Appunti subtitling

Audiovisual translation (AVT)

Audiovisual translation (AVT) refers to the transfer from one language to another of the verbal components contained in audiovisual works and products. There are three main audiovisual practices:

• Subtitling
• Dubbing
• Voice-over (voce fuori campo)

Importance of AVT

We have to use AVT because it is the fastest growing strand of translation studies, developing translation capability, enhancing our language awareness, and acquiring vocabulary. It is defined as screen adaptation, the highest grade of a translation, total translation. We need to consider different codes, including four main ones: acoustic verbal, acoustic non-verbal, visual verbal, and visual non-verbal.

Dubbing

Dubbing involves the replacement of the original speech with a voice track that attempts to closely follow the timing, phrasing, and lip movements of the original dialogue. This practice is prevalent in FIGS countries: France, Italy, Germany, and Spain.

Subtitling: Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Allows translations to respect the original language integrally.
• Realization times are quite short.
• Cheaper than dubbing, a politically correct mode of linguistic transfer (it respects the original text > foreignization).

Cons:

• Subtitles that are too long become unreadable and distract the audience from the images.
• Not synchronized and aesthetically unpleasing as they partially cover the images.
• The use of two linguistic codes (written and oral) can confuse the audience.

The linguistics of subtitling

There are many rules to consider in subtitling:

• The most important rule is the six seconds' rule (35-36 characters).
• The length of lines is crucial.
• One and two-liners are preferred.
• Synchronization is a golden rule: if possible, a subtitle should appear at the precise moment the person starts speaking. Subtitles should maintain temporal synchrony with the utterances.
• An important part is the line break: to segment or divide something into sections or separate parts, distributed across one to four lines. Segmentation follows the same grammatical rule. Follow grammatical construction to give sense to the segmentation from a grammatical and semantic point of view, dividing sense units per line.

Additional guidelines:

• Do not hyphenate words under any circumstances.
• Put one sentence on each line.
• Use one line for each clause.

Subtitling process

The subtitling process involves three basic steps:

1. Elimination of false starts (e.g., "ehm..."), repetitions, and hesitations to focus on the sense and reduce time and space.
2. Rendering involves the elimination of taboo items, slang, and dialect through standardization, where linguistic variations are not rendered.
3. Condensation entails the simplification of original syntax to make subtitles more easily readable.

The aim is to maintain the sense and reduce the number of characters used in the subtitles.