1 Subtitles and language learning
Annamaria Caimi
Pavia University
Table of contents
· 1.Subtitled audiovisuals in informal and formal language-learning contexts
o 1.1Subtitles and informal foreign-language learning
o 1.2Subtitles and formal foreign-language learning
· 2.The pedagogical relevance of interlingual, intralingual and reversed subtitles
o 2.1Description of the three types of subtitles
o 2.2Subtitles as learning aids
o 2.3Interlingual standard and reversed subtitles
· 3.The translation of subtitles as a language-learning tool
· 4.Concluding remarks and a challenge for the future
· Notes
https://doi.org/10.1075/hts.4.sub2PRINTER-FRIENDLY
Handbook of Translation Studies Volume 4 (2013), pp. 167–173.
© 2013–2016 John Benjamins Publishing Company
Foreign-language learning by means of subtitled audiovisuals has been the object of scholarly study for more than four decades. Studies converge in observing that the use of subtitles facilitates linguistic and cultural comprehension, in both formal and informal settings. Karen Price (1983: 8), a forerunner of this teaching/learning practice, explains how a group of ESL students, from twenty different language and educational backgrounds, improved foreign language/culture acquisition after watching intralingual subtitled TV programmes.1
Price’s study was rapidly imitated by a number of foreign-language-teaching scholars, and at the turn of the century Henrik Gottlieb (2002) published a vast bibliography on subtitling, covering the period from 1929 to 1999. Updated lists of titles on Audiovisual translation and the pedagogical relevance of subtitled videos2 are available on the web, but a pivotal source of information for this entry is Gambier (2007). This is a comprehensive, very well-referenced overview of empirical experiments with comments backed up by scientific insights.
The rapid growth of multimedia digital technology has fostered the dissemination of e-books, articles, projects and websites on the educational value of subtitles on the Internet and other forms of social media. Also, the European Commission, through its Educational, Audiovisual & Culture Executive Agency (EACEA), has funded many projects on subtitles as a means of enhancing foreign-language acquisition.3
1.Subtitled audiovisuals in informal and formal language-learning contexts
1.1Subtitles and informal foreign-language learning
In most countries, films, TV programmes, documentaries, DVDs, together with the ever-growing range of audiovisual products supplied by the digital market, are among the most common types of entertainment that people can enjoy. Multilingual leisure-oriented viewers understand the dialogues by reading subtitles. As a result, the populations of subtitling countries, compared with those of dubbing countries, exhibit a better command of the foreign language they are accustomed to listening to (Media Consulting Group 2011: 3; Gambier 2007: 98). The primary purpose of this category of viewers is to enjoy the film/TV programme and understand what it is about. In such contexts, foreign language learning is incidental, that is, it is subconscious and unintentional.
In practice, the difference between intentional and unintentional L2 learning rests mainly with the relaxed disposition of people watching subtitled audiovisuals for entertainment. When the primary objective is learning a foreign language, viewers are consciously or unconsciously hindered by their level of anxiety, which is usually associated with the intellectual commitment of formal learning.
1.2Subtitles and formal foreign-language learning
When subtitled videos are used in teaching/learning contexts, they are usually introduced by pre-viewing and followed by post-viewing activities. This implies that learners watch the video with prefixed learning tasks in mind. The type of audiovisual material used in such contexts may be an episode from a TV series or a short extract from a film or television programme, since long viewing time reduces concentration and favours passive watching to the detriment of language-learning objectives.
These objectives may focus on pronunciation and intonation, vocabulary, idioms, syntactic structures, etc. When the viewing activity starts, learners instinctively generate interrelated cognitive processes (Caimi 2011) which make them focus on the video clip with the aim of picking up what was required by the previewing lesson.
Such processes are based on each learner’s cognitive potential as well as on his/her language/culture pre-requisites and degree of concentration. If the learning commitment is small, learners may still pick up language unconsciously, as if they were not leisure-oriented but leisure- oriented viewers.
2.The pedagogical relevance of interlingual, intralingual and reversed subtitles
2.1Description of the three types of subtitles
There are three types of subtitle combinations used in teaching/learning contexts. Interlingual (or standard) subtitles provide translation of the dialogues into the viewers’ native language. They are beneficial at all levels of language acquisition, from elementary to advanced, and can serve many language/culture goals by means of graded cross-linguistic and cross-cultural exercises (Ghia 2012: 7–48).
Reversed subtitles are interlingual subtitles the other way round, i.e. the film sound track is in the viewers’ native language and the subtitles translate dialogue into the foreign target language. They are addressed to learner-viewers and are successfully employed in L2 formal acquisition (Danan 1992).
Intralingual subtitles (bimodal, same-language, unilingual subtitles or captions) provide the transcription of dialogues in the language of the sound track. Same-language subtitles reinforce the acquisition of pronunciation, intonation, orthography, vocabulary learning, idioms, cross-cultural and cross-linguistic expressions, and are recommended for intermediate and advanced learners (Vanderplank 2010).
2.2Subtitles as learning aids
It is now taken for granted that the most common way of communicating and receiving information is by means of visual/spoken and written media. For this reason young generations are likely to be better stimulated by subtitled audiovisual learning tools than by printed books. That is why the exploitation of subtitled audiovisuals as foreign-language-learning aids has been validated by extensive research matched with careful examination of practical experiments and followed by encouraging testing results (Gambier 2007; Vanderplank 2010).
While the referential interconnections between image and text are unquestionable across the board, the acquisitional value of the different types of subtitle combinations depends on many variables and on the aims of the course design.
2.3Interlingual standard and reversed subtitles
Interlingual subtitled video clips can be released to classes of beginners, intermediate and advanced learners within a framework of pre-viewing instructions and post-viewing testing exercises, aiming to make learners grasp cultural and behavioural patterns, improve listening/viewing/reading abilities, and enhance vocabulary or syntactic learning according to their level of language competence. The learner-viewers’ acquisitional feedback also depends on how often they watch subtitled videos. The standard version of subtitled videos is usually released to beginners, who need the support of L1 mediation, or to intermediate and advanced learners to test their language/cultural feedback when submitted to the subsequent release of the same video clip with different subtitle combinations. To date, the primary function of interlingual subtitles is framed within a sociolinguistic and sociocultural perspective supported by the EU policy to spread multilingualism in contexts of unintentional or incidental learning (Gambier 2007: 99–101).
Martine Danan and a few other scholars conducted experiments using interlingual reversed subtitled videos, which proved to facilitate general comprehension and understanding of contextual meaning. In fact, students with little L2 knowledge benefited from their native language dialogues to match the meaning of the corresponding subtitles. During such pilot experiments, learners were confronted with two or more types of subtitles: for example the video clip was released with L1 audio only, then with interlingual subtitles, finally with interlingual reversed subtitles. Another group of learners watched intralingual subtitled versions instead of standard subtitled ones. The result of the experiment was that interlingual reversed subtitled videos implemented vocabulary recall and language intake at a slightly higher level than bimodal ones (Danan 1992: 497–511).
2.4Intralingual subtitles
A video clip, possibly not longer than five/ten minutes, can be released with different combinations of audio and visual input. Some experiments also include releasing the video with no sound and only subtitles or soundtrack without subtitles, but same language subtitles are by far the favourite combination for L2 intentional learners.
Almost all the researchers who conducted studies similar to Price’s (1983) broadly agree that intralingual subtitles are precious learning aids for intermediate and advanced learners because they develop word recognition, pronunciation, spelling and vocabulary building, reinforce listening and reading skills, favour the comprehension of details, stimulate conversation, and reduce learner-viewers anxiety (Vanderplank 2010: 13).
In line with the positive results of these experiments, the farsighted Indian entrepreneur and scholar Kothari (2000) exploited same-language subtitles to bridge the gap between Indian official languages and the various regional dialects. The promotion of mass reading and listening activities to facilitate literacy in India was carried out by means of subtitled TV musical programmes. Strategies based on same-language subtitles are being experimented in multilingual African regions (Gambier 2007: 99).
3.The translation of subtitles as a language-learning tool
The success of reversed subtitling, Danan wrote (1992: 407), “can be explained by the way translation facilitates foreign language encoding.” Danan’s assumption is in keeping with the revival of translation as a teaching/learning subject in foreign-language instruction. Experiments where translation plays different acquisitional roles are now developing in various directions and are well documented in the previous editions of the present publication (Gambier & van Doorslaer 2010, 2011, 2012), while the online bibliography edited by the same authors provides more than twenty thousand references on all aspects of translation studies.4
The translation of subtitles is an after-viewing activity that benefits from hearing, reading, and visual perception of images. It is based on group work where different styles of learning interact to develop a productive written skill which includes reducing, condensing, simplifying and paraphrasing the L1 or the L2, both with exercises based on standard and same-language subtitles.
For example, an L2 teaching researcher (Talavàn 2013: 123) made her learners translate dialogues into L2 subtitles with a view to focusing on the correspondence between the syntactic and semantic structure of the oral messages of the two languages involved. Another researcher (Ghia 2012: 122) gave her students tasks based on sentence transformation, completion and reordering according to the requirements of the target language, with a view to applying various translation techniques.
The EU-funded project Learning via Subtitling (LeViS 2006–2008) provides an overview of a successful endeavour replicated by the ongoing ClipFlair (2011–2014), which has extended its audiovisual didactic approach to a remarkable number of lesser-used languages.5 It provides a web platform where an online community of teachers, learners, activity authors and researchers may exchange experiences, suggestions and feedback. It is meant to be an international instrument for the dissemination of languages where users can also tackle the translation of intralingual subtitles.
4.Concluding remarks and a challenge for the future
Nowadays, the most common forms of international mass communication are based on the interdependence between sound, image and text. It is thus not surprising that recent methods for both independent and tutored foreign-language learning are based on multimedia learning tools. Internet projects meet the learner-viewers’ demand for multilingual distance foreign language acquisition at a wide variety of L2 levels, and provide subtitled audiovisuals and didactic guidelines that facilitate independent as well as tutorial learning from childhood to adulthood. For this reason, the subject of subtitles and Language learning is always in progress, attempting to broaden the parameters of its research and discover new motivating learning strategies. Now it is time to promote further experiments to test the interaction of the cognitive activities involved in media processing with the intersemiotic activity of translating subtitles.
Notes
1.Learning and acquisition are used interchangeably.
2.For online sources, see www.transedit.se/Bibliography.htm (accessed July 2013), and www.fremdsprache-und-spielfilm.de/Captions.htm (accessed July 2013).
3.See, for instance, Media Consulting Group (2011) eacea.ec.europa.eu/llp/studies/study_on_the_use_of_subtitling_en.php, and the ongoing ClipFlair (www.clipflair.net) (accessed March 2013).
4.See www.benjamins.nl/online/tsb/ (accessed July 2013).
5.For LeVis see blogs.sch.gr/plinetkk/files/2012/10/levis_sokoli_v.1.1.pdf, for ClipFair see clipflair.net/ (both accessed March 2013).
References
Caimi, Annamaria
2011“Cognitive insights into the role of subtitling in L2 learning.” In Audiovisual in Close-up – Practical and Theoretical Approaches, Adriana Serban, Anna Matamala & Jean-Marc Lavaur(eds), 113–128. Bern: Peter Lang.
Danan, Martine
1992“Reversed subtitling and dual coding theory: New directions for foreign language instruction.”Language Learning42 (4): 497–527. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467 1770.1992.tb01042.x BoP
Gambier, Yves
2007“Sous-titrage et apprentissage des langues.” In A tool for social integration? Audiovisual translation from different angles, Aline Remael & Josélia Neves(eds), 97–113. -Special issue of Linguistica Antverpiensia6. TSB
Gambier, Yves & Doorslaer, Luc van
(eds) 2010/2011/2012Handbook of Translation Studies, volume 1-3. Amsterdam/-Philadelphia: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/hts.1 BoP
Ghia, Elisa
2012Subtitling Matters: New Perspectives on Subtitling and Foreign Language Learning[New Trends in Studies 3]. Bern: Peter Lang. TSB. https://doi.org/10.3726/978 3 0353 0390 2
Gottlieb, Henrik
2002“Titles on subtitling 1929–1999.” In Cinema: Paradiso delle lingue. I sottotitoli nell’apprendimento linguistico, Annamaria Caimi(ed.), 215–397. Special issue of Rassegna Italiana di Linguistica Applicata34 (1–2).
Kothari, Brij
2000“Same language subtitling on Indian television: Harnessing the power of popular culture for literacy.” In Redeveloping Communication for Social Change: Theory, Practice and Power, Karin Wilkins(ed.), 135–46. New York: Rowman and Littlefield.
Price, Karen
1983“Closed-captioned TV: An untapped resource.”MATSOL Newsletter12 (2): 1–8.
Talavàn Zanòn, Noa
2013La subtitulación en el aprendizaje de lenguas extranjeras. Barcelona: -Ediciones Octaedro. TSB
Vanderplank, Robert
2010“Déjà vu? A decade of research on language laboratories, television and video in language learning.”Language Teaching43 (1): 1–37. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261444809990267
Webliography
Bibliography of Subtitling and Related Subjects www.transedit.se/Bibliography.htm
Bibliography: Intralingual Subtitles (Captions) and Foreign/Second Language Acquisition www.fremdsprache-und-spielfilm.de/Captions.htm
Matsol newsletter www.matsol.org/assets/documents/Currentsv12no2Fall1983.pdf
LeViS project blogs.sch.gr/plinetkk/files/2012/10/levis_sokoli_v.1.1.pdf
Study on the use of Subtitling Media Consulting Group project eacea.ec.europa.eu/llp/studies/study_on_the_use_of_subtitling_en.php
ClipFlair clipflair.net/
Handbook of Translation Studies online www.benjamins.nl/online/hts/
Translation Studies Bibliography www.benjamins.nl/online/tsb/
2. Subtitling
Jorge Díaz Cintas
Imperial College
Table of contents
https://doi.org/10.1075/hts.1.sub1► Translations: German, Spanish, French, Polish, Russian, Turkish, UkrainianPRINTER-FRIENDLY
Handbook of Translation Studies Volume 1 (2010), pp. 344–349.
© 2010–2016 John Benjamins Publishing Company
In the context of today’s multimedia society, audiovisual translation (AVT) is gaining great visibility and relevance as a means of fostering communication and dialogue in an increasingly multicultural and multilingual environment. AVT is the umbrella term used to refer to the translation of programmes in which the verbal dimension is only one of the many shaping the communication process. The concurrence of different semiotic layers through the visual (images, written text, gestures) and audio (music, noise, dialogue) channels makes the translator’s task particularly challenging in this field. Of the several modes available to translate audiovisual programmes (Gambier 2003), subtitling is arguably the most commonly used because it is cheap and fast. Other professional practices are interpreting, voiceover and dubbing.
By way of definition, subtitling consists in rendering in writing the translation into a TL of the original dialogue exchanges uttered by the different speakers, as well as of all other verbal information that is transmitted visually (letters, banners, inserts) or aurally (lyrics, voices off). Subtitling can be seen as a supplement to the original programme, which, unlike in dubbing, remains intact in the target culture for all to watch and to hear. All subtitled programmes are therefore made up of three main components: the original spoken/written word, the original image and the added subtitles. Subtitlers are expected to come up with solutions that create the right interaction among these components and they must take into consideration the fact that viewers have to read the written text at a given speed whilst also watching the images at the same time. The constraining nature of the audiovisual environment has always been brought to the fore when discussing this type of translation, leading scholars in the past to label it as an example of ‘constrained translation’ (Titford 1982) or even ‘a necessary evil’ (Marleau 1982).
1.The technical dimension
Generally speaking, subtitles do not contain more than two lines, are displayed horizontally – usually at the bottom of the screen though in some countries like Japan they can also be vertical – and appear in synchrony with the image and dialogue. The synchronisation process is known as spotting, cueing, timing or originating and it may be carried out by the translators themselves or by technicians who know the subtitling program.
The time a subtitle stays on screen depends both on the speed at which the original exchange is delivered and on the viewers’ assumed reading speed. Tradition had it that the best practice should be based on the so-called ‘6 second rule’ (Díaz Cintas & Remael 2007: 96–99), whereby two full lines of around 35 characters each can be comfortably read in six seconds. For shorter periods of time, proportional values are automatically calculated by the subtitling software, bearing in mind that no subtitle should stay on screen for less than one second so as to guarantee that the eye of the viewer can register its presence.
Although these parameters still enjoy some currency in the industry, particularly on television, the viewers’ increased exposure to reading text on screen and enormous technical advances in recent decades have brought considerable changes. The sacred rule of having a maximum of two lines in a subtitle so as to minimise their impact on the photography is being broken daily by the emergence of three, four and even five-liners, notably in the subtitling being done on the internet. The traditional positioning of subtitles at the bottom of the screen is also being challenged as they are beginning to be displayed on different parts of the screen.
Likewise, restricting the number of characters per line to 35, 39 or even 43 is not an important factor anymore. Most professional subtitling programs work now with pixels, allowing for proportional lettering, which means that subtitlers can write as much text as possible, depending on the font size being used and the actual space available on screen.
Perhaps surprisingly, viewers’ reading patterns and abilities have not been thoroughly investigated in subtitling, and there is apparently a general consensus in the profession that the 6-second rule dictates a rather low reading speed. With the advent of DVD and mobile technology, the mushrooming of screens around us, and the proliferation of audiovisual programmes, it seems fair to accept that today’s viewers are ‘better/faster’ audiovisual readers than those of previous generations. Besides the lengthening of lines, shorter exposure times and faster reading speeds are all a consequence of this belief. It is not uncommon to keep two-liners for a maximum of 5 seconds, and to apply reading speeds that hover around the 180 words per minute (wpm) or 15 to 17 characters per second (cps), as opposed to the traditional 140 wpm or 12 cps. As can be expected, all these technical changes have had a knock-on effect on the way the actual translation is carried out.
2.The linguistic dimension
Whilst respecting the technical specifications discussed above, subtitles must provide a semantically adequate account of the SL dialogue. The fact that viewers do not normally have the possibility of back-tracking to retrieve information has a great impact in the way subtitles are presented on screen. Ideally, if they are to be easily understood in the short time available, each subtitle ought to be semantically self-contained and come across as a coherent, logical and syntactical unit. To boost readability, both spotting and line-breaking ought to be carried out in such a way that words intimately connected by logic, semantics or grammar should be written on the same line or subtitle whenever possible.
Unless speakers deliver their utterances really slowly, reduction is arguably the main strategy in use by subtitlers. Reductions can be partial, where condensation of the original is paramount, and total, when part of the message is deleted. In both cases, decisions have to adhere to the principle of relevance and make sure that no information of vital diegetic value is deleted. Any solutions should take the iconic information into account and avoid translating what is explicitly conveyed through the image. Although subtitles cannot translate absolutely everything that is said, they must strive to capture the essence of what is said. As aptly put by Gottlieb (1998/2001: 247): “In subtitling, the speech act is always in focus; intentions and effects are more important than isolated lexical elements”.
The transition from oral to written poses certain challenges and raises the question of whether non-standard speech, like accents and very colloquial traits, can be effectively rendered in writing. More often than not, this type of linguistic variation is neutralised in the subtitles. Swearwords and other taboo expressions are also particularly sensitive to this media migration as there is the tacit belief that they are more offensive when starkly reproduced in text than when verbalised, which in turn tends to lead to the indiscriminate deletion of most effing and blinding in the TL subtitles.
Because of the concurrent presence of the original soundtrack and the subtitles, and especially when translating from a well-known language like English or from one linguistically close to the TL, subtitling finds itself in a particularly vulnerable situation, open to the scrutiny of anyone with the slightest knowledge of the SL. One strategy used to deal with this is for subtitles to follow, as far as possible, the syntactic structure of the source text so as to reinforce the synchronisation and to preserve the same chronology of events as in the original utterances.
A worrying practice in the industry is the recourse to English as a pivot language to translate from some languages (Czech or Japanese) into others (French or German) following an English translation rather than the original soundtrack. Errors or misunderstandings in the English translation will most likely be replicated in the other languages, and nuances and interpretations will also be filtered through English.
The imperative of having to synchronise dialogue and subtitles, the need to stay within a maximum of two lines per subtitle, and the widespread belief that the best subtitles are the ones that are not noticed, have been frequently invoked to explain why subtitlers cannot make use of metatextual devices, such as footnotes or glosses, to justify their solutions. However, this assumption seems to be being challenged by new practices, where glosses inside the subtitles and explanatory notes on top of the screen are freely used (Díaz Cintas 2005).
3.Types of subtitling
From a technical perspective subtitles can be open, when they are delivered together with the image and cannot be turned off, as in the cinema, or closed, when they are optional and can be added to the programme at the viewer’s will, as on most DVDs. The process of merging the subtitles with the images has evolved considerably over the years (Ivarsson & Carroll 1998: 12–19) and today’s main methods are laser, whereby the subtitles are burnt onto the celluloid, and electronic, whereby the subtitles are projected onto the film.
Subtitles can appear on screen as a block and off again, known as pop-on subtitles, scroll horizontally, or roll-up. According to the time available for preparation, subtitles can be pre-prepared ahead of the programme’s release, or (semi/real)live if they are produced at the same time as the programme is being broadcast.
From a linguistic point of view we can distinguish between intralingual subtitles, also known as captions in American English, where the language of the subtitles and the programme coincide and interlingual subtitles, where the spoken/written message of the original programme is translated into a TL. Bilingual subtitles are part of the latter category and are produced in geographical areas where two or more languages are spoken, as in Finland (Finnish and Swedish) or Jordan (Arabic and Hebrew).
The best known type of intralingual subtitles is aimed at audiences with hearing impairment and is widely known as subtitling for the deaf and the hard-of-hearing (SDH). They are a step forward in guaranteeing greater democratic access to audiovisual programming and, in many countries, their output is regulated by legislation. Although they share many features with standard subtitling, they also make use of some unique attributes (de Linde & Kay 1999; Neves 2005). On television, they normally change colour depending on the person who is talking or the emphasis given to certain words within the same subtitle, whilst on DVD they resort to labels to identify speakers. It is not unusualy to come across subtitles of up to three or even four lines, and accommodate more than one sepaker in the same line. Crucially, not only do they reproduce the speaker’s dialogue, but they also incorporate paralinguistic information that deaf people cannot access from the soundtrack, such as the revving of an engine, steps on a staircase, indications concerning music, laughter, or whispering. Their positioning is also important and they can be left or right justified so that speakers can be easily identified or to indicate where a given sound is coming from.
Thanks to greater social awareness, SDH is one of the forms of audiovisual communication which has undergone spectacular growth in recent years on all media. In addition to a higher turnover, with some TV stations subtitling 100% of their output, SDH has also crossed linguistic barriers and interlingual subtitling for hearing impaired audiences is now a reality on some DVDs.
4.New trends
Subtitling is so dependent on technology that any technical advances have the potential to encroach both on the subtitling process from the practitioner’s perspective as well as on the perception that viewers have of subtitling as a product. In this sense, digitisation and the availability of free subtitling software on the net have made possible the rise and consolidation of translation practices like fansubbing, which in turn are having an incidental effect on how formal conventions are applied. Subtitles have been traditionally rather humdrum in terms of positioning, font type and layout. This new way of approaching subtitles as part of a budding participatory culture is pushing the boundaries of creativity and shaking the foundations of traditional subtitling. Only time will tell whether these conventions put forward by the so-called ‘collective intelligence’ (Lévy 1997) are just a mere fleeting fashion or whether they are the prototype for future subtitling. The impetus provided by 3D technology may well open the door to more interactivity and cr3aTVty in subtitling.
Recent developments in voice and speech recognition have made possible the appearance and booming of respeaking as a professional practice to subtitle programmes that are broadcast (semi/real)live, such as the news or sports. The wider breadth and scope of genres being distributed audiovisually – corporate videos, scientific and technical documentaries with a high level of lexical repetition – makes the incipient use of translation memory systems and automated translation in subtitling a very promising development.
In terms of research, the didactic potential of subtitling to learn and consolidate a foreign language has been a particularly active line of enquiry in recent times (Díaz Cintas 2008). In an attempt to bolster their quantitative findings and gain an insight into the cognitive efforts presupposed by reading subtitles, some researchers are resorting to the application of new methodologies and tools, like corpus studies and eye-tracking.
Since the late 1990s subtitling has been a most inspiring field in which to conduct research and more recently also for netizens to communicate in cyberspace. Far from waning, this interest is still aflame and as strong as two decades ago, if not stronger.
References
Díaz Cintas, Jorge
2005“Back to the future in subtitling.” In MuTra 2005 – Challenges of Multidimensional Translation: Conference Proceedings, Heidrun Gerzymisch-Arbogast and Sandra Nauert(eds).www.euroconferences.info/proceedings/2005_Proceedings/2005_DiazCintas_Jorge.pdf[Accessed 10 May 2010]. TSB
(ed.) 2008The Didactics of Audiovisual Translation. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjaminshttps://doi.org/10.1075/btl.77 BoP
Díaz Cintas, Jorge & Remael, Aline
2007Audiovisual Translation: Subtitling. Manchester: St Jerome. TSB
Gambier, Yves
2003“Introduction: Screen transadaptation: Perception and reception.”The Translator9 (2): 171–189 https://doi.org/10.1080/13556509.2003.10799152
Gottlieb, Henrik
1998/2001“Subtitling.” In Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, Mona Baker(ed.), 244–248. London & New York: Routledge. TSB
Ivarsson, Jan & Carroll, Mary
1998Subtitling. Simrishamn: TransEdit. TSB
Lévy, Pierre
1997Collective Intelligence. Mankind’s Emerging World in Cyberspace. Transl. by Robert Bononno. Jackson: Perseus Books.
de Linde, Zoe & Kay, Neil
1999The Semiotics of Subtitling. Manchester: St Jerome. TSB
Marleau, Lucien
1982“Les sous-titres… un mal nécessaire”. Meta27 (3): 271–285 https://doi.org/10.7202/003577ar
Neves, Josélia
2005Audiovisual Translation: Subtitling for the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing. London: Roehampton University. Ph.D. Thesis. roehampton.openrepository.com/roehampton/handle/10142/12580[Accessed 10 May 2010]. TSB
Titford, Christopher
1982“Sub-titling: constrained translation”. Lebende Sprachen27 (3): 113–116.
3. Media accessibility
Aline Remael
Artesis University College
Table of contents
· 1.Accessibility, media accessibility and audiovisual translation
· 2.Central issues in media accessibility practice and research
o 2.1Content, platforms and devices
o 2.2Stakeholders, legislation and standardization
· 3.TS-linked media accessibility research
o 3.1Audio-description and audio-subtitling
o 3.2Subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing and live subtitling
o 3.3Sign language interpreting for television
· Note
https://doi.org/10.1075/hts.3.med3PRINTER-FRIENDLY
Handbook of Translation Studies Volume 3 (2012), pp. 95–101.
© 2012–2016 John Benjamins Publishing Company
1.Accessibility, media accessibility and audiovisual translation
Generally speaking, the concept of accessibility refers to the degree to which a product, service, environment, concept or even person can be used, reached, understood or accessed for a specific purpose. It also implies that the accessible product has been manipulated in some way in order to appreciate it or make it “accessible”. This is the sense in which the adjective is used, for instance, in the entry on Children's literature and translation in this handbook: “The text may be simplified in order to become more accessible […].”(my emphasis). Obviously, translation itself is a form of accessibility: it provides access to texts in a foreign language, and by extension, the culture that has generated them.
Today, however, accessibility in the more narrow sense of the word is linked with the idea of full access to our globalized world as a human right (cf. the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities). The concept in this context refers to the need to overcome barriers caused by physical and/or mental disabilities; while the combined term media accessibility covers research and practice aiming to ensure that information and entertainment disseminated via audiovisual media, including the Worldwide Web, is accessible to all. In Translation Studies (TS), accessibility is associated with translation modes such as (Media) Interpreting, Translation and the Web, hts.4.introLocalization and, especially, Audiovisual Translation (AVT), which is sometimes subsumed under Media Accessibility or occasionally renamed Audiovisual Accessibility (Díaz Cintas et al. 2007). Recent developments in the field are due to the digitization of the media, because this has exponentially increased the possibilities for rendering audiovisual content accessible.
A prime objective of accessibility research is inclusive design, i.e. designing mainstream products so as to make them accessible from their inception (Clarkson et al. 2003). However, even though the issue of accessibility is central to many forms of audiovisual translation today, the road to inclusive design is still long.
2.Central issues in media accessibility practice and research
Research and practice in AVT and media accessibility are both interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary. The disciplines involved include: text linguistics and (audiovisual) translation studies, media studies, ICT and design, engineering, cognitive psychology, social science, economics and (international) law. Much research is therefore applied project research,1 however, AVT scholars tend to focus mainly on accessible content.
2.1Content, platforms and devices
A number of components must be fully integrated if audiovisual media are to be accessible, and in compliance with quality standards (see 2.2). This includes: content (e.g. TV and radio programmes, films, social media and video games), platforms (e.g. DVDs, digital broadcast, Internet Protocol Television or IPTV, Open Internet, Mobile and Wireless Net), and devices (e.g. digital TV receivers, PCs, smartphones, tablets, and peripherals such as remote controls that are user-friendly). In other words, for a TV programme (content) to be accessible to visually impaired users, for instance, it must be audio-described (3.1), then broadcast (e.g. via digital broadcast), received and decoded by a digital television set (or another device), and activated with the help of a custom-designed remote control. Thanks to digitization, television now offers audio-description (AD, 3.1), subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing (SDH, 3.2) and sign language interpreting (SL interpreting, 3.3). Likewise, internet users can select options with or without AD, SDH or SL interpreting, when watching productions on fully accessible websites on their computers or even hand-held devices.
2.2Stakeholders, legislation and standardization
The users of accessible media constitute a heterogeneous group with many subgroups. Providing accurate figures about people with disabilities worldwide and the use they make of audiovisual media is therefore extremely difficult. The World Health Organisation states on its website that in 2005 about 278 million people had some form of hearing impairment and that 285 million people are visually impaired worldwide today. However, all countries and institutions use different classifications to define disabilities and the figures relating to the use that disabled persons make of audiovisual media are dispersed. On the one hand, a growing group of younger disabled people is technology savvy, and on the other hand, the incidence of disabilities increases with age.
Substantiated figures about who uses what media are important for research, but also to convince governments that legislation ensuring accessibility must be implemented. Providing accessible services always comes at an additional cost. Initiatives like the European Audiovisual Media Services Directive (2010) state that governments must “encourage” media companies under their jurisdiction to make audiovisual content accessible, but leave implementation to the discretion of national governments. Likewise, the Worldwide Web Consortium has issued guidelines (www.w3.org/standards/) that can serve as a basis for accessible labels everywhere, but the way in which they are implemented varies greatly.
Awareness of this state of affairs has led to an increased interest in research into standardization of both accessible content and form. Research into the standardization of platforms and devices is supported or carried out by such institutions as the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), which set up a Focus Group on Audiovisual Media Accessibility in 2011.
3.TS-linked media accessibility research
The development of standards and methods to make media content accessible, falls within the domain of AVT research. Below we consider a selection of accessibility modes in more detail, but due to limitations of space, the discussion will be limited to television. The availability of the different modes still varies greatly from country to country.
3.1Audio-description and audio-subtitling
Audio-description, video description in the USA and Canada, renders essential visual information from an audiovisual production in a verbal narration that is timed to fit between the source text dialogues and designed to interact with the aural sign systems of the source text (including music and sound effects; see Fryer 2010; Remael 2012.). In the case of foreign language films, the AD can be combined with audio-subtitling (AST), an adapted aural version of the subtitles that appear at the bottom of the screen (Braun & Orero 2010).
The target audience of AD is visually impaired users, but the service also helps people with cognitive disabilities, giving them extra tools with which to reconstruct the contents of an audiovisual production. Within the visually impaired group, only a minority is born blind, most users have lost their sight at a later age or have impaired vision, which has implications for the way in which the content is described.
AD is produced in two stages: first an AD script is written, then it is recorded and mixed. Much of the research into AD focuses on the AD script and the ways in which it functions (Braun 2008). Some national scripting guidelines exist but they remain very vague and are based on practice rather than research (the website of the Royal National Institute for the Blind offers an overview). The creation of reliable and flexible guidelines is therefore the purpose of various research projects today (see e.g. ADLAB, www.adlabproject.eu). Some research also aims to develop methods for a more judicious selection of information to be included in AD scripts using, for instance, insights from narratology (Kruger 2010; vercauteren 2012). Other research investigates what the typical features of the hybrid AD text and language are (or could be), often using corpus linguistics (see Braun 2008 for an overview). On the reception side, research looks into the limits and possibilities of the target audience processing the AD (Chmiel & Mazur 2012).
3.2Subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing and live subtitling
The entry on Subtitling provides an overview of all the forms subtitling can take today. The user group of SDH, closed captioning in the USA and Canada, which addresses access barriers of an aural nature, falls into two main categories: people who are hard of hearing or ‘deaf’ but relate to the oral language as their mother tongue, and the ‘Deaf’, who, “[…] constitute a social and linguistic minority, who use sign language as their mother tongue and read the national language as a second language.’(Neves 2008: 129).
The group that uses SDH is itself heterogeneous and the linguistic abilities of its members differ greatly. Recent research has paid special attention to SDH requirements for children (Zárate 2010 and various in Matamala & Orero 2010). Some die-hard “fallacies” related to SDH, listed by Neves (2008), still constitute the object of debate today. Pressing issues remain the need for more research into visual presentation, reading speed and linguistic formulation as well as the rendering of sounds and intonation (Neves 2010), especially with the current increase in interlingual SDH. Many (European) countries have introduced legislation on quotas that broadcasters must meet.
It is partially due to quotas, often calling for 100% SDH, that broadcasters must also subtitle live programmes such as newscasts and sports programmes. Live subtitling, now accomplished with the help of speech recognition technology, is currently the only option. Depending on the display mode (scrolling or block), the reading speed of the subtitles varies (Romero Fresco 2011). The schematic representation of block live subtitling in Figure 1 will be used to describe one version of the process.
Figure 1:
The live subtitling process (from Luyckx et al. 2010: 4)
ParaphrasePhase 1CorrectionPhase 3Phase 2RespeakerTimeRespeakeraudioSpeechrecognizerConceptsubtitleEditor/respeakerFinalsubtitleX+†TVaudioErrorsDelay†
The subtitler/respeaker listens to the audio input from the TV programme (TV audio), respeaks this input in an edited form into the speech recognition program (respeaker audio), the speech recognizer produces a concept subtitle (which in the case of scrolling subtitles is usually the final subtitle), and the concept subtitle is edited and broadcast. Errors can occur in all stages, while the sum of the subsequent actions causes a delay between the input time of the audio and the output time of the subtitle. Research topics include: determining the causes of errors and classifying them, finding ways to reduce the delay, improving the training of the speech recognition technology and the respeaker, etc. To date, the quality of speaker independent respeaking technology is insufficient to eliminate the respeaker. In addition, it would produce subtitles with extremely high reading speeds (Romero Fresco 2011).
3.3Sign language interpreting for television
The Deaf are the target audience of sign language interpreting for audiovisual media, which shares a number of features and research questions with Sign Language Interpreting and with Media Interpreting. The main additional challenges (Guitteny 2011) are: the limited space available for the insertion of the interpreter on screen, the lack of acceptance of some members of the hearing public of SL on TV, the speed with which news programmes - the main candidates for SL interpreting - are delivered, user insistence on employing (D/deaf) native speakers as well as the training and organisational issues. Moreover, some (fiction) programmes by and/or for D/deaf people, presented in sign language, constitute new challenges for delivery (McDonald 2012). Digital television offers options for closed signing that can be accessed by those who need it only, whereas the BBC iplayer, for instance, allows viewers to watch programmes with sign language interpreting (as well as AD and SDH) live on their computers or over mobile networks. In addition, the use of 3D human computer-generated models capable of producing natural-looking sign language may allow the elimination of labour-intensive work and elaborate training in the future (Olaf Looms 2011).
4.Concluding thoughts
One could conclude that the prospects for media accessibility are good, even though the task at hand is still considerable. A great need for more standardisation and legislation exists, which may be difficult to match with the heterogeneity of the target groups and the increasing complexity of contents, platforms and devices to be made accessible. However, new technologies are also offering innovative solutions. A word of caution seems warranted nevertheless: researchers in all areas of (media) accessibility must be mindful of the need to further develop accessibility for all, not merely accessibility for the young and affluent. Accessibility in developing countries too, remains a major challenge.
Note
1.CAIAC, a research Centre within Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, for instance, is composed of two complementary groups: CEPHIS from Engineering, and TransMedia Catalonia from Audiovisual Translation. (centresderecerca.uab.cat/caiac/en/content/about-us).
References
ADLAB project
2011“Audio-Description Life-Long Access for the Blind.”www.adlabproject.eu[Accessed 26 February 2012].
Braun, Sabine
2008“Audio-description research: state of the art and beyond.”Translation Studies In the New Millennium.6: 14–30. TSB
Braun, Sabine & Orero, Pilar
2010“Audio-description with audio-subtitling – An emergent modality of audiovisual translation.”Perspectives18 (3): 173–188. https://doi.org/10.1080/0907676X.2010.485687
Chmiel, Agnieszka & Mazur, Iwona
2012“AD reception research: Some methodological considerations.” In Emerging Topics in Translation: Audio Description, Elisa Perego(ed.), 57–80. Trieste: EUT. TSB
Clarkson, John, Coleman, Roger, Keates, Simeon & Lebbon, Cherie
(eds) 2003Inclusive Design. Design for the Whole Population. London: Springer.
Díaz Cintas, Jorge, Orero, Pilar & Remael, Aline
2007Media for All. Subtitling for the Deaf, Audio Description, and Sign Language. Amsterdam: Rodopi. TSB
Fryer, Louise
2010“Audio description as audio drama – A practitioner's viewpoint.”Perspectives18 (3): 205–213. https://doi.org/10.1080/0907676X.2010.485681 TSB
Guitteny, Pierre
2011“Traduction audiovisuelle et langue des signes.” In Traduction et médias audiovisuels, Adriana Şerban & Jean-Marc Lavaur(eds), 215–228. Villeneuve d’Ascq: Septentrion.
Kruger, Jan-Louis
2010“Audio narration: Re-narrativising film.”Perspectives18 (3): 231–249. https://doi.org/10.1080/0907676X.2010.485686 TSB
Luyckx, Bieke, Delbeke Tijs, Waes, Luuk Van, Leijten, Mariëlle & Remael, Aline
2010“Subtitling with speech recognition. Causes and consequences of text reduction.”Artesis Working Papers. www.artesis.be/vertalertolk/upload/docs/onderzoek/Artesis_VT_working_paper_2010-1_Luyckx_et_alii.pdf[Accessed 26 February 2012].
Matamala, Anna & Orero, Pilar
2010Listening to Subtitles. Subtitles for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. Bern: Peter Lang. TSB. https://doi.org/10.3726/978 3 0351 0147 8
McDonald, Alex
2012“The in-vision sign language interpreter in British television drama.” In AVT and Media Accessibility at the Crossroads. Media for All 3, Aline Remael, Pilar Orero and Mary Carroll(eds), 189–205. Amsterdam: Rodopi. TSB
Neves, Josélia
2008“10 fallacies about subtitling for the D/deaf and the hard of hearing.”JosTrans10, www.jostrans.org/issue10/art_neves.pdf[Accessed 26 February 2012]. TSB
2010“Music to my eyes… Conveying music in subtitling for the Deaf and the Hard of Hearing”. In Perspectives on Audiovisual Translation, Łuckasz Bogucki & Krysztof Kredens(eds), 123–145. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
Olaf Looms, Peter
2011Making Television Accessible. Report published by the International Telecommunications Union, in collaboration with The Global Initiative for Inclusive Information and Communication Technologies. Geneva: ITU.
Remael, Aline
2012“For the use of sound. Film sound analysis for audio-description: Some key issues.”MonTI4: 255–276. https://doi.org/10.6035/MonTI.2012.4.11 TSB
Romero Fresco, Pablo
2011Subtitling Through Speech Recognition: Respeaking. Manchester: St. Jerome. TSB
Vercauteren, Gert
2012“Narratological approach to content selection in audio description. Toward a strategy for the description of narratological time.”MonTI4: 207–231. https://doi.org/10.6035/MonTI.2012.4.9 TSB
Zárate, Soledad
2010“Bridging the gap between Deaf Studies and AVT for Deaf children.” In New Insights into Audiovisual Translation and Media Accessibility. Media for All 2, Jorge Díaz Cintas, Josélia Neves & Anna Matamala(eds), 159–174. Amsterdam: Rodopi. TSB
4 Journalism and translation
Luc van Doorslaer
Table of contents
· 1.Transediting and the various media
· 2.Both a creative and a re-creative practice
https://doi.org/10.1075/hts.1.jou1► Translations: Japanese, UkrainianPRINTER-FRIENDLY
Handbook of Translation Studies Volume 1 (2010), pp. 180–184. Current revision: 2016.
Previous version(s) of this article: 2011
© 2010–2016 John Benjamins Publishing Company
Particularly with regard to foreign news gathering and foreign news production, the relationship between language (knowledge) and journalism has often been stressed and described in the margins of linguistic (discursive, stylistic, pragmatic) or communication-oriented research. However, the interest for the specific position of translation, both as a process and a product in this interaction, is relatively new. Within the broader research field on translation and/in the media, various subfields can be discerned. Referring to several recent publications and making use of quantitative data, van Doorslaer 2009shows that this research domain largely focuses on the subfields of audiovisual translation, voiceover and dubbing and subtitling. The journalistic aspects of media translation as well as the position of translation in day to day journalistic work are not an explicit object of study in those subfields. In the wake of the Warwick project on ‘Translation in Global News’, however, more and more interest has arisen for news translation and other aspects related to news and translation. Valdeón (2015) provides an overview of the past fifteen years of ‘Journalistic Translation Research’. The most prominent publications of the Warwick project itself are the conference proceedings in Conway & Bassnett 2006 and above all Bielsa & Bassnett 2009, the final publication to issue from the project. It explores in particular the role of translation in so-called global news agencies (mainly AP, Reuters and AFP) as well as concrete translated news texts. Despite tendencies towards globalization and harmonization, the increasing role played by English language and even the dominance of Anglophone writing models (shorter and more direct texts), there still is an important variety in the use of different framing and translation practices, strategies and values. This variety can sometimes be traced back to the national/regional origins of the news agency or to marked choices with regard to content, for instance in the case of the ‘alternative’ IPS news agency. Since the publication of the famous MacBride report criticizing the very imbalanced news circulation in the world and the media exposure of the ‘elite countries’ (MacBride 1980), new balances were established. Nevertheless, a complex mixture of power relationships (continental, national, linguistic, political and ideological) determines important decisions and choices regarding news selection, news translation and news editing. Christina Schäffner (2008) analyzes a corpus of translated journalistic texts and political quotes that were recontextualized for the home audience (without any reference to the translation act). She shows that institutional and ideological conditions of translation production are of decisive importance in these cases of political journalism and political communication. In his case study on the Spanish BBCMundo, Roberto Valdeón (2008)discovers an underlying difference in status between Anglophone and Spanish-speaking cultures, where the importance of the former over the latter is often accentuated in the news coverage. The journalistic selectivity visible in the appropriation, translating and editing of certain materials influences the framing of world perception. Luc van Doorslaer (2009) reveals a clear correlation between the news agencies used as main sources and the countries dealt with in international news coverage. Newsrooms in Belgium mainly using AP for example, write more about the USA. Those who mainly use AFP, write much more about France. Though world news agencies may present themselves as ‘global’ nowadays, they obviously do not deny their roots. News agencies inevitably include norms linked to their national origins and this fact is reflected in their selection and de-selection principles as well as in their framing approach. So it remains an unsolved question “whether they have sufficiently disengaged themselves from their national and/or regional base in their news production” (Bielsa & Bassnett 2009: 49).
1.Transediting and the various media
Various aspects of translation can thus be found at several levels in the news process: during the initial news gathering stage (correspondents, news agencies), but also during the handling stage (editing and writing) at news agencies, (national or local) news organizations and newsrooms. Particularly the selection and de-selection principles adopted at the different stages are considerably influenced by language knowledge and (non-)translation. In many newsrooms all over the world, translation is not done by translators. But translation forms an integral part of journalistic work: a complex, integrated combination of information gathering, translating, selecting, reinterpreting, contextualizing and editing. Karen Stetting (1989) coined a term for such writing activities that include both translating and editing and that had often been referred to in later research as ‘transediting’. However, Schäffner doubts whether the term adds any explanatory power, since all transformations identified in news translation “are characteristic of translation more generally” (2012: 866).
From this perspective, it seems legitimate that a lot of research has mainly focused on the person of the journalist-translator as the crucial actor in this process of meaning-making or meaning-remaking. Based on the similarities between the daily work of translators and some journalistic work, Luc van Doorslaer introduces the term ‘journalator’ for “a newsroom worker who makes abundant use of translation (in its broader definitions) when transferring and reformulating or recreating informative journalistic texts” (2012: 1049). Kyle Conway (2008) suggests that we should no longer concentrate on the journalist himself, but rather on the larger social system in which he functions, including such aspects as the political role of journalists, or the influence of degrees of national identity on the journalists’ institutional roles.
Most of the existing research on news translation concentrates on printed and online news materials. The most important reason for this is very practical: audiovisual news items are spoken and, as a consequence, not immediately available for written textual analysis or comparison. It is usually not easy to retrieve them from the media themselves, not even for scholarly research. Contributions on the position of translation and translators in TV newsrooms have focused on the pressure, the stress and the hectic circumstances of news production with hardly any specific attention being paid to language transfer or subtitling in the news. Claire Tsai (2006), for instance, deals with TV news translators in Taiwan working under extreme time pressure. Under such circumstances, translation is a very uncomfortable activity to carry out. Such translation products are often the result of high levels of simplification or manipulation in news texts. One of the rare examples that combine and compare broadcasting and newspaper news translation can be found in Lee (2006) for the language pair Korean-English. The contribution analyzes differences in lead structures between broadcasting and newspapers. Whereas broadcast news translation prefers the use of shorter leads, this reduction in leads is not clearly identifiable in newspaper translation, where lead expansion seems to be a frequent phenomenon. Although translators fulfill their traditional roles as cultural mediators and decision makers in both contexts, newspaper translators (or newspaper journalist-translators) act more clearly as gatekeepers, taking advantage of their greater freedom compared to broadcast translation.
2.Both a creative and a re-creative practice
Except for the few cases where ‘real’ translators work in a newsroom environment, translation in journalism is hardly ever seen as ‘translation proper’ or ‘translation-as-generally-understood’. More than fifty years ago Roman Jakobson (1959) published his seminal article distinguishing between intralingual, interlingual and intersemiotic translation. Although the interest in transfer processes in a globalized world is huge and still increasing, in many of these publications translation is still considered mainly or purely linguistic transfer. Jakobson’s explicit enlargement of the object of Translation Studies is clearly present in everyday translation and editing practices in newsrooms. An internet based English telex message from a source in India that is rewritten for tomorrow’s edition of The Independent, is an example of an intralingual translation. An Italian news article in La Repubblica that is adapted for an item on the news of German public TV station ZDF, is an example of an intersemiotic translation. Despite this intralingual or intersemiotic transfer, there are a considerable number of cases outside the media in which a source text and a target text or product can be clearly identified. Most rewriting in the journalistic field is more problematic, however, as far as the status of a(n) (identifiable) source text is concerned. In many cases, several sources, or more particularly, several source texts are used when producing a new target text. Let us re-visit the last example. When ZDF wants to prepare an item on the Italian Prime Prime Minister’s policy, it would not only be based on the article in La Repubblica, but almost certainly also on earlier news items, other national and international media coverage of the topic, as well as on information or feedback from experts. Source texts are multiplied in such working procedures, and combined with information processing, various transformation, reworking and rewriting stages in order to produce one new target text. This multiplication of texts problematizes the presence and status of the source text in a ‘normal’ translational relationship. Such a situation is not unique, but rather typical of translation in journalism: the combination of a (hardly reconstructable) multi-source situation with a highly pragmatic use of translation in potentially all three object fields as described by Jakobson. Whereas Jakobson’s extension of ‘translation’ was exclusively target-text and target-situation-bound, this additional extension refers to aspects of the source-text and the source-situation. As a result of this complex combination of factors, studying the position and role of ‘translation proper’ in the day-to-day journalistic practice of text production can be seen as very challenging, but it is not necessarily rewarding. Media translation researchers are often confronted with this obstacle: in many concrete cases, it is not realistic to deconstruct a news message in order to determine which parts have been edited and which parts are likely to be the result of an interlingual translation act. Lucile Davier’s (2014) case of text production in Swiss news agencies shows the relative invisibility of multilingualism and translation in a highly plurilingual process.
Translation in the journalistic field not only has to take into account the disintegrating status of the source text, it also has to problematize the concept of authorship. In journalistic text production, translating and writing are brought together in one process that is both creative and re-creative at the same time. In most cases it is impossible to distinguish the two activities involved in this integrated process. The same goes for the two functions in a newsroom: journalists writing ‘original’ reports or journalists translating and rewriting on the basis of existing sources. This practice explains the absence of ‘real’ translators in newsrooms, a situation that is highly paradoxical: because translation is everywhere, there are no formal translator positions. The relativity of both the status of source text and authorship creates a situation that is opposite in many respects to the position of translation in traditional research on literary translation for example, where the author and the ‘sacred original’ are of central importance. This specificity is what makes the relationship between journalism and translation highly interesting for Translation Studies.
References
Bielsa, Esperança & Bassnett, Susan
2009Translation in Global News. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.1075/target.19.1.08bie BoP
Conway, Kyle
2008“A cultural studies approach to semantic instability: The case of news translation.”Linguistica AntverpiensiaNew Series7: 29–43.. https://doi.org/10.1080/14781700.2012.701938 TSB
Conway, Kyle & Bassnett, Susan
(eds) 2006Translation in global news: proceedings on the conference held at the University of Warwick 23 June 2006. University of Warwick. www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/ctccs/research/tgn/events/tgn/translation-in-global-news-proceedings.pdf[Accessed 3 May 2010].
Davier, Lucile
2014 “The paradoxical invisibility of translation in the highly multilingual context of news agencies.” Global Media and Communication10(1): 53–72. https://doi.org/10.1177/1742766513513196 TSB
Jakobson, Roman
1959“On linguistic aspects of translation.” In On translation, Reuben Arthur Brower(ed.), 144–151. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. TSB
Lee, Chang-soo
2006“Differences in News Translation between Broadcasting and Newspapers: A Case Study of Korean-English Translation.”Meta51 (2): 317–327. https://doi.org/10.7202/013259ar TSB
MacBride, Sean
1980Many voices, one world: towards a new more just and more efficient world information and communication order (Report by the international commission for the study of communication problems). London/ Paris/ New York: Unesco. unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0004/000400/040066eb.pdf[Accessed 3 May 2010].
Schäffner, Christina
2008“‘The Prime Minister said…’: Voices in translated political texts.”Synaps22: 3–25.. https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.26.11sch
2012 “Rethinking Transediting.” Meta57(4): 866-883. https://doi.org/10.7202/1021222ar
Stetting, Karen
1989“Transediting – A New Term for Coping with the Grey Area between Editing and Translating.” In Proceedings from the Fourth Nordic Conference for English Studies, G. Caie(eds), 371–382. Copenhagen: University of Copenhagen.
Tsai, Claire
2006“Translation through Interpreting: A Television Newsroom Model.” In Translation in global news: proceedings on the conference held at the University of Warwick 23 June 2006, Kyle Conway & Susan Bassnett(eds), 59–71. Coventry: University of Warwick. TSB
Valdeón, Roberto A.
2008“Anomalous news translation. Selective appropriation of themes and texts in the internet.”Babel54 (4): 299–326. https://doi.org/10.1075/babel.54.4.01val BoP
Valdeón, Roberto A
2015 “Fifteen years of journalistic translation research and more.” Perspectives23(4): 634-662. https://doi.org/10.1080/0907676X.2015.1057187
van Doorslaer, Luc
2009“How language and (non-)translation impact on media newsrooms. The case of newspapers in Belgium.”Perspectives17 (2): 83–92. https://doi.org/10.1080/09076760903125051 TSB
2012"Translating, Narrating and Constructing Images in Journalism with a Test Case on Representation in Flemish TV News.”Meta57(4): 1046-1059.https://doi.org/10.7202/1021232ar
Further reading
Bielsa, Esperanca
2007“Translation in Global News Agencies.”Target19 (1): 135–155. https://doi.org/10.1075/target.19.1.08bie BoP
Orengo, Alberto
2005“Localising News: Translation and the ’Global-national’ Dichotomy.”Language and Intercultural Communication5 (2): 168–187. https://doi.org/10.1080/14708470508668892 BoP
Schäffner, Christina
2005“Bringing a German Voice to English-speaking Readers: Spiegel International.”Language and Intercultural Communication5 (2): 154–157. https://doi.org/10.1080/14708470508668891 BoP
Valdeón, Roberto A
2005“The CNN en Español news”. Perspectives13 (4): 255–267. https://doi.org/10.1080/09076760608668996
