Audiovisual Translation in a Global Context

Mapping an Ever-changing Landscape

Jorge Díaz Cintas, Rocío Baños Piñero, Jorge Díaz Cintas, Rocío Baños Piñero

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781349554041, 9781137552884
• eBook ISBN: 9781137552891
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Film & Video
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This book offers an up-to-date survey of the present state of affairs in Audiovisual Translation, providing a thought-provoking account of some of the most representative areas currently being researched in this field across the globe. The book discusses theoretical issues and provides useful and practical insights into professional practices.

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Audiovisual Translation in a Global Context

Rocío Baños Piñero and Jorge Díaz Cintas

Today’s exposure to and interaction with audiovisual content is far greater now than ever before, and this has obvious repercussions for audiovisual translation (AVT), both as a professional practice and as an academic discipline. A recent report by Ofcom (2014), the independent communications regulator in the UK, revealed that UK adults spend an average of eight hours and 41 minutes using media or communications every day, and that approximately half of that time is spent watching audiovisual content. Of course, audiovisual practices differ across the globe. Whereas a large proportion of the audiovisual content consumed in the UK and other English-speaking countries involves AVT in the form of audio description for the blind and the partially sighted or subtitling for the deaf and the hard-of-hearing (SDH), the situation is rather different in other countries where, owing to the need to make foreign programmes available to local audiences, interlingual AVT modes are more frequent. However, some trends seem not to recognize boundaries and could even be deemed to be universal. Far-reaching technological developments and new forms of communication have given consumers and audiences a great deal of power and autonomy, enabling them to decide and influence decisions related to the translation of audiovisual content. We are not only referring to the widespread practice of fansubbing (Díaz Cintas and Muñoz Sánchez 2006; Massidda 2015) or crowdsourced AVT (O’Hagan 2012), but also to the possibility of making an audiovisual programme go ‘viral’ in just minutes, thanks to communication tools such as Twitter and Facebook, increasing the need for AVT in different contexts, involving different audiovisual genres and into different languages.

The purpose of this volume is to offer an up-to-date survey of the present state of affairs in AVT, enabling a better understanding of the global audiovisual landscape. One of its main aims is to gauge the pulse of the changes taking place in this thriving field by focusing not only on current research, but also on professional practices in a wide range of contexts. With these goals in mind, this volume brings together a group of scholars and academics of proven international reputation, who have been working in this field for many years in countries such as Brazil, China, Croatia, France, Italy, Poland, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland and the UK. In their contributions, theoretical issues are discussed in close connection to real translation problems and empirical data, providing useful and practical insights into the personalized input that translators inevitably give to their work. As the table of contents shows, the chapters have been grouped into three key areas, which are closely related: quality, audiences and professional practices.

Probably as a result of globalization, audiences seem to be more willing to disregard borders and language barriers, but are also growing increasingly impatient when it comes to AVT consumption. They want to enjoy their favourite videogames, TV series and the latest movies as soon as they are released. To this end, some viewers even seem prepared to sacrifice quality, a loose term which has come to have a different meaning and significance for scholars, industry members and audiences, and which cannot be mentioned without resulting in long and often polemic discussions. As can be seen in the first part of this volume, Addressing Quality, scholars are not afraid of discussing quality-related issues in AVT. These discussions constitute a logical step forward in our field now that quantity is no longer the most pressing concern in most contexts and technology has provided us with appropriate tools to improve and even measure quality.

In some contexts, however, the importance of high-quality AVT seems still to be underestimated. As Adrián Fuentes-Luque’s contribution shows, this seems to be the case with some official institutions and non-profit organizations. Having identified the power of audiovisual and multimedia content as an effective communications and public relations tool, some of these institutions seem to be more concerned to assert their multimedia presence than about the appropriateness of their audiovisual programmes. Yet, as Fuentes-Luque argues in ‘Institutional Audiovisual Translation: A (Shop)Window on the World’, international institutions using audiovisual material to communicate and increase their visibility should not be satisfied with being a virtual shop window on the world, and should instead adopt a diverse and integrating approach. The author discusses how ‘institutional audiovisual translation’ differs from traditional AVT and traditional institutional translation and offers a descriptive overview of its characteristics through a wide range of interesting case studies of prominent institutions worldwide. Drawing on examples from the European Commission webcast portal and the United Nations webcast, among others, the paper outlines potential areas for improvement and identifies the need to establish adequate quality standards, appropriate linguistic conventions and consistent accessibility policies as far as audiovisual content is concerned.

As illustrated in the existing literature available on the widely explored topic of translation quality (House 2015; O’Brien 2012, among many others), assessing it from an objective standpoint is extremely challenging, if not impossible. In AVT, the relevance and often constraining nature of the technical and semiotic dimensions, as well as the many factors influencing the translation process, hinder the evaluation of quality even further. In their contribution ‘Accuracy Rate in Live Subtitling: The NER Model’, Pablo Romero-Fresco and Juan Martínez Pérez reflect on the concept of quality assessment in live subtitling, emphasizing that, although many parameters are to be considered (e.g. subtitle speed, delay, positioning of the text, audience reception, etc.), linguistic accuracy and closeness to the original seems to be the main concern for broadcasters and regulators. Bearing this in mind, the authors put forward the NER model, which is designed to assess the accuracy of live subtitles regardless of the language and the country for which the subtitles are destined. This model addresses the deficiencies and weaknesses of previous models and is defined by the authors as viewer-centred since it distinguishes between different types of error (serious, standard and minor), at the same time as acknowledging that not all of them pose the same issues for viewers. The authors illustrate the easy implementation of the model with examples of respoken live subtitles in different languages and discuss the reasons motivating its rapid success in the industry. Although the focus of this research is on respoken subtitles, Romero-Fresco and Martínez Pérez argue that the model can also be applied to subtitles produced with automatic speech recognition (ASR). In this case, they warn of the critical importance of other parameters such as speed and synchronization. The latter dimension is discussed in detail by Mercedes de Castro, Luis Puente Rodríguez and Belén Ruiz Mezcua, who in turn propose a model to correct the lack of synchronization between live subtitles, respoken and automatic, and video/audio. Their contribution, entitled ‘Synchronized Subtitles in Live Television Programmes’, describes the processes involved in live subtitling from the initial audio transcription to the final reception, decoding and presentation on the viewer’s screen. They report on the results of three tests carried out to substantiate the significance and variability of the delays between subtitles and video/audio in live programmes. To compensate for potential delays, the proposed model relies on the assignation of time references to subtitles and their corresponding source audio fragments as well as on the application of a global buffering time for audio and video. Like Romero-Fresco and Martínez Pérez, the authors highlight the limitations of current ASR technology, concluding that such technology is ‘a long way from producing quality subtitles with negligible delay’.

Quality can be perceived very differently by those involved in the production and consumption of translated audiovisual products depending on their needs and expectations. As such, translation scholars might criticize and question the appropriateness of some translated programmes deemed ‘fit for purpose’ by broadcasters and media companies. Likewise, audiences might be highly critical when appraising a subtitled product as a result of its vulnerability (Díaz Cintas 2003) or because of their very different set of expectations and understanding of quality criteria. The chapter ‘Cross-fertilization between Reception Studies in Audio Description and Interpreting Quality Assessment: The Role of the Describer’s Voice’, by Emilia Iglesias Fernández, Silvia Martínez Martínez and Antonio Javier Chica Núñez, examines the quality expectations of audio description (AD) users. The authors distinguish between the a priori preferences of users and their actual quality assessment of specific audio described scenes taken from the film The Hours and set out to compare both. This is achieved through a truly interdisciplinary approach, drawing on the methodology and findings from experimental studies in interpreting quality assessment. The focus of the reception study presented in this chapter is on the perception of the nonverbal qualities of the audio describer’s voice, in particular on vocal sonority qualities and its emotional correlates. With this emphasis, the aim of the authors is to question the assumption that the describer’s voice best serves the interests of the viewers if it is kept neutral, as is often argued in official guidelines and literature on AD. Their findings show that quality expectations do not match actual quality assessment in situated contexts and that users seem to favour non-neutral vocal quality in AD. The results of this study reveal other factors to be considered in the quality assessment provided by viewers, namely their previous exposure to the practices being evaluated and the general availability of such practices.

Quality is closely related to the audience profile, an aspect that is discussed in detail in the second part of this volume entitled Targeting the Audience. This part contains papers in which the heterogeneous profile of audiences and the challenges of providing solutions to satisfy the needs of such a diverse target group are emphasized. Also focusing on AD, the opening chapter of this second part has been co-authored by Eliana P. C. Franco, Deise M. Medina Silveira and Bárbara C. dos Santos Carneiro under the title ‘Audio Describing for an Audience with Learning Disabilities in Brazil: A Pilot Study’. As the title suggests, the target audience in this study is made up of viewers with learning disabilities. The authors remind the reader that, although AD is understood as an accessibility service targeting people with visual and cognitive impairment, research carried out to date does not seem to include those with learning disabilities as potential beneficiaries of this service. To bridge this gap, the authors designed a pilot study to observe whether current AD practices, mainly for visually impaired audiences, are also able to meet the needs of people with learning disabilities. After exposing participants to a short film, both with and without AD, and having asked them to complete a questionnaire, the authors conclude that further information would be needed in order to make this film fully accessible to this specific audience. The pilot study also resulted in interesting findings as regards the different degrees of learning disability and the inability of the available official classifications to define and categorize them adequately.

In her paper ‘Analysing Redubs: Motives, Agents, and Audience Response’, Serenella Zanotti also discusses audience perceptions and reactions, but in this case redubs in Italy constitute the object of study. Although some scholars have recently given some attention to retranslation in AVT (Chaume 2007), it is a fascinating area that remains relatively unexplored. The corpus compiled by Zanotti for this study shows that redubbing is a common practice, with some films having been dubbed on as many as three different occasions. The aim of the analysis is to test the so-called retranslation hypothesis and to examine the process and effects of redubbing, the type of changes implemented in redubs, and the translational norms at work. Although it is very difficult to ascertain the motives behind some of these changes, decisions and norms and to determine the role played by all the various agents, the paper provides insights into how these could have influenced the final product. As regards audience response, this contribution claims that the practice of redubbing is often despised by viewers due to the poor quality of some retranslations or to a change of dubbing actors from one version to another. In this regard, audience preferences can be decisive when it comes to relegating a new redubbing, ‘compelling distributors to revisit their marketing strategies’. Redubbing emerges as the result of shifting needs in the target audience, but technological developments allow different perceptions of a single product. As Zanotti states, more DVD and Blu-ray editions now include both the old and the new dubbed versions, giving viewers a choice, an aspect that is explored further in the next contribution.

In ‘Subtitling in the Era of the Blu-ray’, Nicolas Sanchez reflects precisely on the customization of subtitles by viewers and customer satisfaction, which has become a priority for the audiovisual industry. He discusses the implementation of ‘remote subtitling’ in France, a technological development allowing viewers to decide the size and position of subtitles on screen in Blu-ray productions. In addition to examining the limitations and potential of this technology, the author asks whether such decisions should be left to viewers and whether audiences have the knowledge necessary to judge the best viewing conditions in subtitling. What would be the point of following specific subtitling conventions and guidelines if viewers are able to disregard these by pressing a couple of buttons on their remote control? Sanchez argues that, whereas there are many questions to consider as regards the suitability and success of this technology in a wider context, the potential of this development and the principles behind it should not be underestimated. Customization seems to be valued highly by French consumers of Blu-ray editions but, as Sanchez suggests, its importance is even greater considering the wide range of devices where audiovisual material is consumed nowadays, from large HD computer screens to tablets or smart phones. In this regard, a readable and accessible audiovisual programme would quickly become unusable and unreadable if it were not repurposed appropriately for its broadcast in a different medium.

Readability, usability, accessibility and standards are also discussed by Cristina Valdés, but this time with a focus on the World Wide Web. Her chapter, entitled ‘The MultilingualWeb (MLW) Project: A Collaborative Approach and a Challenge for Translation Studies’, emphasizes the need for best practices and quality standards in the design, management and localization of multilingual web content. Valdés outlines the contribution of the EU-funded MultilingualWeb project and maintains that multilingual websites pose a challenge to Translation Studies from a quantitative as well as a qualitative point of view. Regarding the former, the challenges lie in the vast amount of web content that requires translation and in the recent role of users as producers, and also translators, of such content. As for the latter, Valdés posits the idea that interdisciplinary collaboration and standards represent the way forward as far as enhancing the quality, accessibility and usability of the multilingual web is concerned. In line with the rest of the contributions in this section, this chapter argues that user and cultural variables are key aspects, and that reaching each target audience adequately is essential to make the World Wide Web fully international.

The third part of this volume, Mapping Professional Practices, examines professional aspects and the working conditions of audiovisual translators and provides an insight into particular cultures and contexts around the globe. Arista Szu-Yu Kuo’s contribution opens this section with an extremely detailed overview of the subtitling industry worldwide from the point of view of subtitlers. ‘Professional Realities of the Subtitling Industry: The Subtitlers’ Perspective’ presents the findings of a survey on subtitlers’ working conditions carried out in an attempt to shed light on professional practices globally. Although the results seem to be more representative of European countries due to the responses gathered, they provide an initial and very valuable survey of working conditions in other continents. The discussion touches on key aspects such as deadlines, rates, use of software and negotiation power. One of the main findings of Kuo’s study is that it is very difficult to draw general conclusions concerning these aspects owing to the broad differences in practices between countries as well as within the same country. As far as subtitling rates are concerned, the author interprets the substantial disparity reported by respondents as a prevalent global phenomenon in the subtitling industry. One of the trends emerging from the survey is that the vulnerability of subtitlers seems to have increased in recent years and that divergences between respondents seem to be less marked in countries with strong subtitlers’ associations and unions. This chapter also explores themes recurrent throughout the volume, such as the part played by research findings in our understanding of the factors influencing subtitling quality in a professional environment. In his contribution, Kristijan Nikolić highlights the use of templates as one of these factors. In ‘The Pros and Cons of Using Templates in Subtitling’, Nikolić examines the reasons behind the use of templates in the industry and provides an account of the varied terminology used to refer to this approach to subtitling. The advantages and disadvantages are considered from a subtitler’s perspective, as well as that of subtitling companies, and the discussion brings to the table issues such as quality, subtitling rates and client awareness of the specificities of subtitling and the discrepancies between languages and cultures. The author illustrates the limitations of some subtitling software programmes through a number of interesting examples, as well as the motives behind the objections to translating from templates made by some experienced subtitlers.

In the next contribution from this section, ‘Signing and Subtitling on Polish Television: A Case of (In)accessibility’, Renata Mliczak addresses the issue of accessible audiovisual programmes for the deaf and the hard-of-hearing on Polish television. The discussion revolves round the four groups influencing the provision of SDH and signing on Polish television: the audience, the actual providers, the promoters and the legislators. Although each of these groups is examined in detail, more importance is paid to the viewers since they represent the main reason for the services under study. The author concludes that, despite the fact that SDH and signing have been provided on Polish television for some time, these accessibility services are far from being satisfactory and audiences tend to look for other options including the Internet, the DVD market, cinemas and theatres. The reflections on the use of an ar...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on Contributors
• 1 Audiovisual Translation in a Global Context
• Part I Addressing Quality
• Part II Targeting the Audience
• Part III Mapping Professional Practices
• Index