. in the above example, the verbal item might is an elliptical verbal group. in order to fill out the verbal group, a lexical verb needs to be presupposed from the previous utterance. operator ellipsis, on the other hand, involves the omission of the operator: a. what have you been doing? b. reading. in the answer to the question, the operator which can be recovered by supposition is omitted. this kind of ellipsis occurs across sentences, characterized by very closely bonded sequences such as a question and answer, in which the lexical verb either supplies the answer, as above, or repudiates the verb in the question: a. has she been singing? b. no, dancing. 3. clausal ellipsis is looking at verbal ellipsis from the clausal point of view where either one of the two clausal elements of modal and proposition is omitted (see halliday & hasan, 1976, pp. 197–198), e.g. the governor is going to set up a follow-up committee where ‘the governor is’ is the modal element and going to set up a follow-up committee is the proposition. in the two conversations below clausal ellipsis occurs by omitting either element: (3) a. what is the governor going to do? b. setting up a committee. c. who is going to set up a committee? d. the governor is. there are special features of both substitution and ellipsis that require some attention here: finiteness, polarity and modality. these pertain to the presuppositions on which these two cohesive devices are based. in terms of finiteness, the categorization of operators are to be finite or non-finite. if finite, then an operator is indicative or imperative. if indicative, it can be a modal or non-modal (halliday & hasan, 1976, p. 167). in lexical ellipsis, the polarity has to be made explicit and the first operator is always present whatever else is deleted; the finite operator is never omitted (halliday & hasan, 1976, pp. 167, 176, 177, 181). on the other hand, polarity refers to whether the statement is positive or negative, and marked or unmarked (halliday & hasan, 1976, p. 167), whereas modality is “the speaker’s assessment of the probabilities inherent in the situation, or the rights and duties” (halliday & hasan, 1976, p. 135). 3. substitution and ellipsis in arabic in arabic, cohesion is dealt with as one area of the field of ي علم المعان ʿ ilm al-maʿānī (literally the science of meanings). this field focuses on the semantics of different processes and how thoughts journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 130 are expressed. al-jurjāny (died in 471 ah/1078 ad) is the founder of ʿ ilm al-maʿānī through his theory of النظم al-naẓm (organization of discourse). al-jurjāny’s theory is a fully-fledged account of cohesion in arabic. it is a paradigm of the semantics of syntactic structures to achieve the intended meaning. it deals with how to compose a text to establish cohesion and coherence through interrelating text elements by having lexico-grammatical functions therein (al-jurjāny 2004, pp. 100, 103). al-jurjāny classifies meaning into two types: semantic and syntactic, and naẓm implies that word meanings are organized according to the syntactic order. naẓm is essentially the eloquent formulation of textual elements by relating them one to another in a way that interconnects them semantically. it is attaining stylistic elegance via rhetorical structuring. substitution in arabic is looked at as a cohesive link that refers to a word or phrase that substitutes elements in the same grammatical slot elsewhere in the text: قطع صلته بها أياما ففعل she asked) طلبت him to sever his relation with her few days so he did). the verb فعل (did) substitutes the phrase of ‘to sever his relation with her some days’. the substituting verb may be supported by a demonstrative: ، ففعل ذلك ي in the (that) ذلك however, the word .(he commanded him to sing, so he did that) أمره أن يغن example below substitutes the phrase تفوز أن (to win): يفوز؟ أن تتوقع هل (4) (do you expect him to win?) (yes i expect that) نعم، أتوقع ذلك it is worth noting that ذلك (that) does not function here as demonstrative pronoun as such, but rather as a cohesive device presupposing what is discussed. it connects the two sentences together by providing an interpretation of the reply. ellipsis in arabic is treated under the umbrella of اإليجاز (brevity). different elements of the sentence could be omitted depending on the presence of an element in the cotext (an index) that helps the hearer/reader understand the sentence. due to the scope of the article, the restriction on word count and the detailed categories of ellipsis in arabic, only a brief account will be given here. according to ḥammudah (1998, p. 20), sībawayh used the terms حذف ḥaḏf (ellipsis) and إضمار ʾiḍmār (concealment) interchangeably. al-sakkāky ( 1987, pp. 176, 206, 224–225, 228) maintains that ellipsis can be based on the receiver’s clear understanding of the message, with the help of the cotext and context as well as non-textual elements. the purpose of ellipsis can be euphemism, willingness to be implicit, or brevity. ḥassan states that ellipsis in arabic always occurs when there is a cotext element (index) that disambiguates the elliptic one (1979, p. 218). in the example below the verb in the coordinated clause is omitted depending on the one in the first clause (ḥassan, 1979, p. 219) : كاد أو هلك زيدا إن (5) (zeid perished or was about to). the translation of substitution and ellipsis in arabic subtitling 131 subordinate clauses could be omitted when disambiguation is guaranteed, i.e., when other sentence elements are sufficient for interpretation (ḥassan, 1979, pp. 220–221). this includes the second part of conditional sentences and answers of questions, e.g. جاء؟ من (6) (who came?) (ali) علي one of the structures in which omission occurs is the case of coordination, as in the qur’anic verse وظلها دائم أكلها (its fruit is eternal and its shade is) (13:35, al-raʿd). here, the assumed structure of the sentence is مدائ وظلها دائم أكلها (its fruit is eternal and its shade is eternal), but the predicate of the second clause is ellipted to avoid repetition of the predicate of the first clause. ellipsis necessitates acceptability of structure, presence of an index element and possibility of recovering the ellipted item. it includes among other things, pronominals omitted for economy, verb of quoting and reporting speech قال (to say), transitive verbs with the object omitted making it generic and comprehensive, e.g. وينىه يأمر (to command and prohibit). the cohesive devices in both arabic and english are not fully compatible when it comes to features of both substitution and ellipsis such as finiteness, polarity and modality. for example, non-finite operators may be substituted or ellipted, which is not necessarily the case in a corresponding structure in arabic. this can be a good reason why translators opt to change the cohesive device in subtitling. 4. cohesion in subtitling diaz-cintas and remael (2007) define subtitling as “a translation practice that consists of presenting a written text… that endeavors to recount the original dialogue of the speakers, as well as discursive elements that appear in the image, and the information that is contained on the soundtrack” (p. 8). subtitles are a condensed version of the target text incorporated on the screen, and they have to be as short as possible to help the audience to read and process them within a relatively short time (chiaro, 2009, p. 148). subtitles express what is said (spoken medium) into a written text to be read (written medium). de linde and kay (1999, pp. 28–31) discuss the different cohesive devices used to achieve text cohesion. they maintain that these devices do not only establish cohesion in subtitles, but they also enhance the text readability. according to them, not reproducing the cohesive relations in subtitling “can lead to a text becoming more difficult to process and result in loss of meaning” (1999, p. 30). cohesion does not only establish a text unity, but it also helps the audience process and understand the textual elements, as these are an integral part of the semiotic whole, thus providing coherence journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 132 through intertextuality between the verbal communication and other semiotic elements, i.e., the visual. lack of cohesion in subtitles can be further complicated by their transitory nature and relation to visual elements (de linde & kay, 1999, p. 30). subtitling should benefit much from cohesive ties such as reference and ellipsis to produce condensed translations. cohesive subtitles are constructed by bearing in mind semiotic resources, i.e., linguistic and nonlinguistic that are available in a screen production. linguistic resources can be manipulated to meet the needs of the target audience. subtitlers will have to select key and relevant elements that will be transposed into the subtitles and that will assist in the construction of meaning in the target language. semiotic elements in a screen production can help in establishing cohesion and coherence. the focus of this study, however, is on the linguistic elements of a spoken discourse as it is the overwhelming majority of discourse in feature films. subtitling involves processes such as elimination, condensation and reformulation, which can lead to shifts in translation. shifts are changes that take place in translation. they are the results of the translator’s attempts to deal with the differences between the st and the tt (bakker, koster, & van leuven-zwart, 1998). catford (1965) defines shifts as “departures from formal correspondence in the process of going from the sl to tl” (p. 73). furthermore, space and linguistic constraints have their say in how subtitles are formulated (see gottlieb, 1998). 5. data and methodology this paper sheds light on the strategies employed in dealing with cohesive devices, namely substitution and ellipsis, when producing arabic subtitles. the examples are taken from a corpus of 20 english-speaking films of different genres. the films are either broadcast by tv stations such as dubai one, fox movies and mbc2, or viewed on dvds produced and translated by different production companies. tv channels normally outsource subtitling assignments to regional agencies in egypt, jordan, lebanon and the united arab emirates (uae). the selection criteria of the corpus are mainly availability as well as diversity of genre, year of production, country of origin and a need for balanced representation of works subtitled by individual translation agencies. in our data, there are 19 occurrences of substitution (seven cases of nominal substitutions, eight of verbal substitutions and four of clausal substitutions) and 17 occurrences of ellipsis (six instances of nominal ellipsis, six of verbal ellipsis and five of clausal ellipsis). the present study will focus only on the linguistic component of the st semiotics. therefore, visual and acoustic elements will not be considered here. moreover, as the text in subtitles tends to be fragmented in sentences that are transitory in nature, i.e., they appear and disappear on the screen, cohesion is examined here at sentence level only (within the boundaries of two lines of subtitling). the translation of substitution and ellipsis in arabic subtitling 133 the subtitles will be compared to the original and any change in the cohesive elements will be discussed. the graph below illustrates how this is looked at. the translation of what is substituted in the st, for example, is rendered the same, repeated or deleted in the tt. figure 1. how the translation of substitution and ellipsis are examined within the arabic subtitles while halliday and hasan’s model does not readily apply in its entirety to arabic, any observed shifts involving cohesive devices are not necessarily indicative of an optional subtitling strategy. the tl system and style usually guide translators to produce a cohesive text, thus opting for this or that strategy. the analysis will look at how effective arabic subtitles are at achieving cohesion either by maintaining the cohesive device of the st or shifting to another device. shifts will be analysed to see whether they are justified or not, and whether they contribute to the cohesiveness of the subtitles. 6. discussion and analysis no doubt that the differences between language systems necessitate shifts in dealing with textual aspects. transferring st cohesive devices in translation will not do without reworking them to establish links that suit the tl norms. what matters is the preference of tl cohesive devices and the role of the translator in establishing linkage suitable for the norms acceptable in the tl. this can entail changing the cohesive devices of the st. the aim of the translator is presumably to achieve cohesion in the translation with devices available in the tl, bearing in mind the preference of the tl in terms of cohesion (i.e., what is appropriate to the language system and the style that establishes cohesion in the tt). translators deploy different procedures in arabic subtitles in order to achieve cohesion. these will be discussed in detail below. based on our statistics, it has been found that a considerable number of shifts (lexical and grammatical) were made in the st cohesive devices within the translation process. to provide journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 134 an overview of the devices used in subtitles and shifts occurred, we present figures and a table of statistics below. as we can see in figure 2, six occurrences of nominal substitution are shifted into repetition (85.7%) and one occurrence is translated as nominal substitution (14.29%). for verbal substitution, six occurrences (75%) are rendered as repetition, while one occurrence (12.5%) is translated into nominal substitution and one (12.5%) into verbal substitution. with regard to clausal substitution, three occurrences (75%) are rendered as clausal substitution whereas one occurrence thereof (25%) slightly shifts into verbal substitution. figure 2. translation of st substitutions in arabic subtitles. for ellipsis, figure 3 shows that three occurrences of nominal ellipsis (50%) are translated as nominal substitution, two occurrences (33.33%) are recovered as repetition, and one occurrence (16.67%) shifts into reference in the tt. we also notice that repetition is the dominant cohesive device in translating verbal ellipsis with four occurrences (66.67%), while two occurrences (33.33%) are rendered as verbal substitution. for clausal ellipsis, three occurrences (60%) are recovered as clausal substitution and two (40%) are translated as clausal ellipsis. the translation of substitution and ellipsis in arabic subtitling 135 figure 3. translation of st ellipsis in arabic subtitles as we can gather form figures 2 and 3 above and table 1 below, repetition is predominantly used in translating cohesive devices in arabic subtitles, in particular in the translation of nominal substitution and verbal substitution as well as verbal ellipsis and nominal ellipsis. second comes substitution, mainly in rendering clausal ellipsis as well as nominal and clausal substitutions. ellipsis and reference are marginal. the former is solely used in the translation of clausal ellipsis and the latter in dealing with one case of nominal ellipsis. table 1 below shows that in terms of shifts taking place as a result of opting for these devices in the arabic subtitles, seven cases of substitution are retained as such (36.84%), whereas making shift by using repetition in dealing with this particular device accounts for about 63.15%. so in dealing with substitution, explicitation by repetition is much more commonly applied than retaining substitution. as for ellipsis, two occurrences (11.77%) are translated into ellipsis, whereas shifts occur in dealing with this device account for about 88.23%. as a whole, non-shift renditions combined are 25% (7+2 out of 36) making the percentage of shifts in dealing with both devices of ellipsis and substitution 75% (18 +8 +1 out of 36). journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 136 table 1. numbers and percentages of cohesive devices in arabic subtitles used to translate those in english sts cohesive devices in sts substitution (19) ellipsis (17) total (36) no. of occurrences % no. of occurrences % no. of occurrences % cohesive devices in subtitles repetition 12 63.15% 6 35.3% 18 50% substitution 7 36.84% 8 47% 15 41.6% ellipsis 0 0% 2 11.7% 2 5.5% reference 0 0% 1 5.88% 1 2.77% while constraints of time and space play a significant role in the reduction of the text in subtitling, (see gottlieb, 1998, p. 247), subtitling into arabic seems, nevertheless, to consider the cohesion requirements of the tl. arabic style favours repetition, especially in dealing with sl cohesive devices such as substitution and ellipsis. johnstone (1991, p. 71) contends that “english discourse rules (codified in rhetoric texts under ‘variety in word choice’) encourage writers to avoid repetition of this sort. the situation in arabic is the opposite.” hatim (1997, pp. 164–165) states that repetition in arabic can be either necessitated by the linguistic system (langue) or can include forms that have non-systemic function (parole); they are motivated by rhetorical functions of the text. repetition in arabic subtitling belongs to the linguistic system requirements, i.e., the langue, and thus it is a necessity for the cohesion of the text. opting for a non-condensation strategy in dealing with ellipsis in the sts is of interest here as repetition and substitution are used to translate ellipsis in the overwhelming majority of occurrences. this demonstrates that meeting the cohesiveness requirements of the tl discourse takes priority over compliance with the brevity requirement of subtitling. explicitation seems to be a significant strategy to establish cohesion in arabic subtitles. it triggers repetition in the tts aiming at making what is implicit in the st, which can be inferred by the st audience, explicit in the subtitles to meet the cohesion condition of the tl. based on the data discussed above, using cohesive devices in arabic subtitles functions as an explicitation strategy in translation. the translation of substitution and ellipsis in arabic subtitling 137 the translation of substitution and ellipsis occurring in the sts will be discussed in detail below. both the st elements with a cohesive function and their counterparts in the tt are underlined. for reference purposes, the name of the film is given in brackets next to the st. back-translation of arabic subtitles is also given between brackets. subtitles are back translated using a mid-course between direct and idiomatic rendition as frequently as possible, with the aim of highlighting the changes occurring in the arabic tts. 6.1. translation of substitution following halliday and hasan’s classification of the three types of substitution, we will provide an analysis of examples that illustrates how translators dealt with the three types of substitution in the sts. 6.1.1. translation of nominal substitution substitution is retained only once (14.29%). the majority of nominal substitutions (85.71%, six out of seven occurrences) are translated into repetition. this seems to reflect a trend towards using repetition to fulfil the tl system preference and utilizing it as a safe strategy to ensure the message is clear with no misunderstanding or confusion. translators made shifts by moving from the grammatical level (nominal substitution) in the st to the lexical level (repetition) in the tt. this type of substitution is illustrated in the following example where the subtitle involves a shift into a repetition of رجل (man). (7) st: a. i thought i was a better judge of men. b. you gave him credit for being one. (possession) tt: a. ي حسبت ي بارع أنن الرجال شخصية عل الحكم ف (i thought i was skilful in judging men’s character) b. ا ته رجل (you are wrong because you considered him a man) أنت مخط ألنك اعتبر the nominal substitute one refers anaphorically in the original to the lexical entity mentioned before whereas the translator rendered it by repetition of the same lexical item instead of using substitution as the st does to provide explicitness in the tt. repetition provides a clear link between the two elements. retaining substitution in the tt would be confusing to the audience if it is to be translated أحدهم اعتبرته ألنك مخطئ أنت (you are wrong because you considered him one of them) as this may read as referring to one of a group in the sense of membership rather than quality as the actual subtitle successfully denotes. it would be even more awkward if the translator utilized واحدا (one in the sense of cardinal number). unlike a shift into repetition, a direct translation in this case, by means of substitution, will produce non-cohesive text in the tl. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 138 in the example below two cohesive devices are used: nominal substitution ones and verbal substitution do. the latter will be discussed under 5.1.2 below. (8) st: iguanas don’t swim, they are land animals. these ones do. (master and commander) tt: أرضية حيوانات إنها تسبح، ال اإلغوانا (iguanas don’t swim, they are land animals) (these animals swim) هذه الحيوانات تسبح a direct translation of ones would not be recommended, as it would not produce a cohesive, coherent text. however, the translator did not repeat the substituted noun اإلغوانا (iguanas) in the tt but rather its hypernym or superordinate حيوانات (animals), making it as if it were a different species. the repetition of حيوانات (animals) does not contribute the cohesiveness to the tt. the translator could have opted for the repetition of the substituted noun اإلغوانا (iguanas) to fulfil both the cohesion and coherence of the tt: تسبح اإلغوانا هذه (these iguanas swim). another option is to substitute the verb with تفعل (do) to become تفعل اإلغوانا هذه (these iguanas do). moreover, with the use of the deictic هذه (these), omission would be a good option to have the tt read تسبح هذه (these swim) or فعلت هذه (these do), thus producing the required condensation of the subtitles. nevertheless, a different approach can be seen here when nominal substitution is rendered as substitution rather than repetition: (9) st: what does your church do, mr. langdon? that’s right, you don’t have one. (angels and demons) tt: نغدون؟ال سيد كنيستك، تفعل ماذا (what does your church do, mr. langdon?) (that’s right, you don’t have one) هذا صحيح، ليس لديك واحدة this rendition is awkward arabic style. the translator could have repeated the noun كنيسة (church) to make the tt natural and cohesive. by relying on substitution in the tt, the translation provides the cardinal version of same lexical item of the st device (rather than a similar word that denotes group membership أحد) as the use of واحدة (one fem)1 refers to a quantity (i.e., one, not two). 1 kanīsah (church) is feminine in arabic. the translation of substitution and ellipsis in arabic subtitling 139 6.1.2. translation of verbal substitution translation by repetition is the most frequent approach used to translate verbal substitution, making up 75% (six out of eight) instances. translation by nominal substitution accounts for 12.5% (one out of eight) instances. however, verbal substitution is used in one subtitle (12.5%). in the previous section on nominal substitution, we mentioned that example 8 also includes a case of verbal substitution. (10) st: iguanas don’t swim, they are land animals. these ones do. (master and commander) tt: أرضية حيوانات إنها تسبح، ال اإلغوانا (iguanas don’t swim, they are land animals) (these animals swim) هذه الحيوانات تسبح the substitute do is translated by repeating the verb ‘swim’ in tt. while it was suggested earlier that st nominal substitution can be rendered as ellipsis, verbal substitution, however, may not. the verb has to be repeated as in the tt and that is why we suggested in5.1.1 above the subtitle could be تسبح هذه (these swim). another option is to substitute the verb in arabic by تفعل which is the counterpart of ‘do’. this is a common substitution in arabic (see 2 above). the subtitling would be فعلت هذه or better (these animals do) هذه الحيوانات تفعل (these do). the latter is a condensed option, meeting the brevity condition of subtitling. the example below shows that instead of using a direct rendition of the verbal substitute do to have a substitution in the tt as well, a shift is introduced by repeating the verb: (11) st: a. you forget i don’t care what people think. b. yes, you do. (10 things i hate about you) tt: a. ي تنسي إنك ث بأنن الناس لرأي ال أكبر (you forget that i do not care about people’s opinion) b. ثي (rather, you care) بل تكبر this is an optional action that opts for more explicit rendition. the translation could use substitution as well to be تفعلي بل (rather, you do). journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 140 this, nevertheless, cannot be done in the following example. (12) st: a. all women become like their mothers. that’s their tragedy. b. no man does, that’s his. (rumor has it) tt: a. مأساتهن هي هذه أمهاتهن. مثل كل النساء تصبح (all women become like their mothers. this is their tragedy) b. ال رجل يصبح مثلهن، هذه هي مأساته (no man becomes like them, this is his tragedy) the translator repeated the verb يصبح (to become) and مثل (like) with the pronominal reference هن (them fem) to refer to ‘mothers’. the translator’s choice seems to be justified by the aim to make the meaning coherent through repetition since a direct translation, e.g. يفعل (do sing masc) may denote action rather than the intended meaning of becoming as such. repetition here facilitates comprehension as it provides a semantically less dense discourse. however, the use of the pronoun is ambiguous due to unclear reference on the one hand, i.e., whether it refers to ‘women’ or to هن ‘mothers’, and on the other hand it refers, in actual fact, to a man’s own mother. thus, the translator should have once again utilized repetition of أم (mother) as a cohesive device. then the translation would read: ال رجل يصبح مثل أمه، هذه هي مأساته (no man becomes like his mother, this is his tragedy). the use of his in the st is a case of nominal ellipsis, which will be discussed in example 19 below. the shifts made in the examples above are justified in terms of serving the cohesive function of the tl, reproducing the meaning of the st and establishing coherence. there is a shift there resulting from altering the grammatical cohesive devise (the substitute does) into a lexical verb. in the following example, however, the translator retained substitution of the st: (13) st: hello, you’ve reached arthur’s machine. if you wish to leave a message, please do so after the tone (michael clayton) tt: مرحبا، أنتم تتصلون بهاتف آرثر. إذا أردتم ترك رسالة فافعلوا ذلك بعد الزمور (hello, you are calling arthur’s phone. if you want to leave a message, do that after the tone) there is a verbal substitution here by using the verbal group ذلك افعلوا (do that) to translate do so. the demonstrative pronoun ذلك (that) serves the cohesiveness of the text by referring back to the phrase رسالة ترك which denotes the action of leaving a message. repeating the verb of ‘leave’ and using a pronoun referring back to the ‘message’ is less cohesive in the tl, especially if it is in the same sentence: الزمور بعد فاتركوها رسالة ترك أردتم إذا (if you want to leave a message then leave it after the tone). the translation of substitution and ellipsis in arabic subtitling 141 in the example below, however, the translator rendered the verbal substitution does into a phrase made of a demonstrative supported by صحيح (true): (14) st: a. he moves fast. b. yes, he does. (les misérables) tt: a. برسعة يتحرك إنه (he moves fast) b. هذا صحيح (that’s right) while rendering yes as صحيح (right) to indicate affirmation, the translator decided to convey the meaning of the verb does by using the proximal demonstrative هذا (this) which refers anaphorically to the statement. this shift by a total change in the structure affects neither the st meaning nor tt cohesion. the translator’s attempt to fulfil cohesion in the tt is successful, given that subtitling aims at providing a condensed structure with yes encapsulated in the translation. the authors contend that this tt formulation is recommendable for such sl structures. it is a standard language closer to spoken variety. a more standard arabic translation would have a rather formal register of a classical tone: ،يفعل إنه أجل (yes, he does), or it would, if repeated, be longer, non-condensed subtitling ،برسعة يتحرك إنه أجل (yes, he moves fast). 6.1.3. translation of clausal substitution three out of four occurrences of clausal substitution are rendered as clausal substitution (75%) and one occurrence (25%) as verbal substitution. (15) st: a. how was your sleep? restful? b. i would not say so, no (australia) tt: a. ؟ نـومك؟ كان كـيف ً مريحا (how was your sleep? restful?) b. ي قول هذا ، ال (i cannot say this) ال يمكنن the demonstrative used here, هذا (this), substitutes the statement made before to chain together information in the text. it provides the intended meaning and contributes to the cohesiveness of the tt. translators tend to use demonstrative هذا (this) as a translation for so in the st. knowing that هذا (this) is a proximal demonstrative (holes, 1995), it seems to be used in such cases in its nondemonstrative sense as a cohesive devise with a substitution function. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 142 in example 16, the translator used the direct translation strategy in dealing with the negative clausal substitution: (16) st: a. is your decision to take a year off anything to do with the rumours about jeff and his present leading lady? b. absolutely not. (notting hill) tt: a. يكته )جيف( عن باإلشاعات عالقة لعام عملك بتوقيف لقرارك هل الحالية؟ وشر (is your decision to stop your work a year a relation with the rumours about [jeff] and his present partner fem?) b. بالتأكيد ال (certainly not) although it might be an unnecessarily longer version, one may repeat the same element using the demonstrative ذلك. the suggested response can be spelled out as بالتأكيد ال عالقة له بذلك (certainly it has no relation to that). however, the translator opted not to, which is also cohesive in the tt, and at the same time the translation meets the brevity condition of subtitling. as this is a yes/no question, the direct translation approach conveys the message and establishes a cohesive tt. it is a standard language structure that is also used in spoken language (see also badawi, 2012), something that is recommended for subtitling conversations. in subtitling, the verbal auditory channel becomes a verbal visual channel (gottlieb, 1998, p. 245). spoken dialogue in the st is conveyed as a written text in the subtitles. this makes the language of subtitles much closer to the standard than the st. 6.2. translation of ellipsis in this section, representative examples of ellipsis will be analysed to illustrate how this cohesive device is translated in arabic subtitles. 6.2.1. translation of nominal ellipsis nominal substitution is used to translate 50% of nominal ellipsis (three out of six) and repetition is used for 33.33% of nominal ellipsis (two out of six), whereas there is a shift into reference in 16.6% of occurrences (one out of six). the translation of substitution and ellipsis in arabic subtitling 143 (17) st: isn’t that dr. wolfe’s assistant? was (possession) tt: وولف؟ الدكتور مساعد هذا أليس (isn’t this dr. wolfe’s assistant?) (he was as such) كان كذلك here, the translator opted for the addition strategy to cater for the cohesiveness of the tt, as using the verb كان (was) only would not be enough to establish cohesion. the added prepositional phrase is composed of the particle of simile ( التشبيه كاف ) and the demonstrative ذلك (that) to achieve tt cohesion. the demonstrative is assisted by the simile particle to provide a substitute by the anaphoric reference to the whole previous statement and thus helps the reader retrieve the identity of the item stated earlier. in example 18, the translator opted for addition using the word واحدة (one fem) as a counterpart for the ellipted element in the st. (18) st: a. there is gonna be a better way. b. no, if there is, i don’t know (flicka) tt: a. أفضل طريقة ثمة بالتأكيد (sure there is a better way) b. إن كان هناك واحدة، فال أعرفها (if there is one, i don’t know it) the ellipsis in the st is a feature of the sl discourse, which cannot be applicable to tl in this case, because of the grammatical requirements of the arabic sentence to have a noun. the arabic sentence in b cannot be informative if one of its parts is elided without a pointer. in this example, واحدة (one as a cardinal) is added to serve as a substitution in the tt. however, the added word results in an awkward non-cohesive translation as it refers to a quantity, not quality, i.e. without providing the preference noun (comparison). the translator should have used repetition to ensure the text has the right reference and natural style thus helping the audience understand it with ease. if the nominal group ‘better way’ is repeated in the tt, there can be two more options that fulfil the cohesiveness of the tt. the suggested translations would be either إن كان هناك واحدة أفضل فال أعرفها (if there is a better one, i don’t know it) or إن كان هناك طريقة أفضل فال أعرفها (if there is a better way, i don’t know it). although both versions are longer, they provide better translations in terms of cohesiveness. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 144 we already discussed the example below as a case of verbal substitution (see example 12 above). it is also cited here as it features a case of nominal ellipsis as well: (19) st: a. all women become like their mothers. that’s their tragedy. b. no man does, that’s his. (rumor has it) tt: a. مأساتهن هي هذه أمهاتهن. مثل كل النساء تصبح (all women become like their mothers. this is their tragedy) b. ال رجل يصبح مثلهن، هذه هي مأساته (no man becomes like them, this is his tragedy) the noun tragedy is elided in that’s his ø. the translator, however, repeated the noun مأساة(tragedy). the structure of the english sentence allows such omission and the sentence is still meaningful. this is a feature of spoken discourse of the sl which is inapplicable to the tl as an enclitic pronoun in arabic (corresponding to his here) is a bound morpheme that needs a noun or a verb to attach to. rather, repetition is obligatory in order to maintain the cohesiveness of the tt. similarly, in the example below, the translator made a shift by repeating the noun which is omitted in the second part of the st: (20) st: we need three messages … what if i don’t get three? (echelon conspiracy) tt: رسائل ثالث إىل نحتاج (we need three messages) (?and what if i don’t get three letters) وماذا إذا لم أحصل عل ثالث رسائل؟ an arabic sentence does not allow the deletion of the countable noun (messages), what is termed in arabic grammar التميب (adverb of specification), after an indefinite noun. it is necessary to specify the element being modified by the numerative and make it clear what item is being discussed (alsuyoṭy, 1978, p. 262). this is an obligatory operation and applies to the first part of the tt only. however, it is optional in the second part of the tt since it is stated in the first part of the text or known for the addressee or understood from the context. the ellipted version would read ثالث؟ عل أحصل لم إذا وماذا (and what if i don’t get three?) (see al-sāmārʾiy, 2007, p. 77). shifting from ellipsis into repetition is successful though, because repetition serves the cohesion of the tt by reminding the audience of the previously mentioned lexical item. the translation of substitution and ellipsis in arabic subtitling 145 (21) st: a. i know what you want, lara b. oh, i doubt it a. another life with your father. a second chance. it will be within my power to give (lara croft: tomb raider) tt: a. (i know what you want lara) الرا يا تريدين ماذا أعلم b. بذلك أشك (i doubt that) a. أخرى فرصة والدك. مع أخرى حياة (another life with your father. another chance) (i will enjoy the authority to give it to you) سأتمتع بالسلطة لمنحك إياها there is an ellipsis here in it will be within my power to give ø. the translator resorted to addition to function as a reference and produce a cohesive tt. s/he utilized the pronoun إياها (it) which refers anaphorically to the noun فرصة (chance) stated before. without such addition, the translation would lack cohesion (and ultimately coherence) and would therefore not be successful. 6.2.2. translation of verbal ellipsis a shift of verbal ellipsis to repetition accounts for 66.67% of its occurrences (four out of six), and verbal substitution is used to render 33.33% of occurrences (two out of six). (22) st: reed i trust. peterson i don’t (echelon conspiracy) tt: )سون ي ال أثق بـ )بيبر (i trust [reed], but i don’t trust [peterson]) أثق بـ )ريد( ولكنن in this example, the st verb is elided in the second part of the line. in the subtitles, a shift occurred whereby the main verb أثق (trust) is repeated. to enhance the cohesiveness of the tt, adversative conjunction لكن (but) and the conjunctive particle و (and) are also added in the tt. the cohesion of the tt is achieved through these two shifts, i.e., repetition to specify the verb and make it explicit to the addressee, and the adversative conjunction that links the two sentences and signals the meaning of concession (استدراك) to the preceding statement. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 146 (23) st: i thought you were dead could (gladiator) tt: مت خلتك (i thought you died) (i almost died) كدت أموت for the verb أموت (to die) in this example, ellipsis in the tt is not a choice for it occurred in a response. it would be possible if it was in the same sentence. a possible arabic translation of the modal verb could alone does not produce the intended meaning. the verb used here كاد belongs to the verbs of appropinquation ( المقاربة أفعال ), denoting an imminent event. ellipsis in the reply cannot be used since, unlike example 5, the two occurrences are not within the same sentence (see also ḥassan, 1979, p. 219). repetition of the verb is necessary for the cohesive function of the text by having a clear focus on the intended meaning. (24) st: i thought you are leaving tomorrow? i was. (notting hill) tt: ستسافرين أنك اعتقدت ً غدا (i thought you will travel tomorrow) (i was about to do) كنت سأفعل in the st the verb is elided: i was ø. the translator opted for the addition strategy, i.e., adding the verb أفعل (i do) as a verb of action to substitute أسافر (to travel) stated in the previously mentioned clause. not repeating or substituting the verb would produce a non-cohesive text, or it would be perceived as incomplete sentence or a false start. the translation of substitution and ellipsis in arabic subtitling 147 6.2.3. translation of clausal ellipsis the kind of clausal ellipsis found in our data is the one that involves interrogative clauses which are categorized by halliday and hasan (1976, pp. 206–215) under rejoinders to seek confirmation and have the form of interrogative clauses with propositional ellipsis, i.e., question tags at the end of a declarative or imperative clause. all occurrences of clausal ellipsis except one are translated into tag questions that involve substitution to refer to the previous elliptical statement in the st. (25) st: a. my daughter jane is a splendid dancer, is she not? b. she is indeed (pride and prejudice) tt: a. ي الرقص، أليس كذلك؟ ي )جاين( مذهلة ف ,my daughter [jane] is an amazing dancer) ابننر is it not as such?) b. بالتأكيد (certainly) in this example, there are two cases of clausal ellipsis occurring in rejoinders where the complement is elided. in the first one, the translator adopted a direct translation by a fixed arabic short interrogative structure كذلك أليس (is it not as such). this is a formal correspondence approach, a procedure to preserve the rhetorical purpose of assertion. the tt features a substitution of the previous clause although according to traditional arabic grammar, كذلك (as such) is a prepositional phrase that refers to an omitted phrase indicating the previous clause. the interpretation of the first example can be ي ي مذهلة )جاين( ابننر ي مذهلة هي أليست الرقص، ف الرقص؟ ف (my daughter [jane] is an amazing dancer, is she not an amazing dancer?). the tl tag question deletes she and is of the st, making it a more general question that applies to any kind of statement. the translation could abandon the st structure and merge both parts (the statement and the tag question) into one interrogative in arabic that is shorter and more natural: ي أليست ي مذهلة )جاين( ابننر الرقص؟ ف (is my daughter [jane] not an amazing dancer?). the second case of clausal ellipsis occurs in the response she is indeed. whereas an affirmative response of نعم (yes) could be given, the translation provided instead an arabic counterpart of ‘indeed’ which is part of an elliptical sentence. the tt deletes she is and involves ellipsis of the clause ي مذهلة هي الرقص ف where the full response is ي مذهلة هي بالتأكيد لرقصا ف (indeed she is an amazing dancer). what helped in having ellipsis here, creating successful communication, is the information that can be retrieved from the previous line (index). it is worth noting that this is one case (of only two) of ellipsis used in the subtitles examined here (see example 28). however, this is optional as the translation could have given a full sentence, but for brevity and condensity, ellipses is opted for. in the two examples below, the questions in the sts are rejoinders to the statements that aim at providing the rhetorical purpose of assertion or provide confirmation. subtitles translated the tag journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 148 questions as أليس كذلك (is it not as such) which is the most common form of translation for tag questions used by translators, whereas صحيح (true/right) in example 28 below is a less common translation: (26) st: she gave up her life, didn't she? (possession) tt: لقد تخلت عن حياتها، أليس كذلك؟ (she gave up her life, is it not as such?) (27) st: this is a pleasant fiction, isn't it? (gladiator) tt: هذا تخيل جميل، أليس كذلك؟ (this is a beautiful imagination, is it not as such?) the function of tag questions is to keep a channel of communication open (halliday & hasan, 1976, p. 207). the unified translation using the interrogative structure contributes to the cohesiveness of the tts, conveys the meanings intended by the questions and adds an element of assertion, which. however, adopting one interrogative structure in tts to correspond to the function of two different tag questions in the sts results in levelling out the tts, i.e., providing one uniform translation for all kinds of tag questions. (28) st: you’re looking rather well, smith. been enjoying yourself, have you? (the new world) tt: تبدو بخب يا سميث، كنت تستمتع بوقتك، صحيح؟ (you look well, smith. you have been enjoying your time, right?) here, the operator been and the verb in the progressive enjoying are omitted in the st tag question. the subtitle corresponds to that feature and achieves the cohesive function in the tl. the word صحيح (true/right) is used as an interrogative element to compensate for not having a corresponding tl structure for the english tag question, referring anaphorically to what has been said earlier. this is, then, another case of clausal ellipsis in the tt with the full sentence being بوقتك؟ تستمتع كنت أصحيح (is it right that you have been enjoying your time?) (see example 25). the subtitle lacks an interrogative particle such as hamza. however, it is deleted due to frequent use, which is closer to spoken variety. we believe that this approach makes such tl structure recommended for the subtitling of small talk and casual conversation. the translation here has the merit of being shorter than the tag question form أليس كذلك (is it not as such) used in other subtitles. the examples of clausal ellipsis in english are all tag questions, which is a grammatical structure specific to the sl. such structure is originally uncommon or almost non-existent in the tl.2 this is rather modern usage in arabic, mainly as a by-product of translation and in response to sl formulation, by providing a calque translation. however, in arabic it can fall under استفهام التقرير 2 in the arabic premodern subcorpus, with more than 9 million words, there is only one occurrence of كذلك أليس (is it not as such masc) and only two of كذلك تأليس (is it not as such fem). see http:// arabicorpus.byu.edu the translation of substitution and ellipsis in arabic subtitling 149 (assertion interrogatives), which is about inviting the addressee to acknowledge and recognize what the speaker believes in (al-zarkašhy, n.d., vol. 2, p. 331; see also saḥraoui, 2005, p. 163). while the examples are translatable, they do not reflect the same rhetorical purpose as the ones in the sl. thus, translators opted for formal correspondence to preserve the rhetorical purpose of assertion. 7. conclusions the paper has examined how substitution and ellipsis in english texts are translated into arabic subtitles. the study findings show that through translation, the use of cohesive devices in subtitles departs from that in the sts. the analysis provided in the present paper demonstrates that translators altered most of st cohesive ties and maintained few of them. shifts are successful in the overwhelming majority of the cases discussed, i.e., they achieve the cohesive function of the tt and do not affect the meaning of st. as arabic prefers explicit relations (see johnstone, 1991) translations tend to state clearly the ties by mostly changing ellipsis and substitution into repetition, moving from grammatical into lexical cohesion. it is worth nothing that although some cases would be cohesive in arabic using ellipsis or substitution, translators used repetition instead. repetition as a cohesive device in arabic is pervasive in the translation of nominal substitution, verbal substitution, nominal ellipsis, and verbal ellipsis. repetition is cohesive (johnstone, 1991, p. 108), and it also enhances the readability of the text (de linde & kay, 1999, pp. 28–31) while substitution is used to translate substitution, mainly clausal substitutions, it is also used to recover ellipsis. the study has found that only two cases of ellipsis are translated as ellipsis in the subtitles, which seems to be a product of focusing on one element in the elliptical sentence rather than providing a yes/no response. otherwise, ellipsis is mainly rendered by means of repetition and substitution. using ellipsis and clausal substitution is in line with the brevity principle in subtitling. however, the translation of cohesive devices into repetition is against this principle, giving priority to tt cohesion and coherence. when ellipsis is recovered and translated into repetition, it runs counter to the condensation requirement of subtitling; however, cohesion is important in processing and understanding the tt and helps in making it coherent for the target audience. addition as a translation strategy of explicitation is opted for to serve as a cohesive tie in dealing with ellipsis, i.e., lexical elements are added in the translation to provide repetition, substitution and reference as cohesive devices. we can see that the deployment of these three devices in arabic subtitles serves as some kind of explicitation. moreover, in some cases, translators’ approach to use one formulation in arabic tend to level out the tts. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 150 references al-jurjāny, a. 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(1997). communication across cultures. exeter university press. holes, c. (1995). modern arabic: structures, functions and varieties. london: longman. the translation of substitution and ellipsis in arabic subtitling 151 johnstone, b. (1991). repetition in arabic discourse: paradigms, syntagms and the ecology of language. john benjamins. retrieved from proquest ebook central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/aus-ebooks/detail.action?docid=740285. kenworthy, d. et al. (producers), & michell, r. (director). (1999). notting hill [motion picture]. uk: polygram filmed entertainment et al. lazar, a. (producer), & junger, g. (director). (1999). 10 things i hate about you [motion picture]. usa: touchstone pictures et al. levinson, b. et al. (producers), & labute, n. (director). (2002). possession [motion picture]. usa: warner bros et al. leyvimam, a. et al. (producers), & marcks, g. (director). (2009). echelon conspiracy [motion picture]. usa: dark castle entertainment et al. luhrmann, b. et al. (producers), & luhrmann, b. (director). (2008). australia [motion picture]. australia: 20th century fox et al. pollack, s. et al. (producers), & gilroy, t. (director). (2007). michael clayton [motion picture]. usa: section eight et al. radclyffe, s. et al. (producers), & august, b. (director). (1998). les misérables [motion picture]. uk, germany and usa: mandalay entertainment et al. saḥraoui, m. (2005). al-tadāwiliya ʿinda al-ʿulamāʾ al-ʿarab [pragmatics from the perspective of classical arab scholars]. beirut: dār al-ṭaliʿah. wick, d. et al. (producers), & scott, r. (director). (2000). gladiator [motion picture]. uk and usa: universal pictures et al. 137 template files: the holy grail of subtitling panayota georgakopoulou  athena consultancy _________________________________________________________ abstract the use of english template files in the creation of multilanguage subtitles from the same source audio assets, typically english, was one of the greatest innovations in the subtitling industry at the turn of the century. it streamlined processes, eliminated duplication of work, reduced direct costs, improved timelines and facilitated the quality control of large volumes of subtitle files whilst expanding the pool of available translators to complete the work (georgakopoulou, 2006). template files became the cornerstone for the globalisation of the subtitling industry and, almost two decades since their inception, they are still a topic of debate among language service providers and subtitlers. the present paper is a descriptive work, presenting a set of guidelines originally devised by the present author at the turn of the century, and used in practice for almost a decade in the production of multilingual subtitling work, enhanced and improved upon by the very subtitlers that worked with them. it aims at providing a reference point for debate to researchers in the subtitling field, so as to further the ongoing discussion on interlingual subtitling quality, practices and standards. key words: subtitling, templates, norms, quality, audiovisual localisation, language service providers.  yota@athenaconsultancy.eu, https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9780-1813 citation: georgakopoulou, p. (2019). template files: the holy grail of subtitling. journal of audiovisual translation, 2(2), 137–160. editor(s): g.m. greco & a. jankowska received: september 19, 2019 accepted: december 6, 2019 published: december 31, 2019 copyright: ©2019 georgakopoulou. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license. this allows for unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 2 138 1. introduction template files have dominated the globalised audiovisual localisation industry since the dvd era, starting in the mid ’90s and used extensively as of the turn of the century. being a young phd researcher at the time of the dvd boom and eager to implement my learnings in dvd localisation, i decided to focus on subtitling templates, which i considered the holy grail of the subtitling industry (georgakopoulou, 2005). “holy grail” because templates helped language service providers (lsps) better manage multilanguage subtitling production, by enabling efficient quality assurance across files in multiple languages, while also cutting down production times and cost, and at the same time expanding the pool of freelance translators available to work on such files by simplifying their training (georgakopoulou 2006, 2009). “holy grail” also because of their elusive quality, as creating a template file suitable for translation into any given language would require substantial additional considerations to subtitling in a single language for a hearing audience. in fact, the quality and suitability of subtitling templates for a given project or language has been at the heart of the debate between subtitlers and lsps ever since their inception (o’hagan, 2005, p. 10; georgakopoulou, 2012, p. 81; artegiani & kapsaskis, 2014, pp. 420–421). despite the intense dialogue between practitioners and agencies in the industry, rather surprisingly, there has been limited research on the topic of templates in the academic community. kapsaskis (2011) and nikolić (2015) wrote on the repercussions of the template phenomenon that dominated the industry in the first decade of the 21st century, whilst artegiani and kapsaskis (2014) also performed a qualitative analysis of the impact of template files on translation decisions, but not much else has been published to date. this is justified to an extent, due to the fact that template guidelines are typically part of internal company documentation and not publicly available. as template files have been serving the purpose of an intermediary file to aid in multilanguage subtitle production, they did not become a deliverable requested by content owners until recently. hence, it is not surprising that not many such style guides on templates can be found online, with the notable exception of the guide supplied by netflix (n.d., a). after two decades of english-audio material dominating the multilanguage production chain at large lsps, who have been catering to the need for centralisation, security and quality assurance that major content owners demand, the industry is now shifting to non-english language production, again for a multilingual audience. this is bound to raise questions once again regarding the appropriateness and suitability of workflows employed for such work, especially where these are tailored around the use of pivot english source template files for the translation in any and all languages required in a project, irrespective of its source audio language. having worked on the first published set of template subtitling guidelines (georgakopoulou 2003), which were enriched and used for approximately a decade by professional subtitlers, i think it is appropriate to re-publicise them, accompanied by notes and examples collected over the years, so they can be referenced, discussed and questioned by researchers in the subtitling field, template files: the holy grail of subtitling 139 as the industry is moving on to a new, exciting era that is bound to question a lot of established subtitling norms. this paper is, as a result, written in a descriptive manner, showcasing a representative example of an industry practice that still holds strong today. it is not meant to be an analysis of the practice of template writing, a justification of the rules it presents, or contrasted with recent research on subtitling norms and conventions, as it would be impossible to do so within the word limit of this article. rather, the intention is for it to be used as a reference point in future discussions on current practices, so as to enable comparisons and the exploration of trends, as well as help shape new practices in an informed manner. 2. the history of template files template files first came about as a result of the need for multilanguage subtitle production for the same source material. the first traces of a template-based workflow in subtitling were found among subtitle files in scandinavian languages, as i concluded from my phd research (georgakopoulou 2003, pp. 246–250): subtitling providers catering to scandinavian audiences often used the swedish file they created as the basis for the creation of files in other scandinavian languages, largely retaining the subtitle segmentation and timing of the original swedish files. the fact that subtitling traditions among scandinavian countries were very similar certainly must have helped in this practice. the creation and use of spotting lists as templates by subtitling houses in workflows involving multiple subtitle stream creation was employed even before the dvd era, e.g., in corporate multilingual workflows (bywood, 2019). nikolić (2015) provides a useful analysis of the various types of template files in use in the industry today, many of which are created on the basis of the same workflow logic. with the advent of the dvd, lsps had to deal with the demands of content owners for large volume subtitling work in many languages simultaneously, reduced turnaround times for the completion of said projects, cost concerns, as well as security issues because of fears of piracy (georgakopoulou, 2006). the template methodology served all these purposes, as it helped achieve shorter project turnaround times through the reuse of subtitle timing information from source template files and also reduced the creation cost for the language versions required per project. templates also helped address the issue of multilanguage quality control (qc) of subtitle files from experts, typically linguists, who however did not necessarily speak all the target languages involved in a project, but who were fluent in the source english language and typically one or two other languages as well. the need for standardisation in multilanguage subtitle production, as well as security concerns were addressed with the centralisation of work in the hands of a handful select localisation service providers primarily located along the london – los angeles axis (georgakopoulou, 2003, pp. 208– 209; carroll, 2004). as no guidelines for the creation of template files existed at the dawn of the dvd era, lsps naturally experimented with different styles of subtitling until each created their own internal guidelines. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 2 140 some used english subtitle files for deaf and hard-of-hearing (sdh) as the basis, under the influence of itc’s (independent television commission, 1999) subtitling guidelines, since the lsps’ headquarters were located in the uk and, as a result, often staffed by subtitlers trained in uk’s hardof-hearing subtitling standards. eliminating hard-of-hearing elements from english subtitle files was the obvious thing to do to turn them into template files, and subtitle timings also needed to be adjusted so that sync would be with the dialogue rather than other sounds or shot changes, mimicking the style of translated subtitles that were the norm in traditionally subtitling countries. influenced by my phd research and on the receiving end of subtitle template files for translation into greek for a while, i embarked on drafting guidelines for subtitle template creation that our team of subtitlers would follow at the company i was working at the time, so that subtitle translation into other languages could be facilitated. i had read the code of good subtitling practice in ivarsson’s and carroll’s seminal book subtitling (1998) and i was investigating dialogue reduction from audio to the subtitles in several european languages as part of my phd, before the use of template files became the norm. i was interested in finding the golden mean so as to produce a template file that would be agnostic, a fair compromise among country-specific subtitling styles, which could easily be tailored to the norms and needs of each country if needed. i was also fortunate to be surrounded by colleagues from a good variety of language backgrounds and thus had the opportunity to debate template creation guidelines and their appropriateness for translation into swedish, norwegian, portuguese, dutch, greek, bulgarian and several other languages, thus indirectly taking into consideration a good representation of european subtitling country standards. the result was a set of guidelines that became part of my phd thesis (georgakopoulou, 2003), which were presented at conferences and later also published (georgakopoulou 2010), but more importantly used in practice, amplified by the various subtitlers that worked with them, resulting in thousands of subtitle files distributed internationally. 3. english template guidelines the present style guide builds on those earlier guidelines and includes further detail, especially as regards timing and reading speed issues, to exemplify the best practices followed for template file creation by a multilanguage subtitle service provider at the turn of the century. as traditional norms for subtitle (and thus template) file creation are questioned (perego, del missier, porta, mosconi, 2010; krejtz, szarkowska, & krejtz, 2013; szarkowska & gerber-morón, 2018), the present guide can provide topical information to serve as example in current discussions and comparative research on the topic. an english template file is a subtitle file in english, meant to be used as the basis for translation into other languages, which may follow different linguistic conventions. as such, it seeks a compromise between different national styles of subtitling and is meant to aid the translator in focusing on the translation aspect of his/her job without being distracted by the timing of individual subtitles. template files: the holy grail of subtitling 141 english template files are typically used in work involving english source audio assets, however they have also extensively been used as a pivot language in the case of non-english language pair combinations; this style guide addresses the creation of files from english source audio assets. although it is possible that template files are amended for timing at translation stage to best fit the chosen translation, this style guide assumes a strict template workflow, i.e., one in which translators are not allowed to manipulate the timings or the number of subtitles in the file they are translating, which are to remain identical in all language versions created out of a single template file, thus facilitating quality control and highlighting the importance of a well-crafted template file. the style guide is meant to inform the practice of experienced subtitlers, i.e., people that have already mastered the art of timing and transcription of dialogue from audio, and who are familiar with various subtitling or captioning styles and guides, such as ofcom’s code on television access services (2017), the bbc subtitle guidelines (2018), the captioning key (dcmp, n.d.) and ebu-tech i44-2004 (2004). as such, settings like number of lines per subtitle (typically two), number of characters per line (the file format required may impose its own limitations, such as 32 characters for closed captions and 37 for teletext, while 42 is most frequently used for open subtitles), font colour, style and size (white fonts without serifs are typically used, such as arial), etc. are not explained or discussed further. the latter vary per project anyway, whereas the guidelines below are written so as to be valid irrespective of what these settings may be. finally, this style guide is written in a prescriptive manner but its rules are not absolute. it is understood that there may be occasions where the complex plot information one is required to convey in the subtitles overrides some of the rules presented here. 3.1. timing the subtitles a template file is (usually) addressed to a hearing audience. although there are situations involving the translation of sdh subtitles into other languages, in which sdh-styled templates need to be utilised, templates are most frequently used in contexts involving hearing audiences in multiple languages. accurate timing is crucial for the creation of high-quality subtitles, i.e., determining the exact moment when a subtitle should appear on screen (in-time) and disappear from view (out-time). translation templates need to be timed in sync with the audio and, therefore, sdh conventions that bring subtitles in to shot changes, even if the character only speaks a second later, are not acceptable. also, it is not the onset of sound that should trigger off a subtitle as in sdh files, but the onset of actual speech. if a character laughs, coughs or makes any other noise before s/he actually speaks, the subtitle should not appear until the first word is uttered. hearing audiences can hear if subtitles are out of sync with the audio so, unless shot changes are an issue, as will be explained below, journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 2 142 a subtitle should come in on the same frame as a character starts speaking and come out when s/he has stopped speaking. it is recommended that subtitles in template files are timed back-to-back to provide a smooth viewing experience, but also so as to give the subtitles ample reading time, which will be needed for the translation in other languages. thus, subtitles in a sequence are usually contiguous, as are captions, unless there is a gap of over 20 frames in the dialogue. if the gap is less than 20 frames and does not cross a shot change, it is recommended that it is closed in order for the subtitles to be timed back-to-back, observing a set minimum subtitle separation which should be consistent throughout the file. an exception to this rule would be if a shot change intervened between the two subtitles, e.g., if a subtitle ended on a shot change whereas the following subtitle begun 15 frames in. such subtitles would typically be timed to audio, though for a translation template it may be advisable to close the gap between such subtitles as well, by extending the out-time of the first to cross the shot change and come up to one frame before the time-in of the second, so as to allow for more reading time. when, on the other hand, the slow pace of dialogue allows for a gap between the subtitles or there is a dramatic pause that needs to be conveyed, it is recommended that the separation between subtitles is a minimum of 12 frames (half a second). finally, where no other subtitle follows immediately afterwards, a subtitle should not be taken off as soon as people have stopped speaking, as it may appear abrupt to the audience; it is best that there is at least a beat before the subtitle comes off. delaying the time off of the subtitle in such cases also amplifies its reading time. the proposed timing settings are the ones below:  minimum duration of a subtitle: 1 second minimum durations down to 12 frames have been observed in the industry, but rarely below.  maximum duration of a subtitle: 7 seconds 6 or 7 seconds is the most common industry setting, with the exception of songs that can stay on the screen for as long as the lyrics are being sung.  minimum separation between subtitles: 1 frame 2, 3 or even 4 frames are also very common; 4 frames is stipulated by the code of good subtitling practice (ivarsson & carroll, 1998). template files: the holy grail of subtitling 143 3.1.1. deviation from sync ideally, subtitles will appear in perfect sync with the dialogue as outlined above. if pressed for time, however, it is possible to ‘borrow’ time before or after the speech so as to maximise reading time. where there is no previous subtitle, it is possible to bring in a subtitle a little early. this is a practice to be generally avoided, but when necessary it is recommended to bring the subtitle in ahead of speech by no more than 7 frames or it may be noticeable to the viewer and could create confusion as to the identity of the speaker. where there is no subtitle following the speech, it is possible to extend the out-time of a subtitle by up to a second for readability purposes.1 in flowing speech, where subtitles are contiguous, the maximum deviation from sync should be 12 frames (forward or back). such leniency should be applied only to gain a clear advantage in readability, i.e., that a subtitle can contain a complete sentence or clauses of a sentence, which would not otherwise be possible, and so awkward splits can be avoided. 3.1.2. shot changes the aim when timing subtitles is to synchronise them with speech, however difficulties are encountered around shot changes. as a rule of thumb, shot changes are to be respected when timing subtitles, as “[s]ubtitles that are allowed to over-run shot changes can cause considerable perceptual confusion” (itc, 1999, p. 12). the importance of shot changes though is generally lesser than that of ample reading time and appropriate subtitle breaks that make the reading of the subtitles effortless and faster for the viewer. thus, cases of subtitles carried over shot changes are not rare in practice, especially as modern filmography makes more use of frequent shot changes. below are some handy rules so as to avoid the flashing effect of subtitles around shot changes:  the one-second minimum duration of subtitles must always be respected.  if a subtitle is to be carried over a shot change and its time-in or time-out is up to 6 frames either side of a shot change, it is advisable to ‘snap’ such time-in or time-out to the shot change.  if a subtitle needs to be carried over a shot change so that it has enough time to be read, move its in-time and/or out-time so that is it at least 12 frames from the shot change. this is frequent in two-way conversations, where the audio is ahead of the shot change and the film cuts between the speakers. 1 the netflix english template guide (n.d., a) states a 12-frame maximum, or half a second. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 2 144  if a subtitle is to come out on a shot change and there is no subtitle following it, it is advisable to bring it out 2 frames before the shot change, so that it does not give viewers the impression of hanging on.  if a subtitle is to come out on a shot change and the subtitle following it is more than 6 frames after the shot change, it is recommended to increase the gap between the subtitles, so that they don’t flash (e.g., bring the first one out 2 frames before the shot change and the second in when the character starts speaking). 3.2. editing – helping the translator the definition of a template is that it is to be used as a base file for translation into other languages. despite the fact that different percentages are quoted as to the exact degree of expansion when translating from english into other languages, it is generally agreed that considerable text expansion takes place when translating from english into most european languages.2 as a result, a full two-liner in english loaded with information that cannot be omitted, such as nouns and uncommon or culturalspecific abbreviations cannot always be rendered easily in other languages as expansion will almost certainly have to be involved as part of the translation process. full lines should thus be avoided in english template files, especially in two-liners. it is also recommended to always give a subtitle the maximum time possible, especially where many nouns are involved, as the latter are particularly difficult for translators to edit. in the following example, the subtitle has enough time to be easily read in english, but the fact that it consists of a main and a secondary clause, however short, and includes an acronym could make it very tricky to find an adequate rendering in most languages. a higher duration should be given to such a subtitle to ensure it will have ample reading time when translated in other languages as well. (1) 11:34:58:01 11:35:00:00 reports say it’s sol. not every sound needs to be subtitled. internationally recognisable features, such as exclamations and information that can be deducted from body and facial expressions, may easily be omitted. this is due to what is known as the “feedback effect” of film (nedergaard-larsen, 1993, p. 214) and is based on the fact that subtitles are added to the original production and, as such, do not need 2 indicative lsp sites quoting expansion percentages from english into other languages (and vice versa) are: kwintessential (n.d.); arancho doc (2017); andiamo (2019). there is guidance on this topic by w3c (ishida, 2007), while ibm includes relevant instructions in its knowledge center (n.d.) regarding expansion allowances that should be made available when translating from english. template files: the holy grail of subtitling 145 to reproduce the information that is already covered in the visuals or the soundtrack. (this same phenomenon can cause problems in the opposite scenario, i.e., when the visuals or soundtrack provide information that is contrasting to the target language audience’s knowledge and culture and this dissonance needs to be mediated in the subtitles.) easily omittable items from the audio to the subtitles are shown in the list below, which was inspired by marleau’s classification (1982, pp. 278–279) and newmark’s advice on redundancy and clichés (1995, p. 208):  repetitions;  names in appellative constructions;  false starts / ungrammatical constructions;  certain internationally known words, such as “yes” and “no;  expression followed by gestural language to denote salutation, politeness, affirmation, negation, surprise, telephone responses, etc.;  exclamations;  phatic phrases, such as “naturally”, “of course”, “understandably”, repeated implied superlatives (“basically”, “fundamentally”), prepositional phrases (“in view of the fact that”), rhetorical flourishes, sonorous phrases. (georgakopoulou, 2003, p. 216) if it’s irrelevant or obvious – leave it out! this simple rule of thumb goes back to the feedback effect of film (regarding the ‘obvious’ part) and constitutes a subtitler’s core technique when it comes to editing down text. this is the very logic behind the cases below as well.  there is no need to subtitle stuttering and hesitation for a hearing audience; hard-of-hearing audiences need such information, however hearing audiences have access to it in the dialogue track.  no need to subtitle exclamations like “oh!” and “aah!” for the same reason. however, it would be advisable to subtitle “oh dear” or “o lord”. “hey!” as an exclamation to attract someone’s attention does not need to be subtitled, but when it is a substitute for “hi” it is advisable to include it, e.g., “hey, honey, i’m home!”.  non-verbal utterances should also be left out when subtitling. an exception would be the phrase “pretty, huh?”, where the “huh” is necessary to indicate the type of question, i.e., “isn’t she pretty?” rather than “is she pretty?”.  names should be subtitled if they are not well-known to the audience, for the first couple of times they are spoken, as it is not always obvious which words are names in other languages. it is good practice to introduce all names in the subtitles and leave them out in subsequent occasions.  music. songs need not be subtitled unless specifically requested or if it is necessary to translate something sung in order for the audience to understand what comes after it. for example, if someone on screen is singing an entire song, leave it out. if someone bursts into a song in the middle of a conversation and only sings a line, this may need to be translated journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 2 146 if there is a reference in the dialogue to what has just been sung. such plot-pertinent songs are typically sung to camera. it is recommended to use a symbol to indicate song lyrics, such as the music note if supported, or hash. use a capital at the beginning of every song line, but do not use full stops or commas at the end of song lines, however commas can be used within the lyric lines if needed. question marks and exclamation marks may also be used as needed. 3.2.1. reading speed reading speed is one of the most important settings in a subtitle file, as it determines the amount of text that can fit in the subtitles for the viewers to be able to read them. thus, different reading speed settings are used depending on the audience, with subtitle files created for children having lower reading speeds than those addressed to adults. different countries also follow different norms in terms of subtitle reading speed, and hence the amount of dialogue that is represented in the subtitles differs from country to country, with traditionally subtitling countries in europe showing a strong preference for lower reading speeds than traditionally dubbing ones (georgakopoulou, 2003, pp. 274–278). reading speed is traditionally measured in characters per second (cps), characters per minute (cpm) or words per minute (wpm), where a “word” in english is defined as 5 characters on average, including spaces and punctuation.3 the difference between the time-in and time-out of a subtitle is the subtitle’s duration. the latter, in combination with the reading speed setting applied to a specific file, determines how much text it is advisable for a subtitle to contain, so as to ensure there is enough time for the viewers to read it. research has shown that reading text on the screen is considerably slower than reading text on printed paper, approximately 20–30% slower according to dillon (1992).4 reading time should be further maximised in template files, due to the expansion inherent when translating from english to other languages. it is thus recommended that the reading speed used in template files does not exceed 750 cpm (12.5 cps; 150 wpm). in particularly fast-paced 3 however it is an imprecise metric as not all words can be read in a time proportional to their length – word frequencies make a difference, as does syntax (discussed below) and also the video element that allows a viewer to spend more or less time on the subtitles depending on how much action is taking place on the screen. the use of this traditional subtitling metric is currently questioned in a relevant discussion among subtitle professionals on twitter (sokoli, 2019). between the two metrics, cps/cpm versus wpm, martí ferriol (2013) has shown that cps/cpm is more accurate across languages. 4 more recent research on print versus screen reading speeds would be interesting, as reading habits are changing over time with the effect of technology. some studies on subtitle reading speeds listed in section 4 indicate an increase in the tolerance of higher reading speeds among viewers. template files: the holy grail of subtitling 147 scenes, reading speed can be increased exceptionally up to 900 cpm, i.e., 15 cps or 180 wpm, if needed. however, keeping subtitles in sync may still be problematic, so it may also be necessary to edit the dialogue on behalf of the translator in order to allow for additional reading time. this technique is meant to help the translator, irrespective of whether the latter may well have to edit further anyway. breaks also affect the audience’s reading speed, so that awkward line breaks and particularly subtitle breaks may disrupt the reading process (itc, 1999, p. 8–9). the better a subtitle file is chunked into subtitle units and separate subtitle lines, on the basis of syntax and semantics, as explained in the section below, the greater the reading speed, as reading is facilitated (itc, 1999, p. 8–9). 3.2.2. syntax adherence to syntactic rules helps the audience process textual information easier. thus it is better for the viewers but also for the translator if subtitles contain entire sentences. an ideal subtitle is sentence-long. when dealing with more sentences within a single subtitle, it is recommended they are placed in separate subtitle lines, unless they are too short. if a sentence needs to be split, it is recommended that this is done in up to three consecutive subtitles, as it is hard for audiences to retain information further back than that. in general, it is good practice to create fuller subtitles with a longer duration, as opposed to more, shorter subtitles with a short duration. the latter are harder to translate well, and they also require more of an effort by the viewer to read, according to brondeel (1994, p. 28). if sentences have to be split over two or more subtitles, it is important that this is done in a way that takes semantics into consideration, as this will increase the audience’s reading speed, subtitle comprehension and overall film enjoyment.5 such a split is called a subtitle break. as different languages use different sentence structures to english, awkward splits can cause problems, whereas subtitle breaks at the clause level facilitate both translation and readability. if subtitle breaks cannot be achieved at the clause level, then it is important to try and retain entire phrases, e.g., noun phrases, prepositional phrases, etc. within the same subtitle. 5 keeping semantic units together has always been one of the cardinal rules of interlingual subtitling; one can read further on this in ivarsson & carroll (1998, pp. 76–78) and díaz-cintas & remael (2007, pp. 172– 180). journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 2 148 for example, the two subtitles below (examples 2 and 3) may reflect the pauses the speaker makes in the audio, but for translation they are preferable as a single subtitle in order to form a complete sentence, or alternatively split after “fair” so that each subtitle contains an entire clause. (2) i’m going to the fair and i’m going to buy a strawberry ice-cream! (3) i’m going to the fair and i’m going to buy a strawberry ice-cream! as one cannot possibly know what is appropriate syntactically in other languages, equivalence can be achieved more easily in larger syntactical structures, i.e., entire sentences, clauses and noun or verb phrases, which should preferably be kept within the same subtitle. conjunctions usually provide a natural split for subtitle breaks. for example, the subtitles below are read and translated easier if split as in (5). (4) 11:05:32:02 11:05:34:23 announce a state of emergency and arrest all members 11:05:34:24 11:05:38:10 of the executive council. break their chain of command. (5) 11:05:32:02 11:05:36:06 announce a state of emergency and arrest all members of the council. 11:05:36:07 11:05:38:10 break their chain of command. template files: the holy grail of subtitling 149 in the following example editing down helps retain a clearer syntactic structure across subtitles: (6) 10:22:55:13 10:22:58:16 although you’re under 15 if you get more than 50 10:22:58:17 10:23:02:10 penalty points on your record, you go to the regular courts. (7) 10:22:55:13 10:23:00:09 although you’re under 15, if you get more than 50 penalty points, 0:23:00:10 10:23:02:10 you’re sent to the regular courts. though not as critical as subtitle breaks, line breaks, i.e., breaks within a subtitle from the top to the bottom line, can also ease reading and help viewers understand subtitles faster. very much like subtitle breaks, line breaks should also be made at the highest syntactic node possible. common mistakes to be avoided include separating articles or adjectives from the nouns they accompany, prepositions from the prepositional phrases they introduce, splitting proper noun phrases, etc. punctuation is typically a good guide as to where to insert a line or subtitle break, as in most cases it will ensure semantic units are kept together. in the examples below the optimal line breaks are the ones in (9). (8) you’ll all be surprised when you see what i accomplished. i really hope that the teacher will not be late again this time. it’s incredible, i would have never recognised him. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 2 150 (9) you’ll all be surprised when you see what i accomplished. i really hope that the teacher will not be late again this time. it’s incredible, i would have never recognised him. simplifying syntax also helps viewers process a subtitle faster. although a variety of syntactic structures may be possible in different languages, the most common word order is preferred as it is simpler and thus easier to read: subject-verb-object. canonical forms are generally shorter and simpler to read, argues karamitroglou (1998), and hence they should be preferred in subtitles. one such example is the preference of active over passive voice, which also tends to be more concise and this helps reduce character count in the subtitles. this is a technique recommended specifically for interlingual subtitles, where translation takes place, and as such can be employed in the case of template files too, but not in sdh files where viewers are likely to lip-read. (10) original voice track: one thing people never ought to be when they’re buying used cars is in a hurry. it is reported by many students that the course is particularly hard. (11) english template file: people never ought to be in a hurry when buying used cars many students report that the course is particularly hard. template files: the holy grail of subtitling 151 3.3. formatting the subtitles 3.3.1. dialogue subtitles ideally contain a single speaker’s speech, but when two speakers need to be combined in a single subtitle, then each speaker’s speech should be strictly placed on a separate subtitle line and preceded by a dialogue dash. dialogue dashes are either consistently followed or not by a space, depending on the style chosen. dialogues can present a particularly problematic case in subtitling when the bulk of the information load rests on one of the two dialogue lines and expansion is not possible into a second line (as is the norm in some countries). the original needs to be restructured in such cases, as per the example below (georgakopoulou, 2003, p. 212): (12) 01:56:55:18 01:57:00:21 – sunset? no! i mean, it’s very late. – what? the possible alternatives are: 1. splitting the subtitle in two subtitles. 2. omitting the dialogue in the translation and translate the first line only. 3. omitting ‘sunset’ from line 1. 3.3.2. punctuation an old and widely used subtitling convention is the use of continuation and linking dots to indicate that a sentence continues from one subtitle to the next. while continuation dots are still used to a large extent in some countries, their use has been reduced over the years, and linking dots are a rare occurrence, while audiences are now largely conditioned not to rely on them. in the benefits of saving space, and as viewers are able to deduct that a sentence has not finished by the proper use of sentence end punctuation marks, it is recommended that neither continuation nor linking dots are used in template files. they can be inserted, if needed, in the translation files. suspension dots (ellipsis) are however used to indicate speech trailing off, a pause in the speech, or speech picking up mid-sentence. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 2 152 3.3.3. italics italics are used to indicate speech that is coming from a source that is not visible on the screen. common examples of the use of italics are for voice over speech, tv/radio speech, announcements at stations/airports, telephone responses where the person at the other end of the line is not visible, etc. italics should be applied to complete sentences only; if the speaker comes into vision at any point of the dialogue/scene, then italics are not needed. italics are also commonly used for:  single words or short phrases in a third language (l3) that have been transliterated rather than translated in the subtitles.6.  song lyrics, when subtitled.  book, film, album and programme titles, though song titles are usually presented in quotes. 3.3.4. positioning subtitles cover a significant part of the screen and as such it is best to have the largest load of text at the very bottom of the screen, where less action is taking place. template subtitles are typically placed at the bottom of the screen and centred, with the exception of dialogues which are centred and left justified (in left-to-right languages). thus, assuming syntax allows for it, it is best to keep the second line of a subtitle fuller than the first, and to place one-liners at the very bottom of the screen (where the second line would be placed in the case of a two-liner). when there is principal photography on screen, however, e.g., newspaper text, or captions burnt-in on the screen, e.g., “london, 1941”, “john smith: producer”, then one must take care that the subtitle text does not cover the on-screen text. in such cases, subtitles should be raised either just above the on-screen text or to the top of the screen. such subtitles are called raised subtitles. it is recommended to raise subtitles to the top of the screen in the case of template files. when doing so, the distribution of text in the subtitles should again follow the logic of placing the bulk of the text towards the edges of the screen where there is less action, i.e., the top line should be fuller than the bottom one in the case of raised subtitles. 6 for a detailed analysis on the use of l3 in subtitles, see corrius & zabalbeascoa (2011). template files: the holy grail of subtitling 153 3.3.5. forced narratives when text appears on the screen as part of principal photography, e.g., newspaper text, signs, letters, etc. or as captions burnt-in on the screen, e.g., date and time or location stamps, such text also needs to be subtitled and translated if plot pertinent. for example, you do not need to add a subtitle to translate the word “restaurant” when a character is running past a restaurant on screen and this makes no difference to the plot. on the other hand, it is likely to be necessary to add a subtitle for the word “police” if a character goes into a police station, or reads a note saying “back in five minutes”. such subtitles are known as forced narratives. this is because forced subtitles will need to appear (to be “forced”) on a dub track in the target language as well, as such text would not normally be covered in the dubbed dialogue. it is important to mark forced narratives as such in a subtitle file, e.g., using a note or annotation or special commands in your subtitling software, as it may be necessary to also deliver a forced subtitle stream separately to the end client if one is needed for the dub track of the same film. forced narratives are typically timed to match the on-screen text, and also copy its punctuation and case style. it is recommended, however, that forced narratives which appear in between consecutive dialogue, e.g., the phrase “john smith: producer” appearing on screen in the middle of a character’s speech, are typed in all caps so they stand out from the dialogue that surrounds them. the exception to this rule is when there is a large block of text on the screen, such as the exposition or the epilogue of the film, in which case it is best to use sentence case for readability. forced narratives need only be subtitled once, even if they appear on the video recurrently (e.g., the name of a producer in an interview). when there is dialogue running consecutively over forced text and it is necessary to subtitle the forced text (if not, the dialogue always takes precedence), then it is allowable to go out of sync in order to include the forced narrative and give it a minimum duration. a forced narrative should never be combined with dialogue in the same subtitle. text in a third language (l3) in the dialogue is only meant to be subtitled in a template file (so that it is translated in all the target languages) if it is subtitled in the original version of the film, so as to follow the director’s intent and create the same effect to the target audience as for the source audience. such subtitles are also considered forced narratives and need to be flagged as such. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 2 154 3.3.6. checklists a template creation task is not complete until the following accompanying documents have been prepared: an italics list, a raised subtitles list, a forced subtitles list, and a names & notes list. all these lists are particularly useful when performing a qc of the ensuing translated files across multiple languages, even without knowledge of said target languages. the first three types of lists have already been discussed. a names & notes list would include all proper names in a video, properly checked for spelling against the credits, script, official website, imdb, halliwell’s, or other available source, and including information such as a person’s sex if not obvious from the film, so this can be taken into account when translating. information about song lyrics can also be included here, as well as notes regarding the relationship between film characters, especially in the case of series, where different episodes may be translated by different translators and, hence, it would be important in some languages to determine the familiarity level between characters so as to use appropriate politeness markers in the translation. other translation notes are explanations designed to help the translator better understand the source dialogue, by providing useful information regarding the use of slang, dialect or cultural references in the subtitles that would be difficult for a non-native speaker to be familiar with. frequently this is information that can also be found in the film script, if available. 4. discussion as already mentioned in the introduction, the motivation for writing this paper is to contribute to the ongoing discussion regarding quality and standards in subtitling by providing one additional source of reference, specifically for the creation of template files, which is a topic that remains underresearched to date. template files have, out of necessity, become a representation of a golden mean between varying subtitling practices and norms, favouring the ease of production and quality assurance of increasingly larger volumes of content, whilst trying to allow for regional variation to the extent possible. the language-specific subtitling guidelines published by netflix (n.d., b) are a good representative example of this process in practise, by standardising aspects such as characters per line and subtitle reading speed, while allowing for regional treatment in formatting issues of subtitles, such as the use of dialogue dashes and italics. despite their predominance in today’s market, templates are still relatively unpopular among some groups of professional subtitlers and unions, mainly because of financial concerns, but also for reasons of quality (artegiani & kapsaskis, 2014; nikolić, 2015), which are worth examining further, as specifications are being revisited. with the developments in the entertainment industry and the over-the-top (ott) distribution of content in any country and language, as well as the possibilities offered by online communication, template files: the holy grail of subtitling 155 modern subtitling software and tools applied to subtitling research, such as eye-trackers, we are noticing today a rekindled discussion on subtitling norms and the questioning of long established practices. some examples are: the study by perego et al. (2010) on subtitle processing, which goes against the cardinal rule of subtitling for line segmentation; the analysis of the effects of crossing shot changes on subtitle re-reading by krejtz et al. (2013), which shows that viewers are not induced to re-reading subtitles that go over shot changes, but also points to a higher number of gaze shifts from the subtitles to the image in such instances, a factor that would affect reading speed; szarkowska’s and gerber-morón’s (2018) empirical work on the appropriateness of the famous sixsecond rule for subtitle readability; or their empirical verification of the rule about subtitle layout with respect to syntax (gerber-morón & szarkowska, 2018).7 such reception studies are extremely important in order to better define the needs of today’s global audiences, which may have evolved and diverged from those catered for by national subtitling practices of the previous century as a result of technological innovation, exposure to and processing of vast amounts of audiovisual information, and conditioning to practices that promote homogenisation, such as subtitling workflows involving template files for translation purposes. the most notable difference in the specifications laid out for template file creation in section 3 above as compared to current practices by global lsps providing subtitles in multiple languages, is the subtitle reading speed setting analysed in section 3.2.1. the 1999 itc standards for subtitling of pre-recorded programmes for adults in the uk recommended a reading speed of 140 wpm (or roughly 12 cps). this was later revised by ofcom to 160–180 wpm (or roughly 13–15 cps) to reflect an increase in the audience’s reading abilities, which was corroborated with a relevant study (2005),8 and it remains ofcom’s (2017) and the bbc’s (2018) recommendation to date. this was also the standard loosely followed when drafting the present guide albeit for interlingual subtitles, which stipulates a reading speed of 150 wpm or 12.5 cps, with an allowable increase to 180 wpm or 15 cps in exceptional cases. this setting was verified in practice at the time, against locallyproduced subtitle assets in a variety of european languages, and was shown to represent the average of the reading speeds applied in the sample files examined (georgakopoulou, 2003, pp. 274–278). such reading speeds are also in line with traditions in france, spain and germany (mikul, 2014, p. 25) 7 reception studies are also being carried out on the effects of innovative subtitling practices commonly used by fansubbers, which may also shed interesting light on today’s audiences’ reception capacities – see künzli & ehrensberger-dow (2011), as quoted in van tonder (2015). 8 the study performed by ofcom was on deaf and hard-of-hearing participants, and intralingual subtitles. nevertheless, its results could also be loosely applied to hearing interlingual audiences, who also “rely more heavily on subtitles” – “speed is much more of an issue because if they cannot read them fast enough they will literally lose the plot” (ofcom, 2005). the comments of the participants and the results of the study regarding the issue of increasing subtitling speeds are of particular interest to those wishing to investigate this issue further. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 2 156 as well as in scandinavian countries (pedersen, 2011, p. 133).9 still, a lot of subtitling today, especially when produced in a centralised manner with a template workflow, is much closer to american standards of verbatim captions, with reading speeds above 200 wpm or 17 cps being the norm rather than an exception. for example, the netflix partner help centre specifies a reading speed of 20 cps (approx. 240 wpm) for adult programmes and 17 cps for children when it comes to english templates and sdh files (n.d., a), and 17 and 13 cps respectively for most other languages for interlingual subtitles (n.d., b). this is a striking difference to the reading speed recommended for use in english template files in the previous decade. it is also the cause for a lot of debate. the danish subtitlers’ association, for instance, recently published a set of subtitling guidelines for denmark, which are endorsed by the most prominent players in the danish subtitling industry (forum for billedmedieoversættere, 2019); they specify 10–15 cps (120–180 wpm) as the reading speed standard in the country and encourage everyone involved in danish subtitling production to respect it. on the other hand, the bbc r&d published a white paper (sandford, 2015) on the impact of subtitle display rate on the enjoyment of television programmes, that speaks for higher reading speeds in sdh viewers, a tolerance as high as 242 wpm before the viewers started having difficulty to follow the programme and concludes that speed is not an issue if the subtitles follow the rhythm of natural speech. a similar finding was reported by szarkowska and gerber-morón for hearing viewers (2018), who show that audiences are able to keep up with higher reading speeds, such as 20 cps, and even report re-reading of slower paced subtitles at 12 cps. finally, jean-louis kruger (2019), at a keynote speech he delivered at the 8th media for all conference, spoke about studies performed on the topic of visual perception and skilled reading, and how audiences consume subtitled audiovisual material. he concluded that appropriate subtitle presentation speed is much more complex than simply counting words: word frequencies and word length also make a difference in viewers’ reading speed, for instance, but other filmic elements, such as sound, are also factors in subtitle processing. clearly reading speed is a topic that lends itself to research, thus new reception studies would be welcome in order to shed more light on the debate and help foster audience-friendly subtitling standards. 9 romero-fresco (2009) provides an excellent analysis of reading speed for sdh viewers and how this compares to the respeaking rate used in the uk for live intralingual subtitles. his analysis includes a section on reading speed research, including the findings of d’ydewalle, rensbergen and pollet (1987) on the subtitle reading speed of hearing adults and the history of the famous ”six second rule” (romero-fresco, 2009, p. 114). template files: the holy grail of subtitling 157 5. conclusion this paper is a detailed presentation of a subtitling style guide used for the creation of english template files and practiced for approximately a decade, one of the few to be published to date. it is meant to serve as an example of best practice followed by a multilanguage subtitle service provider at the turn of the century and to be compared to the style guides in use today, so that it contributes to the ongoing debate about subtitling quality and practice, and highlights areas where research is necessary. the most important such area has been identified as the reading speed settings in use today and how well they cater to the needs of local audiences. more research on this topic would be most welcome. acknowledgements this work would not have been completed without the contribution of multiple subtitlers i had the privilege to work with at the european captioning institute and who i learned from. they helped refine the present rules on the practice of english template file creation and produced some of the best subtitle template files i have come across. this paper is dedicated to them – thank you all! references andiamo (2019). how much will your text expand or contract? retrieved from https://www.andiamo.co.uk/resources/expansion-and-contraction-factors/ arancho doc (2017). text expansion & contraction chart. uploaded 2017, july. retrieved from http://www.aranchodoc.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/text-expansion-contractionchart3.png artegiani, i., & kapsaskis, d. 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(2019, may 21). on #subtitling quality: when will we stop measuring readability just by counting characters per second? message posted to https://twitter.com/stavroulasokoli/status/1130940807735857152 szarkowska, a., & gerber-morón, o. (2018). viewers can keep up with fast subtitles: evidence from eye movements. plos one, 13(6), e0199331. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0199331 van tonder, l. c. (2015). fansubbing and creative subtitling – how amateur approaches can help improve professional products. south african translators’ institute – second triennial conference: the changing face of translation and interpreting. kempton park, south africa. retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/16564660/fansubbing_and_creative_subtitling_how_amateur_ approaches_can_help_improve_professional_products about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank 8 five things you wanted to know about audiovisual translation research, but were afraid to ask agnieszka szarkowska institute of applied linguistics, university of warsaw centre for translation studies, university college london piotr wasylczyk faculty of physics, university of warsaw faculty of engineering sciences, university college london _________________________________________________________ abstract young researchers often encounter questions, problems and hurdles at the early stages of their careers that relate to areas (apparently) outside their core subject. these may span from selecting the research topic and methodology to publishing strategies and identifying the position of audiovisual translation research in a wider framework of the fast-changing academic world. drawing on our experience in audiovisual translation and natural sciences research, we address some of these issues in a way we wish someone had done for us many years ago. key words: audiovisual translation, research, subtitling, publishing, media accessibility  a.szarkowska@uw.edu.pl; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0048-993x  pwasylcz@uw.edu.pl; https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0851-9838 citation: szarkowska, a., & wasylczyk, p. (2018). five things you wanted to know about audiovisual translation research but were afraid to ask. journal of audiovisual translation, 1(1), 8-25. editor(s): a. jankowska & p. romerofresco received: january 22, 2018 accepted: june 30, 2018 published: november 15, 2018 copyright: ©2018 szarkowska & wasylczyk. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license. this allows for unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0048-993x https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0851-9838 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0048-993x https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0851-9838 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ five things you wanted to know about audiovisual translation research, but were afraid to ask 9 dear young researcher, we hope our letter finds you well. we are sorry to hear that your paper on audiovisual translation has recently been rejected from one of the top translation studies journals. it happened to nearly all of us. one of us has recently received the following response from a high-impact journal after sending them a manuscript reporting results of an eye tracking study on subtitling: i have now considered your paper, and i applaud the time and effort you put forth in conducting and presenting your research. this paper has a number of strengths, but unfortunately, i feel that it is not suitable for publication in [journal title], and thus i have decided not to send it out for an external review. our journal is focused on other subjects. i felt that your research fell outside of this scope. the manuscript did not fit their profile. in fact, it did not fit any journal profile. there is no journal on experimental studies in subtitling. come to think of it, there is no journal at all focusing on audiovisual translation (avt) as such. or there hasn’t been, until now. research in avt is becoming increasingly interdisciplinary. back in 2007, at the audiovisual translation: multidisciplinary approaches conference in montpellier (serban, matamala & lavaur, 2012), it was claimed that it is not enough for avt researchers to be conversant with other fields like experimental and cognitive psychology, film studies, information technology, deaf studies or sound engineering; we also needed to co-operate with researchers from other disciplines. ten years on, we have indeed witnessed important changes in the way we work, do research and publish. but where are we as a discipline? below you will find our contribution to the on-going discussion about the status of avt as a discipline. 1.1. “audiovisual translation – what is it?” in its traditional core sense, avt is about how films and tv programmes are translated from one language to another, mainly through dubbing or subtitling (chaume, 2006, 2014; díaz cintas, 1999, 2013; díaz cintas & remael, 2007; gambier, 2006). today, however, avt researchers are interested in many more modalities and research avenues than interlingual transfer alone. apart from interlingual subtitling, dubbing, and voice-over (díaz cintas & orero, 2006; franco, matamala, & orero, 2013; orero, 2009), which gambier referred to as dominant modalities back in 2003, avt has eagerly embraced other modalities, including audio description for the blind (ad), subtitling for the deaf and the hard of hearing (sdh), sign language interpreting, live subtitling, audio subtitling, opera surtitling, to name just a few (gambier, 2003, 2004). ad and sdh fall under the umbrella term media accessibility, which has been thriving in avt research in recent years (díaz cintas, matamala, & neves, 2010; díaz cintas, orero, & remael, 2007; remael, orero, & carroll, journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 10 2012). some scholars even call for a departure from the term audiovisual translation towards media accessibility, arguing that translating a film makes it accessible to viewers who otherwise could not have access to the dialogue. in this sense, media accessibility can be considered a higher-level umbrella term encompassing audiovisual translation (greco, 2018; jankowska, forthcoming; romero-fresco, 2018). avt – both as a discipline and as a term – is relatively young compared to its elder siblings: linguistics and translation studies (díaz cintas, 2004; gottlieb, 1992). some trace the beginnings of avt back to the birth of cinema (gambier & gottlieb, 2001), whilst others would rather talk about the intellectual ferment from the 1990s, which kicked it off from a somewhat sluggish start, particularly following the 1995 conference on audiovisual communication and language transfer in strasbourg (gambier, 2004, 2013; von flotow, 1995). not only is pinpointing the birth date of avt problematic, but so is the term itself. in the early days, various names were given to this area of study, such as screen translation, multimedia translation, transadaptation, film translation, versioning, language transfer, etc. (gambier, 2003, 2013; gambier & gottlieb, 2001). now, the dust has settled, and most scholars and practitioners have agreed on using audiovisual translation, which is also reflected in the name of this very journal. this brings us to the question you asked us last time: 1.2. “is there anything interesting left for me to research?” judging by the number of bachelor, master and phd theses submitted across the world, you may think that avt is mainly about comparing originals with their translations, aimed at analysing the strategies used and possibly at criticising the translator. indeed, if you want to join a myriad of researchers pursuing the ever-popular topics of culture-specific items or humour in translation and reinvent the wheel with yet another analysis of translation strategiesi, you may soon discover that jat editors may not find it as appealing as you may have expected. but don’t fret – there are still many unexplored, exciting research avenues to pursue. in recent years, research in avt has been flourishing (chaume, 2002, 2013; o’sullivan, 2016) and a number of exciting projects and publications have seen the light of day. these include a host of reception studies and translation process research (chmiel & mazur, 2016; denton & ciampi, 2012; di giovanni, 2013; di giovanni & gambier, 2018; jensema, 1998; kruger, hefer, & matthew, 2014; mangiron, 2016; mazur & chmiel, 2012; perego, 2016; perego, del missier, porta, & mosconi, 2010; perego et al., 2016; rajendran, duchowski, orero, martínez, & romero-fresco, 2013; romero-fresco & fryer, 2013; widler, 2004; wissmath, weibel, & groner, 2009; beuchert, 2017; carl, bangalore, & schaeffer, 2016; hansen, 2013; hvelplund, 2011; hvelplund, 2017; jankowska, 2015; orregocarmona, dutka, & szarkowska, 2016; orrego-carmona, dutka, & szarkowska, 2018). not only can five things you wanted to know about audiovisual translation research, but were afraid to ask 11 you do interesting research in this area, but you also get to play with fancy, high-tech toys such as eye trackers, eeg, heart rate or galvanic skin response devices (doherty & kruger, 2018; kruger & doherty, 2016; kruger, doherty, fox, & de lissa, 2017; kruger, doherty, & soto-sanfiel, 2017; orrego-carmona, 2016; perego et al., 2010; ramos, 2015; romero-fresco, 2015). if you like to think of yourself as a doer and want to change the world, think about joining the ranks of scholars working to improve the audiovisual experience for users of audio description, sign language interpreting and subtitling for the deaf and the hard of hearing. this line of research is pursued within the growing area of media accessibility (braun & orero, 2010; colmenero, dominguez, & ruiz, 2014; díaz cintas et al., 2010; fryer, 2010, 2016; jankowska, 2015; jankowska, wilgucka, & szarkowska, 2014; pedersen, 2012; remael et al., 2012; szarkowska, 2011; szarkowska, jankowska, kowalski, & krejtz, 2016; szarkowska, krejtz, klyszejko, & wieczorek, 2011; utray, pereira rodríguez, & orero, 2009; walczak & fryer, 2017). if you are into new technologies, why not work on some accessibility apps, like audiomovie, moviereading, or openart? for a perfectionist willing to improve things, it may be interesting to look into quality (house, 2013; mikul, 2014; pedersen, 2017; robert & remael, 2017; robert, remael, & bastin, 2016; romerofresco, 2016; romero-fresco & pöchhacker, 2017). if you are more theoretically inclined, avt has some theoretical frameworks you can work with (arrojo, 2013; assis rosa, 2016; braun, 2016; buzelin, 2013; kruger, 2016; kruger & steyn, 2014; neves, 2016; nord, 2013; remael, reviers & vandekerckhove, 2016; taylor, 2016). or how about sparking some controversy with professional translators by dabbling into machine translation (bywood, georgakopoulou, & etchegoyhen, 2017; bywood, volk, fishel, & georgakopoulou, 2013; fernández-torné & matamala, 2016; o'brien, 2014; ortiz boix, 2016; ortiz-boix & matamala, 2017)? professional translation aside, avt also abounds in fan translations and crowdsourcing (antonini & bucaria, 2016; díaz cintas & muñoz sánchez, 2006; dwyer, 2012; jimenez-crespo, 2017; luczaj holy-luczaj, & cwiek-rogalska, 2014; massidda, 2015; munday, 2012; nord, 2015; orrego-carmona, 2016; pérez-gonzález, 2012; wang, 2014). being a young discipline, avt and its history are still under-researched with plenty of space to look into archive material (díaz cintas, 2018; gromová & janecová, 2013; o’sullivan & cornu, in press; zanotti, 2018). more research is also needed in the area of avt and gender (de marco, 2012, 2016; fasoli, mazzurega, & sulpizio, 2016; feral, 2011), multilingualism (heiss, 2004; meylaerts, 2013; o'sullivan, 2011; remael, 2012; szarkowska, żbikowska, & krejtz, 2013), avt corpora (baños, bruti, & zanotti, 2013; prieels, delaere, plevoets, & de sutter, 2015; reviers, remael, & daelemans, 2015) or ideology, manipulation and censorship (bucaria, 2017; díaz cintas, 2012; dwyer, 2009; hołobut, 2012; kruger, 2012; rashid, 2016; scandura, 2004; wang & zhang, 2016). is teaching something you are more interested in? why not research avt translator training (al dabbagh, 2017; chmiel, lijewska, szarkowska, & dutka, 2017; di giovanni & geraghty, 2016; díaz cintas, 2008; dorado & orero, 2007; kim, 2013; orrego-carmona et al., 2018; remael, 2008; romero-fresco, 2012; szarkowska, krejtz, dutka, & pilipczuk, 2018)? do not forget to check out some journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 12 of the eu-funded projects on avt, such as adlab pro (audio description: a laboratory for the development of a new professional profile), ilsa (interlingual live subtitling for access) and act (accessible culture & training), which aim to define the competencies of audio describers, interlingual live subtitlers and accessibility managers, respectively. speaking of projects, make sure you become familiar with some avt-related projects, both completed and ongoing, such as dtv4all, hbb4all, sumat, umaq, sure, immersive accessibility, easy tv, nea, clipflair, compass or eu bridge. a good starting point may be media accessibility platform (map)ii, translation studies bibliographyiii or bitra bibliography of interpreting and translationiv. avt plays an important role in education, particularly in language acquisition and learning. did you know that avt can not only improve your receptive skills in a foreign language, but also language production, not to mention other skills? a new wave of publications on educational roles of different avt modalities has seen the light of day in recent years (bolaños garcía-escribano, 2017; kothari, 2008; i. krejtz, szarkowska, krejtz, walczak & duchowski, 2012; k. krejtz, krejtz, duchowski, szarkowska & walczak, 2012; kruger et al., 2017; kruger et al., 2014; mahlasela, 2017; mcloughlin & lertola, 2014; talaván, ibáñez & bárcena, 2016; talaván & lertola, 2016; talaván & rodríguezarancón, 2014; vanderplank, 2010, 2013, 2016; walczak, 2016). you may be somewhat overwhelmed by all the titles and names above. the list is surely impressive – yet, by no means exhaustive. however, please bear in mind that we tend to trust and revere the written, published word and we sometimes take it for granted. but is everything that has ever been published true?v and even so, maybe it was indeed true 20 years ago, when some of the studies were done, but what about today, in the ever-changing world of the information technology revolution? would you perhaps be interested in questioning the status quo? that is one of the ways science progresses. but as a graduate of linguistics, translation, or philology, you may now be wondering... 1.3. “how to do research (properly)?” if you studied linguistics, like the first author here, you probably left the university happily holding your master’s diploma, but without having much of an idea about how scientific research is planned and executed. if you were lucky enough to join an ambitious, lively, research-oriented group during your phd, this might have improved over the following years. if you weren’t, you may have discovered that research methodology is not your strongest asset. today, whether you like it or not, humanities are often adopting the research strategies and methodologies used in social, physical, technical, and live sciences. these include research project planning; working in research groups rather than alone; data collection, processing and analysis; and publishing styles, like this new journal. the scientific landscape, shaped with five things you wanted to know about audiovisual translation research, but were afraid to ask 13 policies set by universities and funding bodies, influences how research results are published. for many scholars the ultimate dissemination medium is a monograph (often, the book) – usually taking a few years to write and at least another year to publish. according to a recent nielsen bookscanvi, in the united kingdom, on average, an academic book in linguistics sold 50 copies in 2004, and 13 copies in 2015. in contrast, writing a series of short papers for a high-impact journal that provides publication within two months from submissionvii on average (including peer-review – yes, this is possible, and without compromising the publication quality), may be the winning strategy in terms of building your research group reputation, credibility and position in the academic world. and yes, it is ok to pay for your paper to be available in the open access (so don’t forget to include that in the budget of your next grant application). for many areas that avt could explore, a significant fraction requires the researchers to expand their research toolkits beyond a set of strategies and techniques with which to analyse yet another translation and compare it against the original. if you are planning a research project in audience reception, you won’t get far without understanding research design principles (saldanha & o’brien, 2013). there are probably hundreds of books on research design (some of them actually worth reading), and frowning upon terms like dependent and independent variables, or confusing betweensubject and within-subject designs may no longer be the way to follow. if you want to do cutting edge – or at least methodologically correct – research, there is one more thing: statistics. many researchers in humanities in general, and in avt research in particular, tend to ignore statistical rules, and are happy with reporting their results using mere percentages. the first author has been in fact guilty of this for years, without realising how little chance she would have, did she ever try to publish these findings in a high-impact journal. which brings us to the next question… 1.4. “where to publish?” have you ever looked up translation in the scimago journal ranking (sjr) or the web of science? the search results: translational research, science translational medicine, or american journal of translational research may – perhaps to your surprise – have nothing in common with translation as a linguistic transfer between languages, but rather are journals that publish findings in research that aims at turning fundamental discoveries into improvements in human life (e.g. by their applications in medicine). even if you are just beginning your academic journey, you may already be familiar with some journals which publish articles in your field. until now, there has been no journal devoted exclusively to avt, so you had a choice of general translation studies journals, such as perspectives: studies in translation theory and practiceviii, the journal of specialised translation, across languages and cultures, babel, the translator, meta, target, monti: monografías de traducción e interpretación, intralinea, the interpreter and translator trainer. in recent years, many new titles emerged, such as translation journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 14 studies; linguistica antverpiensia new series – themes in translation studies (lans-tts); translation & interpreting; translation and interpreting studies; translation spaces; translation, cognition and behavior; international journal of translation and interpreting research; transletters. international journal of translation and interpreting, yet none of them focuses solely on avt. a comprehensive list of translation studies journals is maintained on the website of the european society for translation studies and can be found at: http://www.est-translationstudies.org/resources/journals.html 1.5. “but wait... somebody did this already!” how would you feel if one day you discovered that the medicine you take had only been tested once, in one country, by one research team, back in the 1980s? such was indeed the case with one (and perhaps more) of the cornerstones of avt: the six-second rule (d'ydewalle, rensbergen & pollet, 1987). it is not uncommon in avt research to assume that since someone did a study once, the outcome is true beyond doubt and does not need confirmation or replication. replication is not sexy. yet, just like with medicines and their effects, avt findings need to be revisited, preferably on more people than a handful of the author’s students. in his controversial and highly debated paper, ioannidis (2005) argues that most published research findings in most fields are false. among many factors which have contributed to the situation, he blames “the high rate of nonreplication (lack of confirmation) of research discoveries”, which in turn is “a consequence of the convenient, yet ill-founded strategy of claiming conclusive research findings solely on the basis of a single study assessed by formal statistical significance, typically for a p-value less than 0.05” (ioannidis, 2005, p. 696). so what? have you ever considered sending a press release accompanying your research article? however strange this may sound, it is now becoming common practice in many leading research groups from top universities as part of their efforts to position themselves in the academic landscape and to communicate their findings to the general public. science is changing, and it is changing very fast. universities and research groups compete on the international arena for the best academics and students, individual scientists compete for (more and more limited) funding, journals compete for the best research papers to establish and maintain their reputation and position on the market. more and more scientists realise the importance of establishing a recognisable “academic brand” (of a researcher, a faculty, a university). in many respects we are witnessing science and academia adapting to the conditions of liquid modernity, where creative scientists and ideas move fast and freely around the world, and research topics that were hot and guaranteed rapid publication in a “luxury” journal one year ago may be merely interesting today (bauman, 2000). http://www.est-translationstudies.org/resources/journals.html five things you wanted to know about audiovisual translation research, but were afraid to ask 15 you may disregard all these changes and follow the well-established paths that so many generations of scholars have taken before. until perhaps one day you realise that nobody cares about your findings, students are not interested, and you are left alone with your books that sold no copies at all. or, instead, you can choose an exciting and important topic with a potential of high impact (not only in science, but also in the society), find an active, lively research group with passionate people on board (check what and where they have published so far!), and embark with them on a great scientific adventure. good luck and best wishes, agnieszka & piotr ps please revise the rejected paper following the feedback you received and send it to another journal. acknowledgements many thanks to gert vercauteren for his comments on an early version of the manuscript. biographical notes agnieszka szarkowska, phd, is associate professor in the institute of applied linguistics, university of warsaw. she is the head of avt lab, one of the first research groups on audiovisual translation. agnieszka is a researcher, academic teacher, ex-translator, translator trainer, and media accessibility consultant. between 2016 and 2018 she was marie skłodowska-curie research fellow at the centre for translation studies, university college london, working on the project “exploring subtitle reading with eye tracking technology” funded by the european commission. her areas of expertise include audiovisual translation, media accessibility and translator training. she has participated in many research projects, including eye tracking studies on subtitling, audio description in education, textto-speech audio description, multilingualism in subtitling for the deaf and the hard of hearing, respeaking, and modern art for all. agnieszka is the vice-president of the european association for studies in screen translation (esist), a member of european society for translation studies (est), galician observatory for media accessibility (galma), intermedia research group, akces expert group and an honorary member of the polish audiovisual translators association (staw). piotr wasylczyk, phd, is associate professor at the faculty of physics, university of warsaw, and research associate at the faculty of engineering sciences, university college london. his research interests cover (micro)robotics with potential applications in eye surgery, experimental photonics and lasers. he also teaches effective communication in science and business environments in poland and the uk. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 16 references al-dabbagh, u. 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(2018). investigating the genesis of translated films: a view from the stanley kubrick archive. perspectives, 1-17. doi:10.1080/0907676x.2018.1490784ix five things you wanted to know about audiovisual translation research, but were afraid to ask 25 i this is not to say that there is no good work on these popular topics, see for instance pedersen (2011). iiwww.mapaccess.org iii https://benjamins.com/online/tsb/ iv https://aplicacionesua.cpd.ua.es/tra_int/usu/buscar.asp?idioma=en v please see the great eskimo vocabulary hoax and other irreverent essays on the study of language by geoffrey k. pullum. vicited by m. jubb in “academic books and their futures: a report to the ahrc and the british library”, london 2017, available at https://academicbookfuture.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/academic-books-and-theirfutures_jubb1.pdf vii for example, in optics express average time to publication is 65 days (https://www.osapublishing.org/oe/home.cfm) and in bmj open the median time to first decision in 2017 was 47 days (https://bmjopen.bmj.com/pages/about/) viii the name was recently changed from perspectives: studies in translatology. https://benjamins.com/online/tsb/ https://aplicacionesua.cpd.ua.es/tra_int/usu/buscar.asp?idioma=en https://www.osapublishing.org/oe/home.cfm https://bmjopen.bmj.com/pages/about/ centre for translation studies, university college london faculty of engineering sciences, university college london abstract citation: szarkowska, a., & wasylczyk, p. (2018). five things you wanted to know about audiovisual translation research but were afraid to ask. journal of audiovisual translation, 1(1), 8-25. editor(s): a. jankowska & p. romero-fresco received: january 22, 2018 accepted: june 30, 2018 published: november 15, 2018 copyright: ©2018 szarkowska & wasylczyk. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license. this allows for unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original auth... 1.1. “audiovisual translation – what is it?” 1.2. “is there anything interesting left for me to research?” 1.3. “how to do research (properly)?” 1.4. “where to publish?” 1.5. “but wait... somebody did this already!” so what? acknowledgements biographical notes references reshaping history: cultural and temporal transfer in the subtitled heritage film oliver twist (2005) _________________________________________________________ citation: liang, l. (2020). reshaping history: cultural and temporal transfer in a heritage film oliver twist (2005). journal of audiovisual translation, 3(1), 26–49. editor(s): j. pedersen received: october 15, 2018 accepted: february 20, 2020 published: october 15, 2020 copyright: ©2020 liang. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license. this allows for unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. reshaping history: cultural and temporal transfer in the subtitled heritage film oliver twist (2005) lisi liang sun yat-sen university abstract the paper will focus on how history is reshaped in a case study: the film adaptation of oliver twist (2005). it is of significance as its chinese authorised subtitles mediate nineteenth-century british history for a contemporary chinese audience. but this adaptation creates various problems of translation as it negotiates the cultural and linguistic transfer between early victorian england and twenty-first-century china. to illustrate the challenge that translators and audiences face, examples drawn from the subtitles are grouped under eva wai-yee hung’s (1980) suggested aspects of dickens’s world: “religious beliefs, social conventions, biblical and literary allusions and the dress and hairstyle of the victorian era”. moreover, andrew higson’s “heritage” theory (1996a), william morris’s (bassnett, 2013) views of historical translation and nathalie ramière’s (2010) cultural references specific to audiovisual translation are adopted to read the chinese subtitles. they are used to bring back the audiences to an impossible, inaccessible past. the historical features shown in this modern version of a british heritage film make it possible for the subtitles to interact with chinese culture to transfer meaning via a complex combination of translation strategies. therefore, in order to rejuvenate chinese cultural heritage, the subtitles of the cultural and temporal specificities and complexities involved are reinterpreted and redirected to the receiving culture key words: subtitling history, oliver twist, heritage film, archaism.  liangls6@mail.sysu.edu.cn, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1705-7500 26 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1705-7500 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1705-7500 about:blank about:blank https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1705-7500 reshaping history: cultural and temporal transfer in the subtitled heritage film oliver twist (2005) 1. introduction there are many film adaptations of the world classic novel oliver twist, set in nineteenth-century england. oliver twist was serialised at the commencement of the victorian era in 1837 (grubb, 1941, p. 209; kuhn, 1987, p. 111), and the novel thus reflect the beliefs and customs of the early victorian era only, as the victorian era spans from 1837 to 1901; the 2005 film adaptation also kept close to the original story, so the same beliefs and customs are depicted there. the film under study was first released in 2005 and then on 30th april 2006 (netease, 2006) in china, one year after its original release. as this 2005 chinese sanctioned subtitled film mediates nineteenth-century british history for a contemporary chinese audience, this film is thus worth analysing. therefore, this paper has the dual aims of investigating why the film was chosen and how the film was subtitled. furthermore, based on the textual effect of the subtitles, the paper explores whether the historical context of victorian england is made accessible to the chinese audiences. 2. background 2.1. chinese state-sanctioned subtitling and its relevance to oliver twist (2005) explaining chinese subtitling necessary is pertinent for providing a contextual link between this casestudy film and subtitling censorship in china. in an effort to expand the quota of foreign film importation, china increased the annual number of imported films from the strict quota of 34 to 39 in 2016 thanks to related “cultural exchange projects” (brzeski, 2017). after importation, foreign films always undergo a stringent censoring process including four key steps: selection, censorship, negotiation with the foreign film distributors, and the approval by the national film review committee that is directly affiliated with state administration of radio and television of the people’s republic of china under the close scrutiny of several key official institutions (liang, 2018, pp. 27-28). this process must conform to the sanctioned rules and regulations clearly standardised in 2014 to govern the editing and exhibition of imported films (wang and zhang, 2017, p. 304). both the selection of films to be imported and the subtitles to be released are strictly censored by the chinese authorities. the above film censorship in china clearly applies in 2006 to oliver twist (2005). the actual images of oliver twist (2005) have not been altered and the length of the chinese subtitled version of the film has not been tampered with, which is a common practice for the historical film genre that normally excludes sexual and taboo scenes. though the level of archaism of the original in relation to language and culture may be mediated by the chinese subtitles, the theme in relation to religious and temporal differences between early victorian england and 21st century china are transferred to the chinese audience. when it comes to producing chinese subtitles, charles dickens’s dark depiction of victorian england may pose challenges to translators as the dickensian world depicts early victorian cultural specificities. these challenges refer to linguistic, cultural, historical and 27 journal of audiovisual translation, volume 3, issue 1 temporal differences and transference between victorian england and modern china. seen in this light, this paper highlights four historically-laden groups of examples from the early victorian era of england to discuss problems caused by linguistic and cultural disparities, and to observe how the subtitles provide viable solutions to these problems. 2.2. delay and fansubbing due to the complex process of censoring in china, delay is inevitable in releasing foreign films shown on cinema, on television, in their dvd forms and other censored online resources. to accommodate the growing demand of foreign films in the chinese market, the recent trend in subtitling practice is uncensored fansubbing. its online bases are mainly found on fan-generated websites such as ydy translation extreme team, yyets and fr1000 (kang, 2007, p.85). an unofficial chinese subtitled version of oliver twist (2005) is available on the popular film website (http://www.btgang.com/). it is difficult to trace the subtitler’s real name and the exact date on which the translation was produced and uploaded. one specific unauthorised version http://www.btgang.com/subject/9345.html contains more than one fan-generated subtitled version. in this article, however, only the official, government-sanctioned subtitles will be analysed. 2.3. oliver twist in the british and the chinese contexts the novel oliver twist contains three historical themes of nineteenth-century england. the novel depicts the suffering of the poor in the miserable poorhouse, the maltreatment of children, and a tremendous population shift as unemployed migrants move from villages to cities (sertkan and gülperi, 2007, pp. 34-37). these issues were influenced by the passing of the poor law1 in 1834 and by rapid industrialisation (p. 34). thus, oliver twist not only exposes the dreadful conditions of the workhouse, but the poverty, juvenile abuse, theft and prostitution, etc., that existed in early nineteenth-century england. the novel hence places the darker side of capitalist society in the foreground (p. 34). in relation to chinese audiences being exposed to earlier film adaptions based on oliver twist, an older one has already been imported to china: david lean’s 1948 adaptation was dubbed in chinese in 1958 by the shanghai film dubbing studio. the 2005 film, a film directed by roman polanski, was china’s second cinematic version of dickens’s novel. this film will be used as the case study in this paper because this paper considers the subtitled form instead of the dubbed medium.2 1 cody, lisa forman. (2000). the politics of illegitimacy in an age of reform: women, reproduction, and political economy in england's new poor law of 1834. journal of women's history 11(4), pp. 131-156. 2 for further details of lean’s adaptation, see paganoni (2010, pp. 3-5). 28 http://www.btgang.com/subject/9345.html http://www.btgang.com/subject/9345.html http://www.btgang.com reshaping history: cultural and temporal transfer in the subtitled heritage film oliver twist (2005) 3. research questions the paper undertakes a qualitative study to examine specifically why the film was selected, how the film was subtitled, as well as the technique of translation that enables subtitlers to translate a challenging historical past; in addition, the study examines how the subtitles both make use of archaisms and modern terms. to identify the challenges of translating the historical context in the subtitles, this paper will centre around three main questions regarding why and how history is translated: 1) why did the chinese authorities select this film to be released and subtitled? 2) what challenges does the subtitling of this british film dramatisation of a bygone era present when translated into a modern chinese context? 3) what translation strategies exist for the chinese subtitlers trying to make sense of this film adaptation through the means of the chinese subtitles? to be specific, the paper will discuss research question 1 from a sociological perspective; and will answer research questions 2 and 3 using a qualitative analysis of some representative examples of cultural references in the film. the next theoretical section will detail the method that structures the paper. 4. theoretical framework having listed the research questions, this section outlines the theoretical framework of this paper. in relation to archaism, this paper uses the cultural theory of andrew higson (1996a, p. 233) on how films promote national identity played out in a historical context. it also employs the translation theory of william morris, who believes that the translator should immerse his/her reader in an archaic past (bassnett, 2013, p. 76). this paper will draw upon research in audiovisual translation (avt), specifically relating to nathalie ramière’s (2006, p. 157) proposal that the foreignisation/domestication model does not work in tandem with the pragmatic realities of avt. according to lawrence venuti (1995 pp. 20-21), translation practice applies either a foreignisation or a domestication method. for venuti, foreignisation is the method whereby the translator allows elements of the foreign source culture to remain in the text. domestication is the phenomenon whereby such foreign elements are mediated and recast in the target culture. higson’s theory of heritage is key to this paper. that oliver twist is a heritage piece is clear. the film abounds with archaic expressions and dialects from early nineteenth-century england. higson’s work on heritage film underlines the thirst of audiences to go back to an impossible, inaccessible past for which they are nostalgic (higson, 1996a, p. 233). according to his description of heritage film in britain, it “projects a particular image of the national past” (higson, 1996b, p. 235). ultimately, these films “strive to recapture an image of national identity as pure, untainted, complete, and in place” (higson, 1993, p. 123), which clearly reflects on higson’s (2002, p. 38) claim to reinforce ideologies 29 journal of audiovisual translation, volume 3, issue 1 of national identity and nationhood when constructing national cinema in britain. higson’s theory is particularly intriguing in relation to this paper which seeks to evaluate not how a british heritage is translated for a british audience, but how a british heritage is imported for a modern chinese audience. oliver twist is a clear expression of an imagined british past which is at once nostalgic and problematic (higson, 1997, p. 275). this paper will consider ways in which this very british past is received by a contemporary chinese audience. it is suggested in this paper that the chinese authorities are using the heritage of another nation simultaneously to promote their own values via cultural and temporal transfer in the subtitling practice. furthermore, this paper will marry higson’s vision of heritage with william morris’s view of historical translation. morris believes that it was more important to plunge a reader into the sense of a historic era than to focus on linguistic accuracy (morris 2012, p. xvi; bassnett 2013, p. 76). morris’s translation3 of the icelandic volsunga saga in 1876 uses an archaicising approach as “he very much wanted english readers to recognise the greatness of the saga, and softened it in some respects to achieve this” (britain et al., 1982, p. 78). the theories of higson and morris are linked in their common discussion on how an archaic text is translated for audiences who aspire to a nostalgic past. apart from the aspiration of promoting a nostalgic past and national identity when interpreting heritage, nathalie ramière specifically links the challenges of translating heritage to a more widespread audience directly at international audiences in her work reaching a foreign audience: cultural transfer in audiovisual translation (2006). in order to achieve a successful reception abroad – though she agrees with venuti’s (1998 p. 240) two methods of domestication and foreignisation with the macro level affecting the selection of foreign texts to be translated and the micro level marking the actual strategies used to translate them – she refutes any form of consistency as far as domestication or foreignisation is concerned. more pragmatic approaches should be considered given culturally specific references in avt settings, and audiences’ “intercultural skills and readiness to accept the foreign” should be taken into sufficient account to make the cultural transfer (ramière, 2006, p. 162). this paper will analyse whether the subtitles archaise or modernise, considering whether and how the subtitled film works to mediate and to speak to both chinese and british cultures. therefore, this paper will use eva wai-yee hung (1980)’s classifications to read the chinese subtitles for analysis. in her thesis a critical study of chinese translations of oliver twist and david copperfield (1980), she proposes four key features which she suggests are characteristics of dickens’s work and remain basically unfamiliar to chinese readers: “religious beliefs, social conventions, biblical and literary allusions, and the dress and hairstyle of the victorian era” (p. 122). since hung focuses on the translation of the novel oliver twist while this paper concentrates on the medium of subtitles, her last category on “the dress and hairstyle of the victorian era” is rendered superfluous because victorian costumes and hairstyle can be seen in the film. therefore, this paper summarises hung’s last category into a broader category: other elements of the victorian era in that it fits into the medium of the chinese subtitles. 3 for further details on morris’s approach to translation, see britain et al. (1982, pp. 103-105). 30 reshaping history: cultural and temporal transfer in the subtitled heritage film oliver twist (2005) 5. qualitative analysis 5.1. religious terminology as an initial point, hung’s work makes specific reference to oliver twist in relation to one of her chosen categories, “religious beliefs”. she analyses the religious faith of the victorian age and relates it to the chinese language and culture with the following comment: dickens shared fully this christian cultural tradition with his contemporaries, and his novels reflect naturally something of that tradition in its value and its language. in the absence of an exact counterpart in the chinese tradition, the references to religious beliefs, observances and language pose problems in translation. … potential readers of the bai-hua4 translations would be more knowledgeable about christian beliefs and observations since they were comparatively exposed to western culture (hung, 1980, pp. 123-124). as hung suggests (1980, p. 123), although translating christianity posed challenging problems in the chinese translation, chinese people were aware of the prevalence of christianity as early as the sixteenth century. in contrast, the translations of the turkish versions of oliver twist5 domesticates every aspect related to christianity into muslim beliefs in keeping with the prevalence of religious-conservative ideology in turkey (sertkan and gülperi, 2007, p. 72). unlike the turkish translations which domesticate christian doctrine, the chinese subtitles maintain the biblical context by using dynamic strategies. this section demonstrates how the subtitling of nineteenth-century british history in oliver twist speaks to chinese values and culture in the following two aspects: religious beliefs and religious terminology, as the below examples will underline. (1) oliver twist (01:10:20 – 01:10:47) original dialogue: jack: what a pity he ain’t a prig. charley: he don’t (sic) know what’s good for him. jack: i suppose you don't know what a prig is. oliver: yes, i do. it’s a… it’s a thief. you’re one, aren’t you? jack: yes, i am. and so we all are. down to the dog… and he is the downest one of the lot. 4 “白话”, phonetically, “bai hua” is related to vernacular language, which is a simplified writing style, as opposed to classical chinese. this style of language enables the expression of new ideas in daily approachable language (hasergin, 2016, p. 6). 5 given the records of the turkish national library, the novel oliver twist has been translated by sixteen different translators from 1949 to 2004 (sertkan and gülperi, 2007, p. 38). all those translated versions used domestication in relation to the transfer of christianity into muslim beliefs (p.72). 31 journal of audiovisual translation, volume 3, issue 1 … charley: he’s an out-and-out christian, he is. chinese subtitle: 可惜他不是我们圈里的 --谁让他不知好歹 --你还不知道什么是 “三只手” 吧？ --我知道，三只手就是…… 就是指小偷 你就算一个，对吗？ --没错，我们都是，包括那只狗 它是最听话的一个 …… --它是最忠实的基督徒 back translation: jack: what a pity he is not one of us. charley: he does not know what is good for him. jack: you didn’t know what “three hands” are? oliver: i know, three hands are… it means thief. you are one, aren’t you? jack: yes, we all are, including that dog. it is the most obedient. … charley: it is the most faithful ji du disciple. in example 1, the boys are persuading oliver to continue stealing things while a dog is laughably described as a virtuous christian because he always follows his owner’s instructions. hung’s category “religious beliefs” is embodied in this example in relation to the religion of christianity. the example makes a sarcastic use of the term christian as it applies it to a dog. the humour in this scene is 32 reshaping history: cultural and temporal transfer in the subtitled heritage film oliver twist (2005) generated as the text calls on, in english, the reader’s biblical knowledge. oliver is urged to commit an unchristian act. the boys urge him to break one of the commandments and steal. in contrast, an animal is hailed as a good christian for following its owner’s instructions. fagin’s boys use the vocabulary of christianity to try to persuade oliver to do unchristian things. the chinese subtitles replicate this humour by using the accepted term for christian in china “基督徒” (“ji du disciple”) and applying it to a dog. “ji du” is the phonetic equivalent in chinese of “jesus”. transliteration has been used to show the phonetic equivalence from one language to another (wan and verspoor, 1998, p. 1352). however, this process tends to achieve only phonetic equivalence (p. 1353). yi chen (2010, p. 483) also notes that transliteration is the simplest translation method, and functions when no equivalence is found between the chinese language and culture and the english language and culture. it is a widely received concept in chinese though its origin is recognisably foreign. while this application of biblical language to a non-human may appear sacrilegious, it is worth remembering that the bible underscores the interrelation between human and animals (bible society new 2015, genesis 2:19; job 12:7-10). both the english source and the chinese subtitles are innately embedded in christian teaching and ideology. (2) oliver twist (01:11:37– 01:11:40) original dialogue: fagin: take the dodger’s word for it. he understands the catechism of his trade. chinese subtitle: 听机灵鬼的话…… 他可是相当懂行的 back translation: fagin: take clever ghost’s words for it. he indeed knows the business. 33 journal of audiovisual translation, volume 3, issue 1 in this example, fagin teaches oliver how to steal. at this moment, he mentions jack dawkins who is really good at stealing. according to the oxford english dictionary (oed) (1989), catechism is defined as “a summary of the principles of christian religion in the form of questions and answers, used for religious instruction”. fagin, in the film, uses the noun in an inappropriate context in order to describe the trade of theft. christian religious doctrine prescribes that christians do not steal. fagin, however, uses the vocabulary of that christian doctrine to commend one of his pupils in relation to theft. there is thus dark humour relating to religious belief in the original dialogue as fagin is a thief and he is training others as thieves by using the religious word catechism. the religious word applies in a nonreligious context. however, the subtitles do not maintain either the metaphor or the humour of the religious origin but use an explication6 “他可是相当懂行的 ” / “he indeed knows the business” (c-e dictionary). what is presented here is the descriptive equivalence for the receiving audience (newmark and hall, 1988, p. 103). both metaphor and humour are lost in the chinese subtitles. religion actually advocates no stealing and ironically the religious word is being used to promote a non-religious act of theft. the subtitles eradicate the biblical and religious origin by means of explication to make a mere linguistic transfer in the target language. to summarise, the above two examples illustrate that different translational and cultural strategies are used when conveying religious beliefs in the source film. the subtitling of christian adopted a cumulative use of transliteration and explication which is also embedded in contemporary chinese christianity. the religious terminology of catechism fails to cross national boundaries and is replaced by a chinese linguistic equivalence that allows audiences to comprehend meaning via explication, but without the accompanying source imagery. 5.2. biblical allusions this section will focus on biblical references as religious terminology and biblical allusions are intimately related. according to hung (1980, p. 133), “biblical and literary allusions” are an integral part of the english cultural heritage in oliver twist. there are frequent detailed biblical references in relation to key characters. these references are relevant for what they reveal about the subtitler’s approach towards such allusions. (3) oliver twist (01:25:08 – 01:25:15) original dialogue: bill: what you done (sic) with that boy? where is he? 6 according to bernard bolzano, in translation, explication is the interpretative relation between linguistic and mental events; in other words, the relation between signs and intentions and the way in which we understand the word expressions (kasabova, 2006, p. 21). 34 reshaping history: cultural and temporal transfer in the subtitled heritage film oliver twist (2005) fagin: safe and sound. the dodger’s minding him. they're as close as cain and abel. chinese subtitle: 你把那孩子怎样了？ 他人呢？ --他很安全，机灵鬼在看着他 他们现在都形影不离了 back translation: bill: what have you done with that boy? where is he? fagin: he is very safe, clever ghost is looking after him. they are now after each other like shadows. what example 3 depicts is that because oliver is badly injured, the artful dodger is looking after him. the original film dialogue takes a religious and cultural approach to this biblical allusion, cain and abel. the biblical story in genesis says that cain and abel are the children of adam and eve. they can only be understood in light of the religious and social conditions of the earliest traditions of the hebrews (hooke, 1939, pp. 58-59). this classic tale describes how cain murders his brother abel out of jealousy (p. 59). interestingly, it is rendered in the chinese subtitles with a clear domestic expression, “形影不离” / “to be after each other like shadows” (c-e dictionary). while the original english dialogue implies the metaphor of brotherhood, as well as the ultimate self-annihilation between brothers in the religious story, the chinese subtitles domesticate it with a four-character chinese idiom, which clearly means “inseparable as form and shadow” in the oxford advanced learner's english-chinese dictionary (1970). a four-character idiom carries with it a concise but profound meaning and forms with set structure, which are not replaceable and often originates from traditional folklores (guo and lin, 2019, p.161). according to feng, 97% of chinese idioms consist of four characters. a domesticating and explanatory strategy has apparently been adopted. this domestic expression works fluently in the chinese discourse. another key feature is that oliver twist is like abel and the artful dodger is like cain, as abel is pure while cain is a murderer. there is an extra layer of irony attached to the original; oliver (abel) and the artful dodger (cain) once were close “inseparable as form and shadow”. in the genesis story, after murdering abel, cain claims to not know where his brother is. in the film, a physical separation between the artful dodger and oliver occurs after the artful dodger betrays oliver. the subtitles construct the same sense of closeness between the brothers in an ironic way as the film’s dialogue does but there is key translation loss as 35 journal of audiovisual translation, volume 3, issue 1 the chinese subtitles eradicate the violence of the source image, a violence entirely appropriate to the setting of oliver twist. the notion of domestication is relevant to j. m. cohen’s statement that readers receive the idiomatic translation to comprehend a classical work (cohen, 1962, p. 33). by using the four-character chinese epigram, the translation speaks to the domestic audiences ensuring “an irresistible stream of narrative” (venuti, 1995, p. 30). but the biblical allusion is lost in the subtitles and replaced by a domestic four-character discourse in the chinese context. the subtitles regarding biblical allusions indicate a domesticating strategy that the subtitlers employ when translating religion. when translating cain and abel, the subtitles make alterations, recasting the archaic origin into a more archaic chinese equivalence via the use of a four-character idiom. 5.3. social conventions according to hung (1980, p. 152), social conventions are key to understanding victorian society. however, the cultural, temporal and linguistic gap between dickens’s source and the chinese contemporary audience make such social conventions hard to convey. hung (p. 152-178) focuses more on the legal system, names (including personal names and territorial names), currency, food, drink and games. this section, however, will use hung’s term elastically to consider conventions in nineteenth-century england. 5.3.1. legal system (4) oliver twist (00:47:41 – 00:47:51) original dialogue: mr. brownlow: before i am sworn… …i must beg to say one word. mr. fang: hold your tongue, sir. mr. brownlow: i will not, sir! mr. fang: hold your tongue this instant. you’re an insolent, impertinent fellow. how dare you bully a magistrate? chinese subtitle: 在我宣誓前…… 请容我说句话…… --住嘴，先生 36 reshaping history: cultural and temporal transfer in the subtitled heritage film oliver twist (2005) --我不，先生 --给我住嘴！ 你这个鲁莽无礼的家伙 竟敢蔑视本法官 back translation: mr. brownlow: before i take an oath… please allow me to speak… mr. fang: no speaking, sir. mr. brownlow: i won’t, sir! mr. fang: stop talking! you are an impertinent and rude fellow. how dare you look down upon me, myself, the judge? in this present example, the magistrate, mr. fang, stops the benevolent old man, mr. brownlow, who is trying to withdraw the charge of pilfering against oliver twist. according to the oed (1989), magistrate stands for a civil officer who administers the law, especially someone who conducts a court dealing with minor offences and holds preliminary hearings for more serious cases. the chinese subtitles offer an explanation of the english term magistrate by translating the word as “法官” (“judge”). china has a variety of court structures in its legal system. the highest level of court is the supreme people’s court (“最高人民法院 ”) in beijing. there are also the local people’s court (“ 地方人民法院”), the court of first instance, for criminal and civil cases (“初审法院”, 适用于 “刑事 法院”和“民事法院 ”). these courts incorporate the high people’s court (“高级人民法院”), the intermediate people’s court (“中级人民法院 ”) and the basic people’s court (“基层人民法院”). 7 however, the chinese word used to convey magistrate in the subtitles refers to none of these chinese courts. instead, the chinese subtitles choose to use a general term “法官” (“judge”) for this officer of law. the subtitles avoid to specify of which court a specific judge presides in in the original text, offering in this place a general term and using the following amplification to amend for this loss in specificity as there was no relevant equivalent to be found in chinese. if there is translation loss in this subtitle in relation to the legal function, there is also translation gain as the speech patterns of the chinese subtitles offer character analysis. in english, the line of dialogue “how dare you bully a magistrate?” is, to a large extent, time and register neutral. in contrast, the chinese subtitle chooses to insert “本” (“myself”), a translation addition which places the character’s dialogue in a formal, archaic style which references for a chinese audience his clear sense of self-importance and stature. in this instance, amplification occurs when the target text uses more signifiers to cover syntactic or 7 for further details on the judicial system in china, see china's judiciary (china.org.cn). 37 journal of audiovisual translation, volume 3, issue 1 lexical gaps (molina and amparo, 2002, p. 500) to smooth the reader’s expectation in the target culture. in relation to key legal figures, the subtitles offer general non-specific equivalence for the word magistrate. 5.3.2. games if cultures and nations are often characterised by distinct products and culturally specific references, so too are they characterised by patterns of their games (haraway, 1994, p. 3). one relevant example from dickens’s source text will be explored in this context. (5) oliver twist (00:42:37 – 00:42:44) original dialogue: nancy: it’s called spec or speculation. three cards each, and then the one he turns up… is trumps. chinese subtitle: 这叫 “偷鸡” 每人三张牌，谁拿到那张…… 谁就是赢家 back translation: nancy: this is called “stealing hen”. each person has three cards, and whoever gets that one... is the winner. nancy is teaching oliver how to play the game of “spec or speculation” in example 5. spec or speculation, a british card game, is mentioned in both jane austen’s and charles dickens’s novels (parlett, 2014). the english word denoting the card game, speculation, is comparatively neutral and merely refers to “a round game of cards, the chief feature of which is the buying and selling of trump cards, the player who possesses the highest trump in a round wins” (oed). however, it is rendered in the chinese subtitles with the much more culturally equivalent chinese character, “偷鸡”/ “stealing hen”. the chinese here is derived from an idiom “偷鸡不成蚀把米”, meaning “to try to steal a chicken only to end up losing the rice used to lure it” (hornby et al., 1970). the general english term speculation, as opposed to above reference for the card game explanation, refers to investment 38 reshaping history: cultural and temporal transfer in the subtitled heritage film oliver twist (2005) in stocks or property in the hope of gain but with the risk of loss. the chinese imagery works in a different direction from the english source. the english card name includes the possibility of gain. the chinese subtitles, via the idiom, underline the inevitability of loss. the chinese subtitles may domesticate the imagery of the original but, in their word choice, they offer a different moral reading of the game. to summarise, in relation to the subtitling of games in oliver twist, the subtitling of spec or speculation adopts a domesticating approach which implicitly carries an altered moral meaning. 5.4. other elements of the victorian era: working conditions there are inevitable challenges associated with the subtitling of a film set in an earlier era. lawrence venuti (1995, pp. 20-21) writes about foreignisation and domestication in terms of geographical space and cultures. his theories of foreignisation and domestication are useful for discussing the temporal transfer in the subtitling process of oliver twist. the subtitlers of this film face a choice when translating these cultural and temporal gaps set in different geographical locations between early nineteenth-century britain and modern china. according to venuti (1995), it is advisable to either domesticate for modern comprehension or foreignise these temporal terms, leaving them archaic and “other”. nathalie ramière (2010) builds on venuti’s advice, claiming that there remain twofold practical difficulties in the transference of cultural specificities. they are “referential problems”, relating to “the absence of a particular referent in the target culture” and “connotation problems”, which accounts for “different networks of images and associations in the two cultural contexts considered” (ramière, 2010, p. 101). the following examples will illustrate ramière’s two practical difficulties when translating working conditions, as more nuanced and implicit connotations and associations are required for a fluent and idiomatic interpretation of the film dialogue. (6) oliver twist (00:19:42 – 00:19:56) original dialogue: noah: but you must know, workhouse… …your mother was a regular right-down bad one. … ...it’s a good thing she died when she did… …or she'd be hard labouring or transported. chinese subtitle: 但你要知道，救济娃…… 你妈准不是什么好东西 39 journal of audiovisual translation, volume 3, issue 1 …… 她死了也好…… 不然准会做苦役或被流放 back translation: noah: but you have to know, baby from the rescue institution… your mum must be a bad thing … it’s good for her to die… otherwise she must be doing hard servitude or be exiled. what this example shows is that goaded by the taunts of noah, oliver is roused into action when noah shouts cruel insults at his dead mother. hard labour8 is defined as “heavy manual work as a punishment” (oed). given that it is no longer a punishment meted out by the british judicial system, the term is an archaic concept. penal servitude was abolished for england and wales in the criminal justice act of 1948 (killingray, 1994, p. 204). in contrast, the people’s republic of china still uses “劳教” (“laojiao”), re-education through labour and “劳改” (“laogai”), reform through labour, as ways to punish prisoners. however, the subtitles do not use either of these contemporary chinese words, choosing instead to use the word “苦役” (“kuyi”) / “hard servitude”. the subtitles thus explain the concept but choose a word which does not embed it in a contemporary chinese context. the chinese subtitles avoid using these available words perhaps for fear that the viewers might link contemporary chinese practice to a backward era. an era back in 1967-1977 was china’s cultural revolution when intellectuals were punished through “劳教” (“laojiao”) and “劳改” (“laogai”). attention must also be paid to the british word transported. in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the government started to send prisoners to penal colonies, first in america and then in australia (moran et al., 2012, p. 449). the word transported therefore is a word which is particularly resonant in a nineteenth-century context. it is again an archaic concept now. the concept is not one which applies to the chinese legal system in historical terms either. therefore, the subtitles again have to explain the term as “流放” / “exile”. while the english dialogue is clearly historically situated in its vocabulary, the chinese subtitles are more neutral in terms of time and geographic location. if hard labour and transportation are key features of the nineteenth-century british cultural landscape, so too is the institution in this next example: workhouse. 8 oscar wilde underwent a sentence of two years’ hard labour in 1897. he deemed the punishment more than a man could endure and expressed his hope that it would be abolished in the 1898 prison act (bailey, 1997, p. 289). hard labour was thus a key feature of the nineteenth-century crime and punishment. 40 reshaping history: cultural and temporal transfer in the subtitled heritage film oliver twist (2005) (7) oliver twist (00:13:32 – 00:13:40) original dialogue: mr. sowerberry: ...this is the orphan from the workhouse. mrs. sowerberry: dear me, he’s very small. mr. bumble: but he’ll grow, mrs. sowerberry. chinese subtitle: 这个就是救济院的孤儿 --天哪，他可真瘦小 --他会长大的，苏太太 back translation: mr. bumble: this is the orphan from the rescue institute. mrs. sowerberry: oh, my, he is very thin and small. mr. bumble: he will grow, mrs. su. what example 7 describes is that mr. bumble takes oliver to his new master, mr. sowerberry. according to the oed (1989), the workhouse is a historical british institution where the destitute of the parish received lodging in return for work. they were harsh places to inhabit. one poor woman once described her experience of staying in a workhouse: “i only wish those who like the law9 may suffer under it as i have done. i would sooner kill my children and hang myself than go in again to be treated as i have been”.10 in the previous example, in noah’s contempt for oliver by calling him “workhouse”, the chinese subtitles actively maintain this contempt as they render it as “救济娃 ”/ “baby from the rescue institution” as a specific term. however, in this case, the chinese subtitles render this term with an archaic and domestic equivalence, “救济院”/ “rescue institution”. the “救济院”/ “rescue institution” is also known by people as “同善堂” / “benevolent association”. the attempt to make the historical transfer is evident in the subtitles. the “救济院 ”/ “rescue institution” in china was established early in 1888 for less fortunate people including homeless people, orphans, maltreated prostitutes, the disabled and those 9 for further details on the new poor law of 1834 and the experience of those who lived in the workhouse, see ledger (2007, p. 83). 10 quoted from a letter from a southern country correspondent to the author, sally ledger of the book dickens and the popular radical imagination, dated 2 october 1840. 41 journal of audiovisual translation, volume 3, issue 1 who needed care in later life, an education, a weaving job, or just simple labour. this institution in china is regarded as a welfare house for relief (li, 1956). the east and west are markedly different in relation to these two institutions. employing the strategy of domestication, the subtitles encourage the reader to make a connection between the domestic culture of “救济院 ”/ “rescue institution” and that of victorian england. nida (1964) claims that one may use the concept of dynamic equivalence to “relate the receptor to modes of behaviour relevant within the context of his own culture” (p. 159). this subtitle enacts this theory. it should be noted that in this dialogue where a domestic equivalent is chosen for the workhouse. it is interesting to note that the name sowerberry is also domesticated. the subtitles render mrs sowerberry as “苏太太 ”/ “mrs su”, a common chinese surname. to summarise, while there are common themes in the subtitles’ translation of these working conditions in early victorian england in the context of the modern film version oliver twist, so too are there differences in relation to cultural approach. the subtitles maintain an archaic symmetry via the historical and domesticating transfer of the historic term workhouse, but they make other modern and neutral expressions and mark the profession of working in relation to hard labouring, in descriptive and approachable contemporary ways via the use of explication. with the intention of recreating the historical context, the chinese subtitlers thus employ both archaic and modernised approaches in rendering working conditions in this section. 6. results and analysis as the representative examples in this study have demonstrated, archaism, modernisation, amplification, explication, transliteration, foreignisation and domestication are used to capture the complexity of cultural and temporal transfers in this film. three possible reasons that may justify the importation of this film by the chinese authorities. these are related to three periods of time: the first decade of the millennium where china experienced political and cultural changes; the year of 2006 in which the chinese subtitled film was released, and the link between 19th century britain and modern-day china shared social similarities. first, both china and britain share, despite their differences, common social problems. there is a cultural link between early victorian london and 21st century china when oliver twist was originally written in britain during the nineteenth century and when the chinese subtitled film was released in modern-day china. in 2006, when oliver twist was released in china, china was facing increasingly serious social problems relating to the unrest caused by the divide between the rich and the poor, as a result of the government being busy preparing the infrastructural facilities for the 2008 beijing olympic games. preparations for the beijing olympics caused a sharp imbalance in chinese society (shin and li 2013, p. 560). this imbalance in chinese society mainly relates to the urban fringes or former industrial sites in beijing in which an estimation of 171 “villages-in-the-city” (also known as chengzhongcun) were demolished, which has led to the eviction of around 74,100 permanent village residents and about 296,400 migrants (p. 560). this massive demolition casts negative social impact 42 reshaping history: cultural and temporal transfer in the subtitled heritage film oliver twist (2005) in modern china, specifically for beijing migrants and rural citizens who experienced disruption to their lives and went through involuntary relocation (pp. 559-560). this wealth imbalance in 21st century china is similar to the wealth imbalance in early victorian london. this is because there are arguably associations between modern chinese society and the issues related in oliver twist where the enforcement of the new poor law act (1834), rapid industrialisation and mass migration have led to a social, cultural and political downturn in london. in the creation of oliver twist, the focus is on the stark contrast between the consuming upper class and the starving lower strata as indicated in the novel (ledger, 2007, p. 79). while the vision in dickens’s novel is far starker and harsher than the situation in china in 2006 based on the above comparison, overlaps remain as china too had clear social differences and economic imbalance, not least in the decade in which oliver twist was released in china. in addition to the social similarities between the social realities of dickens’s novel and china in the first decade of the twenty-first century, it is also important to underline the literary similarities between oliver twist and key chinese literary trends from the beginning of the twenty-first-century china. the ending in oliver twist, which emphasises the importance of being humanistic (mei, 2018, p.63), is consistent with the traditional chinese confucian culture. this culture raises people’s awareness of gratitude and forgiveness, which is also in line with chinese cultural values. these values are used for establishing the harmonious society as put forward by president hu jintao. at the sixth central committee plenum11 in late 2006, the ideal of constructing a “harmonious society” – a term used in reference to a socio-economic order in which all chinese can coexist in peace and harmony – was explored and discussed (lam, 2007, p. 6). the authorities proposed to act as coordinators to regulate the distribution of revenue among different classes and sectors, and adequately address contradictions in the social order. therefore, the call to set up “scientific and effective mechanisms” to tackle existing social problems was highlighted as being of urgent importance (p. 6). oliver twist has been revisited throughout history in different social contexts, always emphasising the dark side of victorian london. prior to the modern film adaptation of oliver twist in 2005, there were three other famous film adaptations: david lean’s oliver twist (1948), carol reed’s musical oliver! (1968) and the disney cartoon oliver and company (1988). apart from these, there are over twenty silent film versions and a continuing output of television, video and theatre productions in the uk (paganoni, 2010, p. 307). however, this modern film version, is considered by contemporary british society to be more upbeat, as this 2005 incarnation also stresses that fagin “has a heart and loves the urchins he trains” (oakes, 2005). polanski’s adaptation emphasises “a humorous tale of good fighting evil” (oakes, 2005), which resonates with chinese cultural values. there are thus social similarities underway both in dickens’s novel, the modern film version and the chinese society at whom the subtitled version is targeted. 11 central committee plenum is a political conference held annually by the top leaders of the communist party of china (cpc). 43 journal of audiovisual translation, volume 3, issue 1 thirdly, the wish that good overrides evil and that justice will prevail in even the most adverse circumstances (dickens, 1868, pp. v-viii) corresponds to chinese people’s belief in benevolence (“仁 ”) and harmony (“礼”). the third reason relates to the ending of the film, which resonates with modern-day chinese values and traditional confucian culture. the latter is still very much alive today as relevant chinese values and is not just a “traditional relic”. in other words, with great friendliness and politeness, the protagonist oliver expresses his gratitude to the antagonist fagin when oliver visits the condemned man in his cell, thanking him for his philanthropy. such an insistence on gratitude could possibly be reminiscent of confucius’s belief that lifelong learning cultivates moral and intellectual virtues such as humanism, forgiveness, honesty, courage and strength (kim 2003, p. 79). the above gratefulness is compatible with one of the chinese virtues, “仁” /phonetically “ren”, the all-compassing virtue in traditional confucian culture (p. 86). “仁” (“benevolence”) and “礼” (“rite”) are two important beliefs in confucius’s sayings on critical learning. “礼” /phonetically “li” regulates human conduct, operating in various social contexts and in the political arena. it not only stresses the promotion of rituals and righteousness, but also places heavy emphasis on establishing cultural values (p. 78). it is thus clear that when the chinese authorities imported oliver twist, they did so at a time when there were social similarities between the film adaptation and the target culture. the theme of the film resonates with key elements of confucius’s thoughts that may contribute to the importation of this film. furthermore, the ending of the film, resonates with contemporary political and social initiatives at the time of its release in china under president hu jintao. despite the above possible key justifications to release and subtitle this film, when the china film corporation imported the film, its marketing sector, beijing nianen changying culture communication co., ltd made it clear that there are two major rationales for selecting this film (wang, 2006): 1. the director roman polanski is well known to the chinese audiences through his earlier successful film the pianist (2002), which was released in china in early 2004; 2. china seldom imports this film genre based on renowned classic works, but oliver twist is one of the best representatives of this genre that has already gained popularity with the chinese audiences (wang, 2006). the crucial message that the chinese government wants to convey to the people by releasing this film is that it symbolises the nature of humanity (wang, 2015). in other words, the vision is that young people should remain benevolent and upright even in adverse circumstances. apart from this, the film also serves as a moral sentiment of sympathy for the destitute (douban, 2018). 44 reshaping history: cultural and temporal transfer in the subtitled heritage film oliver twist (2005) 7. conclusion using hung’s (1980) key classifications of recurrent historical features in dickens’s novel oliver twist which characterise the modern heritage film version, this paper has sought to analyse how the chinese subtitles mediate british history for a chinese audience. the major challenge for the subtitlers lies in the transfer of the early nineteenth-century victorian history to modern china, taking the linguistic, cultural and historical barriers into consideration. from the perspective of the film selection, the chinese authorities most presumably used british heritage to develop their own chinese heritage via the modern film version of oliver twist (2005). in the time when the film was subtitled and released in 2006, china was experiencing social chaos which resonated with that of victorian britain. the subject matter of the film resonates with traditional and modern chinese values such as confucius’ critical thinking and benevolence, president hu jintao’s aspiration of “constructing a harmonious society”, as well as the chinese themes of reward and punishment. the subtitled film, in consequence, is used to promote chinese cultural values for the chinese audiences, despite being about nineteenth-century britain. the above representative examples of the chinese subtitles demonstrated that domestication has been heavily used. this has been done through the frequent use of archaic expressions such as fourcharacter idioms and idiomatic expressions. as william morris asserts in his writing, the domestic reader expects illustrations of the source culture in a translation as well as a return to an earlier time. therefore, morris suggests that the peculiarities of the archaic languages be deliberately and consciously translated (bassnett, 2013, p. 76). at times, the chinese subtitlers for oliver twist follow his advice. however, in other instances, they explicate and update to enable the viewer to make for a smooth reading in modern china, which leads to another key strategy of the selected instances being explication. moreover, a many subtitling approaches is found in oliver twist (2005). while norms with rich cultural and historical overtones often cannot be translated by the chinese subtitles, it is interesting to note that the frequent adoption of dynamic strategies gain multiple meanings. china’s own heritage can thus be said to be mediated via that of britain. this subtitling process, shaped as it is by linguistic, cultural and historical constraints, at times creates subtitles which work on multiple levels. in other words, transliteration is not only faithful to the sounds of the english origin, but conveys the foreignness of the subject, complemented by approaches such as explication, amplification and domestication. therefore, the historical features shown in this modern version of a british heritage film interact with chinese culture to transfer meaning via either archaic historical or modernised expressions for chinese audiences. having identified how the chinese subtitles use a complex combination of translation strategies, this paper has attempted to shed new light upon the intertextual relationship between early victorian england and twentieth-first-century china in the chinese subtitles. the foreign and other auditory and visual cultural and historical specificities set in early victorian england may impede modern chinese audiences from thorough comprehension. however, a cumulative, fluid and dynamic use of translation strategies and contextually appropriate consideration mutually enable a creative and 45 journal of audiovisual translation, volume 3, issue 1 modernised reading of a historical past to entertain the 21st century audiences in china. these cultural and temporal specificities and complexities are, therefore, reinterpreted and redirected to the receiving culture for the purpose of rejuvenating china’s cultural heritage. references bassnett, s. 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(1999). zhuangzi. foreign languages press beijing. 49 http://www.chinanews.com/gn/2015/10-22/7584086.shtml 101 reappraising verbal language in audiovisual translation: from description to application maria pavesi university of pavia _________________________________________________________ abstract focussing on the verbal code alone in audiovisual translation research is often criticised as it supposedly disregards the semiotic and cultural complexity of the audiovisual text. this article by contrast argues for the relevance of an in-depth analysis of the linguistic component of the multimodal complex. first, the article presents a model of key dimensions necessary to account for the space occupied by the language of dubbing, while placing it within a wider sociolinguistic context. three pairs of dimensions are proposed: naturalness and register specificity, target language orientation and source language interference, and routinisation and creativity. second, the article argues that translation for dubbing can be applied as a heuristic device to explore the translation of casual conversation. by analysing the rendering of a typical structure of conversational english in dubbed italian, an illustration is provided of systematic crosslinguistic correspondences that potentially extend to spontaneous speech. further sociolinguistic, diachronic and cross-cultural investigations are suggested as a way to push research into the language of dubbing forward. key words: fictive orality, conversation, the language of dubbing, naturalness, source language interference, creativity, demonstrative clefts  maria.pavesi@unipv.it; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7474-9546 citation: pavesi, m. (2018). reappraising verbal language in audiovisual translation. from description to application. journal of audiovisual translation, 1(1), 101-121. editor(s): a. jankowska & p. romerofresco received: january 22, 2018 accepted: june 30, 2018 published: november 15, 2018 copyright: ©2018 pavesi. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license. this allows for unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7474-9546 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7474-9546 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 102 1. introduction the canadian-french film juste la fin du monde (dolan, 2016) tells a story of life and tragedy by zooming in on dialogue, images and sound. the verbal and the visual are co-protagonists, together with the pressing music, perfectively rendering the tension towards the main character’s announcement of his looming death to his family. his sister-in-law is alone in attempting to break the wall of the unsaid. her elliptical, unfinished and hesitant questions: combien temps?, combien temps ave-?, combien temps? – equally elliptical in the english subtitles ‘how much time?’, ‘how much time?’, ‘will you?’ – are the only verbal hints to the man’s predicament. verbal language is there, essential in the film’s architecture to talk about daily life, family memories, conflicts and old grudges, at one level, but at another level the dialogue indirectly asks why the protagonist has come to visit his family after many years of absence; and by doing so, it dramatically expresses the anguish of the unspoken truth. the aim of the present contribution is to reappraise the role of verbal language in audiovisual translation (avt) by recognising the language of dubbing as a fully legitimate object of research and proposing a model to describe and account for it in a principled way. the application of dubbing research to the broader field of spontaneous spoken language offers further justification for the study of this translated language. in the remainder of the article, section 2 provides the general background against which dialogue takes central stage in audiovisual (av) products. section 3 presents a model of key dimensions of orality in avt that moves beyond a reductionist and loss-oriented conception of dubbing. section 4 explores how dubbing translation can be profitably applied as a heuristic device to study the translation of casual conversation, with subsection 4.4.2. illustrating the specific case of a typical spoken language construction. the conclusions briefly round up the main arguments of the article. 2. the background after years of surprising neglect, av dialogue and its translation have recently given way to a remarkable outpouring of scholarship, a wealth of topics and methodological approaches. as film dialogue is made up of highly contextualised language, it is necessary to consider the integration of all semiotic codes in the multimodal complex so as to achieve an ecologic account of how av dialogue develops both diegetically and extradiegetically (e.g., chaume, 2012; pérezgonzález, 2014; taylor, 2013). with multimodality coming to the foreground in avt studies, researchers have addressed themes such as space, characterisation and av cohesion (baumgarten, 2008; guillot, 2017; zabalbeascoa, 2012) to disclose not only how meaning may be lost during the transfer process but also effectively recreated thanks to the semiotic richness of film (pérezgonzález, 2014; taylor, 2013). for example, the shift from formal to informal pronouns (meister, 2016; pavesi, 2014-2015) strategically conveys greater emotionality through intersemiotic explicitation (perego, 2009), whereby contextual cues and nonverbal behaviour in the original version are expressed linguistically in translation. intersemiotic explicitation occurs, for instance, reappraising verbal language in audiovisual translation: from description to application 103 when a change in voice quality and volume in the original version is reproduced in translation accompanied by a change in grammatical form. extra layers of meanings are also added in translation by exploiting interactional troping (agha, 2007), which arises when two performed signs belonging to the verbal and nonverbal semiotic complexes “index models of social relation that are mutually inconsistent” (p. 26). this occurs, for example, if respectful address is used when dubbing a scene of physical or psychological abuse (pavesi, 2014-2015). the attention to multimodality and film semiotics, however, represents one end of the continuum of research centred on the language of the screen. at the other end, it may be argued, the verbal code can be investigated by focussing on specific subsystems or language items, hence bringing to light salient features of the dialogue itself. this approach to research is often criticised within mainstream avt research owing to its emphasis on the verbal component of film, vis-à-vis both the semiotic complexity and cultural embedding of the av text. the contrast is evidenced in the following quotations by two leading figures in avt research. it is […] paradoxical that the dominant research perspective is linguistic, though avt is actually a multisemiotic blend of many different elements such as images, sounds, language (oral and written), colours, proxemics and gestures. (gambier, 2008, p. 11, emphasis added) [the] apparent lack of more academic contributions with a focus on the cultural angle of avt is perhaps one of the many paradoxes in this field, […] given the wealth of cultural information conveyed by them and the fact that the linguistic fabric is only a part of the whole semiotic composite. (díaz cintas, 2012, p. 281, emphasis added) the linguistic approach to research on av language can nonetheless be justified for reasons of feasibility, autonomy of the object of investigation, and social impact. firstly, as for feasibility, there should be no objection to research that proceeds on the basis of the methodology available at the time and asks research questions that can be readily operationalised, leaving to more powerful theoretical and methodological approaches the task of bringing together and systematising previous results. that is, research on a complex and many-sided phenomenon such as avt can benefit from the tackling of individual components to be later integrated into the larger picture. secondly, the language of dubbing deserves to be studied on its own as a variety within the target repertoire, and with reference to other registers of the same language such as the language of original dialogue, the language of other avt modalities, or the language of dubbing from different source cultures. the languages of dubbing should also be compared across different target languages and cultures, a crucial research avenue that is still under-investigated (but see for instance the comparative study of dubbing into european and canadian french in mboudjeke, 2016). from the complementary perspective of subtitling, guillot (2016) argues that subtitles make up a text within the text and brings attention to their “meaning potential as text, that is [to] subtitles’ capacity to mean on their own terms, as a necessary step for developing a better understanding journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 104 of their interplay with other meaning-making resources from the broader semiotic context” (p. 607). the idea that subtitles follow their own logic and their own agenda vis-à-vis original dialogues was already put forward by remael (2003), in this way supporting the view that the verbal component of avt merits close scrutiny. when treating telecinematic language per se, several approaches to analysis are available and contribute to a better understanding of how dialogue works. they include engaging with the sequential dimension of verbal language, seen as motivated series of connected utterances as with conversation analysis and appraisal theory (pérezgonzález, 2007, 2014). they also comprise the examination of how the dialogue sprawls vertically from beginning to end within the av text, developing its own norms during the process (guillot, 2016). the language of avt can also be addressed by looking at individual words and expressions repeated across different texts to identify registers, genres and ideology within corpus-based approaches to avt (baños, bruti & zanotti, 2013; mouka, saridakis & fotopoulou, 2015; pavesi, 2016a; levshina, 2017, among others). thirdly, the language of avt is worth investigating in itself due to the strong social and sociolinguistic impact it exerts on viewers. together with subtitling, the language of dubbing offers significant linguistic and sociolinguistic models to target audiences (motta, 2015) and may trigger language change as a pervasive and influential form of language contact: “tv texts spread more widely and deeply than […] other kinds of texts because they enter into people’s private space and often coexist with activities of everyday life, so the audience is more vulnerable, less concentrated, and more susceptible to interference” (motta 2015, p. 954). it is in its social function that the role of the language of avt can also be appraised as a means to foster first language literacy and metalinguistic awareness along with second language learning, not only in formal educational settings but also via naturalistic exposure through subtitled as well as dubbed media (caruana, ghia & pavesi, 2014; ghia & pavesi, 2016; motta, 2017, among others). 3. focussing on the language of dubbing different perspectives have been taken on the language of dubbing, a kind of fictive orality (brumme & espunya, 2012). mostly relying on a reductionist and loss-oriented conception of avt, this variety is typically assessed with reference to its source language dependence, relative formality, lack of idiomaticity, repetitiveness and sociolinguistic under-characterisation. as a result, many definitions of dubbed language, or ‘dubbese’, have resorted to negatively connoted expressions such as fake, artificial, anti-realistic, stereotyped orality or language. however, if we move away from the initial view of telecinematic language − both translated and nontranslated − as inauthentic orality, and overcome the dichotomous conceptualisation of screen language being set between the written and the spoken poles, greater attention can be devoted to a sociolinguistic view of telecinematic discourse as a fully-fledged language variety (locher & jucker, 2017a). in this perspective the language of dubbing becomes an autonomous space that can be investigated analytically. reappraising verbal language in audiovisual translation: from description to application 105 since with dubbing the film’s verbal message is meant to reach viewers as spoken language, orality is a central concern to this translation modality. a few variables or dimensions appear to be most relevant to our understanding of the dynamics underlining the representation of spokenness in avt. pavesi (2016b) put forward three pairs of complementary dimensions − naturalness and register specificity, target language orientation and source language interference, and routinisation and creativity. these are conceptualised as structured in pairs of poles of attraction that define intersecting planes of variation and delimit areas of overlap. the acknowledgement of multiple intersections and overlaps is needed to account for each language of dubbing and relate it to other neighbouring forms of fictive orality, such as non-translated av speech, the language of subtitling, the languages of dubbing from different source languages into the same target language, as well as from the same source language into different target languages or national varieties. the same constructs can also be exploited to compare the language of dubbing with the reference norms of spontaneous conversation both in the original and the target language. it must be finally observed that the intrinsic variability of dubbed languages suggests a diachronic evolution in the norms that underlie their makeup. these changes across time can be studied by analysing redubs in the same target language, as shown by zanotti (2015) working on a corpus of retranslations, and by constructing diachronic corpora of comparable av products released at given time intervals. by drawing on such corpora, minutella (2015, 2017) and motta (2015) investigated source language interference in films and tv series across time. 3.1. naturalness and register specificity the opposition between naturalness versus register specificity defines the major axis of description and variation in telecinematic language. naturalness as the degree of conformity to the spontaneous use of the spoken language can be contrasted to the register specificity of dubbed language as an independent variety. it can be viewed as a synonym of realism, although the two terms do not perfectly overlap, with realism being often interpreted as a culturally-embedded and subjective notion, dependent on the agreement among viewers belonging to a given community at one historical moment. realism in this sense is bound to audiences’ habits and expectations and naturalness refers to what is idiomatic or conventionally approved by viewers, who as native speakers recognise a linguistic choice as fitting in a given sociopragmatic situation (romero-fresco, 2009, 2012). interestingly, antonini and chiaro’s (2005, 2009) and bucaria’s (2008) research on viewers’ attitudes and perceptions towards italian dubbed tv programmes showed that professionals and academics were generally stricter in their assessments of how probable linguistic features of dubbese were to occur in daily use. by contrast, ordinary viewers, and in particular younger viewers, had a rather lenient attitude towards typical english calques. this is presumably because of the familiarity they had acquired over the years with those expressions which, although unusual by everyday standards, were typical of dubbed language. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 106 realism can be thus investigated empirically through reception studies of viewers’ responses and reactions to translated products, their mental decoding and understanding, along with repercussions, or viewers’ attitudes and sociocultural consequences of avt as extensively debated in di giovanni and gambier (2018). naturalness in the strict sense, on the other hand, is liable to analysts’ quantitative inspections of phonological, lexical, syntactic and pragmatic features of av language. for this reason, the major studies on the naturalness of dubbed languages, including italian, spanish and catalan, all share a comparative, corpus-based methodology (e.g., baños, 2014; freddi & pavesi, 2009; marzá, 2016; zamora & alessandro, 2016). but what exactly does naturalness entail? if we start from the assumption that conversation is the baseline to which screen dialogue should be compared, a first aim of research is to find out to what extent and through which linguistic devices translated av dialogue aligns with spontaneous conversation. baños (2014) investigated a wide selection of spoken features belonging to the various language levels in a few episodes of the spanish dubbed version of friends (krane & kauffman, 19942004) and the domestically-produced spanish sitcom siete vidas (garcia velilla, 1999-2006). the results of her corpus analysis suggest that dubbed language overall is further removed from colloquial conversation and is hence ‘less natural’ than the language of domestic, nontranslated target language products. to ascertain the degree of alignment between dubbed italian and spontaneous conversation, pavesi (2008, 2009) compared the frequency and functions of subsets of key conversational features including personal pronouns, marked word orders, connectors and spoken language subordinators in a parallel av corpus and reference corpora of the target language. the findings substantiated a good degree of overlap between spontaneous speech and dubbed italian for most of the syntactic features investigated. by examining a set of pragmatic markers including de veras (really) and veamos (let’s see) in dubbed spanish, romero-fresco (2009, 2012) conversely showed that the language of dubbing for this group of pragmatic features shifts towards the written and formal pole of register variation, hence exhibiting traits of unnaturalness in comparison to non-translated av dialogue. overall, results for the dubbed languages investigated so far reveal a variable degree of alignment between the language of dubbing and spontaneous speech. but does av dialogue need to mirror conversation faithfully and fully in order to sound realistic and plausible, or is a looser similarity enough for viewers to experience orality? guillot (2012) in her application of roger fowler’s (2000) cognitive theory of mode to subtitling and pavesi (2008, 2009) looking at dubbing have both argued in favour of a selective view of speech representation or mimesis in avt, in that just a few features in avt, named “privileged carriers of orality” by pavesi (2009), can be enough to allow access to the mental model of the appropriate mode or register and trigger the experience of orality in viewers. similarly, tomaszkiewicz (2001) has explained that viewers as well as subtitle readers reconstruct missing parts of the ideal, intended text by activating their pre-existing competence as conversationalists. reappraising verbal language in audiovisual translation: from description to application 107 selection is therefore constitutive of av registers and, as ultimately resulting from the economy constraints of the medium (valdeón, 2017), should not be regarded in terms of reduction or impoverishment. this part-for-the-whole or metonymic understanding of naturalness, however, leads us to the question of exactly which features are entrusted with orality in dubbing. hence the significance of thorough mappings of spoken language features across language levels. in a recent study on naturalness in valencian dubbing, marzá (2016) discovered that there is an uneven distribution of target features expressing intensification in dubbing, which quantitatively displays more differences than similarities with colloquial conversation. however: some specific intensifying mechanisms evoke the colloquial register and naturalise the dubbed text, such as the use of superlatives and diminutives, the semantic fields in the intensification of modality, the variety and colloquialness of phraseological units, the preferred use of molt and tot as simple modifiers (p. 273, emphasis added). this field of enquiry can be widened by asking whether features evoking orality vary within the same language and culture according to source language, and in different target languages, or are shared across different dubbed languages. register specificity is the opposite side of the picture in the relationship between the language of dubbing and spontaneous spoken language. with dubbed language being generally described as further removed from spontaneous spoken language than non-translated dialogues (e.g., baños, 2014; marzá, 2016; rossi, 1999), all the phonological, morphological, syntactic, lexical and discoursal tendencies that distinguish it from spontaneous conversation can be used to characterise it as a selfstanding register. crucial to the distinctive characterisation of dubbed speech is intonation. drawing on a corpus of audio files from the series how i met your mother (bays & thomas, 2014-2015) dubbed into spanish, sánchez mompeán (2017) successfully isolated the intonation patterns that set dubbing apart from spontaneous speech − elongation of sounds, syncopated rhythm caused by pitch fluctuations, tense and precise articulation, emphasis and variation in tempo −, hence empirically substantiating the claim of unnaturalness attributed to suprasegmentals in avt. register specificity can in fact be viewed as including a degree of (un)naturalness or conventional orality. from this perspective naturalness is a different construct from ‘similarity to spontaneous spoken language’ and applies to the perception of the language of dubbing as a kind of language use in its own right, whose plausibility should be assessed against what viewers expect dubbing to be like based on their previous experience. along similar lines, travalia (2012) argues that the reproduction of source models through supposed sociolinguistic equivalents would be disfavoured by target audiences, while the artificiality deriving from the neutralisation of social and geographic varieties leads to greater acceptance by the audiences in that sociolinguistic neutrality better matches the visual foreignness of the imported av product. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 108 3.2. target orientation and source language interference the link between naturalness and target orientedness is close, although the two notions do not overlap. translated dialogue may be different from spontaneous speech and still come near the norms of the target community, notably with reference to the language of domestic products. the extent of target orientation or domestication and, complementarily, the extent of source language influence may also typify different media − with tv series being described as more subjected to interference phenomena than films (motta, 2015; pavesi, 2008). at a syntacticpragmatic level, an interesting case of overlap between target orientation and naturalness in italian is given by marked word orders, including right and left dislocations and cleft clauses: the language of dubbing polarises towards the norms of both spoken italian and italian films, while it mainly shuns the patterns found in the anglophone original texts (pavesi, 2005, 2008, 2009, 2016a). motta’s (2015) recent diachronic study of avt in paleotv versus neotv programmes in italy (before and after 1976) confirms the special status of marked word orders in italian dubbing, which was already evident in films translated during the italian neorealist period (rossi, 1999) and in films and television series from the late eighties and early 1990s (pavesi, 2005). right dislocations of the type ce l’ho già una scopa (‘it i already have a broom’ < i already have a broom) are systematically added to the target texts where they introduce a pattern of the informal spoken language, also exploited in domestic italian productions (motta, 2015; rossi, 1999). in translation criticism and avt research, an ambivalent attitude prevails towards the role the source models play in the language of dubbing. if the levelling out of the original cultural matrix is emphasised as an undesired result, anglicisation – as the import of anglophone modules of speech – is equally criticised. yet, av texts are inherently source-bound and interference-prone. there are different reasons that account for the intrinsic permeability to features of the source language and source texts in dubbing. these reasons are both internal, having to do with the architecture of represented conversation on screen, and external, as growing working time constraints are associated to more than optimal reliance on the source text. due to the structure of telecinematic discourse, cross-comparisons are performed at all the production stages of dubbing (e.g., paolinelli & di fortunato, 2005). turns are pre-assigned and visible on screen, length and timing of speaking must be reproduced, nonverbal emphasis must be considered, and some lip-synchrony must be allowed in the target text (chaume 2012). as toury (1995/2012) already pointed out, a piecemeal organisation of the translation process brings about more visible traces of interference in the target text. the turn-by-turn organisation of av dialogue is hence biased towards carrying over source language features as well as avoiding natural target mechanisms that do not have direct equivalents in the source language. the latter phenomenon was discussed in relation to the unique item hypothesis (tirkkonen-condit, 2002) but has been appropriately labelled calques of absence by marzá in her study of naturalness in valencian dubbing (2016, p. 274). lexis and phraseology have been universally found to be open to source language transfer in the form of semantic, structural, pragmatic and frequency calques in dubbing (cf. minutella, 2015 for a recent reappraising verbal language in audiovisual translation: from description to application 109 overview). calques appear to occur more readily than loanwords (e.g., brincat, 2000; alfieri, contarino & motta, 2003) as they disguise more easily in agreement with the domesticating tendencies of dubbing, and are still widespread in spite of the reported greater vigilance against obvious structural transfer in contemporary av products (bruti & zanotti, 2018; motta, 2015). at the same time, direct borrowing appears to be on the increase, in particular in avt into italian of anglo-american feature films, animated films and tv series aimed at young audiences (minutella, 2017). both calques and loanwords offer readymade solutions to isochrony problems. 3.3. routinisation and creativity the influence of the source language may give way to repetitiveness in the dubbed text through translational routines, that is “recurrent solutions to translation problems which tend to become overextended” in time (pavesi, 2008, p. 94, 2018). routinisation in dubbing also derives from the prefabricated nature of av dialogue (chaume, 2001, p. 81; tomaszkiewicz, 2001) along with the formulaicity and predictability of anglophone filmic speech (freddi, 2011; taylor, 2008), when fixed, reiterated patterns in the source language are translated with fixed, reiterated patterns in the target language. that is, formulaicity is reproduced in the dubbed versions when some english conversational formulaic expressions are translated with recurrent phraseological calques in dubbing. in this way, several calques have become translational routines in italian dubbing, including: sì signore < yes sir, no signore < no, sir; posso aiutarla < can i help you?; è tutto < that’s all ; fine della storia < end of story (motta, 2015; pavesi, 2005, 2016b). but routinisation and formulaicity are only one side of the coin; their counterpart, creativity, a more elusive concept, has also attracted attention in dubbing research (ranzato, 2010, 2011). as a problem-solving process, creativity is most visible when an obstacle is stumbled upon, both locally and generally in the areas where mismatches occur cross-linguistically and crossculturally. the rendering of the typically intermingled regional and social dialects, for example, calls for creative solutions by dubbing professions if the dominant levelling out is to be avoided, as exemplified in minutella’s (2016) analysis of the creative domestication of the animated film gnomeo & juliet (asbury, 2011) dubbed into italian. importantly, creativity can shift from an individual act to a social process, in this way moving from innovation to established norms. as for german dubbing, for example, queen (2004) has shown that a distinctive street culture language spoken by urban youth is creatively and yet systematically used to translate the speech of young african-american male characters. 4. audiovisual translation to explore the translation of spontaneous spoken language as the language of dubbing undergoes multiagency mediation processes, its translational facet makes it inappropriate for the investigation of either spontaneous spoken language or fictive orality tout court. as made clear in corpus linguistics and corpus-based translation studies (e.g., mcenery journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 110 & xiao, 2007), this is due to the limitations of any description of language x or contrastive study of languages x and y, where language x is translated, language y is non-translated. such contrastive studies take great advantage from comparable corpora of original languages, spontaneous or fictive, as in zago’s (2018) comparative study of 3and 4-grams in english and italian original film language carried out on the comparable component of the pavia corpus of film dialogue (pavesi, 2014). the systematic investigation of the language of avt, and of dubbing in particular, can however be of significant use as a heuristic procedure for a different goal, namely exploring the translation of spontaneous conversation, i.e. informal, unguided interactions in various settings (at home, at work, in cars, etc.). this largely underexplored application of research on avt has great potentials for both translation and interpreting studies and nearby disciplines such as linguistics, applied linguistics, language learning and teaching. as spontaneous conversation is the basic type of humans’ verbal communication, the need is there to gain information about the transferability of its key features from one language to another. yet, in its informal, impromptu and phatic realisations, conversation typically remains untranslated. admittedly, there are approximations to the translation of casual conversation. in television interviews with foreign guests, for example, a seemingly spontaneous verbal exchange is staged for the benefit of the non-participating audience. nevertheless, several factors limit the approximation of this genre to conversation. among them, we can mention the lack of synchrony in the interpreter’s intervention, which is necessarily detached from the original language production, and the interpreter’s focus on the referential rather than the phatic aspects of communication. moreover, only one of the two interlocutors is usually translated, while the unstructured, two-way interaction found in natural conversation is clearly not staged in these cross-linguistic encounters. more recently live tv programmes (e.g., dog-training programmes, cooking programmes) are being dubbed. they offer some overlap with conversation and could be used for the study of its translation, limitedly however to language-in-action, one genre of spontaneous spoken language where speech is in support of what people are doing with reference to the physical entities present in the situational context. these instances of media communication bring us close to the dubbing of av dialogue. this translation modality entails the substitution of the original soundtrack with an equivalent target language soundtrack in films, tv series, soap operas, etc., that is all those products that are structured around various forms of fictive dialogue. following richet (2001), it may be contended that cinema and television offer a privileged means for the study of features of spontaneous spoken language in translation. films and television series represent a natural and matchless source of parallel texts, in which the target language dialogue is expected to reproduce the modality of delivery as well as the content of the source dialogue (tomaszkiewicz, 2001). in avt, therefore, we are given the possibility of examining, turn by turn or utterance by utterance, what can be considered functionally equivalent expressions in the source and target texts. also, texts are anchored to fixed scenes representing locations, situations, movements, gestures, gazes, etc., a whole set of semiotic signs that do not change when the language changes (chaume, 2004, 2012). dubbed films hence reappraising verbal language in audiovisual translation: from description to application 111 offer unique opportunities for the synchronous reproduction of verbal-nonverbal combinations in invariant, although culturally not equivalent situations. 4.1. representing conversation the use of avt data to explore the translation of conversation depends on the suitability of av dialogue to investigate conversation. several authors have in fact issued a call to use the language produced by filmmakers and heard on tv as a source of reliable data for linguistic analysis. murphy back in 1978 highlighted the sociolinguistic richness of av language, whereas lakoff & tannen (1984) shifted the attention to the artistic realism of film dialogue. while analysing conversational strategies in ingmar bergman’s film scenes from a marriage (bergman, 1973), they argued that “there is much to be gained by looking at artificial conversation first, to see what these general, unconsciously-adhered-to assumptions are; and later returning to natural conversation to see how they may actually be exemplified in literal use” (p. 323). in a similar vein, having investigated the tv series star trek (roddenberry, 1966-1969), rey (2001) suggested that av dialogue represents a valuable indicator of how conversation is perceived, whereas alvarez-pereyre (2011) discussed film dialogue as a linguistic specimen, that is, language data that can contribute to our knowledge about language. while ultimately espousing a position in favour of the essential distinction between non-fictional and fictional texts, locher and jucker (2017a) present the borders between the two as fuzzy and slippery: “there is nothing in the syntax or morphology of a sentence or in the choice of vocabulary which systematically differentiates between fictional and other texts” (p. 4). importantly, if av dialogue exhibits register specific features (see the recent contributions in locher & jucker 2017b), and is characterised by few disfluency phenomena, increased discourse immediacy and reduced vagueness (bublitz, 2017; levshina, 2017; quaglio, 2009), as well as increased emotionality and conflictuality (freddi, 2011; bednarek, 2010, 2012; levshina, 2017), quantitative corpus investigations have confirmed that it overlaps to a considerable degree with spontaneous conversation (forchini, 2012; quaglio, 2009). more recently close alignment has also been established between spontaneous british and american conversation and the language of english subtitles (levshina, 2017), once again showing that english av conversation shares high involvement, interactivity, and informality with face-to-face conversation. 4.2. dubbing as a discovery procedure since research has brought to the fore the sociolinguistic and pragmatic relevance of the data coming from the screen, provided due attention is paid to avt constraints, we can suggest that features performing a key role both in speech and av dialogue can be usefully examined in dubbing to bring to light pragmatic correspondences across spontaneous spoken languages. just like the “representation of speech in fiction (whether in the form of a play or dialogue in prose) has served as one of the best proxies for actual, historical data” (denis & tagliamonte 2017, p. 554), dubbing translation to some extent can serve as a surrogate for the translation of casual conversation journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 112 in everyday contexts. a few phenomena that correlate with the social and situational parameters of impromptu communication have in fact been profitably addressed in dubbing research. they include: questions, as related to turn-taking and the interactivity of face-to-face conversation (ghia, 2014); politeness in speech acts owing to the social and interpersonal nature of spoken language (bruti, 2013); deictic expressions as linked to the contextualisation of speech in space and time as shared by interlocutors (pavesi, 2008, 2009). 4.2.1. a short illustration to round up the arguments in favour of verbal language and fictive orality as central concerns in avt research, a short illustration is provided of how dubbing can shed light on the translation of discoursal-syntactic structures of face-to-face conversation. among different types of speechrelated focussing strategies, demonstrative clefts of the type that’s what i see; that’s what it means; that’s exactly what tom said; that’s why i’m here, deserve special attention due to their premium role in spontaneous spoken english, where they occur quite frequently and have a formulaic character (calude, 2008). in speech, demonstrative clefts highlight relevant segments of discourse and perform a summative, conclusive function while often introducing a gloss or an explanation. they are thus very useful in assuring textual cohesion and linking up interlocutors’ turns together. in translation, they are interesting features from a cross-linguistic perspective, in that formal equivalents rarely occur in other european languages including german and italian (johansson, 2001; miller, 2006). working with the pavia corpus of film dialogue, a parallel corpus of naturalistic dialogues (pavesi 2014), pavesi (2016a) found that demonstrative clefts in english filmic speech align in both formulaicity and frequency with the same constructions in real life conversational english – about 90 occurrences per 100,000 words. they also share the same functions as they draw attention to portions of text or context, summarise and conclude sections of discourse, and make explicit what was implicit or unsaid. these functions are illustrated in the extract below (example 1), where the first cleft has a highlighting, cataphoric function, the second one is conclusive and the third one is both conclusive and explanatory. the naturalness of av dialogue prepares the ground for exploring how these conversational structures are transferred into another language. example 1. runaway bride (marshall, 1999). interestingly, only four english demonstrative clefts were calqued into italian (pavesi, 2016a). by contrast, the highest percentage (40%) of the 215 demonstrative clefts in the english dialogue were translated with more natural it-clefts equally headed by a demonstrative (example 2). reappraising verbal language in audiovisual translation: from description to application 113 these results uncover viable pragmatic equivalents in a spoken language that does not have the same structural choices as english. example 2. spanglish (brooks, 2004) – author's back translation. other strategies came to the fore for the translation of english demonstrative clefts in italian (pavesi, 2016a). apart from omissions and reformulations, which circumvent the translation problem and account for 19% of all translation solutions, another frequent translation pattern was given by unclefted, one clause utterances containing a demonstrative. the occurrence of these structures with both unmarked (example 3) and marked word orders (example 4) accounted for a high percentage of cleft translations (25% of all instances). importantly, these single clauses confirm the key role of deixis in spoken language, while uncovering other syntactic strategies by which it can be effectively transferred across languages. example 3. the holiday (meyers, 2006) – author's back translation. example 4. the queen (frears, 2006) – author's back translation. more specifically, utterances exhibiting marked word orders and a demonstrative pronoun represent a notable subpattern which couples two focussing strategies together: syntactic reordering of constituents and a strong form of reference. syntactic reordering journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 114 may include both the fronting of the demonstrative pronoun, as in the example (4) above, and dislocations, as in the example below (5). what should be noticed here is that italian can just use reordering of words to give prominence to discourse entities when english resorts to demonstrative clefts. example 5. finding forrester (van sant, 2000) – author's back translation. finally, translations also resort to focussing particles to render the highlighting function of english demonstrative clefts (13% of all instances), in agreement with the universal tendency whereby these devices are productive in languages where clefts are not available or rarely occur (miller, 2006). however, many of these particles are deictic in the dubbed renderings, starting with ecco, ‘here’/’there’, used as a presentative in spoken italian (example 6): translation for dubbing confirms the primacy of deixis in face-to-face communication and shows the way it can be transferred from the source language by taking advantage of specific devices of the target language. example 6. something's gotta give (meyers, 2003) – author's back translation. in this short illustration of how translation for dubbing can unveil cross-linguistic correspondences pertaining to spontaneous conversation, a spoken english construction was chosen that is employed in av dialogue similarly to real life conversation. it was shown how demonstrative clefts in english are systematically rendered in dubbing via a few italian strategies that transfer the focusing functions of the original constructions. not all aspects of spontaneous spoken language are amenable to such analysis and care must be taken in the interpretation of dubbing patterns whose frequency reappraising verbal language in audiovisual translation: from description to application 115 or infrequency may be motivated by synchronisation constraints. with this provision in mind, data from dubbing can furnish valuable indications of resources available in target language. 5. conclusions this contribution has presented a reappraisal of the spoken component of avt, an object worthwhile of investigation in itself for reasons of feasibility, autonomy and social impact. once we overcome the reductionist conception of avt language as artificial orality, or a midway blend between speaking and writing, dubbing can be examined systematically drawing on a model that accounts for its complexity. the model proposed in this contribution builds on three pairs of complementary dimensions − naturalness and register specificity, target language orientation and source language interference, and routinisation and creativity. although most investigations on the language of avt focus on the construct of naturalness, all the dimensions identified in the proposed model are necessary to account fully for individual dubbed languages. the need is there, moreover, for studies on diachronic variation, different av registers as well as a wider array of dubbed languages in europe and beyond. as for applications, avt can also be capitalised on to gain insight into the translation of casual conversational language. provided attention is paid to the intrinsic limitations of translated and non-translated fictive orality as a mirror of spontaneous language, research on dubbing can unveil recurrent cross-linguistic correspondences that would be difficult to gain access to considering the scarcity of relevant translational data. as illustrated with demonstrative clefts, a typical feature of casual conversation, if we exploit the similarities between spontaneous and fictive orality, the analysis of dubbed texts can bring to the fore discoursal and pragmatic devices available in different spoken languages to perform the same or similar functions. as a result, the knowledge we draw from dubbing research can be applied to the broader fields of cross-cultural pragmatics, conversation analysis, spoken language and translation studies at large. biographical note maria pavesi, phd, is a professor of english language and linguistics at the university of pavia, where she also teaches audiovisual translation. her research has focussed on orality in dubbing with special attention to personal, spatial and social deixis, and second language acquisition via audiovisual input. for the past 12 years she has developed the pavia corpus of film dialogue, a parallel and comparable corpus now comprising about 700,000 words of anglophone and dubbed and original italian film transcriptions. her most recent publications include “translational routines in dubbing: taking stock and moving forwards”, routledge (2018) and “corpus-based audiovisual translation studies: ample room for development” in the routledge handbook of audiovisual translation studies (2018). journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 116 references agha, a. 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(2018). cross-linguistic affinities in film dialogue. palermo: siké. zamora, p., & alessandro, a. (2016). frecuencia de uso y funciones de las intericciones italianas y españolas en el hablado fílmico y sus repercussiones en el doblaje en español [frequency of use and functions of the italian and spanish interjections in filmic language and its repercussions in the dubbing in spanish]. monti: monografías de traducción e interpretación, 3, 181-211. zanotti, s. (2015). analysing redubs: motives, agents and audience response. in r. baños piñero & j. días cintas (eds.), audiovisual translation in a global context. mapping an ever-changing landscape (pp. 110-139). basingstoke, uk: palgrave. university of pavia abstract focussing on the verbal code alone in audiovisual translation research is often criticised as it supposedly disregards the semiotic and cultural complexity of the audiovisual text. this article by contrast argues for the relevance of an in-depth analy... citation: pavesi, m. (2018). reappraising verbal language in audiovisual translation. from description to application. journal of audiovisual translation, 1(1), 101-121. editor(s): a. jankowska & p. romero-fresco received: january 22, 2018 accepted: june 30, 2018 published: november 15, 2018 copyright: ©2018 pavesi. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license. this allows for unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source ar... 1. introduction 2. the background 3. focussing on the language of dubbing 3.1. naturalness and register specificity 3.2. target orientation and source language interference 3.3. routinisation and creativity 4. audiovisual translation to explore the translation of spontaneous spoken language 4.1. representing conversation 4.2. dubbing as a discovery procedure 4.2.1. a short illustration 5. conclusions biographical note references 26 the reading comprehension skill of d/deaf and hard-of-hearing poles and its importance for media accessibility: a pilot study paweł aleksandrowicz maria curie-skłodowska university, poland _________________________________________________________ abstract the study investigates the reading comprehension skill of d/deaf and hard-of-hearing (dhh) poles in the context of media accessibility. deriving from the assumption that spoken polish typically acts as a second language for the dhh, the study employed state certificate exams designed for foreigners learning polish as a second language. a reading comprehension test was composed on the basis of these exams, containing tasks at b1, b2 and c1 proficiency levels. it was administered to 126 participants: 87 d/deaf and hard-of-hearing (dhh) and 39 hearing persons acting as the cont correlation between rol group. it was also accompanied by a demographic questionnaire to determine the relationship between the reading skill and such aspects as age, education, degree of hearing loss, onset of hearing loss, preferred means of communication (sign language, spoken polish, both), declared proficiency in polish and preferred media accessibility method (sign language interpretation, subtitling, either of the two). key words: media accessibility, subtitles for the deaf and hard-ofhearing, sdh, reading comprehension, deaf, hard-ofhearing, literacy.  pawel.aleksandrowicz@poczta.umcs.lublin.pl; http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2190-1903 citation: aleksandrowicz, p. (2019). the reading comprehension skill of d/deaf and hard-of-hearing poles and its importance for media accessibility: a pilot study. journal of audiovisual translation, 2(1), 26–52. editor(s): a. jankowska received: july 09, 2019 accepted: august 28, 2019 published: november 30, 2019 funding: the study was carried out at the maria curie-sklodowska university and financed by the polish ministry of science and higher education. copyright: ©2019 aleksandrowicz. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license. this allows for unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2190-1903 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2190-1903 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ the reading comprehension skill of d/deaf and hard-of-hearing poles and its importance for media accessibility 27 1. introduction to make a given material truly accessible, media accessibility professionals should know their audience, which involves not only understanding the perceptual limitations of the recipients or identifying their preferences but also recognizing their cognitive and linguistic abilities. this is especially important when working with d/deaf and hard-of-hearing (dhh) viewers. only through investigating their linguistic competences and literacy skills can media accessibility professionals choose the appropriate accessibility method – verbatim subtitling, edited subtitling, sign language interpretation – that will cater best to the needs and capabilities of the audience. there are a number of studies into the reading comprehension skill of dhh children and students. they were conducted in various countries and for different languages – english (holt, 1994), dutch (wauters, van bon, & tellings, 2006), persian (rezaei, rashedi, & morasae, 2016), japanese (takahashi isaka, yamamoto, & nakamura , 2017), and more. all of such studies point to dhh children having a considerably lower reading comprehension skill than their hearing peers. for instance, kyle and harris (2006) report that deaf children typically experience a delay of at least five years in their reading skill when leaving school, while holt (1994) claims that the reading skill stops developing in the 4th or 5th grade. only one study exists in which polish dhh students had their skills tested in terms of the national spoken language. it was conducted by kowal (2011a) for her unpublished doctoral dissertation. she tested the polish language skills of 50 dhh students from the final high school grade, showing that they average the a2 proficiency level. research into the reading skills of adults is not that voluminous, most likely due to the difficulties in contacting and motivating large samples of participants, but it produces similar findings. for instance, having tested 24 deaf american adults, parault and williams (2010) demonstrated that the reading skills of the participants were below the sixth-grade level. no such research has been conducted on the polish dhh people. although it is possible to extrapolate the results attained in other countries and draw some conclusions for poland, they would have to be fairly general, as the literacy level of a deaf population is influenced by the educational system, access to rehabilitation, and the structure of the language itself – all of which usually differ from country to country. the present paper describes the preliminary results of a study that investigates the reading comprehension skill of dhh poles. it involves testing the skill using reading comprehension test exercises (levels b1, b2 and c1) taken from state certificate exams designed for foreigners learning polish as a second language. so far, it has been conducted on 126 participants – 87 dhh and 39 hearing persons acting as the control group. the dhh participants include not only secondary school students (aged 16 to 19) – like in the study by kowal (2011a) – but also working adults (aged 20 to 60) and seniors (aged 60+) to achieve a broader perspective on the dhh population of poles. the test is also accompanied by a demographic questionnaire to determine the relationship between the reading skill and such aspects as education, degree of hearing loss, onset of hearing loss, means of journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 28 communication (sign language, spoken polish, both), declared proficiency in polish and preferred media accessibility method (sign language interpretation, subtitles, either of the two). 2. subtitling for the dhh in the community of subtitlers and among researches in the field of media accessibility, there is an ongoing debate on how to handle the spoken content in subtitles – whether it should be verbatim or edited. the dispute pertains mostly to intralingual subtitling since editing and text condensation in interlingual subtitling raise no objections either among scholars or the dhh themselves (szarkowska, 2010). szarkowska, krejtz, klyszejko, & wieczorek (2011, p. 363–364) list three approaches related to handling the content transcript in intralingual subtitling: “verbatim,” “edited” (sometimes also called “adapted”), and “standard.” as the name suggests, “verbatim” subtitles are a full, word-for-word transcript of the given speech. their main advantage lies in presenting the exact same content as in the original. according to a report by the british office of communication (ofcom, 2005), the hard-of-hearing tend to opt for verbatim subtitles since such a transcript enables them to complement their residual hearing. the d/deaf communities also advocate verbatim, arguing for equal access to information and content, and even treating any intervention in the original text as a form of censorship. editing subtitles was also severely criticized by the polish dhh (szarkowska, pietrulewicz, & jankowska, 2015). another advantage of a verbatim transcript lies in the fact that it requires less time to prepare and is thus the least expensive (ofcom, 2005, p. 6). however, verbatim subtitles suffer from two significant drawbacks. the first issue is high presentation speed. since we speak faster than we read, a verbatim transcript of speech can be too fast to be read – especially for the viewers with lower literacy skill – and research into the matter proves that it indeed very often is (sancho-aldridge, 1996; de linde & kay, 1999; neves, 2008; romero-fresco, 2009; cambra, silvestre, & leal, 2009). the other issue is linguistic complexity. given the fact that, on average, the reading comprehension skill among the dhh is inferior, a word-forword transcript of speech might be too difficult for some viewers to comprehend. these two drawbacks can lead to a paradox: the concept of having a full and equal access to information via verbatim subtitles de facto is likely to deprive many users of such access. “adapted”/”edited” subtitles provide a transcript of the content with considerable simplification in terms of lexis and syntax, which should be suited to the inferior linguistic skills of the audience. additionally, the subtitle presentation speed is lower than in the case of regular subtitles in order to accommodate slower readers. the main advantage of this approach is that it should foster comprehension to a much greater extent than the other types of subtitles. this is evidenced by the empirical research conducted by baker (1985), jelinek lewis and jackson (2001) and burnham et al. (2008), but a more recent study carried out by szarkowska et al. (2016) on polish dhh found no the reading comprehension skill of d/deaf and hard-of-hearing poles and its importance for media accessibility 29 difference in favour of edited subtitles. in fact, the dhh tested in the experiment tended to have slightly better comprehension scores for verbatim subtitles, although it should be noted that their presentation speed was 180 words per minute – so within the limits of readability – while the rate of speech on tv or dvds can be significantly higher (romero-fresco, 2009). a great disadvantage of edited subtitles, as stated above, lies in the fact that they breed strong resentment in the target audience. ofcom (2005) reports that the initial reaction of dhh viewers to any mention of editing is universally negative. they view editing as information deficit, discrimination, over-protectiveness or patronizing, and similar reservations are held by a majority of polish dhh (szarkowska et al., 2015). yet, having considered the practical aspects of editing and the diversity of the d/deaf community, many recipients do acknowledge the fact that sign language users and seniors might struggle with non-edited subtitles due to difficult lexis, complex sentences and high presentation speed. the dhh who remain adamant include the viewers who are ideologically-minded, retain some hearing, can lip-read or live with hearing family members (ofcom, 2005, p. 17). another disadvantage of edited subtitles lies in their high cost, relatively long preparation time and specialized skills of the subtitler. faced with such financial and organizational requirements, as well as with the dissatisfaction of dhh communities, broadcasters and distributors prefer to avoid any editing (romero-fresco, 2009). “standard” intralingual subtitles comprise a transcript of the content which is limited by the time and space constraints typical for regular interlingual subtitling: the number of lines, number of characters per line, and comfortable reading speed. in order to adhere to these constraints, the content which is unnecessary for the overall understanding of the material – like repetitions, false starts, hesitations, etc. – is eliminated. the content is also condensed wherever possible, without entailing a loss of information. standard subtitles constitute a middle ground between verbatim and edited. they ensure sufficient presentation time with little interference in the lexis and syntax of the original text. however, they are not free of drawbacks either. firstly, the issue of sufficient speed is problematic. given the disproportion in the literacy skill of the dhh, and the resulting discrepancies in the reading speed, it is difficult to assess what presentation pace would accommodate the audience best. for hearing viewers, the subtitle reading speed oscillates between 145–200 words per minute (diaz cintas & remael, 2007; szarkowska & gerber-morón, 2018). having tested 262 hearing, 110 hard of hearing, and 205 deaf people with different captioning speeds, jensema (1998) established the optimum speed for most viewers to be 145 words per minute. keeping the subtitle presentation pace within this limit would enable the dhh who are slower readers to absorb the content to a greater extent, but at the same time it would most likely force the subtitler to include less of what is said in the original. as stated above, this can cause an outcry of the dhh who can spot the difference, and also – paradoxically – have a negative influence on comprehension, especially if vital information is omitted or the cohesion of the text is disrupted, as evidenced by szarkowska et al. (2016). secondly, even retaining the presentation speed at the level of 180 words per minute can journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 30 entail considerable editing, as the spoken content can reach the pace of up to 250 words per minute (romero-fresco, 2009). lastly, unedited lexis and syntax can possibly obstruct comprehension among the dhh with low literacy skill, as evidenced by baker (1985), jelinek lewis and jackson (2001), and burnham et al. (2008). 3. rationale and hypothesis the difficulty in choosing the most suitable approach out of the three presented above resides in the fact that the dhh are a very heterogeneous audience. the heterogeneity is visible in the umbrella term itself – d/deaf and hard-of-hearing – which includes two distinct groups of viewers, each with different abilities and conflicting expectations. for instance, the hard-of-hearing (hoh) with a good command of the spoken language and some residual hearing to rely on would benefit most from verbatim subtitles but dislike the adapted ones for their content loss and discrepancy between the spoken text. on the other hand, the d/deaf who do not lip-read and have low literacy skills would profit from adapted subtitles, but might find verbatim too fast and complex. it thus seems that adapting the subtitles to one type of viewers might result in the exclusion of the others. the best solution to this problem is to provide different types of subtitles simultaneously to cater for the distinct needs and expectations, but unfortunately most broadcasters and distributors employ a one-size-fits-all policy, with only one subtitle stream or file available. in this case, the conundrum of choosing the proper approach cannot be resolved without testing the reading comprehension skill of the total dhh audience, including both the d/deaf and the hard-of-hearing. knowing the general level of the skill in this population, as well as the number of proficient and poor readers, will enable media accessibility professionals to select the method which would ensure the greatest comprehension with maximum possible satisfaction among the widest range of viewers with various degrees of hearing impairment. obviously, the results of the research can be applied outside media accessibility as well – to any form of written communication directed towards the dhh: brochures, application forms, official letters, contracts, etc. if their reading skill is lower, all such materials can be simplified accordingly. to achieve significant and comprehensive results, such a test should be administered to participants who represent the entire spectrum of the population, and are thus diversified according to age, education, degree of hearing loss, onset of hearing loss, means of communication (sign language, spoken polish, both), declared proficiency in polish and preferred media accessibility method (sign language interpretation or subtitling). this will also enable the discovery of any relations between these aspects and the reading comprehension skill. once these relations are established, it is possible to make judgments about the entire population of polish dhh, using statistical data from other sources, like the central statistics office of poland or the polish association of the deaf. the reading comprehension skill of d/deaf and hard-of-hearing poles and its importance for media accessibility 31 when searching for an appropriate reading comprehension test, one can refer to polish researchers (januszewicz, jura, & kowal, 2016; kowal, 2011b) who claim that, in general, spoken polish acts like a second language for deaf poles, and invoke a number of arguments to corroborate this opinion. firstly, it is not acquired in the process of natural acquisition through listening and speaking, as the d/deaf have little or no perceptual abilities to do so. instead, it is learned in artificial conditions on limited sources and unnaturally limited language input (januszewicz et al., 2016, p. 362). secondly, in most cases it never becomes native or even native-like, despite many years of learning. thirdly, the d/deaf do not use it as a preferred means of communication due to its audio-verbal modality. fourthly, the language errors committed by deaf poles resemble the errors committed by hearing foreigners learning polish as a second language (januszewicz et al., 2016, p. 366–368; jura 2011, p. 44–50; kowal, 2011b, p. 23). lastly, many deaf poles tend to highlight their cultural and linguistic distinction from their hearing co-citizens by capitalizing the adjective describing their condition – “głuchy” [deaf] – much like nationalities are capitalized in polish orthography. all of the above inclined the researchers to call deaf poles “silent foreigners” (januszewicz et al., 2016, p. 362; kowal, 2011b, p. 21). it is needless to say, though, that the above argumentation is not devoid of flaws. deafness is not a binary issue, it is gradable and complex. depending on the degree of hearing loss and the time of its onset, the hearing aids, rehabilitation and education, deaf children can achieve different proficiency levels in terms of the spoken language, and can even use it as a preferred means of communication or alongside a sign language. this means that the “foreignness” of the dhh is also gradable, with the d/deaf tending to be more and the hard-of-hearing less “foreign.” the metaphor of foreignness, however, can be creatively exploited. if the dhh poles are “foreigners” to various extents, and their command of spoken polish varies, sometimes being their second language, then it is possible to check its proficiency using tests designed for foreigners learning polish as a second language. such tests are prepared by the state certification commission to be used during the certificate examinations in polish as a foreign language, and are available for various proficiency levels. 4. method 4.1. participants a group of 126 volunteers participated in the experiment, including 87 dhh and 39 hearing persons acting as a control group. the dhh were recruited in a dhh boarding school, the polish association of the deaf and through other associations in lublin, poland. during the recruitment of the dhh, the main focus was placed on diversification of age and education, but in the demographic questionnaire accompanying the reading comprehension test, the dhh were also to give information journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 32 about their degree of hearing loss, onset of hearing loss, means of communication, proficiency in polish and preferred media accessibility method. the dhh participants fall into three age groups. the first one almost exclusively comprises students aged 16 to 19 (n = 32), who attended a special-education vocational boarding school at the moment when the test was administered. such special-education schools are specifically suited to the needs of dhh students, and a major portion of polish dhh are schooled in such facilities. unlike in the investigation conducted by kowal (2011a), which included only final grade students, the participants spanned all the three grades of secondary vocational school. the other two groups include working adults aged 20–60 (n = 33) and seniors over 60 years old (n = 22), who were absent in the previous study. in terms of education, the dhh participants fall into five categories, depending on the highest educational stage they completed: primary (n = 4), junior high (n = 33), vocational (n = 31), secondary (n = 9), post-secondary or higher (n = 10). the dhh participants were asked whether they consider themselves d/deaf (n = 43) or hard-ofhearing (n = 44). they were also to indicate the degree of their hearing loss. the categories they could choose from were a simplified classification by clark (1981) and included the following division: mild – 25–40 db (n = 6), moderate – 41–70 db (n = 19), severe – 71–90 db (n = 14), profound – over 90 db (n = 34). fourteen participants did not know their level of hearing loss. as the onset of hearing loss has a profound impact on the acquisition of the national spoken language, a related question was included in the questionnaire. because the process of acquiring and mastering a language is gradual, the proposed age intervals when hearing loss occurred correlate with the stages of linguistic development and include the following categories suggested by krakowiak (2006):  born deaf (n = 46) – if the hearing loss is profound, the child is unlikely to develop any auditory function for the given language;  hearing lost before the age of 3 (n = 18), that is, usually after the development of basic auditory functions and the ability to communicate using holophrases (i.e. one-word sentences) but before acquiring the ability to understand and formulate full sentences, which constitutes the basics of a language system;  before the age of seven (n = 10), which is after learning to understand and formulate full sentences, but before the phonological development is complete;  at the age 7–12 (n = 0), when the auditory and linguistic functions are still developing, syntactic rules are acquired, and the lexicon is rapidly expanding;  as a teenager (n = 3), when speech and language development are complete;  a separate answer was provided for the participants who did not know when they lost their hearing (n = 10) the reading comprehension skill of d/deaf and hard-of-hearing poles and its importance for media accessibility 33 the participants were also asked what means of communication they use: whether it is sign language (n = 28), polish (n = 7), or whether they use both sign language and polish (n = 52). they also estimated their general proficiency in the polish language on a scale from 0 to 5, where 0 meant no knowledge of polish, and 5 meant a very good command of the language. none of the participants marked 0, five marked 1, six marked 2, twenty-three marked 3, eighteen marked 4, and fourteen marked the highest value. unfortunately, because this question had a slightly different graphic form than the previous questions, twenty-one participants skipped it and gave no answer. finally, the participants were asked about their preferred accessibility method: sign language interpretation (n = 26), subtitling (n = 40), either sign language or subtitling (n = 21). 4.2. test the study used sample tests from the certificate examinations in polish as a foreign language, prepared by the state certification commission. at the moment when the study was being conducted, the sample tests were available for three proficiency levels: b1, b2 and c1. all the three levels were downloaded from the webpage of the state certification commission (http://certyfikatpolski.pl/dla-zdajacych/przykladowe-testy-zbiory-zadan/). two reading comprehension exercises were chosen from each level and compiled in an ascending order into the test used in this research. for each level, the exercises were of the same type, i.e. a/b/c multiple choice and matching headings to text, so that the results for each level would not be distorted by the changing format of the exercise. in the certificate examinations, both the a/b/c questions and the headings pertain to very short snippets of text, 1 to 4 sentences long, with one question/heading per snippet. the test used in this research involved 42 questions altogether: the b1 level included five a/b/c multiple choice questions and seven headings to match; the b2 level, five a/b/c questions and ten headings; and the c1 level, seven a/b/c questions and eight headings. high school and university students, as well as recent high school and university graduates, should be familiar with these two formats. the a/b/c reading comprehension format is widespread in the polish educational system: similar exercises are present on the lower secondary school exam in polish and english, and on the “new” matura exam, i.e. the basic exam in polish, the basic and advanced exams in english and other foreign languages. the heading format is not that ubiquitous as it is typical rather for foreign language tests. yet, it is present on both basic and advanced exams in english and other foreign languages of the new matura. the participants who graduated before the educational reform introducing the new formula of matura, that is, prior to 2005, might be unfamiliar with the two formats. in these cases explanation was provided. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 34 4.3. procedure the participants were informed that they would take part in a test checking their reading comprehension skill in terms of the polish language. before the test, they were asked to fill in the demographic questionnaire. whenever necessary, sign language interpretation was provided to make sure the questionnaire’s content was properly understood. sign language interpreters also explained the procedure and the format of the exercises if the participants were unfamiliar with it. no interpretation was provided for the content of the texts or the questions. if a group of participants were taking the test at once, they were separated and forbidden to communicate to make sure their work was independent. in the original certificate examinations candidates are allowed 60 minutes for five reading exercises. the participants in the experiment were given 120 minutes for six exercises, but the longest session lasted about 90 minutes. 5. results reading comprehension results were processed using anova, with the demographic information from the questionnaire – age, education, degree of hearing loss, onset of hearing loss, preferred means of communication, preferred media accessibility method, and declared proficiency in polish – acting as independent variables. whenever the independent variables were numerical – or could be assigned a numerical value – the pearson correlation coefficient was also calculated to determine if there is a relationship between a given variable and the reading comprehension skill. in the cases of multiple comparisons, the post-hoc bonferroni correction was applied to pinpoint the location of the most significant differences. the descriptive statistics are given in tables below, and include the mean result for each proficiency level and the total mean result – together with their corresponding standard deviations (sd) – as well as the maximum and minimum result, and the median. 5.1. general results the general results correlate with the findings discussed above, which point to the dhh having a significantly lower reading comprehension skill than their hearing peers, with f (1, 124) = 245.71, p < .00001. on average, the dhh participants scored 37% in the b1 test, 30.9% in b2 and 28.7% in c1, with the total result at 31.9%. by contrast, the hearing control group scored 92.9% in b1, 92.8% in b2 and 88.8% in c1, with the total result at 88.8%. as the pass mark is 50% for b1 and 60% for b2 and c1, the dhh would generally settle below b1, which corroborates the earlier findings by kowal (2011a). what is also interesting is the relative flatness of the dhh results for each proficiency level, with the difference between b1 and c1 being a mere 8.3%. this means that most participants performed either equally well or equally poorly at each test level. the reading comprehension skill of d/deaf and hard-of-hearing poles and its importance for media accessibility 35 table 1. test results of all the dhh and hearing participants mean % b1 (sd) mean % b2 (sd) mean % c1 (sd) mean % total (sd) minimum value % maximum value % median % dhh 37 (28.9) 30.9 (26.5) 28.7 (18.8) 31.9 (21.5) 0 95.2 26.2 control group 92.9 (10.0) 92.8 (11.3) 81.4 (18.9) 88.8 (10.6) 47.6 100 92.9 what should also be stated at this point is that four participants found even the b1 test far too demanding, and submitted it without any answers marked, which was included in the results as zero. moreover, many participants had problems comprehending the accompanying questionnaire and required sign language interpretation to fill it in properly. for some, however, the test was fairly easy. hence the glaring disproportion between the lowest (0%) and highest (95.2%) scores, as well as relatively high standard deviation values, which means that the polish dhh population comprises both excellent users of the national language as well as illiterates. for media accessibility professionals, it is crucial to know the proportions of both capable and incapable users among the target recipients. although the mean and median values in the table above suggest some answer to this question, the following histogram serves as a more convenient representation of the distribution of linguistic competences within the dhh audience. for each tenpercent interval, it presents the number of participants whose mean total score settles within that interval. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 36 figure 1. distribution of the reading comprehension competences (mean total result) among the dhh participants the largest number of participants is situated within the 20–30% interval. 74 out of 87 participants, which is 85% of the tested population, scored fewer than 50% of points on the test, and a curious, steep fall can be observed at the 50% threshold. this means that 85% of the participants are at the b1/b2 level or below. to get a more accurate percentage of participants at each proficiency level, the official pass marks for b1 (50%), b2 and c1 (60%) can be employed, in which case 6 participants (6.8%) pass c1, 12 (13.7%) pass b2, 28 (32.2%) pass b1, and 59 participants (67.8%) do not pass even the b1 level. 5.2. age age is a factor influencing the reading comprehension results between the three age groups of dhh participants – younger than 20, aged 20–60, older than 60 – with high statistical significance: f (2, 84) = 17.62, p < .00001. the post-hoc bonferroni correction points to significant differences between the elderly and each of the other two groups (p < .0001), but the difference between the youngest and the middle-aged group does not reach statistical significance. when the age of the participants and their results are analysed outside the age groups, as raw data, the pearson correlation coefficient also points to a moderate negative relationship, with r = −0.56. conversely, the correlation is positive – but weak, r = 0.34 – for the control group, meaning that the literacy skill slightly rises with age. the anova results between the three control age groups do not point to statistical significance, though, with f (2, 36) = 4.53, p = .0176. this can be explained by the fact that older hearing participants also had the highest education. 0 5 10 15 20 25 n u m b e r o f p a rt ic ip a n ts percentage of correct answers the reading comprehension skill of d/deaf and hard-of-hearing poles and its importance for media accessibility 37 table 2. test results per age group mean % b1 (sd) mean % b2 (sd) mean % c1 (sd) mean % total (sd) minimum value % maximum value % median % <20 45.6 (23.6) 29.4 (21.5) 31.9 (10.7) 34.9 (14.3) 11.9 73.8 32.1 20–60 47.0 (30.2) 44.2 (30.9) 35.2 (23.2) 41.8 (24.9) 7.1 95.2 33.3 60+ 9.5 (11.6) 13.0 (11.5) 14.5 (13.0) 12.6 (9.1) 0.0 28.6 11.9 figure 2. moderate negative correlation between age and the mean total results of the dhh participants it comes as no surprise that working adults scored higher than the other dhh groups, as they arelikely to have everyday contact with the polish language for professional reasons. this group also includes the dhh with higher education, who have a very good command of the language and achieved the best scores, thus increasing the mean result. on the other hand, it includes the widest disparity in reading proficiency, with a difference of 88% between the highest and the lowest result, and a difference of 62% between the highest and the median result. the vocational school students were second best, which can be considered relatively high or low, depending on the reference point. their case will be discussed at length in the next section. seniors achieved a very low total score of 12.6%, with the highest result reaching a mere 28.6%, which itself is below the average for all dhh 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% 0 20 40 60 80 100 m e a n t o ta l re su lt s age journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 38 age groups taken together. the four participants who were incapable of answering a single question also belong to this age group. this means that the reading proficiency level within this group is definitely below b1. 5.3. education the dhh participants were divided into the following five groups according to their education: primary (n = 4), lower secondary (n = 33), vocational (n = 31), upper secondary (n = 9), post-secondary or higher (n = 10). at this point, the specificity of the polish educational system should be delineated. the system has recently been reformed, but at the time of the study students obligatorily progressed from primary to lower secondary school. then, they could choose either the upper secondary stage, which provides general education and ends with the matura exam, or the vocational stage, which provides both general and vocational education, and can offer the possibility to take the matura exam as well. passing the matura is necessary for pursuing higher education. it can be assumed that the results should improve along with the educational background of the participants, because from one educational stage to the next, the language input becomes more complex and diverse. to be able to progress, a student should absorb the curriculum material and the related lexis, and then be able to re-express it in polish during state exams conducted at the end of each stage. having a poor command of the language makes the exams increasingly difficult, with the matura exam being an overwhelming challenge for many dhh students. table 3. test results in each educational background mean % b1 (sd) mean % b2 (sd) mean % c1 (sd) mean % total (sd) minimum value % maximum value % median % primary 16.7 (13.6) 15.0 (10.0) 15.0 (14.8) 15.5 (11.9) 0.0 28.6 16.7 lower secondary 43.9 (22.3) 27.3 (19.0) 30.5 (10.1) 33.2 (12.5) 11.9 64.3 31.0 vocational 17.5 (19.0) 17.8 (14.5) 18.5 (12.1) 18.0 (11.7) 0.0 45.2 16.7 upper secondary 41.7 (28.9) 40.7 (29.9) 29.6 (16.0) 37.0 (23.8) 4.8 73.8 33.3 higher 78.3 (24.3) 80.7 (17.9) 59.3 (26.7) 72.4 (14.4) 47.6 95.2 72.6 as predicted above, education has a statistically significant influence on the reading comprehension skill, with f (4, 82) = 30.55, p < .00001. post-hoc comparisons with the bonferroni correction the reading comprehension skill of d/deaf and hard-of-hearing poles and its importance for media accessibility 39 showed that statistically significant differences lie between higher education and every other stage, as well as between vocational and lower secondary, and vocational and upper secondary (p < .002 in each of the comparisons). the results can also be analysed using the pearson correlation coefficient if the respective educational stages – excluding the vocational path – are assigned consecutive numbers from 1 (primary) to 4 (higher), according to the ascending order of the primary-to-higher educational path. the outcome almost reaches a moderate positive correlation, with r = 0.48, meaning that reading proficiency indeed rises together with education. the correlation is also moderate positive for the control group, with r = 0.51, and the anova results for the hearing participants point to slight statistical significance, with f (2, 36) = 7.27, p = .0022. figure 3. positive correlation between respective educational stages and mean total results of the dhh participants the dhh participants with post-secondary or higher education scored the highest in all categories, with relatively low disproportions between individual results, which would situate them at the c1 proficiency level. the dhh with upper secondary education were second best, albeit with a considerable difference of 69% between the highest and the lowest result, and 40% disparity between the highest and the median. their results would place them at b1/b2 level. those with primary education scored the lowest, even with the top result located below the total mean of all the results, and the overall reading proficiency level below b1. the dhh participants with lower secondary education constitute the only exception in the trend, but this can be accounted for. 32 out of 33 participants in this group are vocational secondary school students. they are in constant contact with polish through their school duties, and they are used to solving tests, which is also likely to have had its impact on their performance in this study. hence their high results in relation to the adjacent educational stages. one more conclusion can be drawn here: 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% 0 1 2 3 4 m e a n t o ta l re su lt s education journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 40 since the dhh vocational school students have a higher proficiency in polish than the dhh who already finished vocational education in the past, then the proficiency is likely to decrease with time if education is not continued. the results attained by the dhh vocational school students are high in relation to adjacent educational stages, but low in relation to their control group, which includes 14 hearing vocational school students. there is a slight difference in age – and thus in linguistic competence – between the two test groups here, as the dhh include grades 1–3 and ages 16–19 (with one student aged 21), while the hearing control group comprises only third-graders aged 18–19. yet, the disproportion between the results of both groups is too wide to be explained by this minor inconsistency. the dhh settle at the a2/b1 reading proficiency level, whereas the hearing students easily reach c1. the difference between the results of dhh vocational students and the results of their hearing counterparts is statistically significant, with f (1, 43) = 134.8, p < .00001. table 4. test results of hearing and dhh vocational schools students mean % b1 (sd) mean % b2 (sd) mean % c1 (sd) mean % total (sd) minimum value % maximum value % median % hearing students 89.3 (10.6) 85.7 (15.2) 71.9 (22.5) 81.8 (13.4) 47.6 100.0 81.0 dhh students 43.9 (22.3) 27.3 (19.0) 30.5 (10.1) 33.2 (12.5) 11.9 64.3 31.0 5.4. deaf or hard-of-hearing the participants were asked whether they consider themselves d/deaf (n = 43) or hard-of-hearing (n = 44). intuitively, the latter should score higher than the former as they can possess some residual hearing, which gives them better and wider access to polish via the aural channel, especially with a proper hearing aid. this prediction is confirmed by the results of the test, in which the hardof-hearing (hoh) performed almost twice as well as the d/deaf. the results are statistically significant, with f (1, 85) = 19.41, p = .00003. however, this is undermined by the results for each hearing loss category, described in the next section. the reading comprehension skill of d/deaf and hard-of-hearing poles and its importance for media accessibility 41 table 5. test results of the participants who consider themselves d/deaf or hard-of-hearing mean % b1 (sd) mean % b2 (sd) mean % c1 (sd) mean % total (sd) minimum value % maximum value % median % deaf 24.6 (25.3) 21.7 (21.4) 21.7 (13.3) 22.5 (16.3) 0.0 73.8 21.4 hard-ofhearing 49.1 (27.2) 39.8 (28.2) 35.6 (20.9) 41.0 (22.2) 0.0 95.2 39.3 5.5. degree of hearing loss intuitively, the more residual hearing a participant has, the better and wider access to spoken polish via the aural channel and thus the higher the result. thus, hoh with mild hearing loss should score the highest – maybe even close to the results of the control group – as they can have the greatest possible contact with the spoken language, especially with proper hearing aid. moderately deaf should perform better than severely deaf, who would achieve a higher result than those with profound deafness. however, this is not reflected by the results. the mean total scores are flat and oscillate around 33%, and there seems to be no relationship between the degree of hearing loss and reading comprehension, with f (4, 82) = 0.48, p = 0.75. this is also corroborated by the pearson correlation coefficient being close to 0 (r = 0.0002). the best users of polish fell into the category of severe (95.2%) and profound (85.7%) deafness, while the best hoh with mild deafness scored a low 45.2%. moreover, of all the groups, the mildly hoh performed the best on the b1 test but the worst on b2 and c1, scoring less than half as many points, while the results were relatively similar for each proficiency level in the other deafness categories. these scores are difficult to explain, and most likely the low small sample size of the mildly deaf (n = 6) is to blame. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 42 table 6. test results in each hearing loss category mean % b1 (sd) mean % b2 (sd) mean % c1 (sd) mean % total (sd) minimum value % maximum value % media n % mild 58.3 (25.3) 24.4 (10.0) 24.4 (13.1) 34.1 (10.6) 19.0 45.2 34.5 moderate 37.7 (20.3) 32.3 (24.2) 28.1 (13.8) 32.3 (16.5) 0.0 64.3 33.3 severe 39.9 (31.0) 31.4 (27.1) 33.3 (20.6) 34.5 (23.7) 11.9 95.2 25.0 profound 36.0 (32.3) 34.1 (32.1) 29.6 (22.6) 33.1 (26.0) 0.0 85.7 26.2 don’t know 26.2 (27.1) 23.3 (18.8) 24.8 (15.3) 24.7 (17.1) 0.0 57.1 19.0 figure 4. zero correlation between respective degrees of hearing loss and mean total results of the dhh participants 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% 0 1 2 3 4 m e a n t o ta l re su lt s degree of hearing loss the reading comprehension skill of d/deaf and hard-of-hearing poles and its importance for media accessibility 43 5.6. onset of hearing loss intuitively, the reading comprehension skill should increase together with the age when the hearing loss occurred, and the time of aural exposure to the spoken language should be proportional to the proficiency in this language. as stated by krakowiak (2006, p. 269), even a short exposure to linguistic sounds leaves traces in the central nervous system that can be used in rehabilitation. however, in extreme cases, a lack of proper hearing loss treatment can result in the degradation of linguistic skills, even among those children who lost hearing postlingually. table 7. test results in each age category when hearing loss occurred mean % b1 (sd) mean % b2 (sd) mean % c1 (sd) mean % total (sd) minimum value % maximum value % media n % born deaf 30.3 (27.9) 23.6 (23.8) 24.5 (15.1) 25.8 (18.3) 0.0 73.8 21.4 before the age of 3 45.4 (33.2) 39.6 (33.2) 34.4 (24.7) 39.4 (28.2) 4.8 95.2 27.4 before the age of 7 47.5 (21.2) 37.3 (22.5) 31.3 (18.1) 38.1 (17.4) 19.0 81.0 35.7 as a teenager 30.6 (26.8) 42.2 (40.7) 35.6 (15.4) 36.5 (26.3) 11.9 64.3 33.3 don’t know 44.2 (28.3) 38.7 (19.3) 33.3 (22.2) 38.3 (29.6) 9.5 71.4 38.1 journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 44 figure 5. weak positive correlation between respective onsets of hearing loss and mean total results of the dhh participants note: 1 for born deaf, 2 for deaf before the age of three, 3 for deaf before the age of seven, 4 for deaf as teenager. surprisingly enough, the assumption formulated above is largely invalidated, and there seems to be little relationship between the two measured phenomena according to anova results, with f (4, 82) = 2.03, p = 0.1, and the pearson correlation coefficient of r = 0.24, pointing merely to a weak correlation. although the participants who were born deaf did score considerably lower than the others, the result reaches a plateau of 36–39% for the remaining ages of hearing loss. what is especially unanticipated is the result of the participants who lost hearing as teenagers – theoretically, they should have scored the highest since their exposure to spoken language via the aural channel was sufficient to develop excellent linguistic skills, but in fact they achieved the penultimate score. most likely the small sample size (n = 3) is again to blame here. 5.7. means of communication the participants were asked what means of communication they use: whether it is sign language (n = 28), polish (n = 7), or whether they use both sign language and polish (n = 52). unsurprisingly, those who communicate in polish scored the highest (though it is still 20 percent point lower than the result of the hearing users of polish) and showed the c1 level in reading proficiency, while sign language users achieved very low results, considerably below the b1 level. what comes unexpectedly is the relatively modest result attained by the participants who declared communicating both in sign language and polish. some of them show a language proficiency below the b1 level. perhaps the reason for this lies in their perception of communication: if they can 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% 0 1 2 3 4 m e a n t o ta l re su lt s onset of hearing loss the reading comprehension skill of d/deaf and hard-of-hearing poles and its importance for media accessibility 45 mutually exchange information using several simple phrases, they consider it effective communication. nevertheless, the results are statistically significant, with f (2, 84) = 17.94, p < .00001. post-hoc bonferroni comparisons also indicate that the differences lie between each of the three groups (p < .02). table 8. test results for each means of communication mean % b1 (sd) mean % b2 (sd) mean % c1 (sd) mean % total (sd) minimum value % maximum value % median % sign language 21.4 (19.7) 19.3 (19.7) 21.0 (14.4) 20.5 (15.6) 0.0 69.0 19.0 polish 67.9 (27.8) 71.4 (24.6) 59.0 (25.9) 66.0 (23.2) 31.0 95.2 71.4 both 41.2 (28.7) 31.7 (24.7) 28.8 (15.7) 33.4 (18.8) 0.0 83.3 28.6 journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 46 5.8. declared proficiency in polish table 9. test results in each declared proficiency category mean % b1 (sd) mean % b2 (sd) mean % c1 (sd) mean % total (sd) minimum value % maximum value % median % 0 – – – – – – – 1 5.0 (11.2) 9.3 (8.9) 8.0 (11.9) 7.6 (7.4) 0.0 16.7 9.5 2 19.4 (28.2) 22.2 (32.8) 20.0 (18.9) 20.6 (25.3) 0.0 69.0 11.9 3 33.3 (25.9) 25.2 (15.4) 23.5 (12.4) 26.9 (13.3) 0.0 47.6 31.0 4 50.9 (28.7) 41.5 (28.0) 31.5 (13.3) 40.6 (19.8) 9.5 83.3 36.9 5 55.4 (30.2) 55.2 (34.6) 50.5 (25.6) 53.6 (26.7) 19.0 95.2 60.7 no answer 29.4 (22.1) 19.4 (14.3) 25.1 (11.9) 24.3 (12.3) 4.8 50.0 21.4 the reading comprehension skill of d/deaf and hard-of-hearing poles and its importance for media accessibility 47 figure 6. moderate positive correlation between declared proficiency in polish and the mean total results of the dhh participants note: from 0 (no knowledge of polish) to 5 (very good command of polish). unsurprisingly, the results improve along with the declared proficiency, so there is a relationship between the declared and actual proficiencies according to anova, with f (5, 81) = 8.29, p < .00001. post-hoc bonferroni comparisons point to statistically significant differences (p < .005) lying between the proficiency levels which are not adjacent to each other, i.e. 1 and 3, 2 and 4, 1 and 4, etc. the pearson correlation coefficient of r = 0.58, indicates a moderate positive relationship. the results also show that the dhh tend to overestimate their proficiency in polish, which is visible especially in the minimum values as well as total mean and median results for each proficiency level. 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% 0 1 2 3 4 5 m e a n t o ta l re su lt s declared proficiency in polish journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 48 5.9. media accessibility preferences table 10. test results for each preferred media accessibility method mean % b1 (sd) mean % b2 (sd) mean % c1 (sd) mean % total (sd) minimum value % maximum value % median % sign language 20.5 (21.4) 14.6 (12.8) 17.7 (11.9) 17.4 (12.4) 0.0 45.2 19.0 subtitles 40.2 (30.1) 35.8 (28.3) 32.5 (21.0) 35.9 (22.3) 4.8 95.2 29.8 either 51.2 (25.6) 41.6 (27.4) 35.2 (15.7) 42.1 (20.2) 9.5 83.3 40.5 unsurprisingly, the viewers who rely more on sign language interpretation achieved a very poor result, almost two times lower than the total mean. this corroborates the predictions formulated by ofcom (2005) interviewees that sign language users might find comprehending verbatim subtitles a challenge. however, somewhat unexpectedly, those who prefer subtitles scored relatively low, with the median result slightly below 30%, and the overall reading proficiency at a2/b1 level. it seems that even though they do prefer subtitles, many of them might have serious difficulties understanding their content. the participants who feel comfortable with both accessibility methods achieved the highest scores on each proficiency test. the results are statistically significant, with f (2,84) = 11.05, p = .0001. post-hoc bonferroni comparisons, however, point to significant differences between the participants who prefer sign language only and the other two groups (p < .0004). the difference between those who prefer subtitles and those who can do with either captions or sign language interpretation does not reach statistical significance. 6. research limitations although the above results provide new insights into the reading comprehension skill of the dhh, they are also beset with two significant drawbacks. firstly, the study used plain texts as test material, and not actual subtitles, which are accompanied by image. the image can provide further context and extra-textual information, which – in the process of viewing – merges with the captions into one stream of content. it is evident that dhh viewers can infer meaning from the image and thus compensate for certain issues with understanding the subtitles. it can be suggested that the reading comprehension skill of d/deaf and hard-of-hearing poles and its importance for media accessibility 49 the comprehension results would have been higher if the study had involved testing captions. the suggestion is indisputably valid, but the lack of image can be counterbalanced by the advantages of reading a printed text. unlike in the case of subtitles, which are displayed at a certain rate and then disappear, the participants could choose their own reading speed, re-read any passage as many times as necessary and focus longer on the key parts. obviously, this can also be interpreted as a disadvantage of the study, as it can be suggested that the results could have been lower had the text been transient like actual captions. the other drawback lies in the sample size. although 87 dhh participants is a rather high sample in itself, especially in relation to some others studies of a similar nature, the number of participants within each category under examination is too low to produce statistically significant results. this might be the reason for the counterintuitively low results of the mildly hoh (n = 6) and the d/deaf who lost hearing in their teenage years (n = 3). a higher sample would also further corroborate and extend – or disprove – the findings for other variables. 6. discussion given the fact that the results achieved by the dhh in the reading comprehension test were generally low, with 85% of the participants scoring less than 50% of points, it can be concluded that non-edited subtitles can be difficult to read and comprehend for a significant majority of the audience. in fact, sign language users, seniors and the dhh with poor education – the groups whose reading proficiency seems to be below the b1 level – might even find edited subtitles too demanding, and would require sign language interpretation to fully access the content of given audiovisual material. yet, as stated in the section on research limitations, further study on actual subtitles is necessary to corroborate this conclusion. the results also point to interesting correlations between reading comprehension and the tested variables. surprisingly enough, there is a zero relationship between reading comprehension and the consecutive degrees of deafness, and only a weak positive relationship between reading comprehension and onset of hearing loss, but further research on larger samples is needed to corroborate or disprove them. however, moderate relationships were discovered between reading comprehension and age, and reading comprehension and education. the latter can be employed to estimate the percentage of proficient and incapable readers within the dhh community. since there are no national statistics on the topic, one has to resort to research conducted on smaller samples. kowal and stadnicki (2012) report a relevant study on 1315 members of the polish association of the deaf in wrocław. the educational background of the participants was the following: no education – 2%, primary – 15%, vocational – 59%, secondary – 20%, higher – 4%. this would mean that merely 4% of the polish dhh read at the c1 level, which allows unhampered comprehension of non-edited subtitles, 20% read at the b1/b2 level, at which complex syntax and sophisticated lexis could significantly impede comprehension, whereas 71% read below the b1 journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 50 level and require either extensive subtitle editing or a sign language interpretation to access the content of given audiovisual material. however, the results of the present study should be further validated on a larger sample for the above percentage to be truly accurate. finally, the certificate examinations in polish as a foreign language, prepared by the state certification commission, turn out to be a useful tool for checking the reading comprehension of the polish dhh. as expected from native speakers, the hearing control group achieved very high results, which means that the test exercises are definitely feasible. moreover, the results of the control group were not strongly influenced by such factors as age or education, although it must be admitted that the control group was not as diversified as the dhh. the results were not immaculate, though, which points to some slight imperfections of the test. in the case of the dhh, the results also seem quite plausible, as they correlate with the educational background and declared proficiency in polish. on the other hand, lack of correlation between the degree and onset of hearing loss can raise some suspicion. to prove the usefulness of the test beyond doubt, further research is needed on samples that are larger and more diversified. acknowledgements i would like to extend my gratitude to monika szczygielska of the “widzialni” foundation, whose help was invaluable in the preparation of this study, and two sign language interpreters – janusz włodarczyk of the company “sensus” and magdalena zawadzka – without whom the conduct of this study would be impossible. references baker, r. (1985). subtitling television for deaf children. media in education research series, 3, 1–46. burnham, d., leigh, g., noble, w., jones, c., tyler, m., grebennikov, l., & varley, a. (2008). parameters in television captioning for deaf and hard-of-hearing adults: effects of caption rate versus text reduction on comprehension. journal of deaf studies and deaf education, 13(3), 391–404. cambra, c., silvestre, n., & leal, a. (2009). comprehension of television messages by deaf students at various stages of education. american annals of the deaf, 153(5), 425–434. clark, j. g. (1981). uses and abuses of hearing loss classification. asha, 23(7), 493–500. de linde, z., & kay, n. (1999). the semiotics of subtitling. manchester, uk: st. jerome publishing. diaz-cintas, j., & remael, a. (2007). audiovisual translation: subtitling. manchester: st. jerome publishing. holt, j. (1994). classroom attributes and achievement test scores for deaf and hard of hearing students. american annals of the deaf, 139(4), 430–437. januszewicz, m., jura, m., & kowal, j. (2013). język polski jako obcy również dla milczących cudzoziemców [polish as a foreign language for “silent foreigners”]. in a. burzyńskathe reading comprehension skill of d/deaf and hard-of-hearing poles and its importance for media accessibility 51 kamieniecka, & a. libura (eds). sapientia ars vivendi: księga jubileuszowa profesor annie dąbrowskiej (pp. 361–370). wrocław: oficyna wydawnicza atut. jelinek lewis, m., & jackson, d. (2001). television literacy: comprehension of program content using closed captions for the deaf. journal of deaf studies and deaf education, 6(1), 43–53. jensema, c. (1998). viewer reaction to different television captioning speeds. american annals of the deaf, 143(4), 318–324. jura, m. (2011). polszczyzna głuchych [the polish language of the deaf]. in k. pluskota, & k. taczyńska (eds). nowe perspektywy w nauczaniu języka polskiego jako obcego [new perspectives in teaching polish as a foreign language]. ii (pp. 37–51). toruń: wydawnictwo naukowe uniwersytetu mikołaja kopernika. kowal, j. (2011a). język polski jako obcy w nauczaniu milczących cudzoziemców. analiza możliwości zastosowania metod nauczania języka polskiego jako obcego w edukacji osób niesłyszących [polish as a foreign language in teaching “silent foreigners.” analysing the applicability of the methods used in teaching polish as a foreign language in teaching deaf poles]. (unpublished doctoral dissertation). uniwersytet wrocławski, wrocław. kowal, j. (2011b). “milczący cudzoziemcy” – głusi jako uczący się języka polskiego jako obcego – wyzwanie współczesnej glottodydydaktyki [“silent foreigners” – deaf poles learning polish as a foreign language – a challenge of modern language teaching]. in k. pluskota, & k. taczyńska (eds). nowe perspektywy w nauczaniu języka polskiego jako obcego ii [new perspectives in teaching polish as a foreign language]. (pp. 21–27). toruń: wydawnictwo naukowe uniwersytetu mikołaja kopernika. kowalski, k., & stadnicki, w. (2012). raport na temat kompetencji zawodowych i kluczowych koniecznych do uzupełnienia przez osoby głuche [report on professional and core competence necessary to be acquired by the deaf]. wrocław: centrum badawczoszkoleniowe dobre kadry. krakowiak, k. (2006). pedagogiczna typologia uszkodzeń słuchu [pedagogical typology od hearing impairment]. in k. krakowiak, & a. dziurda-multan (eds). nie głos, ale słowo… przekraczanie barier w wychowaniu osób z uszkodzeniem słuchu [not voice, but the word… overcoming barriers in educating people with hearimg impairment]. (pp. 255–288). lublin: wydawnictwo kul. kyle, f., & harris, m. (2006). concurrent correlates and predictors of reading and spelling achievement in deaf and hearing school children. journal of deaf studies and deaf education, 11(3), 273–288. neves, j. (2008). 10 fallacies about subtitling for the d/deaf and the hard of hearing. jostrans. the journal of specialised translation, 10, 128–143. ofcom. (2005). subtitling – an issue of speed. london: office of communications. parault, s., & williams, h. (2010). reading motivation, reading amount, and text comprehension in deaf and hearing adults. journal of deaf studies and deaf education, 15(2), 120–135. rezaei, m., rashedi, v., & khemadmati-morasae, e. (2016). reading skills in persian deaf children with cochlear implants and hearing aids. international journal of pediatric otorhinolaryngology, 89, 1–5. romero-fresco, p. (2009). more haste less speed: edited versus verbatim respoken subtitles. vigo international journal of applied linguistics, 6(1), 109–133. sancho-aldridge, j. (1996). good news for deaf people: subtitling of national news programmes. london: independent television commission. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 52 szarkowska, a. (2010). accessibility to the media by hearing impaired audiences in poland: problems, paradoxes, perspectives. in j. diaz-cintas, a. matamala, & j. neves (eds), new insights into audiovisual translation and media accessibility. media for all 2 (pp. 139–158). amsterdam: rodopi. szarkowska, a., krejtz, i., klyszejko, z., & wieczorek, a. (2011). verbatim, standard, or edited? reading patterns of different captioning styles among deaf, hard of hearing, and hearing viewers. american annals of the deaf, 156(4), 363–378. szarkowska, a., pietrulewicz, j., & jankowska, a. (2015). long questionnaire in poland. in p. romerofresco (ed.), the reception of subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing in europe (pp. 45– 74). bern: peter lang. szarkowska, a., & gerber-morón, o. (2018). viewers can keep up with fast subtitles: evidence from eye movements. plos one, 13(6): e0199331. takahashi, n., isaka, y., yamamoto, t., & nakamura, t. 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(2006). reading comprehension of dutch deaf children. reading and writing, 19, 49–76. 104 treatment of realia in the subtitling of ekphrastic texts vedrana čemerin  university of applied sciences velika gorica _________________________________________________________ abstract as far as the basic tenets and technical constraints of subtitling go, the subtitling of documentaries devoted to various types of visual arts does not differ significantly from subtitling performed with other types of audiovisual content. however, each source material has aspects that go beyond the technical framework, encompassing cultural idiosyncrasies and culture-specific references. a special place among such items belongs to realia, in the sense of words and phrases denoting concepts characteristic of one nation and foreign to another. this article narrows down the scope of its research of such phenomena to a corpus consisting of several art documentaries ranging in subject from byzantine to ottoman and chinese art and translated from english and french into croatian, examining the strategies used to deal with realia in ekphrastic texts and the overall treatment of the concepts which they denote, while at the same time providing insight into the role played by the visual experience given by subtitles as an integral part of the representational process. the paper is partially based on a talk given in february 2016 at the audiovisual representation conference in rome but as the research project had been a work-in-progress, it has since been substantially revised and expanded. key words: realia, art documentaries, subtitling, audiovisual translation, translation strategies  vedrana.cemerin@vvg.hr; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4980-0282 citation: čemerin, v. (2019). treatment of realia in the subtitling of ekphrastic texts, journal of audiovisual translation, 2(1), 104–125. editor(s): n. reviers & a. jankowska received: september 9, 2018 accepted: september 6, 2019 published: november 30, 2019 copyright: ©2019 čemerin. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license. this allows for unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4980-0282 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4980-0282 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ treatment of realia in the subtitling of ekphrastic texts 105 introduction taking as our starting point lawrence venuti’s (2010, p. 132) assertion that translation theory provides methodology for studying ekphrastic texts and their relation to their source images, thus enabling the comprehension of both the social and cultural connotations of the source material, as well as those of secondary interpretation, the main aim of this study is to explore the strategies used by translators in dealing with culturally-specific items such as realia in the adaptation and interpretation of ekphrastic source material in subtitles. the study shall focus on the professional croatian subtitling market and examine a corpus of twelve art documentaries, using a methodological framework partially derived from the work of jan pedersen (2011) and hannah silvester (2018), as well as the contemporary notions of literary and digital ekphrasis (brosch, 2018; lindhé, 2013). the translation of documentaries has been an object of avt research for a few decades, mostly focusing on domain-specific and scientific documentaries, bilingual glossaries and terminology extraction (matamala, 2010; hanoulle; hoste & remael, 2015b) or the theoretical principles and tenets underlying the translation of documentaries as an individual genre (franco, 2000; espasa, 2004). since translators of documentaries do not specialize in specific domains, but rather in the individual techniques of audiovisual translation, such as subtitling, voice-over or dubbing, documentary translators usually need to be both versatile and adaptable to be able to perform their duties (hanoulle et al., 2015b, p. 26). likewise, documentary translators need to take into consideration the register of the source text (formal narration, informal interviews), textual function (purely informative, entertaining or a combination of both) and specific guidelines set by the client (translation agency, broadcasting company, independent film festival etc.) as well as eventual habits and unwritten rules present in a specific language market. all of this makes documentary translation a specific audiovisual practice (hanoulle et al., 2015b, p. 26). as croatia is primarily a subtitling country, with dubbing used mainly for materials aimed at young children and voice-over for news segments or interviews, the author has decided to limit the scope of this study to subtitled documentaries. it may be said that art documentaries can be considered “family material” as their purpose and function often heavily lean towards informative and educative. they are indeed occasionally dubbed, or a combination of dubbing and subtitling is used (dubbing for general narration, subtitling for interviewees within the film). however, as most documentaries in the croatian market – encompassing the whole range of broadcasters and channels available to croatian audiences – are subtitled, we opted to use only subtitled films. as stated, the main purpose and function of art documentaries is the dissemination of information for the target audience, while at the same time being sufficiently entertaining to attract and keep the viewers’ attention. in the case of documentaries focused on visual arts, those target audiences may be very wide indeed, including all age groups and genders, or conversely, they may be catering to a niche audience interested in a fairly narrow topic. the following sections will briefly define and discuss the concepts central to this study, namely ekphrasis and realia, and then provide an analysis of the manner in which realia were treated in the examined corpus of art documentaries and their role in the overall ekphrastic experience. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 106 1. definitions of concepts 1.1. ekphrasis: from ancient tradition to the digital era while the original definition of ekphrasis referred to the evocation of visual experience in a textual frame or providing a version of an individual artwork mediated by textual interpretation, it has since been expanded and transformed to involve the description of any medium by another (mills, 2015, p. 2). most of the literature on the junction between translation studies and ekphrastic studies has either been focused on the concept of intertextuality and its practical application in literary translation (venuti, 2010, p. 137) or the concept of translation overlay construed as a melding of an individual work with its own translation (mills, 2015, p. 3). to date, relatively scant attention has been paid to the management of ekphrastic source material in subtitled audiovisual content, despite the fact that subtitling may be considered a form of translation overlay as subtitle lines are added as an integral part to an audiovisual work. from this follows that the opposition between words and images present in classic literary ekphrasis remains active in screen translation but loaded with additional implications due to its multimodal aspects, as well as influenced and shaped by the restrictions of subtitling techniques. however, certain aspects of classic ekphrasis may still be relevant in discussing modern, participatory and hybrid forms of ekphrasis as envisaged by contemporary scholars (brosch, 2018, p. 226). in ancient rhetoric tradition, ekphrastic texts were not perceived as a transparent means of visual representation but rather as a tool for strengthening the emotional resonance of the scenes described in them, evoking appropriate moods and emotional responses through the notion of enargeia or vividness (kashtan, 2011) in the readers or listeners. their aim was to translate the visual input through words into an imaginary visual image in the mind’s eye and thus unite the act of looking through visualisation, imagination and memory (shiel, 2013, p. 84 and p. 90). nowadays, classic concepts of literary ekphrasis as self-contained reading experiences are considered too reductive, following an interpretive shift towards cultural performance that once again returns to the ancient traditions, whereby phenomena such as ekphrasis are not deemed to be static entities but cultural agents with the power to elicit certain effects and to perform certain functions (brosch, 2018, p. 226–227). the emphasis is placed on the imaginative enhancement and the emotional impact which an artwork may exert upon the reader or viewer, using simultaneously the power of the still image and that of dynamic imaginative visualization as attention-grabbing strategies (brosch, 2018, p. 237). cecilia lindhé’s highly influential concept of digital ekphrasis (2013) utilizes the notion of enargeia as a stylistic effect that appeals to the senses of the listener to accentuate the process of visualization itself, rather than its subject matter. for her, images are meant to set in motion a variety of imaginative, emotional and rational reactions, thus making ekphrasis a verbal representation of the entire digital experience, not the artwork as a single point of focus. in the practical sense, this leads the recipient of a digital and multimedial artwork to be simultaneously engaged in an activity of reading, viewing and listening while experiencing an emotional reaction to ekphrasis as part of this multisensory event (jansson, 2018 p. 299). treatment of realia in the subtitling of ekphrastic texts 107 this notion of emotional involvement with the whole experience of perceiving and interacting with an audiovisual or digital work may serve as one of the foundations for examining the role of subtitles within a subtitled film. for could it not be said that the experience of watching any film is an affective and emotional one, enhanced by the multimodal character of the film? the introduction of subtitles to a film would then further affect the emotional response of the viewer, adding an extra layer of meaning and a supplementary point of visual focus on screen. of course, since every emotional experience – as indeed any imaginative visualization of a mental image – is essentially subjective, this would mean that no two viewers will perceive the subtitled documentary or the artwork it depicts in the exact same way. however, the same may be argued for the use of literary ekphrasis in both its ancient rhetoric and classic literary sense. likewise, a researcher may mitigate the hazard of sliding too far towards personal subjectivity, which could adversely impact the overall analysis of subtitled films, by combining the qualitative analysis of the emotional response described by their respondents with any cohesive model created to analyse audiovisual content. this paper will rely on hannah silvester’s model in this regard, due to its emphasis on multimodality and the notion of semiotic cohesion (silvester, 2018, p. 80), which is achieved when all semiotic channels function together to merge into a meaningful whole. the idea of a subtitled film as a meaningful and cohesive whole, involving the film’s verbal and multimodal aspects and the process of imaginative visualization occurring in the viewer’s mind, provides a fertile foundation for studying audiovisual content. this paper intends to argue that in the cases of audiovisual content specifically dealing with visual art, it may be complemented by the concept of ekphrasis as an emotional and imaginative device, enabling the viewer to both create an imagined visual of an artwork and simultaneously immerse themselves into it through several semiotic channels. according to cazden, cope, fairclough & gee, multimodality comprises linguistic meaning, visual meaning, audio meaning, gestural meaning and spatial meaning (1996, p. 19). in examining subtitled films, all of these layers ought to be considered in the appraisal if we are to frame subtitled content as a meaningful whole. silvester claims the study of subtitles without considering the impact of sound and images on their meaning to be “unreasonable” (silvester, 2018, p. 74), since the music can affect the mood of a film scene (silvester, 2018, p. 79) and sound effects may offer supplementary information not contained in the dialogue. it is not difficult to accept this notion and apply it to the examination of art documentaries, in which background music often serves to underpin the narration or fill in narrative gaps. silvester’s model likewise takes into account the technical considerations and constraints of subtitling: time, space and synchronisation, as well as the general cultural context or all external factors that may affect the film’s translation and/or reception. it is also cognizant of the fact that the working conditions of translators may have impact on the translations they produce (following abdallah, 2012) and that the adherence to norms and conventions is an implicit part of every subtitling commission. however, her model also presupposes the possibility of involving the actual subtitler in the evaluation procedure, which may not always be possible, as acknowledged by the author herself (silvester, 2018, p. 75–77). while the norms and conventions used in a specific language market may be available to researchers through codes of good subtitling practices or client style guides; assessing actual working conditions present at the creation of an individual subtitled journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 108 film may be rather difficult. not only might the subtitler be unavailable for discussion or even unable to remember the exact film, they might also be liable to non-disclosure agreements and unwilling to discuss their work conditions. or the market itself might be so fluid and loosely organized so as to make the working conditions and personal experiences of individual translators highly variable. having said that, the present study shall incorporate several elements of silvester’s model in the overall assessment of the topic at hand. since the primary focus of this study lies not only in the ekphrastic experience of subtitled art documentaries, but also in the role played by realia within this experience, the following chapter will briefly outline the defining characteristics of realia and their assumed position within the ekphrastic experience. 1.2. realia: culture-specific elements in the narrative flow due to their informative and educative nature, source texts focusing on the conveyance of visual art from various historical periods and geographical locations are bound to be both culturally specific and teeming with expressions referred to as realia. florin (1993, p. 123) defines realia as objects and concepts characteristic to the way of life, culture, social and historical development of one nation and foreign to another. this primary definition can then be expanded upon by adding that such items are extralinguistic, rather than intralinguistic (leppihalme, 2011, p. 126) and cover a rather large field of culturally-specific terms or concepts. translation researchers have come up with numerous subclassifications of those items, grouping them into several categories. for the purposes of this article, a categorization into four major types provided by fernandez guerra (2012, p. 4) has been used, classifying realia into: 1. geographic and ethnographic terms 2. words and expressions referring to folklore, tradition and mythology 3. names of everyday objects, actions and events 4. social and historical terms. this type of categorization has been chosen in order to cover a broad selection of such items in translated films that have been examined during the research stage in the preparation of this article. while there are several terms denoting quite similar concepts, such as realia, culturally-specific items, culture-bound elements and culturally loaded elements, this paper shall use the term realia to encompass all of them in order to achieve textual cohesion and homogeneity. while realia belong to the visual-verbal layer of meaning, compelling the analyst studying their use in subtitles to focus primarily on the verbal aspect, their presence may also be examined through other semiotic channels, whether auditive (as their pronunciation should be heard by the viewer and thus merge with the visual of the written word) or spatial (as their use in subtitles may be particularly emphasised by using italics or bold typography to draw the viewer’s gaze towards that part of the subtitle). treatment of realia in the subtitling of ekphrastic texts 109 the primary importance of realia lies in the fact that they firmly ground the text in its local and temporal surroundings (leppihalme, 2011, p. 126), leading us to venuti’s central argument that the key aspect of any interpretant, whether formal or thematic, is its relation to cultural traditions and social situations of the source material and of the second-order work that processed it. this can be translation in its capacity for de-contextualization and re-contextualization, traversing two or more languages and their innate structural differences, or it may be ekphrasis in its ability to transcend the boundaries between media in a single language. and yet, both translation and ekphrasis share a common limitation: they are dependent on the interpretants selected by the translator or narrator, their linguistic, stylistic or ideological choices (venuti, 2010, p. 140). any translation must thus be assessed in its immediate interpretative context, including both the source context – the one from which the source text originates – and the one for which the target text is adapted. translations are created for specific audiences, taking into consideration their habits, needs and interests, just as documentary media is created to cater to the needs and interests of specific target audiences in terms of subject matter, the ways in which the subject is approached and treated, linguistic choices and style. what does this mean for translated and subtitled audiovisual ekphrastic texts? could subtitles enhance or diminish the viewers’ experience of a particular work of art? umberto eco (2004, p. 203) remarked that literary ekphrasis nowadays serves as an instrument which tries to draw attention more to the image it tries to evoke in the mind’s eye, rather than drawing attention to itself as a verbal medium. in subtitling, there is no evocation of a painting or a statue in the mind’s eye since the visual is present. what is evoked is the feeling or mood with regard to it, thus shaping the audience’s perceptions of a given work of art. this once again returns us to the ancient rhetoric notion of ekphrasis as an emotional and imaginative device, whose purpose is to meld the imagined visual with the emotional response it causes and thus create an affective impact. we are reminded of contemporary functionalist approaches to ekphrasis, such as brosch’s (2013), whereby the still image and the dynamic imaginative visualization merge their power into a unified whole: in seeing a video, we see the artwork shown in it, but we also feel the overall sense of the artwork through the interaction of the image, the subtitled text, the auditive input and our own affective reaction to it. unlike videogames or virtual reality environments to which the concept of digital ekphrasis is usually applied (kashtan 2011; lindhé 2013), subtitled films are multisensory but not truly interactive. the viewer is not required to physically and practically react in response to the semiotic input they receive. with subtitled films, the viewers are necessarily involved only passively, yet they ask for full cognitive engagement and concentration, thus providing an explicit multimodal experience but not a physically active one. it may be possible to claim that – at least for some – these multimodal facets and complex sensory input provide a new dimension of perceiving art, not reducing the overall experience. certainly, as mentioned above, for some viewers the subtitle lines on the screen may disrupt the creative flow of the source material and thus seem a hindrance, an unwelcome visual obstruction blocking a part of the screen and the artwork shown on it. however – and presuming the high quality of the translator’s work – if we decide to consider an audiovisual translational literary work in itself journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 110 and thus a piece of literary art in its own right, despite the nature of a subtitled text as a secondary work with respect to the original source text, the translator then performs an ekphrasis of an ekphrasis, in a broad sense, condensing and paraphrasing the original narrative exposition of artwork pieces into smaller dense units of the target text and reflecting the original visual input through a double linguistic lens. this view may gather some support in the opinion of peter wagner (1996, p. 14) on the division between poetical and critical ekphrasis: we should drop, once and for all, the tacit assumption that the verbal representation of an image must be literary to qualify as ekphrasis—in our age of the arbitrary sign it has become extremely difficult to distinguish between literary and critical text. if ekphrasis is the verbal representation of visual representation, a definition most experts now seem to accept, the first part of that definition can only mean: all verbal commentary/writing (poems, critical assessments, art historical accounts) on images. all such writing is essentially ekphrastic: the difference between the critical and the literary versions is one of degree, not one of mode or kind. from this would follow that the narration in art documentaries can also be deemed ekphrastic writing, whether characterized by a high register and poetic language or being a strict and up-to-apoint description of the artwork shown on screen. the idea of well-made subtitles having artistic value has occasionally been revisited by translation scholars, see for instance kabara (2015, p. 166– 167 and p. 177), who applied christiane nord’s concept of authorship to argue that subtitles could make the source text grow by transferring the poeticness of the original (understood as the stylistic subtlety and nuance of the original text) through the act of interpretation and restructuring of the original source language, thus prompting the viewers of the target text to engage with the source text and make inferences to interpret it in new and meaningful ways. in this process, the source text is condensed into subtitles, but the denotative meaning and the poeticness are retained and the viewers are encouraged to access and apply their background knowledge resources that include both the target culture and source culture in order to make those meaningful inferences (kabara, 2015, p. 177). of course, translation, including screen translation, remains a second-order work insomuch as its creator works on an original source text created by another author to transform, rewrite and recreate it into a new textual unit, even if we acknowledge the new elements introduced into the final work and its existence as a separate textual unit, de-contextualized and re-contextualized into a new cultural, socio-political and ideological setting. in spite of this fact, the degree to which a subtitled text may be considered a complete copy of the original, taking into consideration all of the paraphrasing and reshaping effort involved in its creation, remains somewhat fluid. that being said, just as ekphrastic texts created by an individual author with a specific purpose and design in mind can take a life of their own and shape the understanding of the artwork even in ways not intended by their author, so can translations, moving not merely through different media, but likewise across languages, cultures and social strata, reaffirming, changing or reinterpreting their treatment of realia in the subtitling of ekphrastic texts 111 audiences’ understanding of the artwork. since realia are items of particular significance for the source culture, it may be surmised that their translation using various strategies plays an important role within this process, enabling the target audience to fully comprehend the source material. since the narrow objective of this study is to examine the way professional croatian subtitlers deal with realia in ekphrastic documentaries, the following chapter shall describe the research hypotheses and the methodological framework used to gather and analyse the study data. 2. methodology the data has been gathered from a corpus of twelve art documentaries, ten in english and two in french and their croatian subtitled versions. only professionally made subtitles from national and satellite tv channels were used, meaning the subtitle films created for the national broadcasting corporation hrvatska radiotelevizija (hrt) and the commercial tv channels such as the croatian branch of the rtl television and the viasat history channel. all films examined include either the names of their translators and reviewers or the universal signature of the translation provider company. while the unsigned films may indicate that the work has been completed by novices or translators with less professional experience, it may be worth noting that the company which brands its subtitles using only the company signature (mediatranslations) is the second-largest avt employer after the national tv broadcaster in croatia and the only one which has an in-house revision team, while all others rely on subtitled films being reviewed externally by freelance contractors. the analysis of the corpus involved two stages, the first being devoted to the investigation of translation strategies used to deal with realia, which was mainly verbal-oriented, and the second examining the relationship between realia and ekphrasis according to the multimodal aspects of hannah silvester’s model, with a special emphasis on the auditive dimension. the translation strategies used to deal with realia were examined in accordance with a model specifically created for subtitles (pedersen, 2005, 2011) and are divided into two main broad categories, source-language oriented and target-language oriented (or foreignizing and domesticating type strategies), with a more specific sub-division within each category: table 1. translation strategies used to deal with realia journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 112 source language oriented target laguage oriented retention generalisation specification (explicitation, addition) substitution (cultural substitution and paraphrase) direct translation (calque and shifted) omission official equivalent the source language-oriented category encompasses strategies such as retention or direct transfer of a term, meaning that source realia are kept intact and unchanged, and then transferred into the target text, but are frequently marked to distinguish them from the rest of the text using italics or any other type of typography. the strategy of specification is divided into two sub-strategies: explicitation, in the sense of expanding the sl text by providing additional explanatory information or spelling out implicit meanings of abbreviations and acronyms; and addition, where the material that is added to the text is latent in the culturally-specific item with regard to its sense or connotations. the source language-oriented category is finally rounded off by including direct translations, both of the calque and shifted variety. calque translation is the result of stringent literal translation, while shifted direct translation entails the translators making optional shifts on the st realia that makes the realia more unobtrusive, that is, shifted translation is a more precise definition of literal translation (pedersen, 2005, p. 5; 2011, p. 83). the end result is often identical when it comes to calque and shifted direct translation, and nothing is added nor subtracted from the source (pedersen, 2011, p. 83). this means that neologisms are occasionally a result of the use of such strategies. the target language-oriented category includes various replacement strategies such as generalisation or replacing realia with something rather vague and general, such as a superordinate term (i. e. a fast food restaurant for burger king), cultural substitution in the sense of replacing realia with equally culturally loaded elements from the target culture and paraphrase, or the replacement of realia with a context-appropriate paraphrase. the final strategy that fits into the tl oriented category is omission, where realia are not replaced by anything and are simply ignored. there is also an additional strategy which fits neither the source nor the target-oriented category, this being the official equivalent that has already been established and codified in the target language and culture, usually by an official authority. thematically, the documentaries selected cover a wide array of topics, geographical locations and types of artwork, including medieval, renaissance and modern western art, greco-roman antiquity, byzantine art, tang dynasty china and medieval tibet, as well as the ottoman turkish art. painting, mosaics, sculpture and architecture are all represented, as well as tibetan mandalas, treatment of realia in the subtitling of ekphrastic texts 113 chinese bas-reliefs and ottoman calligraphy. this non-uniform batch has been selected in order to showcase the widest possible angle in dealing with realia and test the hypothesis that the techniques offering the greatest level of foreignization will largely be used in target subtitles, since they both provide the “flavour” of the source material and serve as a basis for learning about a specific culture and artistic tradition, bearing in mind the educational and entertainment aspects of the documentaries. three hypotheses were envisaged during the study design stage: 1. subtitlers will largely favour foreignizing strategies in order to retain as much of source culture as possible. 2. the strategy of omission will not be widely used since it entails the removal of potentially important information, which would be in contradiction to the informative and educative purposes of the subtitled documentaries. 3. the strategy of addition will have a significant presence due to educative purpose of the subtitled documentaries and the potential need to further clarify certain concepts. 3. results and discussion a total of 170 individual examples of realia have been manually counted in the corpus, in accordance with the division by fernandez guerra (2012, p. 4) and encompassing geographic and ethnographic terms, terms for local traditions, religious and folkloristic items, names of everyday objects and foodstuffs or dishes, and social and historical terms. of those 170 items, 49 were retained in the original and marked with italics, while 49 were retained in the original and left unmarked (those mostly involve geographic locations, names of cities, towns and rivers and similar, which are customarily kept in their original form in the croatian cultural and literary tradition, unless an official equivalent has been ingrained in the collective cultural memory, such as the names venecija for the ity of venice, katalonija for catalunya or beč for vienna). when it comes to official equivalents, in 64 instances realia were croatized and translated using this strategy, largely involving the names of artistic styles such as fauvism, cubism or naturalism, historical movements such as byzantine iconoclasm or painting techniques such as still life (mrtva priroda). this leaves us with only 8 items translated using other techniques, such as addition. it may be said that the data obtained in the study partially support the hypotheses posited in the study design stage: foreignization is very much in use – sometimes even unnecessarily so, with italian catholic churches such as san giovanni or san vitale in ravenna, both of which are quite familiar to croatian audiences and have respective croatian names, being left in their italian varieties. the reason for this may lie in the translators’ ineptitude or lack of knowledge, but a more likely explanation would be the desire to retain the flavour and feeling of the source material. however, it ought to be noted that there are several limitations to the study, primarily the small size of the corpus which may mean that the findings are driven by the corpus itself. a survey of a larger topical corpus journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 114 may yield a somewhat different outcome in terms of strategies used, so the data should be interpreted with caution even though they seem somewhat uniform. likewise, several of the source texts were translated and proofread by the same pairs of subtitlers and proofreaders, so one might be wary of the possibility that the findings reflect the style and habits of individual translators, at least to some extent. the author tried to temper this by including a variety of croatian translations in the corpus and spreading the corpus over several broadcasting corporations and tv channels, with the aim of obtaining a certain level of diversity. taking into account that the croatian audiovisual market is not overly large and that the corpus includes translations created by the three largest avt providers (hrt who have their own in-house translation service, mediatranslations who are contractors for rtl media, and sdi media who translate for viasat), the uniformity of the findings still merits further discussion and can serve as a basis for drawing several conclusions regarding the overall aims of the study. due to spatial limitations of the article, each of the results shall be illustrated by a few select examples. official equivalents are by far the most frequent, codified by regulatory bodies or terms deeply ingrained in the collective cultural consciousness. the use of paraphrase is rare, due to the source material. cultural substitution is not used at all, except only for items that are already a part of the croatian culture (e.g. names of individual fish species painted on still life paintings). however, despite the occasional retention of a term or name that is usually croatized per convention, items that are well-known to the croatian audiences or which are a part of general world culture (e. g. the temple of pantheon in rome, or personal names of roman emperors, ancient greek philosophers or roman catholic saints) are largely croatized. likewise, concepts from time periods and cultures which have had a great influence on the local croatian culture and language are croatized, such as the ottoman turkish concepts like janissaries, minbar or mihrab or the venetian church of san marco, simply because the croatian equivalents exist due to shared historical and cultural influences. the dominions of the venetian republic included the croatian provinces of istria and dalmatia, the ottoman empire spread all the way to slavonia so linguistic calques and cultural items found their way into contemporary croatian language and culture. the retention of such items in their original forms would seem confusing to the audience. it is a reasonable presupposition that subtitlers from other geographical locations and cultures may find those items new, unusual and worthy of utilizing other types of strategies, more foreignizing ones, while domesticating those items that are close to their native culture. furthermore, since such realia are so deeply ingrained in the local cultural concepts and mental imagery, they fit effortlessly into the subtitle text and complement the already present cultural meaning. in art documentaries, this transfer of cultural meaning is often supported by other multimodal aspects. the music accompanying each scene is often selected to fit relevant historical and cultural periods, such as gregorian chants or polyphonic motets being used to evoke western medieval and renaissance tradition and thus strengthen the informative character of the film by simultaneously imbuing the viewer with the knowledge of several contemporaneous cultural artefacts. seen within this process, realia retained in the original and marked with italics or rendered treatment of realia in the subtitling of ekphrastic texts 115 using an official equivalent would serve to further cement the sense of historical and cultural time and place in the viewer’s mind. conversely, the aural dimension might also be used to prompt a different type of emotional response. a discussion of the bayeux tapestry might be accompanied by the sounds of a battle, the clashing of metal weapons and the neighing of horses. or j. m. w. turner’s venetian landscape paintings might be accompanied by the soft sound of swishing seawater, evoking the feeling of a soft summer sunset over the lagoons. in the croatian subtitling tradition, the effects of music and other non-spoken sounds on subtitles are limited insofar as they are not rendered in the form of descriptions onscreen. it is customary to translate only the speech and text that is visually present onscreen, such as written signs. however, in other subtitling traditions – and especially when it comes to the subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing – the written descriptions of sounds and musical effects may provide a further board to fuse the various layers of meaning together. sturken & cartwright (2001) assert that the capacity of images to affect the viewer depends on the cultural meanings they evoke, as well as the social, political and cultural contexts in which they are viewed. in compliance with this notion, the layers of meaning present in an ekphrastic scene of an art documentary, together with the dramatic and narrative effects produced by it and interpreted by the viewer, would depend on the entire multimodal experience. all of the stimuli (verbal narration, music and aural effects, written subtitles and the visual imagery) combine together to create the general impression of an ekphrastic scene for the viewer. the following few examples shall illustrate the usage of the official equivalents in the corpus examined in this study. examples: (1) english subtitle: the importance of these guilds changed with the period. croatian subtitle: važnost tih cehova mijenjala se s vremenom. (back translation: the importance of these guilds changed with the times.) (paris, a capital tale 2, 07:04) the scene follows an indoor medieval market – specifically the one built by king philip augustus for the drapers’ and weavers’ guilds of medieval paris – with extras in medieval garb performing the mundane tasks of everyday life: walking among the produce stalls, cooking or buying vegetables or cutting pork meat for their customers. it is meant to represent a snapshot of daily life microhistory for the citizens and guild members of medieval paris, reinforced by the sights and sounds one might expect in such a location and time period: the cackling of geese as they waddle among people’s feet, the heard-yet-indiscernible conversations among the buyers and sellers. this is overlaid by the narrator describing the codification of trades and the importance of guilds for medieval city life, as an introduction to the saint jacques tower, the only remaining part of the butchers’ guilds’ church journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 116 of saint james (saint-jacques-la-boucherie). the realia related to the concept of a guild (or ceh in croatian) couldn’t have been rendered in any other way since the same concept and organisation had been a part of everyday life for the citizens of medieval croatian towns. moreover, the visual of a stereotypical medieval town scene, underlined by the clothing of the people and the food items (pig carcasses, geese and leafy greens) would have been easily transposable to a croatian setting. hence no particular typographic emphasis would have been necessary to address the concept of a guild or to familiarise the croatian viewers with it. (2) english subtitle: a significant part of which was used for the basilica of san marco, the symbol of venetian power. croatian subtitle: velik dio uporabljen je za baziliku svetog marka, simbol venecije. (back translation: a large portion was used for the basilica of saint mark, a symbol of venice.) (monuments revealed: hagia sophia, 42:30) the image onscreen shows the interior of the hagia sophia, slowly giving way to a watercolour drawing of the basilica of saint mark. the flute music is aimed to evoke medieval secular polyphony. the subtitles leave out the phrase “venetian power”, instead using simply “venice”, but this omission may be due to the limited number of characters per second, not to any contentious decision of the subtitler. however, for a viewer conversant in english, this omission may be glaring and may adversely impact the ekphrastic experience. (3) english subtitle: there was the addition of the minbar, the place from which the imam would give the sermon. croatian subtitle: dodali su minbar, mjesto gdje je imam držao propovijed. (back translation: a minbar was added, the place from which the imam would give the sermon.) (monuments revealed: hagia sophia, 52:33) the camera in this and the following scene follows the narrator as she walks around the interior of the hagia sophia, briefly focusing on each mentioned object, including the minbar and the mihrab, which shows the sacred direction to mecca. both objects are retained in the original and unmarked, since they are explained by the narrator in the source text. the subtitler decided not to use the italics, perhaps believing the explanations to be sufficient. however, while some of the ottoman turkish cultural concepts are quite well-known among the croatian audiences, this may not be the case with objects of religious significance. the lack of emphasis via the italics does not necessarily impact the ekphrastic experience, since the objects referred to are clearly shown onscreen and discussed by the narrator, but it does represent a conscious choice by the subtitler. treatment of realia in the subtitling of ekphrastic texts 117 the strategy of retention is relatively often used in the examined corpus, with the term in question being transferred either with or without italics. with terms in the chinese language, either the hànyǔ pīnyīn or wade-giles romanisation systems are used, usually following the romanisation used in the source text. occasionally a term is retained even when the concept in question has actually entered the croatian language as a loanword (such as brioche, extant in croatian as brioš or the name of buddha, traditionally croatized into buda). cultural gaps certainly exist, but since the emphasis is on the cultural and not necessarily linguistic transfer, spreading information about the source text and individual items described, the primary focus is on the retention of distinctive cultural and artistic experience of the original culture. individual realia are frequently marked, and the attention specifically drawn to them using italics in general type subtitles. however, if there is a change in narration, which is in croatia typically and conventionally marked by the whole subtitle being in italics, then the realia are marked apart by being written in roman type. in one instance, the translator opted to use the italian name of a specific geographic location (the venetian grand canal) and mark it in italics despite the fact that the original narration used the french name for the same place. this might again be explained by the italian name simply being more familiar to the croatian audiences, since canal grande is usually not croatized in the general tradition. examples: (4) english subtitle: the buddha said everything is impermanent. croatian: buddha je rekao da je sve prolazno. (back translation: buddha said that everything is transitory. (lost treasures of tibet, 0:12) the visual features a close-up of a buddhist monk’s fingers, patiently and methodically taking coloured sand out of a round metal box and pouring it along pre-drawn chalk lines to build a mandala. his face is deeply focused and calm and the scene is accompanied by a mixture of quiet flute music and his equally soft and quiet voice. a mandala is a symbol of impermanence and the transitory nature of the world, painstakingly made of colourful sand only to be scattered later; a delicate artwork requiring hours of patient and dedicated work. the scene is meant to evoke the combination of deep calm, unbridled focus and impermanence. the viewer’s gaze is fixed on the fingertips mixing and releasing the coloured green, red and blue grains of sand onto the chalk lines and triangular forms. the subtitle is divided into two lines, even though it perhaps could have been retained as a single line as it contains very little text. however, this again may not have been a conscious choice by the subtitler, but a choice dependent upon the number of characters per line allowed by the client specifications. buddha’s name could have been easily used in the croatian form since it is quite familiar to the croatian audiences, but the subtitler might have opted to keep it intact in order to evoke the feeling of “foreignness” with regard to tibetan buddhism. the scene is immediately journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 118 expanded in the next few frames, where we see a number of children in traditional orange and yellow buddhist monk robes intently watching the artist at work, and other monks working on the mandala. buddha’s name is further retained in the original form in the following subtitles, whose narration expounds on his teachings and their ability to prepare the adherents to face the impermanence. although they bear a certain similarity to the roman catholic medieval concept of memento mori with its own emphasis on intransience and the interminable passage of time and worldly affairs, the tibetan buddhist cultural and religious notions may be considered sufficiently foreign to merit the use of a foreignizing strategy in order to maintain their specific flavour for the audience. (5) french subtitle: whistler fuit le premier artiste important à s’aventurer hors du grand canal. croatian subtitle: whistler je prvi umjetnik koji se otisnuo izvan canala grande. (back translation: whistler is the first artist who ventured outside the grand canal.) (turner, monet, whistler, 46:57) the entire screen is occupied by j. m. whistler’s etchings of the first and second venetian set. the yellow and white paper is filled with the images of sailing ships, palazzos along the small canals and pastel tones evoking the evenings and nights over the lagoons. the scene is rounded off by simple and elegant violin music and a narrator whose voice is subdued and reverent, almost as if to reflect the gentle and soft quality of whistler’s misty twilights on warm water and the tenderness of his lines. the emotion evoked by the nocturne is one of softness, radiance and harmony. the white letters and pale grey lines of the subtitles almost merge into the etchings, virtually giving rise to the illusion that they are a part of the drawing. for the viewers of the documentary, they are a part of the overall visual experience, being infused with the rest of the visual input into a single image on the screen. despite the fact that the combination of white letters on a pale grey surface is the standard for croatian subtitlers, used to enhance readability (see croatian association of audiovisual translators (caat) guidelines for subtitling, 2019, p. 4), one may speculate that some art forms might be additionally enhanced and supplemented by interventionist subtitling techniques, such as the fansubbers’ use of different colours, graphics or even onscreen commentary. couldn’t one imagine the ekphrastic experience of andy warhol’s or damian hirst’s work augmented by such interventions? and yet, some viewers might see such additions by the subtitler as unnecessary, disruptive or overly aggressive. to return to the example at hand: the use of italics and the italian name of the canal grande might have been a deliberate attempt to exert a degree of control over a location very familiar to the croatian audiences. to them, the italian name is almost a household name, so the use of anything else might have been unusual. as such, the subtitles reflect and complement the visual and imaginative experience – since they describe an etching which in turn describes a venetian lagoon – bypassing the french narration in favour of a local cultural tradition. (6) treatment of realia in the subtitling of ekphrastic texts 119 english subtitle: this material, which we call a pizza, is a glass paste. croatian subtitle: ovaj materijal, zvan pizza, jest staklena pasta. (back translation: this material, called pizza, is a glass paste.) (monuments revealed: hagia sophia, 26:08) (7) english subtitle: depending on their needs, the artisans would break this coloured glass croatian subtitle: po potrebi, obrtnici bi razbili ovo obojano staklo english subtitle: into small cubes of different dimensions called tesserae. croatian subtitle: u kockice različitih dimenzija zvane “tessere”. (back translation: depending on need, the artisans would break this coloured glass into small cubes of different dimensions called tesserae.) (monuments revealed: hagia sophia, 26:20–22) the visual over these scenes involves the byzantine mosaics in the ravennese basilica of san vitale and a modern mosaicists’ workshop. as the subtitles follow the unseen narrator, they are mostly in italics, with the realia marked in regular typeface and using quotation marks to distinguish them from the rest of the subtitle. this is in line with the accepted croatian subtitling tradition, but – perhaps unintentionally – creates a rather interesting and agreeable visual effect. the typographic changes from regular typeface to italics follow the golden and blue tesserae as they are placed and fitted into the mould, thus visually evoking the placement and composition of those small cubes into a single large image. the ekphrastic experience of fitting several items into a single whole is further emphasised by the aural dimension: the mosaicist explains her work in italian, voiced-over by the english narrator of the documentary, but not so loud as to make the italian difficult to hear. if we consider the croatian subtitles as the third verbal layer within the scene, the whole ekphrastic experience of the scene is fused together from several verbal components and several visual components, creating an imaginative multimodal mosaic for the viewers. addition was rarely used to deal with realia in the examined corpus, with additional information inserted to clarify individual terms and concepts which may be unfamiliar to some viewers, for example the concepts of pax romana or ancien régime. this conforms to the educative purpose of the source material and helps in disseminating information on the original source context. likewise, since specific terms and concepts were often additionally explained in the source text, such as the parisian court des comptes or court of the accounts, those items were retained in the original and the additional explanation translated into croatian (i. e. court des comptes or revizorski sud). journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 120 examples: (8) english subtitle: the place des innocents was built on top of one of paris’ oldest cemeteries. croatian subtitle: trg place des innocents izgrađen je povrh jednog od najstarijih pariških groblja. (back translation: the square place des innocents was built atop one of the oldest paris cemeteries.) (paris, a capital tale 2, 04:47) the scene is visually and aurally attractive, following the narrator’s description of medieval people’s attitudes to death and graveyards as places of daily activities not strictly separated from the world of the living, as modern healthcare standards and socio-cultural concepts of death impose upon the contemporary society. the visual is a colourful drawing of the cemetery des innocents, not as a place of quiet mourning and contemplation as one may well imagine it to be, but rather as a bustling place teeming with life. it is surrounded by shops and stalls, there are washerwomen washing some clothes, soldiers are leisurely strolling along a path, children are running around at play, while at the same time a funeral is being conducted by a party of priests and monks. the visual slowly blends the drawing with the filmed image of the contemporary square, taking as its central point of focus the depiction of a fountain that stood in the same location during the reign of king philip augustus, then to symbolically and actually replace it with the image of the still-extant fontaine des innocents which has occupied the same site since 1549. the subtitler opted to add the descriptor trg (square) before the place name, possibly to enhance the informative experience – for the square and its fountain occupy the site of the cemetery and express the continuities present in the life of a city. people die, streets change, but the city keeps living and growing above and over the remains of bygone eras. it is also possible that the subtitler simply did not want to start the subtitle using a foreign word. however, the addition fits well with the rest of the subtitle and does not detract from the overall impression. it may be said that this type of addition enables the subtitles to grow in the sense advocated by kabara (2015, p. 177), keeping the denotative meaning of the original intact and making the viewers engage with the source text through several layers of meaning. (9) english subtitle: the name hagia sophia comes from the greek for divine wisdom. croatian subtitle: ime aja sofija (hagia sophia) na grčkom znači “božanska mudrost”. (back translation: the name aya sofya (hagia sophia) means divine wisdom in greek.) (monuments revealed: hagia sophia, 01:22) here the croatized turkish name was added to the greek original and the original retained in brackets, possibly because it is a more familiar form in croatian. the whole subtitle is marked in italics treatment of realia in the subtitling of ekphrastic texts 121 since it is spoken by an unseen narrator. the screen shows the interior of the hagia sophia, the camera panning from the golden byzantine mosaics and the interior view of the imposing dome to the islamic calligraphic roundels. the narrator’s voiceover mixes with the dramatic male chorus which underpins the rich images of the mosaics and a single feminine voice, almost like a lamentation, as the camera surveys the interior. the entire ekphrastic experience reflects the enormity of the artwork that is the hagia sophia: both the architectural grandeur of the building and the weight of the centuries and empires that have shaped its existence. the subtitles supplement the educative purpose of the source text and utilize the strategy of addition to provide further information to the viewers. some of the viewers may be unfamiliar with the fact that the turkish name is a calque of the original greek name, so the subtitler filled this knowledge gap by using both forms. it ought to be said that educational documentaries – and indeed documentaries in general – possess a special characteristic which distinguishes them from other types of audiovisual content: a relatively slow narration that frequently accompanies the source text and enables the transfer of large chunks of it. this somewhat reduces the need for omission. this is apparent in the films examined, and the strategy of omission is completely absent in the corpus. 4. conclusions this study focused on the interplay between ekphrastic source material and its translation in a multimodal environment. having examined the corpus, it may be said that items such as realia are seamlessly incorporated into the flow of the textual narrative, while retaining a sufficient sense of “foreignness” to colour the translations. realia complement the context of the source material, enabling the evocation of a specific historical and cultural mental image and a particular feeling with regard to the original artwork in the viewer-reader’s imaginarium. the emphasis placed upon them by using different typography to distinguish them from the rest of the text provides an additional visual stimulant, drawing the viewers’ attention to those items and the concepts they denote. this in turn may serve to complement the viewers’ experience, combined with the sensory overload stemming from the engagement of several channels of information transfer and fulfilling the informative and educative purpose of the source material: items that are particularly visually emphasised may be remembered after the viewing experience has ended. the subtitlers could have chosen to describe the concepts denoted by individual realia rather than opting for official equivalents and original forms, but this would have diminished the purpose of the source texts, which was to evoke specific historical periods, cultural milieus and artworks pertaining to them, as well as prompting an appropriate emotional response from the viewers. since the viewer’s gaze has to be drawn to the subtitles, the subtitles have to blend in with the rest of the whole in an unobtrusive way. this is reflected in all aspects that comprise a finished subtitle: use and choice of vocabulary, efficient management of temporal and spatial constraints, selection and implementation of stylistic choices, as well as translation accuracy and the appropriate use of journal of audiovisual translation, volume 2, issue 1 122 translation strategies. while the spoken narrative in art documentaries serves to underpin and interpret individual artistic pieces, reflecting the choices and intentions of its original creators, its written remaking in the subtitle format – quite literally an interpretation of an interpretation – serves the needs of its own secondary audiences and involves another layer of interpretants through the work of its translator as interpreter. with the viewers being at the same time readers, the experience of watching a subtitled film is at the same time visual, auditive and imaginative, engaging viewers’ attention on several different sensory and intellectual levels. it may be additionally said, with regard to the source material, that subtitling in its essence necessarily remains a certain level of paraphrase, reshaping the original textual and/or spoken input into a new textual form, omitting parts of, condensing the original source text or incorporating new information into the target text. despite this, the verbal layer of interpretation of the source text is only a single layer, not the defining one. language and image are realised through different sensory channels, image and text are both shown simultaneously on the screen, and in most cases, they are accompanied by sound as a third multimodal layer at play. subtitles need not be seen as a hindrance, but rather examined as a further transformative aspect of the translation process; their existence helping to achieve semiotic cohesion for the secondary audiences. the final subtitled product may then be perceived as an integral whole, providing a specific ekphrastic experience to its viewers. there are several further points to be made in concluding this study. it would certainly benefit from being conducted on a larger scale and from utilizing any of the research methods used in audience reception studies to examine the viewers’ perception and response to the films of the corpus, as a potential avenue to gauge the emotional impact of the ekphrastic experience. likewise, it may be claimed that the conventionalized forms and strategies used by the subtitlers who translated the films in our corpus might at least partially stem from the expectations of their audience, which might be used to a specific manner of cultural and textual transfer in subtitling. we ought to mention a study on the emerging expectancy norms in the croatian subtitling market, which came to the conclusion that croatian audiences are rather intolerant of translators intervening in the source text and departing from it in any way that can be interpreted as a lack of faithfulness, favouring source-oriented translation strategies and forming their expectations about the translation based on their knowledge of the original (marčetić, 2016, p. 61). this notion might have had an impact on the subtitlers’ ultimate choices regarding the use of particular subtitling strategies. furthermore, individual av providers have their own specifications and style guides, making subtitlers’ choices subordinate to their requirements, in addition to the general constraints of subtitling. all of these considerations might influence both the subtitling process and the final product, thus 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(2018). from paratext to polysemiotic network: a holistic approach to the study of subtitled films. linguistica antverpiensia, new series: themes in translation studies, 14, 71– 83. http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/5/1/000101/000101.html http://digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/7/1/000161/000161.html http://www.thecine-films.com/listening-to-images-audio-description-the-translation-overlay-and-image-retrieval/ http://www.thecine-films.com/listening-to-images-audio-description-the-translation-overlay-and-image-retrieval/ http://www.thecine-films.com/listening-to-images-audio-description-the-translation-overlay-and-image-retrieval/ treatment of realia in the subtitling of ekphrastic texts 125 sturken, m., & cartwright, l. (2001). practices of looking: an introduction to visual culture. new york: oxford university press. venuti, l. (2010). ekphrasis, translation, critique. art in translation, 2 (2), 131–152. wagner, p. (1996). icons-texts-iconotexts. essays on ekphrasis and intermediality. berlin and new york: w. de gruyter. 286 understanding the urgent need for subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing in the spanish-speaking greater antilles adrián fuentes-luque universidad pablo de olavide pabsi livmar gonzález-irizarry universidad pablo de olavide _________________________________________________________ abstract even though audiovisual translation (avt) is growing and flourishing throughout the world, it is practically unheard-of in the caribbean, where accessibility faces an even bleaker existence. the circumstances of the deaf and hard of hearing (also referred to as d/deaf) are no less alarming: social barriers and exclusion are widespread. this paper emphasizes the need to make subtitles accessible in the spanishspeaking caribbean, specifically on the islands of puerto rico, cuba, and the dominican republic, and underscores the challenges faced by the d/deaf communities on each island. our research focuses on issues like avt laws and regulations, the habits of viewers of audiovisual (av) products, and literacy and limitations on each island. this paper also examines the different types of d/deaf audiovisual consumers in the spanish-speaking caribbean and the difficulties each community faces when accessing media and entertainment. our research reveals the current state of avt accessibility in this region and provides a foundation for influencing legislators to begin enforcing avt regulations and drafting sdh guidelines. key words: audiovisual translation, subtitling for the d/deaf, viewing habits, avt laws and regulations, accessibility, caribbean, spanish-speaking greater antilles.  afuentes@upo.es, http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9717-2519  pabsi.gonzalez@upr.edu, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1802-2326 citation: fuentes-luque, a. & gonzálezirizarry, p.l.. (2020). understanding the urgent need for subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing in the spanishspeaking greater antilles. journal of audiovisual translation, 3(2), 286–309. editor(s): a. matamala & j. pedersen received: february 1, 2020 accepted: july 22, 2020 published: december 21, 2020 copyright: ©2020 fuentes-luque & gonzález-irizarry. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license. this allows for unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. about:blank about:blank http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9717-2519 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1802-2326 about:blank journal of audiovisual translation volume 3, issue 2 287 1. introduction latin america comprises a huge geographical area in which most countries have limited regulations concerning accessible audiovisual translation (avt) and, so far, no guidelines for providing subtitles for the deaf and the hard of hearing (sdh). translators who choose the path of this noble profession must begin pursuing this rewarding effort in their own backyards. here is where accessibility, inclusion, and people with disabilities come into play. in accordance with general perceptions on the concept of “accessibility,” which we will define in the next subsection, the deaf and hard of hearing, who will be referred to as “d/deaf” throughout this article, cannot and should not be considered an isolated group of people within the population of specific countries or societies. they should instead be regarded as people who experience life differently and who have communication systems that are different from those of the hearing population. their experiences, rights, and opportunities should therefore be taken into consideration through initiatives, efforts, and actions that support their well-being and inclusion, such as providing films and videos with sdh. a close look at the statistics1 reveals that the world population is increasing by the day, and as a result, so is the number of d/deaf people. this should put all governments on alert. they should be continually drafting new and better plans to ensure equal rights and opportunities for their d/deaf communities. deafness is, by all accounts, the sensory disability that most commonly leads to human isolation since it affects human development. due to limitations in communication, early life experiences that contribute to personal development may not be adequate, and when they are indeed satisfactory, they are never comprehensive and complete (ramos-ramos, 2010, p. 93). d/deaf people have an urgent need for accessibility, not only from an architectonic perspective (to provide everyone with the capacity to access or inhabit a space regardless of their cognitive and physical capacities), but also in technological and audiovisual (av) contexts, since there is a notable increase in the use and integration of video and technology in our daily lives. 1.1. accessibility of av products and the importance of accessible avt avt is a translation modality by which information is provided through the simultaneous combination of two different communication channels: vision and hearing. an av product is therefore a type of text that must be seen and heard in order for the message to be received and understood. some people with visual or hearing impairments are unable to receive information through these channels. some others receive that information, yet it may not be complete or fully comprehensible. in order to ensure equal access to information, this content must be provided to them. the term “accessibility” plays a key role in guaranteeing people with visual or hearing impairments access to av products. alonso (2007) defines “accessibility” as the reduction of obstacles or barriers that restrict people with disabilities from efficiently assimilating into the population and attaining equal 1 the u.s. and world population clock of the united states census bureau states that there are close to 7.8 billion people around the globe. understanding the urgent need for subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing in the spanish-speaking greater antilles 288 rights with respect to quality of life and opportunities (p. 18). the concept of “universal accessibility” provides a framework for identifying the source of the barriers faced by individuals with disabilities, what can be done to prevent those barriers from resurfacing, and how to develop the measures, programs, and policies to ensure equality among all types of individuals within a population (alonso, 2007, p. 18). accessibility in avt enhances experiences by implementing audio description (ad) for the blind and visually impaired, sign language interpreting (sli), and subtitling for the deaf and the hard of hearing. audio description provides auditory information about the visual component of an av product. sign language interpreting occurs when a person performing language interpretation (from spanish to cuban, dominican, or american sign language, for example) is shown on screen alongside the main speaker or placed in a square at either side of the bottom of the screen. usually, the latter takes place in live scenarios like emergency broadcasts. díaz-cintas (2007) defines sdh as a type of written text “on the bottom of the screen” that aims to provide information about dialogue, intonation, sound effects, and other discursive elements on screen and/or in a foreign language, and other important aspects of the movie or av product soundtrack, such as music and lyrics (p. 47). all av products with sdh therefore comprise three elements: the oral discourse (dialogue and narration), the image, and the written discourse (subtitles). all sdh generally follow the same conventions as traditional subtitles (those without the written translation of sounds and voices overheard). as díaz-cintas (2007, p. 47) points out, they must consider the average reading speed of the target audience, be synchronized with the image, and include all elements of the original discourse necessary to convey the message. it is of the utmost importance for the av translation field not only to define film and video translation and subtitling norms, but also to create or adopt these norms based on the characteristics, social inclusion, and education level of the target audience. it must also ensure that translators use these norms as guidelines for decision-making that takes the time and space constraints that are inextricably linked to the subtitling process into consideration (sokoli, 2005, p. 271). in this sense, av translator training plays a crucial role in the development of media for all, and this training is just as important in the making of accessible films and videos as government support for accessibility and the enactment of laws that guarantee everyone the same rights. neves (2008) indicates that avt training within the educational system began in the late twentieth century, although specific emphasis on sdh became prominent in the early part of the twenty-first century. this training may include studies on the meaning of sound in films, the specifics of the working languages, basic notions of film composition, and the primary difference between sdh and traditional interor intra-linguistic subtitles. this is highly relevant since, as neves (2008, pp. 171–172) puts it, the d/deaf “have limited or no access to sound and, in some cases, to the subtitles themselves due to low literacy skills.” studies into d/deaf literacy do not paint a uniform picture. some d/deaf people read and write at the same level as their hearing peers, while others experience severe delay (dammeyer & marschark, 2016, p. 394), hence why translators should consider the median literacy skills of the d/deaf in a specific society. d/deaf literacy is neither predicted based on the degree of hearing impairment nor journal of audiovisual translation volume 3, issue 2 289 the phonological skills (the ability to decode and process speech sounds). there are other factors to be considered: signed language and spoken language abilities, the school attended, degree of hearing loss, parental hearing loss, upbringing, etc. literacy studies should be carried out in the spanishspeaking greater antilles to have a clearer picture of the situation therein and later consider the median literacy skills of each d/deaf population to provide subtitles accordingly. 1.2. a brief look at the international context of avt for their particular characteristic, silent films were equally accessible to both d/deaf viewers and those with normal hearing ability, since they were based on the visual elements and sporadic intertitles2, which also were especially beneficial for the d/deaf (if they could read, of course). this type of equal access to media has not been possible since the birth of sound films (pereira-rodríguez, 2005, p. 163). however, more countries are adopting and adapting accessible avt practices. in europe, the bbc is the leading tv channel in the promotion of high-quality subtitling for the d/deaf (pereira-rodríguez, 2005 pp. 163, 166–167). spain, on the other hand, is the guiding compass for stipulating sdh laws, regulations, and guidelines that aim to eliminate av barriers for the d/deaf in the spanish-speaking countries of latin america. in spain, the first sdh were screened by televisió de catalunya in 1990 followed by tve (televisión española [spanish public television]) two months later (pereira-rodríguez, 2005, p. 166). even if the spanish population prefers the dubbing of foreignlanguage films over subtitling, as is the case in many other countries, there is growing preference for subtitles for several reasons: internet access at home, which includes access to online video streaming platforms such as netflix, hulu, and amazon prime; the ease with which captions can be turned on; the growth/proliferation of subtitled movies vs. dubbed movies due to financial constraints;3 and the emergence of different video formats (dvd, blu-ray, mp4, etc.) that enable users to choose between many screening options, such as dubbing, audio description, captions, inter or intra-lingual subtitles, and sdh (díaz-navarro, 2016, p. 11). pereira-rodríguez argues that there is still a lot of room for improvement within the spanish legal framework regulating media accessibility, and there is also an ever-growing interest in providing increased access to media to the d/deaf and a strong desire to decrease or eliminate all communication barriers (2005, pp. 166–167). 2 intertitles or title cards were written, drawn, or printed text that was filmed and placed between movie scenes to provide the context, setting, important dialogue, or narration. the first known film with intertitles is edwin s. porker’s uncle tom’s cabin (1903). j. stuart blackton, caricaturist and filmmaker, is recognized as the inventor of intertitles. the first ceremony of the academy awards included an oscar for “best title writing” which was awarded to joseph w. farnham for his intertitles in the red mill (1927). 3 since the dubbing process is more complex than subtitling and requires more labour in order to deliver the full translation, dubbing is costlier to filmmakers and producers when compared to subtitling. understanding the urgent need for subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing in the spanish-speaking greater antilles 290 1.3. subtitling for the d/deaf in the americas avt is practically unknown in the caribbean: almost no one speaks of it (fuentes-luque & gonzálezirizarry, 2019). the concept of accessibility is beginning to have a stronger voice among policymakers and academics; however, the practice of accessible translation is almost non-existent in the region. this, of course, constitutes a significant barrier to the d/deaf accessing entertainment and av content in the way hearing individuals can. the general situation of the d/deaf in the caribbean is alarming: social barriers and exclusion are common. therefore, this article focuses on the urgent need for sdh in the spanish-speaking greater antilles. the island countries of cuba, the dominican republic, and puerto rico are located in the heart of the antilles archipelago, a group of scattered islands in the caribbean sea where a mosaic of traditions and geographical, historical, and political backgrounds converge (cruz, guilbe, & lópez, 2002, p. 37). the fact that most countries in latin america share a similar history, culture, and language and that one of these three greater antilles islands is a territory of the united states calls for a brief survey of the accessibility and inclusion efforts in these geographical contexts. in the united states, as a result of international av product marketing and the arrival of spanishspeaking immigrants from latin america, private avt providers have translated sdh manuals from english into spanish in order to establish some sort of standardization in the subtitling industry. the best example of this is the manual de closed caption [closed caption manual] published in 2011 by the described and captioned media program (dcmp), a fundamental reference when producing sdh for the united states. it was translated by dicapta, a company mostly dedicated to subtitling educational videos for the d/deaf. this digital booklet of guidelines is a true and correct translation of the original. in other words, it adheres to the requirements and format for closed captions in the united states, a primarily anglophone geographical context. the first english version of the manual de closed caption was written in the 1950s and is still endorsed by the department of education of the united states. in latin america, argentina was the first country to implement technological resources for subtitling (instituto nacional para sordos — insor, 2010). the country has also enacted different laws that promote and safeguard sdh. thus, under the title la accesibilidad a los medios audiovisuales: la narración en lengua de señas argentina y el subtitulado para personas sordas [accessibility to audiovisual media: narration in argentinean sign language and subtitling for deaf people], official guidelines concerning sdh and accessible media products have been enacted by argentina’s instituto nacional de cine y artes audiovisuales [national institute for cinema and audiovisual arts]. according to the writers of these sdh guidelines, “[a]ccess to information is urgent for the d/deaf.” therefore, these sdh guidelines follow two principles: (1) “building social inclusion” and (2) “hearing and considering the d/deaf users’ perspectives” (massone & d’angelo, 2011, p. 11).4 4 the english renditions of the texts cited in this article were provided by the authors for lack of an official translation. journal of audiovisual translation volume 3, issue 2 291 colombia has likewise created laws in support of inclusive television, and the instituto nacional para sordos [national institute for the d/deaf] published a booklet in 2010 about accessibility of av products. in this booklet, they demand sdh and narration in colombian sign language for special bulletins, news broadcasting, and government-endorsed programs. notwithstanding, the extensive documentation does not provide official colombian guidelines to state the rules of good sdh practices in the country. the consejo nacional para las personas con discapacidad (conapdis) [national council for people with disabilities] from venezuela published the 80-page long manual instructivo de accesibilidad para las personas con discapacidad (2000) [accessibility instructional manual for people with disabilities], in which design-for-all plans for housing, urbanism, and public transportation are established and explained, with illustrations. this accessibility manual also includes guidelines for journalists to interview the d/deaf and provides information on laws that ban humiliation of people with disabilities on public television, but there are no local sdh guidelines. all other spanish-language sdh norms consulted offer different solutions to the same problems and they all include solutions to problems not addressed in other guidelines. the following guides and documents from spain were analysed: the manual by una norma española (une) subtitulado para personas sordas y personas con discapacidad auditiva (2012) [a spanish standard (une) subtitling for the deaf and hearing impaired]), and garcía-crespo and quintana’s guía de metodología básica para el subtitulado de vídeos (n.d.) [basic methodology guide for video subtitling]. furthermore, we also consulted díaz-cintas’ competencias profesionales del subtitulador y el audiodescriptor (2006) [professional skills of the subtitler and audio writer], a relevant document in training even if it is not an sdh standard. lastly, we also consulted sdh guidelines for subtitles aimed at the latin american communities in the united states drafted and internally published by the following private companies: netflix (translation guidelines and subtitling facts, both documents sent to remote translators in 2012); participatory culture foundation, creators of the amara subtitling platform (amara on demand subtitling team internal 013 handbook, 2013); and zoo digital production llc (abbreviated subtitle style guide, 2014). thorough and detailed comparison of which suggestions are included and which omitted by each of these sdh standards guides is offered in the form of a table (in the form of tables) in the first chapter of gonzález-irizarry’s dissertation draft (gonzález-irizarry, 2020). 2. methodology our research questions are based on the aforementioned information on accessibility regulations and sdh standards, mostly in latin america or aimed at spanish-speaking latin americans: which laws have been enacted in cuba, the dominican republic, and puerto rico in the interest of the d/deaf population? are there cinema laws concerning media accessibility? does the d/deaf community in each island have equal access to media or av products? how are media and av products consumed? are there local sdh regulations or guidelines? are they complied with? understanding the urgent need for subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing in the spanish-speaking greater antilles 292 for this paper, we follow a descriptive methodology with a comparative perspective by: presenting an overview of the d/deaf’s living conditions in each island and the laws in force pertaining to the d/deaf, design-for-all approaches, and sdh as a tool to access media; showing the type of av products d/deaf consumers watch in each country; and outlining the difficulties of each d/deaf community with access to media and entertainment. following the descriptive methodology, the objective of this paper is to shine light on d/deaf media accessibility according to legal and social aspects of the spanish-speaking greater antilles while delimiting the needs of the cuban, dominican, and puerto rican d/deaf with regard to media accessibility, particularly sdh. the social, economic, and political conditions of each island under study have severely restricted data collection concerning (media) accessibility. the facts stated above, combined with poor and complex archival and data storing systems (to cite an example: missing or stolen documentation and other useful data that should be carefully recorded), limited access information, and difficult conditions and prevents us from adopting other methodological approaches. 3. cuba access to information on living conditions and jurisprudence in cuba has been the most limited. the political situation and the economic embargo placed on cuba by the united states (and later other countries), hinders access to information in cuba. to retrieve as much relevant information as possible, we have referred to cuban governmental and private web sites as well as documentation brought forth by a puerto rican librarian, ana espinoza-cancel (a. espinoza-cancel, personal communication, february 13, 2017—march 17, 2017). 3.1. the cuban d/deaf community according to the 2012 cuban census, among the total population of 11.5 million people, there were 60,570 d/deaf individuals. this number is divided as follows: in urban areas, there were 27,756 deaf and 48,643 hard of hearing persons. meanwhile in the rural areas, there were 7,454 deaf and 11,927 hard of hearing persons. our research on the cuban d/deaf community shows that legislators consider this population when enacting both constitutional laws and regulations concerning accessibility for people with disabilities. for example, the cuban government makes education a priority for its people: the cuban education model sets guidelines and high standards for the education of d/deaf people. 3.2. the cuban education model the cuban d/deaf community is under the cuban education model. there are an estimated 20 schools for d/deaf people throughout the island, divided as follows: at least one school for the d/deaf in each of the 15 provinces of the country, and three more in the capital, havana (tomayo, 2001). a journal of audiovisual translation volume 3, issue 2 293 series of law subsections in the 2004 cuban education model state that all d/deaf children and teenagers must learn two languages at the same time: cuban sign language as a first language and spoken/written spanish as a second language. by enforcing this law, d/deaf people receive education in their communication system as well as in the communication system of the hearing population. as a result, they are able to communicate with all people, both d/deaf and hearing, enhance their sense of cuban culture, and develop their identity as a d/deaf individual within the d/deaf community (pérez-gallardo, 2015). in addition to the bilingual system in place, the government’s efforts to include the d/deaf in the hearing community reach all school grounds. in schools for the general population, cuban sign language has been used and taught since 1994 (tomayo, 2001). the cuban education model seeks to provide d/deaf students with a system of specialized schools that will prepare them for higher education or, if they transition to schools with hearing students, the state funds sign language interpreters therein. furthermore, regulations that ensure civil rights for people with disabilities are enacted to guarantee that the d/deaf are well-prepared to become part of society, and that no communication barriers affect their career opportunities, legal awareness, access to recreational activities, and engagement with others (pérez-gallardo, 2015). 3.3. viewing habits of av products in cuba the cuban government exerts strict control on the different media, including the av products the cuban population may watch. according to radio televisión martí (cuba, cintas de video…, 2016), av content is limited, for the most part, to local movies, tv programs, and news, and some local av production is hard to distribute. for example, movies made by students and independent productions that win national awards hardly make it to the screen or movie theatres. this has resulted in an on-going debate between scholars and lawmakers, who seek to broaden the audience of these productions. at the time of writing, no significant action from the government has been taken. concerning foreign av products, cuba’s appetite for american productions has created a void filled by unauthorized use and reproduction thereof and a local black-market of pirated foreign films, which are translated and subtitled illegally by locals for cup $530 to $1,060 (usd $20 to $40) per video (cuba, cintas de video…, 2016). 3.4. avt laws and regulations although it is mentioned in several documents and online media, such as tomayo’s article on the education of d/deaf cubans (2019), leonardo pérez-gallardo’s book on civil rights of cubans with disabilities (2015), and court resolutions published in cuba’s official gazette, la gaceta oficial de cuba [see, as example, resolución no. 44/2019 (goc-2019-521-o43)], so far we have been unable understanding the urgent need for subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing in the spanish-speaking greater antilles 294 to obtain a copy of the ley de cine de cuba [cuban cinema act].5 we have likewise been unsuccessful in finding laws or regulations that govern the consumption of and accessibility to av products. nevertheless, we consider it important to share our findings concerning cuban cinema production according to news, articles, and similar online or documentary evidence. the instituto cubano del arte e industria cinematográficos (icaic) [cuban institute of cinematographic art and industry] was created by act no. 169 of 1959. this was the first cultureoriented legislation enacted by the government, two months after the revolution’s victory. this act created the cuban cinema in all its aspects and stages: production, distribution, and screening. since then, the creation of cuban cinematographic products has been under the state’s complete and absolute control (cineastas cubanos…, 2015). as stated in cineastas cubanos aprobaron propuesta de ley de cine, con el icaic [cuban filmmakers pass film bill with icaic] and quoting the text of act no. 169: “the distribution and screening of cinema products fulfils a cultural role that must be in the hands of the state.” […] furthermore, the act promotes foreign investments in cinema: in today’s cuba, we are able to foresee an increase in the creation of local audiovisual products and foreign producers who are interested in filming in cuba or investing in specific areas of the audiovisual system, such as production and post-production, screening, and marketing (cineastas cubanos…, 2015). likewise, the act stresses the necessity on the part of the state to control cultural productions: “in a world saturated with foreign av works, many of them produced by the homogeneous and global industry of entertainment, protecting and encouraging local av productions is a dire need in order to protect and develop the cuban culture.” decree act no. 373 of independent audiovisual and cinema producers, which overrides resolution 160 of december 4, 2001, enacted by the cuban ministry of culture, was approved by the state council on march 25, 2019. national and international publications thereof state that said ordinance brought in more freedom for moviemakers, the sanctioning of the cuban institute of cinematographic art and industry as the governing institution of cuban cinema, and the recognition of employment conditions of the independent movie and av products creator or producer, which in turn is formalized with the creation of the [cinema] producer registry: a legal recognition of working status for the people who work within the av field (sautié, 2019). likewise, this decree highlights cuba’s economic and marketing opportunities as a strategic venue to film foreign movies: the decree also creates and officialises the cuban film commission, a body that facilitates local and foreign cinema production, promoting cuba as a destination for av productions, as part of a strategy to generate income and increase employment in the cinema industry. finally, the decree continues to establish that the cuban government keeps total control and power over all av products. regarding 5 the original act dated from mid-twentieth century is online. however, the full and current complete act is not online, and although it is a public document, it is not publicly available. we have retrieved and used in this paper information obtained from parts of one of the most recent amendments (if not the most current) quoted in “cuba, la ley núm. 169” and published in cinémas d’amérique latine 17 (2009). journal of audiovisual translation volume 3, issue 2 295 the above, several subsections of resolution no. 44, concerning decree act no. 373 are presented below: whereas: the cuban institute of cinematographic art and industry, subordinated to the ministry of culture, has the following duties: a) […] b) to approve the audiovisual content that may be screened in movie theatres, as well as direct, control, and execute their distribution and screening; c) […] d) to foster the cinematographic and audiovisual culture within the population, as well as supporting the events that take place during screenings; e) to guarantee that the cinematographic memory of the country is retrieved, restored, conserved, digitalized, recorded, protected, socialized, promoted, preserved, and open to the public; f) to direct and control the production, programming, and screening of animated audiovisual works meant to provide an ethical education, particularly of children and teenagers; g) to direct, control, and execute the policies related to the production and marketing of the country’s cultural cinematography’s goods and services, as well as the exportation thereof; h) […] i) to direct and control the businesses that sell or rent audiovisual products, in order to promote and spread cuban and international cinema, as well the education of an active viewer; j) […] k) […] l) […] understanding the urgent need for subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing in the spanish-speaking greater antilles 296 m) to regulate, assist, and supervise the technical aspects of the organization and operation of the country’s movie theatres; n) […] o) to control the use of cinematographic works in the cuban institute of radio and television and other entities dedicated to audiovisual content programming and distribution. the republic of cuba is the pioneer in the caribbean when it comes to enacting laws that regulate its inclusive education system or benefit the d/deaf community. yet, neither the amendment of the 1959 cinema act nor the decree act no. 373, which are the fundamental pieces of legislation we have gained access to, have provisions for creating accessible cinema. however, we believe that the subsequent amendments to the cinema act include provisions that regulate accessible av products, but it has been impossible to find the most recent amendment concerning subtitles for the d/deaf or recent text of said law. similarly, we have not found scholarly or published works that provide evidence of the existence of a manual regulating both standard subtitles and subtitles for the d/deaf in cuba. 4. the dominican republic even if there is no embargo on the dominican republic, much of the data we hoped to find was inaccessible or is limited in content. both liberato tavárez, a dominican writer, and odalis martínez, a deaf dominican woman, confirm that there are no laws demanding the use of close captions or sdh in all or most av material, and if there are, they are being blatantly ignored. (o. martínez & l. tavárez, personal communication, april 13, 2020). nonetheless, “not all d/deaf know dominican sign language” (o. martínez, personal communication, april 13, 2020), making it impossible for them to access information on urgent topics such as weather forecasts, hurricane warnings, and daily news. moreover, according to our documentary research and martínez (2020), there is no website, institution, or person dedicated to the standardization of sdh in the country. 4.1. the dominican d/deaf community the dominican d/deaf community faces a peculiar social situation: while progress concerning the protection of the rights of the d/deaf has been made, policymakers on the island still have a long road ahead. in order to provide understanding about dominican society and law concerning the d/deaf, three interesting facts need to be pointed out: ● in 2000, d/deaf people were granted the right to drive a motor vehicle. journal of audiovisual translation volume 3, issue 2 297 ● eight years later, a sign language act was enacted, providing more education access to the d/deaf community by guaranteeing sign language interpreters to university students. these interpreters earn a salary of dop [dominican pesos] 20,000 to 45,000 [usd $390 to $880] every month, paid by the government (lópez, 2019). ● the rights of people with disabilities were specifically protected by the dominican constitution in 2010. despite the progress achieved, there is no census to help us estimate the d/deaf population in the dominican republic, just like there is no census of how many people are blind or visually impaired, or how many people have some other physical, sensory, or mental disability. the latest dominican census was published in 2018, and although it states how many disabled dominicans live on the island, it does not provide any other information. there is no clear number on how many d/deaf live in the dominican republic, but according to people who lead projects for the d/deaf community, such as the director of the asociación nacional de sordos de la república dominicana (ansordo) [dominican association for the deaf], there are between 95,000 and 145,000 d/deaf individuals in the dominican republic, about 1% of the total population, 50,000 of which are children and teenagers of school age (hiraldo, 2012). on the brighter side, there are about 20 schools exclusively for d/deaf students in the dominican republic and there is a government body devoted to finding employment for d/deaf persons who have at least attained a high school diploma and are able to communicate both in spanish and in dominican sign language. however, the latter has been criticised in the dominican media as not being fully efficient, since the d/deaf who hold at least a bachelor’s degree work in blue-collar jobs and most find employment only as janitors (lópez, 2019). 4.2. viewing habits of av products in the dominican republic as the information we have access to is limited, we have not been able to find evidence-based data in regard to traditional av consumption, such as movies broadcast on tv, local television programmes, and both local and foreign movies screened in movie theatres. on the positive side, tavárez and martínez have assisted us in this matter. according to their statements, most of the films enjoyed by dominicans are locally produced or come from the united states and, to a much lesser degree, other foreign countries. consequently, “the screening of american cinema has increased in both movie theatres and local television” (l. tavárez, personal communication, april 13, 2020). european and latin american films are not common, yet dominicans enjoy these in international movie festivals held in the island. dominicans love their local cinema and the spanish language. we love watching movies made here and the consumption thereof is high. when american movies are screened, we like them dubbed into spanish, especially animated movies, which are almost never imported in their original english versions. the preference for subtitled movies has decreased significantly (l. tavárez, personal communication, april 13, 2020). understanding the urgent need for subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing in the spanish-speaking greater antilles 298 even if local film production is welcomed by dominicans, tavárez and martínez (personal communication, april 13, 2020) argue that, to their knowledge, there is no dominican film with sdh. we have not been able to find one dominican movie with closed captions or sdh either. however, dominicans use current technologies to enjoy av products. according to the oficina nacional de estadística (one) [national statistics office] (2019), 60% of the dominican republic’s population has internet access. their report also states that 61% of those users are women and 65% of them belong to the millennial generation. based on the country’s economy, these figures presuppose a high internet consumption and number of users. one’s report furthermore states, in order of importance, the three types of digital content dominican users prefer: av content found on youtube, netflix, and online tv streaming channels. of course, these companies include closed captions, sdh, or automatically generated subtitles on their video content. therefore, the dominican d/deaf community with internet access has high chances of enjoying accessible av products. 4.3. avt laws and regulations the general law on disability in the dominican republic (act 42-2000) outlines the obligations of the entities involved in the development and social integration of people with disabilities. these obligations are divided into three categories: social, family, and state obligations. therein is also defined the dominican national council on disability (consejo nacional de discapacidad, conadis), which is the governing organization of the sector and has several areas of operation, two of which are the socioeconomic and educational integration. both this body and the general law on disability in the dominican republic are important steps on the way to offering the d/deaf access to av products. although no information is provided concerning dominican films, the act provides the hearing impaired with access to all telecommunication programs of high public interest, such as news and special broadcasts concerning weather or criminal alerts. specifically, act 42-2000, section 85, paragraphs i and ii, provides that all telecommunication programs should include an interpreter of sign language, sdh, or closed captioning, and screen readings of the texts that appear on screen (for the blind). the above is partially confirmed by tavárez: local television does not have a channel or program that incorporates subtitles for the d/deaf. some newscasts care enough to provide a sign language interpreter, and the person interpreting the news can be seen in the corner of the screen (l. tavárez, personal communication, april 13, 2020). as a penalty for operating against the law, the conadis has authority to order a temporary suspension of the operations until the production houses can fulfil the needs for blind and d/deaf viewers. however, the authorities have not enforced this law uniformly: these programs are not always closed captioned or subtitled for the d/deaf and they continue to be screened (santana, 2015). the above has become an urgent topic of discussion both among the d/deaf and people who journal of audiovisual translation volume 3, issue 2 299 work for them, as well as an issue raised by social activists both in the academic sector and in the media (santana, 2015). until today, we have found no locally-produced dominican movies that would incorporate closed captions or sdh, nor any local guidelines for sdh. 5. puerto rico the island of puerto rico has a peculiar government system as it has been an unincorporated territory of the united states since july 25, 1952. furthermore, puerto ricans have had u.s. citizenship since 1917, and the island had been under u.s. military government since its invasion in july 25, 1898 until it became an incorporated territory of the u.s. (picó, 2008). therefore, in terms of law and languages, puerto rico is different from cuba and the dominican republic. for example, federal laws of the united states have hierarchy over commonwealth laws. besides the laws concerning local tv production, all other laws pertaining to av content aimed at people with disabilities only exist at the federal level, as they have not been enacted under the commonwealth law system. concerning the language written and spoken in the island, puerto rico has two official languages: english and spanish, the latter being the most widely used in everyday life (welcome to puerto rico, 2020). most puerto ricans have a beginner’s level of the english language, although spoken spanish is under strong english influence, which leads to the use of neologisms and spanglish, a combination of words and syntax of both english and spanish. 5.1. the puerto rican d/deaf community according to the 2010 census, there are about 139,000 d/deaf individuals in puerto rico. this number corresponds to 3.8% of the total population living on the island, which is estimated at about 4 million people) (departamento de comercio de los ee. uu., 2012). figure 1 below shows percentage distribution by age group: understanding the urgent need for subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing in the spanish-speaking greater antilles 300 figure 1. percentage of d/deaf puerto ricans source: departamento de comercio de los ee. uu., 2012 according to the standards defined by the us statistical policies directive 14 (erickson, lee & von schrader, 2010), most of these people live in poverty. furthermore, education for the d/deaf is limited. currently, a handful of semi-private schools offer elementary, middle, and high school education in sign language only (alternativas…, 2011). yet, regardless of the number of d/deaf in puerto rico, no matter if they are children or adults, there are no education opportunities that provide the d/deaf with an adequate exchange of knowledge that fulfil their intellectual needs, because the island has no specialized schools that allows them to pursue higher education (ramos-ramos, 2010, p. 94). students who are d/deaf and cannot attend any of these semi-private schools for the d/deaf due to economic and/or geographical barriers (e.g., two are located in the island’s capital, san juan, while a very few may be found in other municipalities, such as the christian school and chapel for the deaf in luquillo, in the northeast)6 may be sent to groups of special needs children in regular public schools or even public schools for children with special needs, but this does not mean that they are equipped with resources tailored to the d/deaf. regardless of the school chosen, they are usually placed in mixed groups with children who mostly have psychological and intellectual developmental disorders. 6 there are private schools throughout the island specialized in the education of the d/deaf, such as the colegio de niños sordos fray pedro in ponce, located on the south. yet, most of these do not include all school levels and, for economic reasons, they are not even an option for many d/deaf. 0,7 0,9 0,6 2,6 9,2 21,1 0 5 10 15 20 25 0-4 years 5-15 years 16-20 years 21-54 years 65-74 years older than 75 years percentage of deaf and hard-of-hearing puerto ricans in the island journal of audiovisual translation volume 3, issue 2 301 therefore, d/deaf students are not provided with the tools they need to succeed, such as teachers who can communicate in sign language or sign language interpreters. as a result, as shown in figure 2 below, according to the 2010 census, 40% of the puerto rican d/deaf population has not completed basic high school education, and even for those who have completed it, the education levels are considerably lower than the standard set by the hearing population. not only is there the usual education gap amongst d/deaf persons, but there is also a bigger education gap between the hearing population and the d/deaf population (ramos-ramos, 2010). hence, before engaging in any spanish sdh project, translators should consider the specific situation of the puerto rican education system for the d/deaf and how this has an impact on the understanding of written spanish, since av translations should be made while taking into consideration the median level of comprehension and understanding of the written language by the d/deaf. figure 2. education level of puerto rican d/deaf population source: departamento de comercio de los ee. uu., 2012. another aspect that we deem important to consider when talking about avt tailored to the d/deaf community in puerto rico is their communication system. at present, d/deaf puerto ricans use four communication systems (see williams & parks, 2012): ● american sign language, which is taught in schools for the d/deaf; ● puerto rican sign language, a variation from american sign language and uses both spanglish neologisms and puerto rican slang; ● signing exact english, a communication system, not a language, that uses english grammar and vocabulary to create signs and fingerspelling in order to provide and receive information; 26,1 22,9 10,3 40,7 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 high school associate's degree undergraduate or graduate degree no education or diploma education level understanding the urgent need for subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing in the spanish-speaking greater antilles 302 ● and signing exact spanish, in this case, the puerto rican spanish variation of signing exact english. to communicate with the hearing community, some d/deaf use dactylology or fingerspelling (williams & parks, 2012) with people that may know it, such as family members, friends, or other people working directly within the d/deaf community. d/deaf people who have attained at least a high school diploma have an average understanding of written spanish (a. reyes, personal communication, september 15, 2017). 5.2. viewing habits of av products in puerto rico another aspect to consider when talking about possible regulations in subtitling for the d/deaf is the viewing habits of av products in puerto rico. because of the political and economic proximity to the united states, most av products consumed by the population of puerto rico are commercial us movies and tv series. due to social, geographical, and educational barriers, only a small percentage of the general population is exposed to foreign and local movies.7 movies imported from the united states are screened in movie theatres in english with spanish subtitles. the subtitling of these movies is never performed in puerto rico. distributing companies pay in-house translators or translation agencies, mostly based in new york or california. according to co-author gonzález-irizarry’s experience (2015: lxii), these, in turn, hire spanish speaking citizens of the usa (usually latin american immigrants, not necessarily puerto rican, who were raised in the usa by spanish-speaking parents) and remote workers from south and central america, movies for children, on the other hand, mostly come in dubbed into neutral latin american or standard spanish. usually, the task is performed in argentina or mexico, particularly in the case of disney movies (tav argentina, 2017). although puerto rico was once a major dubbing country (fuentes-luque, 2014), there are currently no studios or translation agencies dedicated to dubbing and subtitling. co-author gonzález-irizarry (2015: lxviii) states that the puerto rican d/deaf receive the exact same av products as the general population. in other words, these are not tailored to their specific needs: they do not include closed captions or sdh. however, the main cinema chain of the island, caribbean cinemas, claims that their cine para todos (movies for everyone) program is inclusive and that it provides equal accessibility to media for all viewers. the name of the program might suggest that caribbean cinemas caters for the needs of persons with sensory difficulties, such as audio description 7 this statement is provided as a life-long observation of one of the co-authors, gonzález-irizarry, who lives in puerto rico, where she was also born and raised. all local production (except for some comedies, which get island-wide screenings) and foreign films are screened in either of the two fine arts cinema theatres located in the municipality of san juan, the island’s capital. only upscale individuals and culturally oriented people either can afford or are deeply interested in this type of cinema. however, that is not the case for most of the population, who live in other regions and/or do not have the means to pay for expensive movie tickets. journal of audiovisual translation volume 3, issue 2 303 for the blind and subtitles for the d/deaf. however, movies for everyone is far from being inclusive: caribbean cinemas only offers specific screening times with lowered soundtrack and less lighting to help persons with autism enjoy the movie experience (negocios metro, 2014). concerning american movies broadcast on local television, such screenings feature dubbing, usually carried out in mexico. as for straight-to-dvd movies, puerto ricans do not receive the same movies as other spanishspeaking countries in south america, central america, or the caribbean. the people on the island can purchase the movies as marketed in the usa. they all come with english closed captions, as ruled by the federal government, and some of them with interlingual subtitles (english > spanish) (fuentesluque & gonzález irizarry, 2019). as a result, the puerto rican d/deaf community is left behind, and their access to av products is limited. 5.3. avt laws and regulations the united states has been one of the pioneering countries as regards avt and accessible av products. díaz-cintas and remael (2014, p. 20) explain that [t]he usa has a long history of subtitling for the deaf and the hard of hearing, which is reflected in some pioneering legislation in this field and in high percentages of av programs with intralingual captions –i.e. from english to english– for these social groups. as early as 1940, cuban deaf actor emerson romero tried to adapt movies for the d/deaf population (oviedo, 2007). yet, it took more than a decade for the first sdh to appear in american movies and many more for captions in public tv. according to izard (2001, p. 169), the first open captions8 for the d/deaf appeared in the united states in 1973 in public late-night news broadcasts. creating sdh (and captions, later) led the u.s. to enact and amend laws concerning av products and the d/deaf communities. one of the most notorious acts on this matter is public law 85-905, enacted on september 2, 1958. the said act provides the following in its statement of motives: an act to provide in the department of health, education, and welfare for a loan service of captioned films for the deaf. be it enacted by the senate and house of representatives of the united states of america in congress assembled, that the objectives of this act are— (1) to bring to deaf persons understanding and appreciation of those films which play such an important part in the general and cultural advancement of hearing persons; 8 open captions are titles that all viewers see, hearing and d/deaf, and they cannot be removed from the screen. understanding the urgent need for subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing in the spanish-speaking greater antilles 304 (2) to provide, through these films, enriched educational and cultural experiences through which deaf persons can be brought into better touch with the realities of their environment; and (3) to provide a wholesome and rewarding experience which deaf persons may share together. today, the federal communications commission is the entity in charge of enforcing the federal laws which state, in sum, that no movie can be screened or marketed within the usa without english closed captions. beginning in 2003, and as stipulated by the federal communications commission, all movies screened in tv channels must have closed captions for the d/deaf (pereira-rodríguez, 2005, p. 163). since national regulations concerning av products are federal laws which have not been enacted in puerto rico, and because of the loopholes in those federal laws (which only consider the english language) and the poor oversight of such laws in the island, the federal laws concerning closed captioning and sdh fail to be properly enforced. as a result, movies are screened and sold without spanish closed captions or spanish sdh. in the national legal corpus, however, puerto rican lawmakers included a subsection in act no. 80 of june 9, 2002 (8 l.p.r.a. § 814), titled sign language and closed captions, which provides that: ● all news broadcast from monday to friday from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. must include sign language or closed captions. watching local television programming allows to confirm that this is currently being fulfilled. ● visual captioning or open captions should be used when broadcasting special bulletins by the emergency alert system. watching local television programming allows to confirm that this is currently being fulfilled. according to information given to the sign language interpreter abdiel reyes by josé beltrán, president of servicios orientados al sordo inc. [d/deaf services inc.], the movies screened to the d/deaf by d/deaf services inc. are subtitled by dicapta in the united states (a. reyes, personal communication, september 15, 2017).9 9 in 2014, gonzález-irizarry began standardizing spanish sdh in puerto rico. since there are no local guidelines, she created a reference guideline for her m.a. thesis, in which she translated and subtitled a documentary about d/deaf artists and partially localized the film’s web site (gonzález-irizarry, 2015). today, she is working on her dissertation la subtitulación para personas sordas y personas con deficiencias auditivas: propuestas normativas y análisis de necesidades en puerto rico [subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing: policy proposals and needs analysis in puerto rico] (2020), whose aim is to write and publish the first spanish sdh guidelines specifically tailored to the d/deaf in puerto rico. in order to complete this research project, she has written a draft of the questionnaire to be completed by a group of puerto rican d/deaf concerning their sdh preferences and needs. gonzález-irizarry’s work aims to propose different projection methods than the ones preferred and discussed in sdh guidelines of spain, latin america, and the journal of audiovisual translation volume 3, issue 2 305 6. conclusion understanding the need for subtitling for the d/deaf in different spanish-speaking contexts is urgent. in this paper we have presented an overview of the d/deaf population, regulations on accessibility, and living conditions of the d/deaf in the greater antilles of cuba, the dominican republic, and puerto rico. this research brings focus to the caribbean, a hardly known part of the world in the av context. the information presented will aid translators and lawmakers in these islands in overcoming the current social, legal, and technological/av barriers in order to establish appropriate avt norms tailored for their d/deaf. translators and legislators should work together to meet the specific needs of each d/deaf community and draft spanish sdh guidelines to be used in these islands. these regulations and guidelines may address the following: preferred typographical conventions; reading speed; maximum amount of characters per line (cpl) and characters per second (cps); new, modified, or updated sdh standards; etc. providing accessible subtitles in movies will boost the marketing and sales for local cinemas, since many d/deaf state that they “watch foreign movies, because they are subtitled [for the d/deaf]” (massone & d’angelo, 2011, p. 9). further research on the matter, such as gonzález-irizarry’s dissertation (2020), is therefore necessary, yet we hope that this article may be of value to translation scholars and translators. it is of paramount importance to start implementing appropriate avt regulations in the caribbean region that can be shared with or replicated in other yet similar socio-geographical and linguistic contexts. it has become imperative to united states, and includes solutions to problems not discussed in those other spanish sdh guidelines, such as the subtitling of sign language for the hearing population, since she has come across movies in which there are characters or subjects that use sign language or fingerspelling to communicate while both on and off screen. this situation led her to come up with possible rules or new sdh standards (see below) that may be used when subtitling information given in any of the communication systems used by the d/deaf, but foreign to hearing persons. furthermore, her finished work will consider the social, political, and economic realities of the island. specifically, gonzález-irizarry addresses the following sdh parameters: • the preferred typographical conventions: • italics, small caps, ellipsis; • em dash, en dash, or colours to identify dialogues; • ways to identify off-screen voices and sounds; • ways to state interrupted dialogues and changes of characters as they speak; etc. • the reading speed of the puerto rican d/deaf community, for which she takes into consideration aspects such as the time when the hearing was lost, the degree of hearing loss, the knowledge about the language in which the subtitles will appear (in this case, spanish), and the average level of education; • the maximum amount of lines and characters per line (cpl) and second (cps); and • new sdh standards, such as subtitling sign language and other communication systems used by the d/deaf for hearing people. this item also includes some of her preferred takes on previously discussed sdh standards or the integration of two precedent solutions into a new one. these alternatives are part of the questions concerning the identification of speakers, how to signal context information, how to subtitle music, etc. understanding the urgent need for subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing in the spanish-speaking greater antilles 306 bridge the gap between av products and the d/deaf, particularly in lesser known contexts and regions, where there is great need for media for all. references act no. 80 (2002, june 9). puerto rico. para disponer que se utilice el lenguaje de señas en todos los noticiarios locales televisados y el sistema de “closed caption” en los boletines del sistema de alerta de emergencia [the official english title of this law in puerto rico is: sign language and closed captions]. alonso, f. 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(2001). la subtitulación para sordos del teletexto en televisión española [the subtitling of teletext for the deaf on spanish television]. in l. lorenzo & a. pereira (eds.), traducción subordinada ii, el subtitulado: (inglés-español/gallego) [constrained translation ii, subtitling: (english-spanish/galician)] (pp. 169–194). vigo: servizo de publicacións de la universidade de vigo. ley general sobre la discapacidad en la república dominicana (ley 42-00) [general law on disability in the dominican republic. no. 42-00). dominican republic]. retrieved from http://www.sipi.siteal.iipe.unesco.org/sites/default/files/sipi_normativa/leyno.42-00_ley_general_sobre_la_discapacidad.pdf ley general sobre la discapacidad en la república dominicana [general law on disability in the dominican republic]. no. 5–13. dominican republic (2013). retrieved from http://www.senado.gov.do/masterlex/mlx/docs/1c/2/12/20/207/298f.htm lópez, m. 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(august 14, 2008). training in subtitling for the d/deaf and the hard-of-hearing. oficina nacional de estadística (one) de cuba. (2012). censo de población y vivienda cuba 2012 [population and housing census cuba 2012]. retrieved from http://www.one.cu/informenacional2012.htm oficina nacional de estadística de la república dominicana. (2019). dominicana en cifras 2018 [the dominican republic in figures 2018]. retrieved from https://www.one.gob.do/multimedia/download?objid=90283 oviedo, a. (2007). una estrella sorda cubana del cine mudo: emerson romero (alias tommy albert) (1900–1972) [a deaf cuban star of silent cinema mudo: emerson romero (aka tommy albert) (1900 1972)]. cultura sorda. retrieved from https://cultura-sorda.org/emerso-romeroactor-sordo-cubano participatory culture foundation. (2013) amara on demand subtitling team internal 013 handbook. pereira-rodríguez, a. (2005). el subtitulado para sordos: estado de la cuestión en españa [subtitling for the deaf: state of the art in spain]. quaderns. revista de traducció 12, 161–172. pérez-gallardo, l. (2015). discapacidad y derecho civil en cuba [disability and civil law in cuba]. madrid: dykinson. picó, f. (2008). historia general de puerto rico [a general history of puerto rico]. san juan, puerto rico: ediciones huracán. public law 85-905 (1958, september 2). to provide in the department of health, education, and welfare for a loan service of captioned films for the deaf. retrieved from https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/statute-72/pdf/statute-72-pg1742.pdf page=1 about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank#page=1 journal of audiovisual translation volume 3, issue 2 309 ramos-ramos, t. m. (2010). el derecho a la educación de las personas con discapacidad auditiva en puerto rico [the right to education of hearing impaired people in puerto rico]. revista clave, 5, 93–120. resolución no. 44/2019, gaceta oficial de la república de cuba, goc-2019-521-o43. república de cuba (2019). 702–705. santana, o. (2015, february 9). república dominicana, ‘en pañales’ a la hora de romper barreras a sordos [the dominican republic, still 'in diapers' when it comes to breaking down barriers for the deaf]. diario libre. retrieved from http://www.diariolibre.com/noticias/repblicadominicana-en-paales-a-la-hora-de-romper-barreras-a-sordos-cadl1004251 sautié, m. 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(2014). abbreviated subtitle style guide. about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank 40 an overview of audiovisual translation: four methodological turns in a mature discipline frederic chaume universitat jaume i abstract digital technology has played a crucial role not only in the process of production and distribution of audiovisual content, but also in the process of localization and consumption of audiovisual products. this has had an obvious impact on audiovisual translation as a field, both in professional circles as well as in scholarly research. to date, this field of research has grown exponentially, parallel to the production, consumption, interaction with and general interest in audiovisual products. at the same time, translation studies have been growing as a discipline and, consequently, has been influencing audiovisual translation (avt) research. this article presents a due brief overview of the four turns audiovisual translation has taken to date (the descriptive, the cultural, the sociological and the cognitive turns), and identifies some of the major steps already undertaken, as well as possible research avenues that such turns are currently opening. key words: audiovisual translation, descriptive studies, cognitive studies, cultural studies, sociological studies, funsubs, fundubs, literal dub versions, honest subtitles.  chaume@uji.es; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4843-5228 citation: chaume, f. (2018). an overview of audiovisual translation: four methodological turns in a mature discipline. journal of audiovisual translation, 1(1), 40-63. editor: a. jankowska & j. pedersen received: september 1, 2018 accepted: september 30, 2018 published: november 15, 2018 copyright: ©2018 chaume. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license. this allows for unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4843-5228 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4843-5228 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ an overview of audiovisual translation: four methodological turns in a mature discipline 41 1. the coming of age of a discipline: four methodological paradigms following the first monograph in audiovisual translation (laks, 1957), sixty years ago, and the first specialised issue of a journal devoted partially to this field (babel, 1960); and following the first research works, dating back approximately thirty to forty years (brant, 1984; delabastita, 1989; fodor, 1976; gautier, 1981; hendrickx, 1984; herbst, 1987; hochel, 1986; mason, 1989; mayoral, kelly & gallardo, 1986; pommier, 1988; titford, 1982; vöge, 1977 among others), it can be said that avt has certainly gained the right to constitute a legitimate and independent field of studies, matching the status of any other area of studies in translation and interpreting (carbonell, 2018; díaz cintas, 2004a, 2009). this statement does not come unjustified. although, epistemologically speaking, it is difficult to define a clear border between audiovisual translation studies and translation studies, or even interpreting studies (with which avt has many common threads, and not only in the case of respeaking), audiovisual translation has undoubtedly boomed in all respects. this phenomenon has kindled the interest of many academics and researchers, enticing numerous theoretical, descriptive, sociological and experimental studies. the reason behind this is the exponential increase in today’s active and passive consumption of audiovisual products, when compared to previous decades (pérez-gonzález, 2014). the global world media markets that produce audiovisual content and entertainment are absolutely aware of this and consequently, are becoming ever more aware of the role of translation, also referred to by the industry as localization, internationalization or even glocalization, that is, the process of adapting an audiovisual production to the norms, likes and dislikes of different target cultures. digital technology has played a crucial role not only in the process of production and distribution of audiovisual content, but as far as our interest goes, in the process of localization and consumption of audiovisual products. it has been the primary cause for the current blooming of new forms of elaboration and consumption of audiovisual products, for the optimized use of new devices (laptops, tablets, smartphones) and also for new forms of communication (social networks, crowdsourcing). consequently, technological developments have brought about new audiovisual transfer modes, or new combinations of the latter. this has had an obvious impact on audiovisual translation as a field, both in professional circles as well as in scholarly research. to date, this field of research has grown exponentially, parallel to the production, consumption, interaction with and general interest in audiovisual products. scholarly research was initially driven by the urge to identify the distinctive traits of audiovisual translation. it identified features of the source text (st) that could potentially constitute translation issues, a good part of which (mainly audiovisual translation constraints) differed from the more conventional issues belonging to literary translation, legal translation, and other types of written journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 42 translation. this first stage also included a preliminary analysis and description of the translation process in the market, the roles of the agents involved, and the translator’s task. this first (and necessary stage) came to an end in the turn of the century when descriptive translation studies (dts) picked up the baton of academic research, and soon after, scholars focused their attention on the target text (tt), the translated text, applying functionalist theories and/or descriptive methodologies. this constituted the first turn of this discipline. cultural approaches were easily drawn from dts. most of them, however, tend to be particular studies focused on the major issues of the cultural turn: the concepts of ideology, otherness, postcolonialism, power, resistance, patronage and censorship, bringing to the fore issues of identity, gender stereotypes, race, etc. contrary to usual dts analysis in avt, cultural studies have gone beyond the explanations for the translation patterns found in descriptive research. cultural approaches put into question the recurrent use of some allegedly innocent strategies and reveal their intentional and deliberate choices. although some of this cultural research is based on the foundations of prior descriptive studies, the change of focus constitutes another major turn in our discipline. scholarly research subsequently shifted interest from the translated text to the agents involved in the translation of the audiovisual text, but this time, adopting a social approach, hence taking a step further from the nineties. thanks to this social and sociological turn (wolf & fukari, 2007), grounded mainly in bourdieu’s sociological paradigm, audiovisual translation research started to investigate the role of the translator and the powers mediating in the selection, translation and adaptation of an audiovisual text, as well as the new active role of audiences, which are now producing new types of translations, from heterofunctional gag translations to activist translations, for example, in the case of honest subtitling. this has constituted the third turn in avt research. last, a cognitive and empirical turn is also gaining ground in academia. since the first and pioneering reception studies in audiovisual translation, mainly carried out in italy, poland and spain at the turn of the century, the use of technology has constituted a step forward in experimental research methods, and now the interest is geared not only towards the translator’s mental processes, as it was in the nineties with the first experimental research in think aloud protocols, but also, and mainly, on the audience’s response to audiovisual translation. this is done with the aid of eyetrackers and biometric sensors. these turns have been accompanied throughout by a transversal turn, the influence of technology, though this cannot be considered as a turn as such because it is not a paradigm or an epistemological way of understanding translation. technology is a tool to help both translators and researchers, to help the market, and to better understand localization processes. yet, technology is also necessarily changing the way scholars view audiovisual translation, and thus, the way research is carried out. automatic translation, for instance, is moulding the way subtitling has been done an overview of audiovisual translation: four methodological turns in a mature discipline 43 so far. translation in the cloud, too, is changing translators’ habits and enables connection with other translators, software and practices. social networks have also constituted a step forward in the way translators work and the extent to which they can now rapidly inquire about any doubt, to mention one advantage. technological advances in the digitalization of images may perhaps bring about a solution for the traditional lip-sync and isochrony issues in dubbing (chaume, 2019). this article presents a due brief overview of these turns and identifies some of the major steps already undertaken in each turn, as well as possible research avenues that these turns are currently opening. 2. the origins: specific characteristics of avt the first isolated contributions by simon laks (1957) and the special issue of babel (1960) constitute the rather anecdotal conception of avt as a field of study. however, the first work to be considered as proper research was fodor’s (1976) contribution to the field of dubbing, followed by some previously mentioned seminal articles in the seventies (e.g., vöge, 1977) and eighties. all this research created the foundations for observing this professional and mostly hidden activity from a scientific standpoint (chaume, forthcoming). however, it was not until the nineties that all efforts centred on the process of audiovisual translation, which still required illustration and description, and so did the role of agents, markets, distributors, dubbing and subtitling companies, translators, dialogue writers, voice talents, dubbing directors, sound engineers, quality control specialists and so on. research in that decade was flooded by such necessary contributions focusing on the peculiarities and specificities of audiovisual translation in comparison with conventional written modes of translation. in a way, this decade witnessed the inception of avt theory. nevertheless, the approach generally adopted in such studies could, in hindsight, be criticized as failing to comply with established research methodologies. despite this, these first descriptions, mostly based on personal experience, have helped new researchers develop avt theory. for instance, sociological and ideological studies in avt are now based on researchers being able to access knowledge of the translation process of their objects of study. before conceiving a valid methodological framework of research able to explain the various dubbing and subtitling norms, it was necessary to take the industrial process into account: what took place and how, when, where and by whom. avt scholars from all over the world are greatly indebted to a seminal article authored by titford (1982), and further developed by mayoral, kelly & gallardo, who first published their article in spanish in 1986, and later in english, in 1988. these authors expanded on titford’s concept of constrained translation and coined the term subordinate translation to refer to modalities such as the translation of comics, songs, advertising, and any type of avt. despite being applied primarily to subtitling, mayoral et al. (1986) succeeded in extending this concept to all avt types and made journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 44 the first attempt to classify avt according to the number of constraints each mode presented. the terms constrained translation and subordinate translation soon gained wide consensus in academic research and have been used and expanded by many other authors since. nowadays, it is impossible, and hardly recommendable, to carry out any research in avt without taking into account all the constraints taking place in the transfer process. constraints are now understood as control variables in any descriptive or experimental piece of research in this field. parallel to the description of the transfer process, scholars expressed their interest in linguistic issues. apart from preliminary research on the invasion of the english language in the subtitled and dubbed versions produced in other countries, most of which was carried out in a prescriptive and even apocalyptic fashion, there have been two other major linguistic issues that have attracted scholarly attention: the language of dubbing, or dubbese, and multilingualism in all avt modes. initially, research on calques was based solely on the comparison between st and tt, but luckily the focus has shifted, and studies on dubbese and multilingualism now compare the tt to the st, the tt to other tts, and the tt to other domestic audiovisual products in a polysystemic fashion, and mainly by inquiring about the norms and habits that are responsible for the final linguistic outcome of the translation. however, comparative studies went way beyond the study of microtextual samples, and, in line with the turns and interests of linguistics of the time, they soon began to focus on textual and discursive issues, by comparing and contrasting registers, dialects, pragmatic discourses and semiotic entities (for example: hatim & mason, 1997; mason, 1989). in a way, this decade witnessed the inception of avt theory. 3. descriptive translation studies the new century witnessed a step forward in avt research. the industrial process and the description of the market and its agents had been largely dealt with in the nineties, mostly as far as dubbing and subtitling were concerned. the field needed to look ahead, because industrial processes did not change fast enough to justify further description. the influence of dts, coming especially from translation theory and from literary translation soon paved its way into avt investigation. although dts had been long established in this discipline, avt needed time to first describe what it consisted of and how it was done (1990s), before entering the stage in which it could be studied in a rigorous and scientific manner (late 1990s and 2000s). researchers soon realized that this field constituted fertile ground for the application of dts methodology with the objective of mapping translation norms (or routines, trends, for other authors), strategies (techniques for others), and even translation methods, mainly foreignization and domestication. academics started to compile coherent catalogues of dubbed and subtitled audiovisual texts in their own target languages, and they sought to describe – from an intentionally detached perspective – an overview of audiovisual translation: four methodological turns in a mature discipline 45 the macrotextual and microtextual operations that the original text underwent in order to match the target language and culture conventions. this research constituted an important step forward in avt, and described what it was like in a certain space and time, thus contributing towards the general comprehension of this area. the introduction of dts in avt research ran parallel to the integration of the cultural turn in this same field (see below). the cultural turn in avt has mostly generated case-studies focused on one film or on tv series in which the fingerprints of ideology captured researchers’ attention, and in which the ideological reasons behind translation solutions are the focal point of interest. however, dts is not incompatible with cultural orientation. dts is a methodology, whereas the cultural turn is a theory. that is why combined studies are also feasible, for example, using dts methodology to draw ideological conclusions. mentioning all the authors who have carried out research on ideology using dts methodology would be an impossible feat. for this reason, two sample examples to illustrate this line of research should suffice: gutiérrez lanza’s work on censorship under franco’s dictatorship in spain (2011 and 2012, among many others), and ranzato (2015) on culture-specific references. descriptive translation studies have helped researchers understand how avt is shaped. nevertheless, we still lack studies on large audiovisual and multimodal corpora, such as the ones based on the pavia corpus (freddi & pavesi, 2009; pavesi, 2014) and the forlì corpus (valentini, 2006). the language of dubbing, also known as dubbese (doppiaggese, synchronien, doblatgés, in other languages), is one of the most successful research fields which fall under the corpus umbrella. spanish scholars alone just to give an example, díaz cintas (2003 and 2004b, based on lambert and van gorp 1985), chaume (2004, 2014), gutiérrez lanza (2005, 2008), barambones (2012), and martí ferriol (2010, 2013) have proposed several frameworks of analysis that can result in helpful tools for new researchers starting any descriptive study. such models of analysis take into account the concept of constraints or restrictions (so typical of audiovisual texts), as well as the specificities of an avt commission, the way translated audiovisual texts are commercialized and presented to the public, the way translated audiovisual texts are received, and the different codes of meaning weaved into the audiovisual text and their implications in the translation process. these models also deal with the main notions of translation theory, such as strategies, norms, constraints and methods. any translation issue (songs, film titles, humour, cultural references, intertextuality, language variation, multilingualism, etc.) can be studied using these frameworks. quantitative and qualitative data are recommended for a descriptive study (i.e. microtextual contextualized samples over and above questionnaires and interviews inquiring about the translation process; in other words, the observation of behaviour in addition to the collection of verbal statements by the actors of the process). the compilation of a catalogue is also recommendable – though case studies can also be carried out without a catalogue – also, the outline of tentative norms (or translation trends or tendencies, martínez sierra, 2008) is the main goal of any descriptive study: seminal research, journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 46 such as goris (1993), who was the first scholar to formulate norms on a textual level in avt, and karamitroglou (2000), who did the same at a macrotextual level have been replicated and e tended during these last three decades. in sum, dts in avt have a double and complementary general objective: searching for norms (schäffner, 1998) or recurrent patterns in translation solutions, and, to go even beyond, the reasons behind those patterns. generally speaking, in order to do this, researchers: • decide which topic they are going to investigate, together with the audiovisual genre or genres they are going to tackle (usually the topic of research is also related or more specific to the genre selected). • compile a catalogue, or corpus, of audiovisual texts ensuring coherency in selection (for example, thrillers in a certain decade or significant period of time, e.g. hollywood musicals in the post-classical era, nordic noir in the 21st century, etc.). • filter the catalogue and obtain a smaller corpus, more manageable for their interests and analysis. filters may vary according to the researcher’s objectives. for example, generally, researchers do not stick solely to one dubbing company or one subtitler (unless they intentionally want to study the translational behaviour of a specific translator or dubbing company, for example). filters also include selecting films according to certain temporal slots or periods (longer in diachronic studies, shorter in synchronic studies), according to different producers and distributors, according to a particular subgenre, etcetera. • interview the agents of the translation process by means of questionnaires, from which they retrieve qualitative data (collections of verbal statements by actors), that will be triangulated with the quantitative data derived from the microtextual analysis. • detect replacing and replaced segments in both target text and original text, usually by comparing them (microtextual analysis), though in this case it is advisable to start with the target text analysis and then proceed with the original text to search for the replaced segments, in a bottom-up fashion (observation of behaviour). • count recurrent strategies and calculate percentages of the strategies found in the target text. these percentages are usually displayed in tables or figures and are subsequently contrasted with the qualitative data retrieved in the questionnaires, in order to check the validity of both types of data. data can be retrieved manually or otherwise with the use of specific software. • formulate norms according to the types of strategies found, for example, if levelling predominates in the analysis, the researcher can formulate the norm of standardization, or if taboo words have been generally avoided in the translation, the researcher can formulate the norm of euphemization, etcetera. • formulate the method of translation according to the norms (trends in smaller corpora, for instance, one single film) found in the analysis, that is, the researchers establish whether the norms found altogether follow a foreignizing trend or a domesticating trend. an overview of audiovisual translation: four methodological turns in a mature discipline 47 corpora may vary substantially. if the researcher wants to really investigate norms, a vast digitalized electronic catalogue would be required in order to find recurrent patterns of behaviour in the translations. only quantitative analysis of substantial catalogues may prove to be valid in formulating norms. catalogues with textual samples compiled in databases or excel files are the middle ground between electronic corpora and a case study (see below), and a good way out for the researcher who cannot use electronic corpora but still wants to find representative patterns of behaviour. the approach adopted to deal with the data obtained can also vary: the researcher may want to look at the data from a pragmatic viewpoint (looking for contextual assumptions, presuppositions, implicatures, etc.), a semiotic and cinematographic viewpoint (dealing with the interaction of semiotic codes in the target and original texts and how these codes impinge on translation solutions), an ideological viewpoint (as mentioned above), and last but not least, a polysystemic approach, comparing the target translated audiovisual product to domestic audiovisual products belonging to the same genre in the target culture (baños, 2014 ). in sum, dts research looks for objectivity and representation, unless this methodology is applied to a case study, where a phenomenon is then studied in detail. 4. sociological studies the advent of digitalization has given rise to a new digital culture. consumers’ participation as cocreators in audiovisual production processes has been critically boosted in the past ten years. a new, more interactive and dynamic use of the web also invites formerly passive audiences to participate in the creation and translation of audiovisual content, in the development of new ideas and in the complex interplay of collective creativity. the fact that audiences now have become agents of production shifts the debate towards the concepts of empowerment and intervention. passive consumers of avt have become active consumers or prosumers, since this new democratic use of technology has allowed them to take on some of the power and responsibility that traditionally was solely in the hands of the producers. another critical area of research is that of activism (pérez-gonzález, 2016), that is, engagement, civic empowerment and dissent expressed in translated audiovisual content, mainly by means of amateur subtitling, and recently by means of gag dubbing, produced by ordinary citizens on digital media platforms on the web. this development brings on the social turn in avt. new values and norms start with the selection of materials to be translated. in the past, distributors decided what to broadcast, what to sell and what not to sell or distribute to tv stations. now, fansubbers and fandubbers decide what to subtitle and what to dub, just by accessing the web and finding newly released products, or products that are deemed worthy or that perhaps have some journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 48 kind of status in their community. therefore, the habitus can be changed, as indeed happens. audiences are weary of consuming audiovisual products in a traditional, linear and scheduled way. orrego-carmona (2015) studies non-professional subtitling use in spain as a successful way to overcome linguistic barriers, and gives an overall picture of users’ engagement with audiovisual content describing their attitude towards official subtitling as against non-professional subtitling. digitalization and empowerment merge in a new type of subtitling, the so-called creative subtitling (both inter and intralingual), which attributes new functions to subtitles over and above the simply communicative one, which characterizes interlingual subtitling. subtitles as footnotes, captions placed anywhere on the screen, subtitles as creative titles, emerging from coffee machines or chimneys, captions placed next to the onscreen characters’ mouths (as is the case in ncis, bellisario & mcgill, 2003-), are new forms of creative subtitles, which aesthetically communicate meaning beyond that of their semantic value – as was the case with monty python and the holy grail’s (forstater, white, gilliam, & jones, 1975) metalinguistic funsubs back in the seventies, an invented pidgin which included words containing swedish and dano-norwegian characters. the increasing use of free-commentaries has flooded the web, both in the form of funsubs and fundubs (not to be confused with fansubs and fandubs), that is, humoristic subtitles and dubbings made for fun, thus intentionally unfaithful to the original text. free-commentaries in the realm of dubbing can encompass gag dubbings, fake dubbings and also newer experiments, such as the so-called literal dub versions. a literal dub version is a literal music video that replaces the original lyrics of a song with newly invented lyrics that ironically describe the visuals in the video – as is the case in the popular literal music clips you’re beautiful, by james blunt (blunt, skarbek & ghost, 2004), total eclipse of the heart, by bonnie tyler (steinman, 1983) – among many others. funsubbers intentionally replace the lyrics with new ones that literally represent what is being seen on screen; this results in very entertained viewers who can’t help laughing at the final outcome, especially when they are familiar with the original text. these literal video versions are subtitled and dubbed, resulting in a new, and apparently weird, product consumed by target audiences all over the world. the opening song of my little pony: friendship is magic (faust, 2010-2015) has been dubbed into spanish, then funsubbed and subsequently also fundubbed into this same language. the funsubbed and fundubbed versions are literal video versions of this clip, displaying a nonconformist irreverent tone intentionally inappropriate for a child audience. as far as subtitles are concerned, it is worth mentioning the so-called mondegreens and soramimis. a mondegreen is a misunderstood word or phrase resulting from a mishearing of something sung or said, while soramimi is a japanese term that refers to the same phenomenon, but that occurs when a word from a foreign language is homophonically translated into one's own language (the italian canzoni travisate, for example). this is the case of the bollywood song dilbar, by sushmita sen (anjaan, saifi, & rathod, 1999), which now globally goes by the name of the nipple song (almost 15 million views on youtube), precisely because the chorus line in hindi resembles the english word nipple. in the gag subtitling or funsub found on the web, the fake translation of this song tries to integrate the word nipple coherently, and the lyrics have been funsubbed accordingly, with plenty of an overview of audiovisual translation: four methodological turns in a mature discipline 49 naïve sexual references in line with the main mishearing. this intended misinterpretation is the result of a near-homophony, such as the one that gave rise to this term: it seems that american writer, sylvia wright, coined the term when, as a young girl, she misheard the lyrics of a scottish ballad: “…and laid him on the green…” was mistaken for “… and lady mondegreen…” (konnikova, 2014). apart from the humoristic use of subtitles, an activist use, too, emerges through fake subtitles or honest subtitles. fake subtitles often conceal a political agenda, by distorting real news coverage and engaging with specific ideological spaces developed by recent crises. they usually encompass parodies, such as the well-known hitler-related downfall (eichinger & hirschbiegel, 2004) parodies. such parodies are widely popular on the web and in many countries, though they can be subjected to censorship. for example, muslim communities complain that several videos on the platform boreme are constantly distorted with false subtitles in order to promote an anti-islam bias based on hostile and false propaganda, thus contributing towards ignorance and conflict. in the following example, nigel farage gesticulates in the european parliament in a speech that was gushed over by the right-wing press. the subtitles, however, make fun of him and his political agenda (example 1). example 1. nigel farage – fake subtitles (original spelling and layout) (koshy, 2017). on the other hand, honest subtitles are subtitles that denounce the usually hidden agenda of politicians, by expressing the underlying contents in an explicit manner, rather than reproducing what they actually say. therefore, instead of a verbatim reproduction of a politician’s speech, the new clip with honest subtitles depicts what politicians really think, instead of what they say. for example, in the well-known footage in which theresa may succeeds david cameron as prime minister of the united kingdom the honest subtitles, which supposedly represent what she really thinks are quite different from the original speech (examples 2, 3 and 4). honest subtitles therefore bring to the surface all that some politicians and prominent people cannot openly say, but allegedly think to themselves. example 2. teresa may – honest subtitles (harvey, 2016). journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 50 example 3. teresa may – honest subtitles (harvey, 2016). example 4 teresa may – honest subtitles (harvey, 2016). creative subtitles have their roots in fansubs (díaz-cintas and muñoz, 2006; ferrer simó, 2005; orrego-carmona, 2015), a still increasingly fashionable phenomenon. all this peripheral, but also highly interesting, new usage of creative subtitles in fansubbings, fake subtitles, honest subtitles, gag subtitling, etcetera, is inducing the industry to adopt new creative and active behaviours by incorporating them into their new modern products. they can also be helpful with subtitling conventional issues, such as the translation of multilingual movies including languages other than the main language of the film. these other languages can be subtitled using creative subtitles, for example. the same goes for the concept of accessible filmmaking (romero-fresco, 2012), where creative subtitles can be part of the production process, thus avoiding the need of inserting postproduction subtitles. the majority of access services that technological developments have spawned, including access services to overcome sensorial and linguistic barriers, have always been added later, during the film or audiovisual post-production process. only once the production is finished and the final cut is edited, and only at a late stage, can the product be dubbed, subtitled, subtitled for the deaf and hard-of-hearing, respoken, audio described, voiced-over, surtitled, etcetera. romero-fresco (2012) was the one to coin the concept of accessible filmmaking, referring to a way of making audiovisual products that incorporates linguistic and sensorial access as an integral part of the production, by means of close collaboration between translators and film directors. creative subtitles can be part of the filmmaking process, by including experts in translation, localization and accessibility in the production team, thus, with foresight, avoiding typical localization hurdles, such as the positioning of subtitles against coloured backgrounds or certain translation issues, reading speed issues, lip synchrony in close-ups, and so on. creative subtitles, therefore, have the potential to foresee and sort out all these typical problems by integrating avt during the filmmaking process. the same goes for accessibility in museums. finally, voluntary subtitling has received recognition from both professionals and viewers, especially when they are produced with the intent of reaching people in countries or regions afflicted by war, or otherwise, using them to divulge scientific findings, once again with the intent of empowering people who otherwise would have fewer resources to enjoy a better life. they are commissioned by some non-profit associations, also known as crowd sourcing (díaz-cintas, 2013), such as ted, universal subtitles and khan academy. an overview of audiovisual translation: four methodological turns in a mature discipline 51 in sum, sociological studies in avt usually have the main objective of analysing the figure and role of the translator, their work conditions, their habitus, the so-called symbolic capital – the value of which may be restricted or aggrandized by the historical context in which it is accumulated – the field or setting in which agents and their social positions are located, the market and its fluxes, the transmission of existing cultural values and norms from one generation to another, the empowerment of audiences, the empowerment of translators, the emergence of new consumption habits, and so on and so forth. the creation of new consumption habits in avt can be exemplified by the rate with which new audiences are getting used to voiced-over reality shows, to mention one example. audiences are also revealing a different tolerance threshold in terms of, for example, the accuracy of lip synchrony in dubbing or reasonable reading speed in subtitling, to mention a few examples. this general objective is usually attained when researchers do the following: • design questionnaires, that is, tools for collecting data based on having a given subject respond to a set of oral or written questions, and/or conduct surveys, which are larger processes of gathering data that may involve a wide variety of data collection methods, including questionnaires. nowadays, online questionnaires and surveys enable information to be gathered from a large audience. the more data the researcher gathers, the clearer the picture becomes. all this information gives stakeholders the ability to create new strategies and follow audience trends. analysing data gathered via these tools can be used to generate predictions and even replace traditional habits with more modern ones. • conduct personal interviews and focus groups. a focus group is a small-group discussion – usually 10 or fewer individuals – guided by the researcher. the group may consist of volunteers gathered to discuss a particular product or idea. this method is used to discover opinions, ideas and reactions on a designated topic, and to guide future action. these groups are presented with a series of questions or statements on which they can freely share their opinions. they may also be asked to try a new product, such as a new kind of subtitling or dubbing or audio description method, for example, or they may simply be invited to react to a specific dubbed, subtitled or audio described audiovisual clip they have just viewed. all these responses are studied in order to measure the reaction of the larger market population. • use both qualitative and quantitative data. qualitative research in avt is used to obtain a deeper understanding of the underlying reasons, opinions, and motivations of all the agents involved in the process of translation, be it distributors, translators, or even the audience. it provides insights into any given issue discussed, and entices the development of ideas or hypotheses for potential quantitative research. qualitative research is also used to reveal norms in shared values and opinions, and is usually triangulated with quantitative data; in other words, the qualitative data obtained from interviews, surveys and focus groups is compared with the empirical data obtained in the microtextual analysis of the corpus chosen. qualitative data collection methods vary using unstructured or semi-structured journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 52 techniques. sample size is typically small, and respondents are selected to satisfy a given quota of the different roles in the avt process (producers, distributors, tv stations, localization companies, translators, dialogue writers, dubbing directors, dubbing actors, quality assurance managers, engineers, different audiences, etc.). quantitative research is typically employed to quantify recurrent patterns of behaviour in the translations by generating numerical data or data that can be processed into usable statistics. statistics is not mandatory in avt research, sometimes only percentages are needed to show a particular translation pattern. it is used both to quantify attitudes, opinions, behaviours, and replacing and replaced segments in the translation and in the original texts, with the aim of generalizing results from a larger sample population. quantitative research uses measurable data to formulate norms and uncover translation patterns at a macro and micro level. • use critical discourse analysis (cda) as a theoretical background to unveil how societal power relations are established and reinforced through language use. although cda is sometimes mistaken for a research methodology, it is a powerful theoretical framework that produces insights into the way discourse reproduces (or resists) social and political inequality, power abuse or domination. thus, translation can also be studied under the lens of cda, because it is through translation that a vast amount of information is made available, or censored. translation can either legitimize or battle current political interpretations of violent conflicts, gender inequalities, power relations, and so on. • investigate agency and structures. structures are the factors of influence, such as social class, religion, gender, ethnicity, age, customs, etcetera – that determine or restrict the agents and their decisions: what to translate, how to translate, what to revise, how to revise, how the information is presented in the translation or described in an ad, for example, which audiovisual products are selected for translation, to which textual and extratextual strategies has the translator resorted, how the different voices in the clip and the translation are identified, which voices are heard and which ones are silenced, and so on and so forth. agency, on the other hand, is the ability of translators, and currently, of the audience, to act independently and make their own free choices. • consequently, outline strategies that represent resistance and activism, moving from the concept of translation as a mere linguistic transposition, to translation as a force and tool “of power, resistance, rebellion, and even revolution” (tymoczko, 2010). this approach is particularly welcome in research that investigates gender issues, religious issues, censorship and sex. • base their findings on the theoretical background of bourdieu, later on applied to translation by cronin (2006), bielsa (2010), villanueva, hermoza & bravo (2017) and etcetera. • this social turn in audiovisual translation can be summarised as follows: new audiences aware of the world surrounding them, consequently take action as consumers, prosumers and translators. the producers and distributors of audiovisual contents will have to take into account the social, co-participating and unrestricted nature of this new scenario whereby contents have to be produced together with the audience and no longer for the audience. an overview of audiovisual translation: four methodological turns in a mature discipline 53 5. cognitive studies the 2010s has witnessed the unstoppable introduction of process research in avt, which is now here to stay (kruger, szarkowska & krejtz, 2015; orrego-carmona, 2015, just to mention a few). although some interesting preliminary studies on reception were first conducted in the 2000s, the introduction of technology has dramatically changed the way research is being done in avt, and has emulated the way in which research has been done in other translation (and linguistic and psychological) domains, where tools such as eye-trackers had already constituted a successful tool in exploring the human brain. eye-tracking systems have been used to identify current reading speeds in subtitling – both interlingual and intralingual – to compare different types of subtitles – both for sighted, deaf, and partially sighted audiences – to analyse minor details in films, to study the reception of amateur subtitles, to analyse viewers’ response to the new promising field of accessible filmmaking, to discover whether the audience is, indeed, constantly watching the onscreen characters’ lips in dubbing, to discover where sighted audiences look (with the intent of using that information to create audio description, instead of laying that responsibility in the hands of the subjective audio describer), to learn and teach audiovisual translation taking into account cognitive data, and so on and so forth. eye-trackers are often combined with biometric sensors, used to identify the translators’ and audience’s physical and behavioural traits, such as vein patterns, voice patterns, iris patterns, heart rate, sweat on the skin, and face detection or recognition. biometric sensors are transducers that change a biometric treat of a person into an electrical signal; this can then be processed and analysed. in the case of avt, only heart rate (rojo, ramos & valenzuela, 2014) and electroencephalograms (kruger, soto-sanfiel, doherty & ibrahim, 2016) have attracted the interest of researchers but we still lack studies about face recognition, iris patterns, and galvanic skin response. experimental studies using physical measures are still scarce, due to the difficulty in finding and selecting subjects, the complexity of analysing the data retrieved from sensors, and most of all, the cost of such sensors, and the highly specialized knowledge required to use them. experimental designs start by raising a research question that needs to be as simple and tangible as possible, clearly stating the variables at play. once the research question is established (e.g., “do spectators set their gaze on the lips of onscreen actors in dubbed films?”), objectives are set, variables are identified (dependent, independent and intervening variables), hypotheses – if need be – are formulated, and participants are selected according to the number of subjects needed, age, gender, background, and so on. sometimes, an additional control group is needed, other times one group suffices for the experiment (in so-called pre-experimental research). informed consent and nihil obstat declarations from the ethics offices of the academic institutions concerned are also needed to proceed with such experiments. the task and necessary materials, too, need to be prepared for the experiment. subjects have to carry out a particular task for researchers to check their response to something. the researchers also have to decide what audiovisual genre or genres they are going to use, how many audiovisual products – and their duration – will be watched by their subjects, how to edit the clips (if need be), which task the subjects journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 54 will carry out (for example, filling in a questionnaire when the clip is over), which information is needed from the participants, which tests are needed to measure all variables at play, how to pilot the experiment, etcetera. therefore, the main objective of cognitive studies is to analyse what happens in the translator’s or audience’s brains, to get inside their black box in order to unveil the reasons behind decisions, feelings, and way of facing and tackling a translation or consuming a certain translated audiovisual text, bringing feelings and body response to the surface. in translation studies, think aloud protocols (taps) were used in the nineties, to gain insight into what translators were thinking while translating particular segments from selected texts. choice network analysis (cna) has been used more recently to compare the translations of the same source text carried by several translators in order to empirically obtain possible options, that is, a set of potential solutions available when translating each translation issue. studies on reception were the precursors of this interest in the human brain faced with a translation task. the first reception studies, carried out in italy, poland and spain, and now carried out worldwide (for example, more recently in japan, see o’hagan and sasamoto, 2016; or in iran, see ameri, 2018), inquired about the response of a selected audience before a dubbed or subtitled film – and more recently before a film that has been audio described or subtitled for the deaf – and sometimes by comparing this to the response obtained from native speakers watching the same films or clips without translation. action-research has also been a precursor of experimental research in avt (see neves, 2005), where a method is designed, put into practice in an experiment, and the same experiment used to better the design of the method, rearranged as many times as required. in sum, cognitive studies: • analyse cognitive processes, both in the translator’s brain and, especially nowadays, in the audience’s brains, and indulge in translation process research. • deal with both quantitative and qualitative data. • obtain the data from new technological devices (namely, in avt, the eye-tracker, and secondarily, other biometric sensors) and/or from questionnaires and surveys. they also use specific software, such as translog – developed to study and acquire objective, digital data of human translation writing processes – or e-prime to study behavioural research, by providing millisecond precision timing to ensure the accuracy in the data retrieved; • can assess and evaluate translation competence. • can assess and evaluate the audience’s likes and dislikes. • can study in detail minor aspects of translation issues (lip-syncing in close-ups in dubbing, reading speed in interlingual or intralingual subtitling, the use and impact of emoticons in sdh, recognition of icons in audio description, playability and game experience an overview of audiovisual translation: four methodological turns in a mature discipline 55 in videogame localization, incorporation of accessibility indicators in the film production process, to name just a few). • use experiments as a simulation of real settings. • validate or refute hypotheses. • help stakeholders to know more about their audiences. 6. case studies with a cultural approach although saldanha and o’brien (2013) consider case studies as a distinct methodological paradigm, they are not opposed to cognitive studies, sociological studies or descriptive studies. case studies are opposed to corpus studies. in between electronic corpora and case studies, we can find studies researching a manageable catalogue of audiovisual texts, that is, a set of texts sharing some characteristics which can, at any given time, be filtered so as to obtain a small corpus that can be manually analysed by a single researcher: figure 1. different possibilities for the researcher to build a corpus. case studies are not a paradigm, nor any specific turn. they are a feasible way forward in research in a university context, where promotion depends on writing a phd thesis, book, or research project on a topic dealing with scientific methodology. in general, case studies: • analyse a phenomenon in meticulous detail; • allow flexibility; • enable quantification – usually combining quantitative data with qualitative data; • follow an inductive method; • can be developed further by following any theoretical background: sociological approaches, cognitive approaches, cultural approaches, hermeneutic approaches, and so on. case studies seem to be ideal in cultural studies. the latter tend to be particular studies focused on the big issues of the cultural turn: the concepts of ideology, otherness, post-colonialism, power, resistance, patronage, censorship, genetic analysis (richart marset, 2012, 2015; zanotti, 2018, journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 56 bringing to light the documented archive generated in each stage and the ideological moves behind each version), intentional use of multilingualism, identity, gender, and more recently gender stereotypes, among others, now receive scholarly attention, after being widely ignored throughout the research phase in the translation process (1990s) and in descriptive studies, which focused mainly on the translation product (2000s). researchers preferred to establish an uncompromised debate on translation norms, but rarely went beyond the reason for those norms, and scarcely questioned the actual reasons behind norms and translation techniques. sanitized descriptive approaches are now substituted by burning discussions and fiery appeals for or against certain translation solutions that are no longer considered to be innocent strategies, but rather as intentional and deliberate choices, many times indicating a hidden agenda stashed throughout the text intended to indoctrinate audiences, to perpetuate – or inoculate – some values, and to shape their will. in sum, case studies aim to: • analyse a particular translation, translator or author; • are usually based on the cultural turn, but can also be based on other paradigms; • try to clarify the ideology behind the translation solutions found in the text; • deal with concepts and aspects such as ideology, patronage, gender and the ones mentioned above; • usually compare the source text to the target text (comparatist studies); • intend to find the strategies used to overcome the conventional translation issues: humour, multilingualism, language registers, film titles, songs, etc.; • find translation techniques or strategies, which, when conveniently grouped, can explain translation norms, and subsequently, the translation method used throughout the text (if any); • take into account audiovisual translation constraints, most of the times; • can deal with microtextual translation issues, but also with preliminary and matricial norms (issues of format, conventions and typographical usages, paratextual elements, etc.). 7. conclusions in the present century, avt research has moved further ahead. the nineties were devoted to explaining the avt process, its distinctive characteristics (mainly, constraints), and the role of the agents involved in the process. the new century witnessed the first turn in avt research, the descriptive turn, and the first decade of the century was necessarily flooded with descriptive studies (dts), revealing which translation norms regulate the behaviour of avt in different countries and periods. such systematic and scientific methodology certainly enabled avt to evolve. once the discipline was mature, the 2010s welcomed the cultural turn, and more recently, the social turn, and this has dramatically changed the perspective of audiovisual translation. cultural studies delve into ideological issues while sociological studies examine the traditional roles of distributors, exhibitors, dubbing and subtitling companies, translators, dialogue writers an overview of audiovisual translation: four methodological turns in a mature discipline 57 and more important, the enhanced role of various audiences, who are now more active and interconnected than ever before; they now decide what to consume, when to consume it, how to consume it and where to consume it. the role of technology has played an essential part in the evolution of avt, both in professional and academic settings. artificial intelligence, machine translation, translating in the cloud, collaborative dubbing carried out in different countries and companies and then edited in one single company, dubbing and subtitling apps, and so on, have all changed the way to practise avt, to distribute it, and to consume it. technology can also change dubbing and subtitling norms, subtitling for the deaf and hard-of-hearing and audio description norms, videogame localization norms, since it now allows moulding the images to fit the translation into the onscreen characters’ mouths (chaume, 2018), dubbing the same film in multiple studios based in different countries, widening subtitles, including captions and props in other screen positions, including emoticons in subtitles, drawing creative subtitles, making many avt modes in the same product available, etcetera. technology is also responsible for the flourishing of research tools in academic settings, such as eyetrackers, biometric sensors and specific software to record the translators’ and spectators’ reactions, as well as to practise avt in the cloud, using dedicated software to subtitle, to audio describe, to dub, etc. this has given rise to a cognitive turn that is currently gaining ground in this field. the use of new apps easily enables domestic subtitling and dubbing. in dubbing alone, for example, new apps enable users to choose an audio recording from movies, shows, music or the web, and record a video of themselves dubbing over that recording, thus empowering themselves and creating a new clip that can also be uploaded to the internet, and subsequently viewed (and translated) by thousands of other spectators. other apps are used to subtitle and to describe. they are also used to create fundubbings, funsubs and funads, thus breaking the avt routines and norms (inducing confusion among stakeholders, now plunged into a sense of bewilderment), creating a collective identity and, in sum, creating what is called a reverse agenda-setting and agendamelding (ragas and roberts, 2009). avt has experienced a vast process of redefinition, which has run parallel to the four turns mentioned and to the irruption of technology. avt has rapidly extended its borders to include other localization processes, such as video game localization, transcreation, transmedia projects, the adaptation of television franchises and transnational remakes, among other new interesting and emerging forms of localization, such as non-professional subtitling and dubbing. all these new market processes are shaping a different audiovisual translation model, when compared to the one we were accustomed to at the turn of the century. research on tv formats and how an adapted franchise differs from its original counterpart, research on transcreations, where several semiotic layers of the original product also can be localized and manipulated, research on transnational remakes, journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 58 which reveal a multimodal process of translation, research on accessibility in museums, etcetera, have changed the way we have been understanding avt so far. avt has not yet reached its horizon. historical studies, theoretical concepts and notions applied to avt, philosophical studies, hermeneutic studies, postcolonial studies, narrative theory, among others, have not yet found their own niche in avt. a comprehensive history of avt, for instance, is still needed, just to mention one example. apart from the urgent need for such research, attention needs to be paid on the field of redubbing and resubtitling (chaume, 2007) and the reasons behind their production. avt didactics is another promising field, especially considering the possibilities introduced by new online technologies. other so-called turns, like the abusive turn (nornes, 1999) and the demotic turn (pérez-gonzález, 2014), have not been mentioned in this article because they easily fit into broader paradigms such as the cultural and the sociological turn, respectively. audiovisual translation does not yet demand a new theory of translation, though it is definitely pushing some translatological theoretical concepts against the ropes. biographical note frederic chaume, phd is a professor of audiovisual translation at universitat jaume i (spain), where he teaches audiovisual translation theory and dubbing; and honorary professor at university college london (uk), universidad ricardo palma (perú) and universidad peruana de ciencias aplicadas (perú). he is author of the books doblatge i subtitulació per a la tv (eumo, 2003), cine y traducción (cátedra, 2004), audiovisual translation: dubbing (routledge, 2013), and coauthor of teories contemporànies de la traducció (bromera, 2010) and la traducción para el doblaje: mapa de convenciones (uji, 2016). he has also coedited two books (la traducción en los medios audiovisuales; la traducción audiovisual: investigación, enseñanza y profesión) and special journal issues (perspectives, prosopopeya) and is the director of the trama book series (publicacions de la universitat jaume i), the first collection of monographs on audiovisual translation. he has given several keynote lectures on audiovisual translation and translation for dubbing in international translation studies conferences and many 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(2018). investigating the genesis of translated films: a view from the stanley kubrick archive. perspectives: studies in translation theory and practice, 26, 1-17. 1. the coming of age of a discipline: four methodological paradigms 2. the origins: specific characteristics of avt 3. descriptive translation studies 4. sociological studies 5. cognitive studies 6. case studies with a cultural approach biographical note 205 the nature of accessibility studies gian maria greco transmedia catalonia, universitat autònoma de barcelona galician observatory for media accessibility, universidade de vigo _________________________________________________________ abstract accessibility has come to play a pivotal role on the world’s stage, gradually pervading different aspects of our lives as well as a vast range of fields, giving rise to a plethora of fruitful new ideas, methods and models, and becoming an ever more key issue within a proces that is reshaping the very fabric of society. the ubiquitous effect of accessibility have led to the emergence of a new research field namely accessibility studies (as). this paper presents both the path tha has led towards the emergence of as as well as the distinctive feature of this new field. as is defined as the field concerned with th investigation of accessibility processes and phenomena, and the design implementation and evaluation of accessibility-based and accessibility oriented methodologies. the analysis is carried out mainly, though no exclusively, in reference to media accessibility (ma), as it is one of th most mature areas in which the process of the formation of as has bee taking place. it concludes by arguing that as is a timely field tha addresses the most pressing issues our society is facing nowadays an appealing to ma to embrace its identity as an area of as. s s , t s e , t e n t d key words: access, accessibility, accessibility revolution, accessibility studies, accessible filmmaking, affordances, audiovisual translation, design, human-computer interaction, human rights, information revolution, interdisciplinarity, isotype, media accessibility, maker-user gap, marie neurath, otto neurath, universal access, universal access in humancomputer interaction  gianmaria.greco@gmail.com; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8714-6349 citation: greco, g.m. (2018). the nature of accessibility studies. journal of audiovisual translation, 1(1), 205-232. editor(s): a. jankowska & p. romerofresco received: january 22, 2018 accepted: june 30, 2018 published: november 15, 2018 funding: this project has received funding from the european union’s horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the marie sklodowska-curie grant agreement no 752659 (project umaq). copyright: ©2018 greco. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license. this allows for unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8714-6349 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8714-6349 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 206 marco polo describes a bridge, stone by stone. “but which is the stone that supports the bridge?” kublai khan asks. “the bridge is not supported by one stone or another,” marco answers, “but by the line of the arch that they form.” kublai khan remains silent, reflecting. then he adds: “why do you speak to me of the stones? it is only the arch that matters to me.” polo answers: “without stones there is no arch.” (calvino, 1974, p. 82) 1. introduction accessibility has come to play a pivotal role on the world’s stage. over the course of a movement born almost a century ago, accessibility has been gradually pervading different aspects of our lives as well as a vast range of fields, giving rise to a plethora of fruitful new ideas, methods and models, and becoming an ever more key issue within a process that is reshaping the very fabric of society. the ubiquitous effects of accessibility have, of late, led some scholars to argue for the emergence of a new research field, namely accessibility studies (as) (e.g. greco, 2016b, 2017; jankowska, forthcoming; romero-fresco, 2017b, forthcoming). yet, a presentation of both the path behind the emergence of as and its distinctive features is still missing. in this paper, the first steps towards bridging this gap will be taken; the footpath of the analysis of a new field tread by many others before will be embarked upon. since one is as good as the company she keeps, in the following pages there will be a careful attempt to retrace the steps of those successful explorers, while being vigilant to the turns and obstacles presently laid out by accessibility. however, in doing so, i will dissatisfy calvino’s kublai khan and marco polo, for i will neither describe each single stone that makes the bridge of as nor detail the line of arch that supports it. the line of arch as well as each single stone deserve a space longer than the one i have at my disposal. therefore, my goal is to sketch a general overview of the field of as, which makes the character of this paper propaedeutic; that is, i aim to present an initial analysis of the distinctiveness of as and prepare it for future systematic studies. more specifically, in the following pages i will start out by introducing the theoretical and social revolution sparked by accessibility through its connections with two other revolutions: that produced by human rights and that by information and communication technologies (icts). i will then present three shifts common to the fields where accessibility has come to play a key role, namely, the shift from particularist accounts to a universalist account of accessibility, the shift from a maker-centred to a user-centred approach, and the shift from reactive to proactive approaches. next, i will analyse the role that internal and external forces – interdisciplinarity, the formation of a new research community, and the opposition from well-established fields – the nature of accessibility studies 207 have been playing in the formation of as. i will go on to introduce and briefly discuss a definition of as and trace its origins to the work of otto and marie neurath, to then conclude by outlining what lies ahead of as. though the emergence of as involves a vast number of research areas, whenever possible, examples from the areas of audiovisual translation (avt) and media accessibility (ma) will be used, given the scope of this journal and also, so as not to make the paper anecdotal. 2. the roots of the accessibility revolution the first cry of accessibility in contemporary thought and society can be traced back to the same intense debate as that on human dignity, equality, autonomy, and participation that took place in the first decades of the last century, between the end of wwi and that of wwii. during this time, the idea that human beings needed some material and immaterial goods to live a decent life became the centre of a widespread movement that, among its many effects, led to the adoption of the universal declaration of human rights (udhr). human rights rest upon two intertwined grounds: human dignity and access. the importance of the former is evident in the fact that it is the very first concept introduced in the preamble of the udhr. this concept of human dignity sets a minimum standard of quality of life an individual is entitled to for the sole reason of being a human being. in turn, such a standard is defined by a series of material and immaterial goods (i.e. the objects of human rights) thought to be essential for every human being in order to fulfil her humanity. without food, work, education, or cultural life, an individual is deprived of her dignity qua human being. yet, guaranteeing the mere existence of those goods does not suffice in assuring a dignified life. the fact that a state doesn’t deplete and pollute water resources is not sufficient grounds for it to claim that it is respecting the right to water. in order to claim so, it must also provide the necessary means for everyone to access those water resources (singh, 2016). setting up a public education system does not suffice for a state to claim that it is respecting the right to education, if said system does not also provide the means to access for every student. guaranteeing the conditions for the existence of fundamental material and immaterial goods is a necessary but not sufficient condition for human dignity; the possibility to have actual access to them also needs to be in place (francioni, 2007). in turn, the requirement of access entails that “everyone has an adequate quantity and quality of that object [of a human right], given their particular natural and social circumstances” (buitenweg, 2007, p. 269; see also scanlon, cassar, & nemes, 2004). controlling access to such goods has been one of the main and most effective instruments used by power structures: social control through the decision over who gets access to what, how, and when (foucault, 2007; morris, 2012). in the udhr only two rights are explicitly formulated in terms of access. since then, the use of the formula “the right to access to x” instead of “the right to x” has been steadily increasing in international texts and human rights treaties. the key role played by accessibility has been made further explicit by the united nations in a series of documents published over the years, most famously, the general comment on the right to adequate food (art. 11 of the udhr) adopted in 1999 by the un committee on economic, social and cultural rights. a general comment provides an authoritative interpretation of an article related to a human rights treaty as well as some precise journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 208 measures to be taken in order to comply with the obligations under that specific article; that is, it provides concrete meaning to the right expressed in the article. the general comment on the right to adequate food makes explicit that human rights impose four distinct kinds of obligations, three of which are based on accessibility, namely: “duties to respect human rights, duties to protect (secure access to the objects of) human rights, duties to provide (secure access to) the objects of human rights, and duties to facilitate human rights fulfilment” (pogge, 2011, p. 8)i, as well as an obligation to facilitate, which means that “the state must pro-actively engage in activities intended to strengthen people’s access to and utilization of” the objects of human rights (un committee on economic, social and cultural rights, 1999, p. 5)ii. consequently, access does not merely mean for an individual to have a good at her disposal or to have the possibility to reach it. having access also means being able to use, interact with, and enjoy that good. thanks to the cultural revolution produced by human rights, it has become clear that access is a necessary requirement for the respect of the human dignity of all. from this point of view, accessibility then becomes a proactive principle for human rights, which calls for an equally proactive attitude from the dutybearers to comply with that necessary requirement (greco, 2016b). as we will see later, this has made accessibility a key instrument in many international policies, not only those concerning exclusively human rights. in order for the accessibility revolution to fully blossom into what it is today, a second condition was needed; this time related to the nature of our world and the ways we access it. in short, it needed the information revolution. over the past few decades, icts have been changing the very nature of the world we live in. they are not “mere tools but rather social forces that are increasingly affecting our self-conception (who we are), our mutual interactions (how we socialise); our conception of reality (our metaphysics); and our interactions with reality (our agency)” (floridi, 2015, p. 2). they are modifying the very mechanisms through which we access the world, ourselves, and others. a 2004 preparatory document for the unesco world summit on the information society, entitled social transformation in an information society: rethinking access to you and the world, highlights how access is at the centre of one of the most disruptive effects of the information society. more precisely, it discusses the “reconfiguration of access enabled by these new digital choices”, which is challenging “fundamental social and political notions of freedom, control, personal responsibility, and shared community values” (dutton, 2004, p. 70). the document shows how, by reconfiguring access, icts are creating “more than just new connections. [they enable] the opening and closing of new forms of personal, social, and economic capacities, relationships, and power-plays” (dutton, 2004, p. 19). they are creating new social inequalities through the formation of multiple divides, beyond the traditional framing of a digital divide between those who have physical access to icts and those who have not. a similar warning was recently made by the internet society in a report that summarises the results of a worldwide survey “to better understand the forces of change” (internet society, 2017, p. 7) in the coming years. according to the report: “existing inequities between the “haves” and the “have nots” could be exacerbated as technology changes move faster and faster” (internet society, 2017, p. 79). in the information age, accessibility becomes the ground on which power negotiations and social struggles take place. consider the issue the nature of accessibility studies 209 of languages on the web, which “serves as a counter to the perceived concentration of issues surrounding the information society on icts and their impact” (unesco institute for statistics, 2005, p. 7), and more specifically the under-representation of minority languages and the effects on the related cultures and communities. more than mere access to icts, a crucial divide here is the one between “languages that are ‘information rich’ and languages that are ‘information poor’ with regard to online content and services” (cunliffe & herring, 2005, pp. 131-132). rooted in the human rights revolution and boosted by the information revolution, accessibility has been leading a movement of its own. the accessibility revolution has been pervading and radically changing the very foundation of our society, bringing access to the fore as a crucial issue in our age, making it “the age of access” (rifkin, 2001). the revolutionary effects of accessibility are visible in the most divergent aspects of society, meaning that they have also been producing a paradigm shift in various research fields, giving way to novel research methods, and to new models. clear evidence can be identified in a wide range of fields, from transportation studies to humancomputer interaction, from geography to engineering, from design to sustainability studies, from translation studies to cultural heritage, from education to tourism studies, just to name a few (e.g., buhalis & darcy, 2011; janelle & hodge, 2000; levine, grengs, & merlin, forthcoming 2019; litman, 2017; prodan, 2017; pullin, 2009; stephanidis & emiliani, 1999). an enumeration and analysis of every case would require a space much longer than the one at my disposal. briefly mentioning two cases, upon first glance quite distant from avt and ma, may help outline the revolutionary changes being produced by accessibility. in the area of digital sustainability, accessibility has been playing a key role for quite a long time. just consider that in both the first and the second edition of the unesco general guidelines to safeguard documentary heritage, the central term of preservation is defined in relation to accessibility, respectively as that which “encompasses all actions required to make documentary heritage accessible for as long as it is required” (foster, lyall, marshall, & russel, 1995, p. 76) and “the sum total of the steps necessary to ensure the permanent accessibility of documentary heritage” (edmondson, 2002, p. 61).over the last two decades, accessibility has become increasingly more relevant in the field. acknowledging that the ability to “provide access to digital information is linked to more than technical issues” (bradley, 2007, p. 156) and that it also includes other factors, such as economic and social ones, researchers have started to develop an entirely new approach to investigate issues of digital sustainability based on accessibility. in turn, this has produced foundational ramifications for the whole field of sustainability studies: since “access concerns can be considered a prerequisite for sustainability”, then accessibility is “a necessary step towards conceptualizing the sustainability of human societies and their development” (prodan, 2017, pp. 67-69). the transformative effects of accessibility are even more pronounced in the case of transportation studies. accessibility has played an essential role in the field since at least the late 1950s. over the years, it has grown and become one of its main concepts, to the point that, in the last decade, accessibility has radically altered the very core of transportation studies itself. under the acknowledgement that people rely on transportation “to travel to work but also to get to school, obtain medical care, attend religious services, shop for basic necessities” (sanchez & brenman, 2007, pp. 1-2), transportation becomes vital journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 210 for human flourishing and human dignity, and as such many scholars have been rethinking the very foundations of the field through the lens of accessibility. they have been highlighting how “[accessibility] changes how we think about and measure transport problems and the scope of solutions that are considered for addressing them. as with the copernican revolution, this shift changes what we consider the system’s centre: traffic-based planning places motor vehicles at the centre, while accessibility-based planning places people at the centre of the transport system” (litman, 2017, p. 4). thanks to accessibility, “transportation planning is experiencing a paradigm shift (a fundamental change in how problems are defined and solutions evaluated). this involves a change from traffic-based analysis (…) to mobility-oriented analysis (…) to accessibility-based analysis” (litman, 2017, p. 4). this foundational shift towards accessibility is having major consequences at a number of different levels. it affects not only scholars, who have launched interdisciplinary research programmes aimed at establishing accessibility, but also major international actors, such as the fédération internationale de l'automobile (fia). in his foreword of the advocacy paper on accessibility. a changing paradigm towards “mobility for all”, the president of the organisation, recognising that “the global commitment to sustainable development goals and their targets mandates us to enable transportation systems that are safe, environmentally sustainable and accessible for everyone”, states fia’s role “to support and advocate for inclusive policies that make accessibility a systematic concern in the planning and implementation of transport systems around the world” (fédération internationale de l'automobile, n.d.)iii. a similar revolutionary effect has led accessibility to become a strategic instrument in the agenda of many international actors for the achievement of some of the most pressing social priorities. this is apparent in numerous policies by international bodies, such as the united nations, the world health organisation, the world bank, and the oecd. a brief look at some european policies will illustrate this point. a first example is that of the european commission, in that accessibility is at the core of one of the eight areas of action of the european disability strategy 2010-2020 (european commission, 2010), as well as a specific mandate in the strategic implementation plan on active and healthy ageing (european commission, 2012), and again, a central issue in the new framework strategy for multilingualism (european commission, 2005). probably even more importantly, it is one of the three pillars of the digital single market strategy (european commission, 2015), one of the chief programmes of the commission, and the subject of a specific mandate (the so-called european accessibility act) under discussion by the european parliament since december 2015. a second case in point is that of the council of europe, which, for example, puts accessibility at the centre of its policies on governance and trust: e.g. accessibility is a recurring theme in at least twelve of the principles and fourteen of the guidelines set up in the recommendation on e-democracy (council of europe, 2009) and one of the eight principles in the guidelines for civil participation in political decision making (council of europe, 2017). the list of the myriad areas of knowledge and society that have been dramatically altered by accessibility could easily go on for pages. as we will see in the next section, these radical changes are the results of three distinctive shifts produced by the accessibility revolution. the nature of accessibility studies 211 3. the three shifts of accessibility a closer look at the pervasive growth of accessibility in our society, especially in terms of how accessibility has entered and developed in various research fields, shows that these fields have been experiencing a three-fold shift. the first is that of a shift from particularist accounts to a universalist account of access, the second is a shift from a maker-centred to a user-centred approach, and the third is a shift from reactive to proactive approaches. the evolution from various particularist accounts to a universalist (or integrated/holistic) account of access means that, while access was previously thought to concern exclusively or mainly specific groups of people, it is now understood to concern all human beings. accessibility usually entered these fields through an initial focus on a specific group, often, though not always, persons with disabilities. over time, the focus was progressively widened to include other groups until finally reaching a universal scope. the field of human-computer interaction is a clear example, where, thanks to the dedication of progressive scholars, over the past few decades, accessibility has given rise to the area called “universal access in human-computer interaction” (uahci), sometimes shortened to “universal access” (stephanidis, 2009b). the origins of uahci “are to be identified in approaches to accessibility mainly targeted toward providing access to computer-based applications by users with disabilities” (stephanidis, 2009a, p. 1.1). over time, uahci expanded its focus to other groups, for instance, the elderly, until finally embracing a universal vision by acknowledging that “accessibility can no longer be considered as a specific problem of people with disabilities [but of] society at large” (stephanidis & emiliani, 1999, p. 22). the shift from particularist accounts to a universalist account is even more evident in ma, originally formed as an academic area of research within the field of avt, the latter being the “branch of translation studies concerned with the transfer of multimodal and multimedial texts into another language and/or culture” (pérez-gonzález, 2008, p. 13). the transfer of such texts, for example, a film, is carried out through what in avt are usually called modalities, e.g., interlingual subtitling. accessibility fully entered the horizon of avt thanks to the pioneering work of some scholars (e.g. díaz cintas, 2005; gambier, 2003; orero, 2004), effectively creating the area referred to as ma. initially however, ma was positioned as a field concerning exclusively “subtitling for the deaf and the hard of hearing (sdh) and audio description (ad) for the blind and the visually impaired” (orero, 2004, p. viii)iv. it was at times expanded to include other modalities, such as audio subtitling and sign language interpreting, though it was still framed as specific for persons with sensory disabilities. over time, scholars began to shift towards a second account of ma based on the idea that ma concerns not only sensory but also linguistic barriers (díaz cintas, 2005; orero & matamala, 2007), to then the universalist account according to which ma concerns access to media products, services, and environmentsv for all persons who cannot, or cannot completely, access them in their original form (greco, 2016b). obviously, the shifts described in ma should not be seen as linear in time, for versions of the two particularist accounts can still be found in recent literature, e.g., “media accessibility, i.e. audio description, subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing and audio subtitling” (orero, 2012, p. 15) journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 212 and “media accessibility has become a key concept in [avt], devoted to studying how linguistic and sensory barriers can be overcome to make audiovisual products accessible” (baños, 2017, p. 485). as will be discussed in section 4, an analysis of this shift and of the current status of ma also provides a clear case of a specific aspect in the dialectics of the emergence of as, that is, the endogenous force exercised by traditional disciplines. the changing tide towards a universalist account of accessibility has been interlaced with a second movement, namely, the increasing attention towards users as bearers of valuable knowledge for the investigation of accessibility processes and phenomena as well as their active involvement in the design of accessibility solutions and artefactsvi. for years, the dominant attitude was based on a radical version of the so-called maker’s knowledge tradition (greco, paronitti, turilli, & floridi, 2005; pérez-ramos, 1988), according to which maker’s knowledge was the only one that mattered (kraus, 2017). whether it be policymaking, scholarly research or industrial development, or the creation and production of an audiovisual product, an urban plan of a city or some software, the main assumption was that makers know best and that users had neither place, nor their knowledge any value for the design process (bruiger, 2017; fisher, 2016). artefacts were devised according to the maker’s point of view (pheasant, 1996), or, in the best case scenario, according to the makers’ interpretation of users’ needs and capabilities (norman, 2013), with makers giving people “what [they] think they want or need or ought to want” (i. h. thompson, 2014, p. 79). over time, this has produced a complex series of gaps between the different stakeholders involved (t. thompson, 2003), of which the most prominent is the maker-user gap, which places makers and users at opposite ends of the spectrum of creation and production. the wider the gap between the maker and the user, the less probable it is that an artefact is accessible (ashok & jacko, 2009), which in turn may strengthen old ghettoisations of users, or create new ghettos (greco, 2016a, 2016b). accessibility has however, challenged the maker-centred and maker-driven approach. in order for artefacts to be fully accessible, the knowledge of users and other stakeholders needs to be fully taken into account in the design system because it is as important as maker’s knowledge. a major consequence of the new outlook towards users is the privileged status that reception studies have reached in the fields affected by accessibility. once more, ma is a good example, as in recent years this area has witnessed a sharp increase in reception studies (e.g., chmiel & mazur, 2016; di giovanni, 2018; eardley-weaver, 2014; mangiron, 2016; perego, del missier, & stragà, 2018; pöchhacker, 2018; romero-fresco, 2015; szarkowska & jankowska, 2015; szarkowska, krejtz, krejtz, & duchowski, 2013; szarkowska, krejtz, pilipczuk, dutka, & kruger, 2016). actually, the distinctive focus of ma on users has led to the flourishing of reception studies in avt as well (di giovanni & gambier, 2018) that is, in the field where ma first originated as an academic area, thus fulfilling gambier’s forecast that it would have been precisely through accessibility that reception studies would come to play a key role in the field of avt (gambier, 2006). while the first two shifts have occurred mainly on an epistemological level, the third shift has taken place on a methodological one. the very acknowledgment of the need to consider accessibility within the nature of accessibility studies 213 the design process, and that users’ knowledge is as important as the maker’s, poses questions as to the place of accessibility concerns and of user’s knowledge within the process of artefact creation as well as how this knowledge should be acquired and used within that process. the process of design of an artefact can be distinguished in a (series of) ex-ante, in itinere, and ex-post stage(s) (greco & pedone, 2015; greco, pedone, monsellato, rizzo, & spinelli, 2012). when access concerns started popping up onto designers’ radar, they were mainly addressed by adopting a reactive approach, that is, through the devising of ex-post solutions, such as specific adaptations or add-ons carried out after the realisation of the artefact (adams, 2009). over the years, a vast body of research literature has shown the numerous limitations of ex-post solutions, as e.g. they produce a “loss in functionality [or] provide limited and low-quality access” (emiliani, 2009, p. 2.6). the shortcomings of reactive approaches have also been apparent to the most diverse actors outside scholarly circles. just consider that in the guide on the enforcement of and compliance with the americans with disability act published five years after the adoption of that law, the american bar association states that “if accessibility is only remembered as an afterthought, or late in the planning/design process, it always becomes less effective for the user, more difficult for the designer/contractor, and more costly for the owner” (salmen, 2000, p. 231). in some cases, adopting a reactive approach means renouncing accessibility completely, because “it is impossible to 'glue' accessibility onto some of the systems as an afterthought or postmanufacture process” (vanderheiden, 1998, p. 35). the main reason for the failure or the very limited success of ex-post solutions is that reactive approaches are often based on the paternalistic assumption that “users are victims of poorly designed systems and need to be rescued by designers” (kaptelinin & nardi, 2006, p. 112). while in some cases addressing access at the ex-post or in itinere stages is the only possible way, the nature of accessibility as a proactive principle for the fulfilment of human rights calls for a radical methodological change. it requires a shift from reactive approaches to proactive approaches, the latter entailing “a purposeful effort to build access features into a product as early as possible (e.g., from its conception to design and release)” (emiliani, 2009, p. 2.6). adopting a proactive approach does not merely mean moving accessibility concerns from the ex-post to the ex-ante stage of design. it also means “placing the users and potential users at the heart of the development process rather than leaving them as an afterthought where they are left to put up with whatever has been designed on their behalf” (taylor, caiafa, & brown, 2002, p. 257). indeed, within this shift, accessibility has underscored the fact that all stakeholders must be proactively involved in the design process, thus calling for an “agency distribution” among the different actors involved (vardouli, 2015). this shift obviously demonstrates that there is no accessibility without participation, and it highlights yet another case of the complex series of gaps between the stakeholders mentioned above, namely the maker-expert-user gap. as such, it is crucial to involve, from the ex-ante stage, not only users but also experts. the ex-post solutions and involvement of experts is a well-known problem in the area of web accessibility, where “a main factor for the lack of accessibility at the web is the major knowledge gap that normally exists between developers and accessibility specialists [as well as the] common practice to consider accessibility at the very last stages of the development process, or when applications are already coded” (martín, cechich, & rossi, 2011, p. 7). over the years, this awareness has pushed researchers as well as industry to devise a series journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 214 of specific methodologies that place accessibility concerns, users and experts at the early stages of development of web applications. an even more conspicuous case comes from the audiovisual industry, where accessibility has been relegated to the ex-post stage for decades. subtitling, audio description, and dubbing, for example, do not form an integral part of the production process of an audiovisual product, as they are often left to be dealt with at the distribution phase, with two major consequences. these include the implementation of accessibility solutions that are not always efficacious as well as, in some striking cases, a total alteration of the original artistic intention of the creators or aesthetic features of the audiovisual product (romero-fresco, 2013). while this attitude nowadays is still dominant, one of the first signs of a growing awareness towards a shift from a reactive to a proactive approach in this context can be found in the arts and 504: a 504 handbook for accessible arts programming. first published by the national endowment for the arts in 1985, the handbook is addressed to projects and activities requesting funding from the agency, and it contains a series of best practices and suggestions for compliance with section 504 of the rehabilitation act of 1973. the section on captioning of the 1992 version of the handbook includes an extra explanatory paragraph, not present in the first edition, which states that “captioning film is most effective if taken into account at the earliest stage of production so that consideration can be made for technical concerns and length of dialogue” (national endowment for the arts, 1992, p. 79). it is precisely this awareness that, in recent years in the field of ma, has driven the development of an approach called accessible filmmaking (afm). the focus on moving accessibility from the ex-post to the ex-ante stage of film production has led afm to explicitly address and bridge the maker-expert-user gap by introducing the role of the director of accessibility, an ma expert involved from the very start of the creation of an audiovisual product (branson, 2018). finally, over the past few years, the area of ad has proven to be very fertile ground for the intersection and the flourishing of the three shifts, producing some of the most innovative projects in ma, e.g. from participatory ad in opera events (di giovanni, 2018) to enriched descriptive guides in museums (neves, 2016) to integrated ad in theatre performances (fryer, 2018). they all share the same traits: a universalistic account of accessibility, the implementation of a proactive approach, and the involvement of the different stakeholders during the various stages of the life-cycle of production. their ability to embrace all the salient features of accessibility and to put them into practice with a conscious, socially-engaged attitude can point the way towards a more structural and analytical approach of as to many other areas. 4. internal and external forces in the formation of accessibility studies research on knowledge production and organisation usually assumes that, in order for a new field to be born, one strong, yet not necessarily well-defined, “unique, or at least central, concern” must exist (pietig, 1984, p. 368), which then sets in motion a dialectic between endogenous and exogenous forces that may lead to the formation of the new field (farjoun, 2002). while scholars have been debating the precise list of mechanisms and their features for decades, the nature of accessibility studies 215 there is widespread agreement on several of them: (a) interdisciplinarity, (b) the formation of a research community, and (c) forms of opposition by well-established fields. when a new problem enters the knowledge horizon, if it cannot be tackled using exclusively the tools of a specific field, a common practice among researchers is to join forces and set up a multidisciplinary programme, with each one utilising ideas and methods from her own discipline, and then “split apart unchanged when the work is done” (committee on facilitating interdisciplinary research, national academy of sciences, national academy of engineering, & institute of medicine, 2005, p. 29). that is, multidisciplinary research is additive, not integrative (klein, 1990). some issues are so ground-breaking and interwoven with social questions that they “demand interdisciplinary participation” and prompt “scientists, engineers, social scientists, and humanists to join” forces (committee on facilitating interdisciplinary research et al., 2005, p. 17). the mere juxtaposition of different fields is not sufficient to address those issues; rather, it is necessary to choose the path of the “integration and synthesis of ideas and methods” (committee on facilitating interdisciplinary research et al., 2005, p. 27), a path that often leads to the creation of “new hybrid research fields” (committee on facilitating interdisciplinary research et al., 2005, p. 18). through a process refined over decades, accessibility issues have proven to demand such an interdisciplinary approach, pulling together researchers from the most diverse of fields – from engineering to translation, from cultural heritage to architecture, from computing to transportation – and pushing them to share their knowledge and tools to devise new methods and techniques in order to address the intricate nature of access problems. game accessibilityvii is a fast-growing topic in ma. initially framed in terms of translation problems requiring a multidisciplinary approach, in recent years scholars have convincingly shown that the topic is much broader and indeed has an “inherently interdisciplinary nature” (o'hagan & mangiron, 2013, p. 37). mangiron’s (2011) call for interdisciplinarity as a strategy for the future growth of research on the topic has become reality in just a few short years, for game accessibility is now addressed through a series of interdisciplinary approaches that involve a large number of fields. these include the ones she identified as well many more, such as: computer engineering, avt, psychology, and healthcare, but also media studies, anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, and humancomputer-interaction (o'hagan & mangiron, 2013). even if we narrow our focus to issues specifically related to disability and technology, that is, even if a particularist account is assumed, researchers are now claiming that this “complex interplay (…) can best be understood by recourse to interdisciplinary and international evidence” (roulstone, 2016, p. 5), which has led to the formation of “interdisciplinary teams of researchers and practitioners [who are] embracing holistic perspectives on disabled people’s intersection with technology to include psycho-social constructs and their connection to technological and social opportunity” (roulstone, 2016, p. 99). the attraction of accessibility as a unique idea, together with the need to combine efforts to develop interdisciplinary resources, has been pulling researchers out of the sphere of influence of traditional fields and bringing them together, in accordance with the formation of the so-called invisible colleges (crane, 1972). they have been creating an informal network, structurally grounded on shared journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 216 research interests based on a common subject matter, and socially bonded through a communication grid on national and international scales (bakker, 2017; price, 1963). this process is brilliantly summarised by holmes in his seminal paper, published in 1972, in which he argues in favour of translation studies as a new, distinctive field: as a new problem or set of problems comes into view in the world of learning, there is an influx of researches [sic] from adjacent areas, bringing with them the paradigms and models that have proved fruitful in their own fields. these paradigms and models are then brought to bear on the new problem, with one of two results. in some situations the problem proves amenable to explicitation, analysis, explication, and at least partial solution within the bounds of one of the paradigms or models, and in that case it is annexed as a legitimate branch of an established field of study. in other situations the paradigms or models fail to produce sufficient results, and researches [sic] become aware that new methods are needed to approach the problem. in this second type of situation, the result is a tension between researches [sic] investigating the new problem and colleagues in their former fields, and this tension can gradually lead to the establishment of new channels of communication and the development of what has been called a new disciplinary utopia, that is, a new sense of a shared interest in a common set of problems, approaches, and objectives on the part of a new grouping of researches [sic]. (holmes, 1988, p. 67)viii. over the course of its diffusion across many fields, access issues have been attracting an increasingly broader range of researchers, who share both a common interest as well as a willingness to hybridise their knowledge and methods in order to address those issues. over the years, they have acquired new skills that do not fully conform to a single, specific area of the current system, as they no longer fit within classical disciplinary boundaries. they end up having more in common amongst themselves – in holmes’ words, sharing the same “new disciplinary utopia” – than with colleagues from their original fields. the area of ma is a clear case. though it was bred within the field of translation studies, in recent years ma problems have attracted scholars from the most vastly divergent fields, thanks in large part to a favourable environment facilitated by many international and interdisciplinary research projects. researchers and practitioners from engineering to psychology, from filmmaking to computer science, from tourism studies to the performing arts, have been joining forces in order to tackle ma problems, sharing their own disciplinary methods and creating new ones along the way. during this process they have been slowly moving beyond the boundaries of their original fields, detaching themselves from their colleagues, and forming a new community of peers, a division of the invisible college of as. the peculiarities of ma as an area that can be neither merely nor entirely “annexed as a legitimate branch of an established field of study” are already leading ma scholars to debate fundamental internal issues, such as the forms of training and education that should be devised in order to adequately respond to the novel character of the field (chmiel, vercauteren, & mazur, forthcoming). the nature of accessibility studies 217 while the formation of a new community around accessibility and the joint development of interdisciplinary methods have been acting as exogenous forces and bringing together researchers towards the common ground of as, they have been opposed by endogenous forces trying to bar that very process. seeing as “no discipline willingly abdicates its mandated sovereignty” (klein, 2009, p. 271), well-established fields tend to resist the formation of a new field, perceived as a competitor or a threat to their fiefdoms, by expressing a cultural stance that some call scholasticism (floridi, 2002). they tend to shield themselves behind the walls of their orthodoxy, so that their “response is often only to create new subfields – a seemingly endless proliferation that incorporates members of the emerging community of scholars within the larger enterprise without any debate about the significance of their challenge” (salter & hearn, 1996, p. 154). a good example of how scholasticism has been cropping up in the development of as is once again provided by ma and translation studies, where the latter has manifested its “sheer force of orthodoxy” (klein, 2009, p. 271) in at least two main ways. the first one is the attempt to keep ma within the disciplinary boundaries of translation studies, while the second one is the apparently positive claim that ma may be an autonomous field of its own. as we have seen in the previous section, ma was born within the field of translation studies, specifically as an area of avt. the initial definition of ma was based on a particularist account that considered ma to be exclusively concerned with sdh and ad, with some variants extending it to other modalities like audio subtitling and sign language interpreting. however, all these alternatives still frame ma in relation to persons with sensory disabilities. over time, scholars began to adopt a second particularist account, which expanded the scope of ma to include foreign language speakers in addition to persons with sensory disabilities. while the first particularist account frames ma as a sub-area of avt, the second particularist account makes it overlap with avt itself. common to both particularist accounts is that they position ma within the disciplinary borders of translation studies. in addition, both implement forms of resistance by relegating ma problems to the realm of translation problems. yet, the moment avt problems are positioned in terms of accessibility, we are stepping outside the safe, familiar boundaries of translation studies and treading upon broader ground, where translation is just one of the many factors at play, and often not the main one (romero-fresco, 2018). this being said, endorsing the two particularist accounts may lead to some controversial implications. grounding ma within translation means paring down its scope to a narrower set of so-called modalities (or services), the ones that are translation based, and excluding from ma others that do not involve any translation activity, or perhaps only in a limited way. even if a restrictive definition of ma was taken, that is, to include only translation-based ma services for the group of persons with sensory disabilities, this still creates friction with the widespread interpretation of ma services for that specific group as adopted by many scholars as well as by industry, service providers, and international bodies and organisations (e.g., armstrong, 2016; cappello, 2014; ellis & goggin, 2015; european telecommunications standards institute, 2009; focus group on audiovisual media accessibility, 2013; nem-access, 2016; sense, 2006; shirley & kendrick, 2006; slater, lindstrom, & astbrink, 2010; utray, de castro, moreno, & ruiz-mezcua, 2012; varney, 2013). both scholars and organisations journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 218 identify subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing, audio description, sign language interpreting, and clean audio as ma services specific for persons with sensory disabilitiesix. while translationbased activities do play a key role, albeit it is not always an exclusive one, in the former three services, the latter – clean audio – does not involve any form of translation (jankowska, forthcoming). this creates discord between the two versions of ma services, even though both are based on the first particularist account that limits ma to persons with sensory disabilities. even more contentious is the implication of the second particularist account, which limits ma to sensory and linguistic barriers. a direct consequence is the exclusion from the core interests of ma of any person who does not fall within the groups identified by those parameters. it follows therefore, that children, the elderly, and persons with cognitive disabilities, for example, as well as any service that makes media artefacts accessible to them, are thus excluded from the visible horizon of ma. any effect of (linguistic or sensory) ma services on them can be determined a mere positive externality (brown, 2010-2011) or the result of a spillover effect (committee on disability in america & institute of medicine, 2007), not a planned result. hence, by framing ma in terms of specific groups, or services for specific groups, the universal trait of accessibility is betrayed, inadvertently re-creating a ghetto effect (greco, 2016a, 2016b). furthermore, a second form of opposition is apparent with regards to the notion that ma be regarded as “media accessibility studies”, that is, that we should consider ma to be a full-fledged academic field of its own, one that incorporates avt, hence, disregarding the need to talk about as. yet, in order to claim that ma is a field of its own, one has to accept all the mechanisms that justify the rise of as presented in the previous two sections while also demonstrating that those mechanisms apply exclusively to avt/ma, and not to any other fields. while it does acknowledge that ma has increased the number of shareholders, this claim seems to want to maintain the control stock in the hands of translation studies by allocating a dominant role to translation practices. the universal account of ma successfully disentangles itself from the abovementioned controversies while also highlighting the benefits of not restricting the focus of ma to any specific group of users or list of access services. rather, it allows for the assumption of functional processes resulting from the interaction between users’ specificities and the means to address those specificities in terms of accessing either media artefacts or other artefacts through media means. by making translation neither the sole nor the main driving force behind ma but simply one of the many factors that contribute to address accessibility issues, the universal account of ma allows for the inclusion of other groups and access services, favours the convergence of the different conceptions of ma and ma services developed in other fields, and encourages the design of solutions that are more inclusive (jankowska, 2017, forthcoming; romero-fresco, forthcoming). ma is wider than avt and cannot be merely reduced to a sub-area of ts. it is a broader, interdisciplinary area, that criss-crosses many well-established fields, including translation studies and avt. however, it cannot be entirely and exclusively reduced to any of them, because its true nature is that of being an area within the field of as. an example may help illustrate this point. as said above, over the last few years, some filmmakers and ma scholars have been developing and implementing a new approach called afm. according to the original definition, afm is “the integration of avt the nature of accessibility studies 219 and accessibility as part of the filmmaking process” (romero-fresco, 2013, p. 203), which includes “not only accessibility for people with sensory impairments but also, in a wider sense, translation or linguistic accessibility; in other words, making film accessible to viewers with hearing/visual loss and to viewers in other languages” (romero-fresco, 2013, p. 223). however, this initial statement of afm presented two main limitations: (a) it framed afm within the second particularist account of ma by restricting its scope to those with sensory and linguistic barriers, and (b) it lacked a strong focus on the proactive role of users. explicitly embracing the rise of as (romero-fresco, 2017b), over the past years afm has moved beyond the particularist account by adopting a new definition that fully complies with the universalist account of ma. more specifically, the new definition states that afm concerns how to “make a film accessible to people that cannot, or cannot properly, access it in its original form” (romero-fresco, 2017a) which mirrors the very definition of the universalist account of ma (greco, 2016b) discussed in the previous pages. moreover, afm has also implemented a user-centred approach, whereby users are not merely passive recipients of, but active agents in, the process of production of accessible audiovisual media (dangerfield, 2017, 2018). finally, as we already saw, it has framed its methodology in terms of the maker-expert-user gap (branson, 2018; branson & romero-fresco, 2017). as a result, afm has been able to display its traits by modifying itself according to the universal account of accessibility. consequently, afm can no longer be considered an internal approach of avt nor of a particularist account of ma, but as applied as within the universalist account of ma. 5. what is accessibility studies? through the multifaceted process summarised in the previous sections, accessibility has slowly but steadily entered a variety of very different fields, moving its way to the forefront and becoming one of their most fruitful concepts. it has produced a wealth of new methods and models, created radical change in the foundations of many fields, and has given rise to new areas that have been gradually converging to constitute the wider field of as. as i have mentioned in section 2, this process can be clearly identified in a number of differing areas. in all of them as well as in society at large, accessibility has driven theoretical, methodological, and social innovation, leading to the development of thriving research programmes and the implementation of novel practices, and, as stated above, has often even provided a new foundation for those very fields. this multidimensional and multifaceted process has been leading to the formation of accessibility studies, the research field concerned with the critical investigation of accessibility processes and phenomena, and the design, implementation and evaluation of accessibility-based and accessibility-oriented methodologies. accessibility refers to neither the prima facie meaning of access as “having entrance to a system, goods and services” nor to the availability of the means or opportunities for “having entrance to” (shadid, prins, & mas, 1982), meaning that it implies more than the possibility to reach or have “direct access or access through add-on” solutions (stephanidis & salvendy, 1998, p. 112; journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 220 see also vanderheiden, 1990). as acknowledged in the field of digital sustainability, “[access] is not only about the ability to find and retrieve an item, but also the ability to use, view, listen to, interact with, display, or run the digital item in such a way that users can be assured that what they are viewing satisfies their needs” (bradley, 2007, p. 154). therefore, accessibility lies at the heart of a whole range of issues, such as acceptability, adaptability, availability, flexibility, personalisation, and usability. the character of access as a necessary requirement, as discussed in this paper, makes it a concept more primitive, “systematically and logically prior, more basic and more fundamental” (jammer, 1999, p. 6), from which others can be obtained as derived concepts. this is why, among the many names suggested for this new field, as is the most suitable one. the fact that accessibility encompasses a multiplicity of other concerns highlights a crucial point concerning the second part of the definition of as. if we adopt gibson’s theory of affordances (gibson, 1979)x and read it through the lens of accessibility, we can interpret an artefact as a complex of disabling constraints and enabling affordances. then, the relationship between an artefact and a user can be analysed in terms of a conditioning friction. the less the design process is based on accessibility methodologies, the higher the probability of producing artefacts with a greater number of disabling constraints and fewer enabling affordances. this leads to a higher probability of a friction, between the artefact and the user, conditioning the space of action and knowledge of the user. on the other hand, the more the design process is based on such methodologies, the higher the probability of producing artefacts with a greater number of enabling affordances and fewer disabling constraints, and thus, the lower the probability of a conditioning friction between the artefact and the user. in order to produce artefacts of the latter kind, the design process need to be carried out in accordance with the general methodological approach delineated by the three shifts analysed in the previous pages. the three shifts define the normative boundaries of epistemic and moral action: this general methodological stance of as allows us not only to design and implement new artefacts that foster inclusion, but also to investigate and evaluate all the other artefacts, and come up with strategies of intervention. moreover, if we consider that “user” does not stand for some remote and amorphous figure, but rather, has to be understood within the variations of human diversity and capabilities (sen, 1985), we can appreciate the breadth of as. in addition, one can also make out some preliminary traits of a possible ethical and social theory that could be developed within this field: a theory that promotes the explicit design of artefacts for the well-being of human beings and the promotion of social justice and epistemic justice (fricker, 2007). before concluding by briefly looking at what lies ahead of and for as, a few steps back to the origins of the field may help. even though as has emerged as a research field only in recent years, its foundation indeed goes back to the ideas and work of otto neurath. among his contributions we can find many of the features of as, e.g. access as a foundational idea for human dignity, an interdisciplinarity methodology, the devising of new methods, the importance of users and of their knowledge, and the involvement of experts and of different stakeholders in the design process. infused by the spirit of logical positivism, being himself one of the founding and prominent members of the vienna circle, neurath was convinced that access to knowledge was fundamental for empowering people, especially the most vulnerable (see o. neurath, 1973c), because only the nature of accessibility studies 221 through access to knowledge they “could develop their judgement and become active citizens of a democratic society” (m. neurath, 1946). between the 1910s and the 1920s, neurath began to work on a method for the visualisation of information, initially called the “vienna method”, in order to “represent social facts pictorially” (o. neurath in burke, 2009, p. 211). in 1925, he established the social and economic museum in vienna,xi where he implemented his method more analytically. the main goal of the museum was to make knowledge and social facts “within reach of everybody” (o. neurath, 1973d, p. 230). neurath’s museum adopted a mix of instruments and new technologies, including early experiments with animated films, which, through the use of his method, made statistical data, facts, and information about the various aspects of social life and of the world accessible to the general population. the work was realised by a truly interdisciplinary team comprising “the director, two transformers, two chief artists, and a number of technicians skilled in the work process [as well as] experts in statistics, history, medicine, cartography, geography, engineering, industrial management, history of art, etc.” (m. neurath, 1974, p. 137). the key figure was an expert called “the transformer”, a seminal version of the accessibility expert, whose tasks included “to understand the data, to get all necessary information from the experts, to decide what is worth transmitting to the public, how to make it understandable, how to link it with general knowledge or with information already given in other charts” (m. neurath & kinross, 2009, p. 78). this role was usually carried out by marie neurathxii, according to whom “the transformer is the trustee of the public” (m. neurath & kinross, 2009, p. 78). over the years, the neuraths refined and expanded upon the method, renaming it “international system of typographic picture education” (isotype). they exported it from new york to moscow to nigeria, and applied it to a vast range of media, replicating the same work method over and over again. a few examples may better illustrate the vast scope of their contribution. their work on children’s books was tested with experiments performed in schools and, through collaboration with c.k. ogden, the inventor of basic english, they also produced two texts that combined isotype with basic english, constituting an early case, if not the very first, of easy reading. in 1941, they were contacted by paul rotha, a pioneer of british documentary filmmaking, who saw in the isotype method a way to make his films more accessible to a wider audience. once again, the neuraths replicated the same organisational model they developed in vienna, with the transformer working in close contact with the different departments of the filmmaking process, from the director to the scriptwriter, sometimes “already at the first stages of conception” (m. neurath & kinross, 2009, p. 61), which probably makes this the first explicit case of afmxiii. the importance of the active participation of the users in the design process is exemplified by otto neurath’s consultancy to the bilston borough council in 1945. when discussing a plan to relocate a part of the population to new houses in other areas, neurath underlined that “participation is vital. the whole success of any plan involving the lives of human beings depends upon obtaining the assent, encouragement, and co-operation of those human beings” (o. neurath, 1973a, p. 76). these are just a few examples of the richness of neurath’s visionary work. he believed that the idea of a democratic polity founded on human dignity and fraternity, like “the distant island of atlantis” and other great utopias, are constructions of “social engineering” (o. neurath, 1973b, p. 151) that take on “the task of consciously cultivating journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 222 the future and the possible” (o. neurath, 1973b, p. 155). he saw making knowledge accessible to everyone as fundamentally functional towards making possible the utopia of a democratic future possible. 6. conclusion: the future commitments of the early days human beings have been successfully adapting to technology for a very long time (norman, 2013). nonetheless, as we have seen, icts are creating a new environment and are reshaping access. this is a process that, if not vigilantly supervised and guided, will risk producing new, deep-seated forms of discrimination whilst exacerbating old ones, because reshaping access means reshaping the very conditions for human dignity. we are epistemic agents and our lives unfold in a knowledge space(s). yet, this space has become a breeding ground of social injustice through epistemic injustice: new forms of discrimination based on who can get access and who can’t. all these has been making access “a conceptual tool for rethinking our world-view as well as our economic view, making it the single most powerful metaphor of the coming age” (rifkin, 2001, p. 15). within this context, as is a timely field that, through critical investigation and proactive agency, addresses some of the most pressing issues our society is facing, and will face. a field within which it is also possible to develop an ethical and social perspective that promotes a culture of (social, ethical, political, scientific, technological, etc.) design in order to render our world an environment with less disabling constraints and more enabling affordances. what lies ahead of us is a highly-demanding task: to accept our role as the trustees of the public, to cultivate the utopia of a just and inclusive society, and to work to make it possible despite difficulties and uncertainties we may face, as brilliantly expressed once again by calvino: the great khan's atlas contains also the maps of the promised lands visited in thought but not yet discovered or founded: new atlantis, utopia, the city of the sun, oceana, tamoe, new harmony, new lanark, lcaria. kublai asked marco: 'you, who go about exploring and who see signs, can tell me toward which of these futures the favoring winds are driving us.' 'for these ports i could not draw a route on the map or set a date for the landing. at times all i need is a brief glimpse, an opening in the midst of an incongruous landscape, a glint of lights in the fog, the dialogue of two passersby meeting in the crowd, and i think that, setting out from there, i will put together, piece by piece, the perfect city, made of fragments mixed with the rest, of instants separated by intervals, of signals one sends out, not knowing who receives them. if i tell you that the city toward which my journey tends is discontinuous in space and time, now scattered, now more condensed, you must not believe the search for it can stop. (calvino, 1974, p. 164)xiv ma was born thanks to the pioneering work of some scholars who envisioned the fundamental traits of accessibility. over the past two decades, ma has been gradually growing into a vast and lively the nature of accessibility studies 223 community of deeply-committed scholars, whose work has been advancing the critical role of accessibility in our society. as one of the most mature areas in which the process of the formation of as has been taking place, what lies ahead of ma is a task as exciting as it is challenging: to fully embrace its identity as an area within as. by working towards making visible the invisible college of as, of which they are among its founding and more engaged members, ma scholars can let as fulfil its role as a force for critical reflection and a driver for social change. acknowledgements the present paper is part of a series of texts on as that have been keeping me company for a very long time. i am grateful to the editorial board of the journal of audiovisual translation for the invitation to publish this paper in its inaugural issue and to the two anonymous referees for their comments. i introduced the term accessibility studies and discussed the ideas presented in this paper during so many talks i have delivered since 2012 that listing them all would require a space longer than this very paper. my most sincere thanks to all the participants of those meetings for their feedback. i will mention only a few as representatives of all. i introduced an early version of section 3 at the artlab13 conference held on 24-28 june 2013. an early version of section 2 and 6 were debuted at the seminar expo 2015 per l’italia held in martina franca (italy) on 3 december 2013, co-organised by censis and the italian pavilion at expo 2015. a revised version of section 2 and 6 were also presented at the zerobarriere conference held in matera (italy) on 2728 september 2014 as part of the candidacy of the city of matera as european capital of culture 2019 (which then was awarded the title), co-organised by the comune di matera, the european network for accessible tourism, design for all europe, the council of europe, and many others. i delivered the first complete presentation of sections 1-5 at the conference the future of media accessibility: issues and visions held in lecce (italy) on 26-27 june 2017. a version of sections 2, 5 and 6 was presented at the transaccess conference held in krakow on 16 november 2017, coorganised by the dg translation of the european commission and the chair for translation studies and intercultural communication of the jagiellonian university in krakow (poland). i wish to thank for their kind invitation in the aforementioned meetings: dino angelaccio, ugo bacchella, ivana bosso, valentina curato, anna jankowska, pete kercher, krzysztof łoboda, francesco maietta, simona martini, maria piotrowska. numerous discussions with josh branson, kate dangerfield, louise fryer, anna jankowska, pablo romero-fresco, and davide ruggieri have helped me refine my ideas in a profound way. with anna jankowska and pablo romero-fresco in particular i am in far greater debt. our long conversations and their constant support are a rare gift. they have helped me sharpen my thought and provided support and encouragement in ways beyond any professional level; most likely, this paper would have not seen the light of day without their support. teressa canosa skilfully copyedited the last version of this paper. all remaining mistakes are mine. journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 224 biographical note gian maria greco, phd, is marie skłodowska-curie individual fellow and a member of the transmedia catalonia research group at the universitat autònoma de barcelona (spain), where he directs the project umaq. he is research associate at galma, universidade de vigo (spain). his research focuses on the theoretical foundation of accessibility studies and how it relates to human rights, the media, and the performing arts. references adams, r. 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(2011). world report on disability. geneva, switzerland: world health organization i italics added, texts between parentheses are in the original paper. ii italics added. the original text from the general comment reads: “the right to adequate food, like any other human right, imposes three types or levels of obligations on states parties: the obligations to respect, to protect and to fulfil. in turn, the obligation to fulfil incorporates both an obligation to facilitate journal of audiovisual translation, volume 1, issue 1 232 and an obligation to provide. the obligation to respect existing access to adequate food requires states parties not to take any measures that result in preventing such access. the obligation to protect requires measures by the state to ensure that enterprises or individuals do not deprive individuals of their access to adequate food. the obligation to fulfil (facilitate) means the state must pro-actively engage in activities intended to strengthen people’s access to and utilization of resources and means to ensure their livelihood, including food security. finally, whenever an individual or group is unable, for reasons beyond their control, to enjoy the right to adequate food by the means at their disposal, states have the obligation to fulfil (provide) that right directly” (un committee on economic, social and cultural rights, 1999, p. 5). iii although it has not been possible to trace the date of publication of fia’s advocacy paper, it may have been very likely published during the current presidency of jean todt, given the fact that he has made “sustainable mobility for all” a trademark of his mandate. iv note that the earliest accounts of ma did not include sign language interpreting, but only ad and sdh. v the expression “products, services and environments” refers to the definition of accessibility provided in the world report on disability (see world health organization & world bank, 2011, p. 301). hereafter, for brevity, i will collectively refer to them as “artefacts”. vi the expression “design of accessibility solutions and artefacts” should be intended in the most general sense, comprising from policies and legislation to computer software. vii the expression “design of accessibility solutions and artefacts” should be intended in the most general sense, comprising a very broad range of concepts, from policies and legislation to computer software. viii italics added. ix some also include audio subtitles. x see fryer (2013) for an application of gibson’s theory to ad. xi this is the english translation used by neurath himself of “gesellschaftsund wirtschaftsmuseum in wien”. xii it was a common practice of marie neurath, née reidemeister, to sign her publications using her husband’s surname. xiii as already said, neurath had already experimented with animated films in the 1920s. sadly, no copies of them nor a detailed description of how they were made have survived, even though one could suppose they were created using the accessible methodology. reports of a public screening of these films in new york in 1933 where published in the new york times and the new york herald tribune (see burke, 2013). xiv in the original text the entire quote is in italics. here, only one phrase is left in italics for emphasis. transmedia catalonia, universitat autònoma de barcelona galician observatory for media accessibility, universidade de vigo abstract accessibility has come to play a pivotal role on the world’s stage, gradually pervading different aspects of our lives as well as a vast range of fields, giving rise to a plethora of fruitful new ideas, methods and models, and becoming an ever more ke... citation: greco, g.m. (2018). the nature of accessibility studies. journal of audiovisual translation, 1(1), 205-232. editor(s): a. jankowska & p. romero-fresco received: january 22, 2018 accepted: june 30, 2018 published: november 15, 2018 funding: this project has received funding from the european union’s horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the marie sklodowska-curie grant agreement no 752659 (project umaq). copyright: ©2018 greco. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license. this allows for unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are... (calvino, 1974, p. 82) 1. introduction 2. the roots of the accessibility revolution 3. the three shifts of accessibility 4. internal and external forces in the formation of accessibility studies 5. what is accessibility studies? 6. conclusion: the future commitments of the early days acknowledgements biographical note references