the cognitive demands on viewers of subtitled material

 compare and contrast reading of translated literary texts and the viewing of subtitled film.

 discuss the status of image in the subtitling process

我建议a viewer-oriented, image-bound approach to subtitling

 reading speed and the concept of loss in the reading of subtitles

 Subtitling should not be considered a second-rate, debased form of translation, as is increasingly recognized.

Subtitlers need to be visually literate and fully familiar with the language of cinema.

Subtitling involves cultural adaptation and language transfers for a single film to reach people in several different countries representing a variety of norms.

Subtitles thus lead to imperfect perception of the image that is the core component of the film.

that subtitles unavoidably disrupt or even halt the process of image reading.

 the reading speed of viewers has been taken as a yardstick for the maximum number of words in writing subtitles.

Visual attention can thus shift away from image reading to focus on reading the subtitles.

The basic unit of a film is a frame, a series of frames is a shot, several shots make a scene and scenes make up the sequences that together constitute the film. The dialogue joins these components up like beads on a single thread.

与其他形式的语际转换不同，有效的字幕翻译需要认识到媒体的制约因素，并采取明显以受众为中心的方法。这意味着最终产品的设计必须考虑两个基本因素：

1） 观众坐在影院或电视机前欣赏电影的需求和能力。字幕作为一种工具服务于这些观众，使图像故事易于理解，从而帮助他们阅读图像。也就是说，字幕必须帮助观众尽可能接近源语言观众对图像故事的体验。字幕并不是为了它们自己而存在的，图像当然也不是为了说明字幕而存在的。

2） 视听媒体的特殊性，最重要的是，它们的短暂性（Larsen，1993:213），这需要字幕来调整翻译策略和重建原始视听环境。

 unlike other forms of interlingual transfer, effective subtitling requires recognition of the constraints of the media and an approach clearly centered on the audience. This means that the final product must be designed with two fundamental considerations in mind:

1) The demands and capacities of the viewers sitting down to enjoy the film in the theater or in front of their TVs. Subtitling serves these viewers as a tool to make the image-story comprehensible and thus help them read the image. That is, the subtitles must help the viewers come as near as possible to the experience the source-language viewers have of the image-story. The subtitles are not there for their own sake, and image is certainly not there to illustrate them.

2) The specificities of the audio-visual media and, most importantly, their transitory nature (Larsen, 1993: 213), which require subtitles to adapt translation strategies and reconstitute the original audiovisual situation.

 

Subtitlers need to be visually literate and fully familiar with the language of cinema as well as completely fluent in the target language. Beyond that, they need talent and creative flair to encapsulate the function of each segment of dialogue in the fewest possible words. And understanding that function in the particular situation concerned often calls for repeated, attentive viewing.

In conclusion, I insist that good subtitling means first and foremost brevity to give image, and the viewer, pride of place (4). Reid, as an experienced subtitler (1987, as cited by Gottlieb, 1993: 273), defines this as "deciding what is padding and what is vital information." I would suggest that, more often than not, the image carries that vital information—and that is where we should look for it.

字幕演员需要有视觉素养，完全熟悉电影语言，并且完全流利地使用目标语言。除此之外，他们还需要天赋和创造性才能，以尽可能少的语言概括每段对话的功能。而要理解这种功能在特定情况下的作用，往往需要反复仔细观察。

总之，我坚持认为，好的字幕首先意味着简洁，让图像和观众感到自豪（4）。里德是一位经验丰富的字幕演员（1987年，Gottlieb引用，1993:273），他将其定义为“决定什么是填充，什么是重要信息”我想说的是，通常情况下，图像承载着这些重要信息，这是我们应该寻找的地方。