Title slide

Translation and Mass-Media

• Advertising
• Globalization
• Information Technology
• Mass-media and Society
• AVT (Audiovisual Translation)

AVT – Terminological Confusion

• AVT – attempts to describe multiple and different modes of translation when the source text is audio (radio), audio and visual (screen), or written, audio and visual (multimedia).
• Work in this field has been called:
• Film translation Screen translation
• Media translation Film communication
• Constrained Translation (Multi)media translation

Types of AVT

• Interlingual subtitling (or open caption)
• Dubbing
• Consecutive interpreting (+ Sign Language)
• Simultaneous interpreting (+ Sign Language)
• Voice over and half-dubbing
• Free commentary
• Sight translation
• Surtitles
• Multilingual Production

AVT - Translation or interpreting?

• All these modes of translation have blurred the traditional borders between written and oral codes:
• Subtitling = a kind of written interpreting
• Constrained by temporal factors
• Conditioned by density of information
• Caught in the relationship between written and oral
• Affected by issues of reception

Requirements of AVT texts:

• Acceptability
• Legibility
• Readability
• Synchronicity
• Relevance
• Domestication strategies
• (Gambier Screen Translation 179)

Subtitling

General features

• All subtitled programmes are made of three components:
• spoken word
• the image
• the subtitle
• Subtitles must be
• Synchronous
• Semantically adequate
• Remain displayed on the screen for long enough for the viewers to read them.
• Text must accommodate to the width of the screen (32-41 characters per line)

• It is a book about subtitling, not translation. Translation is a different art. In my view subtitling, when it is done to high standard, it includes so many of the elements essential to art and above all demands so much skill, imagination and creative talent that it is indeed art.
• (Ivarsson and Carroll v)

• Do you agree with the concept of subtitling as an art?
• DO you think that this perception is positive or negative for subtitling and its learning?
• Is translation, in general, an art form?
• DO you think there are translation practices that are an ‘art’ and other translation practices that are not?