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 well- known 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 pre- questionnaire (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 pre- and post-tasks (to assess both writing and speaking skills enhancement), the post- questionnaire (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, open- minded 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 pre- and 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 pre- and 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 peer- assessment 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; Díaz- Cintas, 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 motivational elements involved in the task of producing creative dubbing (or fundubs) and creative subtitling (or funsubs) are pedagogical assets which both FL teachers and students should not disregard in today’s digital world. Acknowledgements This project was made possible by the participation of a group of internal and external collaborators, all of whom I take the opportunity to thank here, with special mention to the fellowship holder Luis Andrés Foglia, for his extensive and kind help in the course of CREATE. References Ávila-Cabrera, J. J. (2018). 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