If one takes any publication on audiovisual translation (AVT) written in the early twenty-first century (e.g. Díaz-Cintas 2001), its introduction will almost inevitably highlight the dynamic nature and rapid development of AVT. However, recent works seem to take this dynamism for granted (cf. e.g. Bogucki and Deckert 2020). This does not mean that the development of AVT has ceased, though—on the contrary; these days, it is seen as an inevitable concomitant to research in this area. The four driving forces behind the constant advances in AVT practice (and, by extension, research) can be summed up by the interrogative pronouns—how, what, why and for whom.
Firstly, the omnipresent technological headway directly impacts the creation of different language versions of audiovisual products. New techniques appear (such as interlingual live subtitling, cf. Romero-Fresco and Pöchhacker 2017), while established ones, like cinema subtitling, become far more machine-assisted and, consequently, far less human-made. Machine translation is par for the course and software packages grow ever more sophisticated. Research into AVT deploys experimental methods, e.g. electroencephalography and psychophysiological measures such as galvanic skin response and heart rate (Orero et al. 2018: 114; see also Matamala et al. 2020), while previously novel methodological approaches, such as the use of eye tracking, become common and widely deployed. AVT research is escaping the confines of (linguistic) translation studies,1 paving the way for a new (inter)discipline (cf. Bogucki 2019).
Secondly, the audiovisual products of today tend to carry more information (verbal or otherwise), become increasingly interactive (e.g. Netflix’s Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, in which the audience can decide how the plot develops) and interconnected (sequels, prequels, remakes, reboots, spinoffs, even interquels or midquels). This takes the practice of AVT to a whole new level. On the one hand, software development almost makes the traditional technical (space and time) constraints on subtitling (see e.g. Bogucki 2004) obsolete. On the other hand, the subtitler must be ready to cope with a much higher pace of action and shorter scenes (see Chapter 3), as well as information overload (increased use of text on screen); this may increase the audience’s cognitive effort (cf. Chapter 4, Sect. 5). Intertextual relations between episodes within a series, a related series, a feature film that the series is based on (e.g. Fargo the movie vs. Fargo the series or Bates Motel vs. Psycho), or film adaptations of literature call for consistency in translation. If a movie and its trailer are translated by two different translators without recourse to one another, the clash in style and lexis can immediately be noticed (cf. Chapter 5, Sect. 8). All of the above, combined with the emergence of new genres and refinement of familiar ones, calls for extensive research into the nature of the audiovisual text.
Thirdly, assuming that media accessibility is seen as a subset of AVT (see Greco 2018 for a discussion), audiovisual products are not only translated interlingually, that is to say in order to provide different language versions for wider dissemination, but also intralingually, whether for the sake of social inclusion to cope with sensory impairment, or for legal reasons (accessibility in the EU is regulated by the Audiovisual Media Services Directive2). Digital TV gives audiences the power to make choices with the help of a remote controller, so more AVT modalities can be used for the same programme.
The fourth driving force behind the development of AVT is the target audience. Audiences with various degrees of disabilities such as sight or hearing loss require completely different approaches depending on the presence, type and degree of disability. The former two are not the subject of the present book, but the audience profile in the case of interlingual AVT is undergoing constant changes, as evidenced by reception studies (Bogucki and Deckert 2018). In the past, the audience tended to consume audiovisual entertainment in a cinema or at home in front of a TV set. While the two media are still in operation, their structure has changed due to the digital revolution and they are inevitably pushed to the background by a far more expedient, versatile and flexible medium—online streaming. Today, audiovisual content can be accessed not only via computer screens, but also smartphones, which opens the market wide, but may result in previously irrelevant technical constraints (e.g. the visibility of subtitles on a four-inch screen). English has been a lingua franca for decades, if not centuries, but globalisation and schooling have elevated it to a level where young people (the default audience for online streaming) take it for granted. Subtitlers are now discouraged from translating out of English in cases where translation is not a prerequisite for comprehension. For instance, in a scene where a car pulls up, bearing flashing lights and the inscription SHERIFF or POLICE on the door, translating the inscription is redundant; the audience will understand the communicative intention (law enforcement has arrived) and the lack of a subtitle will help them concentrate on other elements of the polysemiotic audiovisual message.
This short monograph aims to investigate the process of decision-making in subtitling. For the sake of research homogeneity, it omits discussion of other modalities of AVT, concentrating on the one which may have the most potential to become the default mode of interlingual film translation, at the same time providing the optimal surroundings to illustrate the research hypothesis. The corpus of examples is made up of Polish subtitles to feature films, entertainment series, documentaries and other audiovisual material available on the streaming platform Netflix. The technical, linguistic and translational constraints at work in subtitling result in a curtailed target text. The restrictions on the form and content also stem from the additive nature of subtitling; the target audience receive the complete filmic message plus added text, which increases their cognitive effort, therefore optimum subtitles are ones which are inconspicuous and easy to process. On the other hand, subtitles must render not just the dialogue in isolation, but its content in conjunction with the information load of the three other semiotic channels, viz. picture, soundtrack and text on the screen.
The study of constraints on the process of decision-making in interlingual subtitling is done within the cognitive framework of Relevance Theory (RT, Sperber and Wilson 1986). While there is currently no shortage of academic publications on subtitling in English and other languages,3 the linguistic and translational scope of this work combines the best of both worlds. Relevance Theory continues to be an influential approach to communication, but its application to secondary communication (=translation) is surprisingly wanting or outright rejected (cf. Sapire 1996). For instance, translation is conspicuous by its absence from an influential volume published towards the end of the twentieth century and titled Current Issues in Relevance Theory (Rouchota and Jucker 1998). Far more criticism has been levelled at the application of RT to translation by E. A. Gutt than at RT itself: “[s]ince the publication of his landmark book, Translation and relevance: cognition and context (1991), Gutt has become one of the most controversial and most misunderstood modern translation theorists” (Smith 2002: 107). Not only does the current work attempt to bridge the divide between translation theory and practice, but also to fill in another glaring gap. Research on subtitling is veering towards experimental studies (eye tracking), while seminal linguistic approaches (e.g. Skopos theory, Vermeer 1978) are becoming outdated or even obliterated; thus, there is need for a fresh look at subtitling from a language perspective. The present work revisits a seminal approach, giving it a new lease of life and positioning it on the current scene of AVT. This is in stark contrast to other linguistic approaches to subtitling, which may no longer be relevant due to the dramatic changes to the practice of AVT in recent years.
There seem to be two reasons for the limited popularity of linguistic approaches to translation of late. Firstly, translation is increasingly machine-dependent and intersemiotic, therefore, translation research draws from disciplines other than traditional linguistics, exploring topics such as neural networks and visual communication. Secondly, translation studies as an independent academic discipline is emerging, though its road to independence has been a long and winding one (cf. e.g. Bogucki 2017). The new discipline is developing its own research m...