The number of studies addressing non-professional or amateur subtitling or fansubbing has increasingly multiplied over the past years, underlying its relevance in the present world. This is partly ...because a growing number of audiences worldwide now watch TV series and films with subtitles by amateur subtitlers, which are freely shared online, and Iranian viewers are certainly included. In Iran, to get around the “cultural gate-keeping” policy advocated and strictly enforced by the state in the national media system, from the early 2010s onward, numerous Persian-language websites have embarked on a new initiative whereby original, especially American tv series and films are made available for download together with their Persian subtitles. Despite the upsurge of this phenomenon in the Iranian context, there is limited literature and research on Persian non-professional subtitling. To fill this knowledge gap, this article aims to examine and analyze the different practices that are closely associated with Persian amateur subtitling. This includes building a profile of Iranian amateur subtitlers, along with an account of their working process, followed by a description of fansubbed products. The data are gathered using an open-ended questionnaire with a criterion sample of Iranian non-professional subtitlers, a survey of Iran-based video and subtitle sharing websites, and a close examination of the common features found in fansubbed Persian products, including reading speed and fansubbers’ experimentation with the original.El sistema de subtitulación aficionada iraní: Una investigación cualitativaResumenLa cantidad de estudios que abordan la subtitulación no profesional o aficionada, o fansubbing, se ha multiplicado en los últimos años, lo que subraya su relevancia en el mundo actual. Esto se debe en parte a que un número creciente de espectadores en todo el mundo ahora ve series de televisión y películas con subtítulos compartidos en línea por subtituladores no profesionales e Irán no es una excepción. Desde principios de 2010 en adelante, en Irán, numerosos sitios web en lengua persa se han embarcado en una nueva iniciativa para sortear la política de "filtrado cultural" —defendida y dirigida estrictamente por el Estado en el sistema de medios de comunicación nacional—, en la cual series y películas, especialmente estadounidenses, se comparten para descargar con subtítulos en persa. A pesar del aumento de este fenómeno en el contexto iraní, existe poca literatura e investigación sobre la subtitulación persa no profesional. Para llenar este vacío, este artículo busca examinar y analizar las diferentes prácticas estrechamente asociadas a la subtitulación persa. Esto incluye construir un perfil de los subtituladores no profesionales iraníes, junto a una descripción de su proceso de trabajo, seguida de una descripción de los productos subtitulados por aficionados. Los datos se recopilan mediante un cuestionario abierto con una muestra de criterios tomados de los subtituladores no profesionales iraníes, una revisión de los sitios web para compartir subtítulos y videos en Irán, y un examen detallado de las características comunes a los productos subtitulados por aficionados a la lengua persa, incluyendo la velocidad de lectura y la experimentación de los subtituladores aficionados con el original.Palabras clave: subtitulación no profesional, subtitulación aficionada, subtituladores aficionados, subtitulación persa, IránFecha de recepción: 30/04/2019Fecha de aceptación: 30/06/2019¿Cómo citar este artículo?Ameri, S. y Khoshsaligheh, M. (2019). Iranian Amateur Subtitling Apparatus: A Qualitative Investigation. Mutatis Mutandis. Revista Latinoamericana de Traducción, 12(2), 433-453. doi: 10.27533/udea.mut.v12n2a08
This study investigates Netflix translation of English movie lyrics into Arabic. It examines and categorizes the subtitles of the movie lyrics based on the translation options proposed by Franzon. ...Translation options refer to the different methods or approaches a translator can use when translating a song. A parallel corpus of 60 lyrics extracted from 10 musical movies was compiled by aligning the English script and Arabic subtitles. The researchers found that Netflix’s subtitlers employed four options for rendering English lyrics into Arabic. These are neglecting the music in translating the lyric (literal subtitling), which was used in rendering 60% of the investigated lyrics, not translating the lyrics (deletion), which was observed in 17% of the cases, and adapting the music to the translation (esthetic subtitling) was followed in rendering only five lyrics (8%). Finally, incorporating the three previous options (blended subtitling), which was adopted in subtitling 15% of the investigated data. This study recommends further research on the audience reception of the different subtitling options of lyrics. The findings of the current study can be useful for subtitlers and translation students, especially those interested in literary translation and musical movie translation.
Despite the fact that subtitling is the most prominent form of audiovisual translation (AVT) in the Arab World, few training centers and academic institutions prepare subtitlers for the industry. The ...present paper sheds light on one of the thorny issues that Arab subtitlers often encounter, namely that of translating metaphorical expressions into English. In particular, it investigates how fourteen students enrolled in the MA program in Audiovisual Translation at Hamad Bin Khalifa University dealt with Arabic metaphors in their subtitling tasks. The students were asked to subtitle two extracts from the famous Syrian series Maraya, and write a commentary on the most problematic issues they encountered during the process. Drawing mainly on Pedersen's (2017) translation strategies for metaphors, the analysis reveals that the students resorted to four strategies: converting metaphor to sense, reproducing the same image in the target language (TL), replacing the image in the source language (SL) with a standard TL image and literal translation. It is also noted that some students faced issues with the Syrian dialect spoken by the original characters of the series, and this resulted in an inaccurate or even in some instances incorrect translation. It is recommended that during their training students should be exposed to more audiovisual materials that contain challenging metaphorical expressions, and should be encouraged to research and read relevant literature on the topic. This will qualify them to become professional subtitlers with a strong academic background, and will certainly improve the quality of their subtitling.
•“It is recommended that during their training students should be exposed to more audiovisual materials that contain challenging metaphorical expressions, and should be encouraged to research and read relevant literature on the topic.”.•“This paper contributes to the literature on Arabic-English subtitling by specifically investigating the strategies adopted by subtitling students when rendering metaphors from Arabic (mother tongue) into English, bearing in mind the technical and cultural constraints of the medium.”.•“Students were also encouraged to read a number of academic papers on metaphors, and the difficulties involved in subtitling them, and the most commonly-adopted strategies in transferring them into other languages.”.•“Finally, audiovisual translation students need to be more frequently exposed to the target culture, especially if it is significantly distant from their own. This exposure would help them select more natural equivalents, which would provide target viewers with a vivid and more accurate account of both the original culture and the characters presented on screen.”.
The researchers in Interpreting Studies have underrated the importance of interpretation strategies in interpretation courses at the university level in the Iranian context. As a mixed-method study, ...the present study mainly aimed at discovering the subtitling strategies used in interlingual subtitling and bilingual subtitling by translation students. The researchers selected 30 homogeneous students majoring in Translation Studies which were divided into two experimental groups. During the treatment phase, the researchers worked with each group's students on subtitling strategies on a comedy film, following Peterson's (2005) strategies. The results of the post-tests confirmed that there was a significant difference for interlingual subtitling since the students’ scores increased significantly from the mean score of 24.53 to the mean score of 27.66 as well as for bilingual subtitling since the students’ scores increased significantly from the mean score of 22.80 to the mean score of 27.13. However, the results revealed no significant difference in students' interpretation scores for interlingual and bilingual subjects. The results of the interviews also supported the effectiveness of audio-visual activities on oral translation. Translation students should pay attention to how they foster their interpreting competence and find the type of subtitling that is more beneficial.
Previous multimedia research suggests that learning from an academic video in a foreign language may represent a boundary condition for the redundancy principle, such that subtitles assist learning, ...especially for low-proficiency learners.
The effects of the subtitle language and the learners’ foreign language proficiency level plus any interaction between the two on learning from a subtitled video were examined.
In an online study, 131 francophone students allocated to three English proficiency levels studied a video lecture under three conditions: subtitles in English (same as audio), subtitles in French or no subtitles (control). They were then asked to provide subjective ratings (cognitive load and interest) and perform comprehension tasks.
Neither a main effect of the condition nor interactions were found on any measure. However, there was a main effect of language proficiency on inference and transfer outcomes as well as on extraneous cognitive load.
The findings did not provide evidence for any effect of subtitles in the same or native language, but confirm the leading role of foreign language proficiency in content learning from video in a foreign language.
•Enabling video subtitles did not affect content learning in a foreign language.•Subtitles' language had no effect on cognitive load and situational interest.•Language proficiency influenced comprehension and extraneous cognitive load.•Subtitles in any language did not compensate for low language proficiency.
People watch subtitled audiovisual materials more than ever before. With the proliferation of subtitled content, we are also witnessing an increase in subtitle speeds. However, there is an ongoing ...controversy about what optimum subtitle speeds should be. This study looks into whether viewers can keep up with increasingly fast subtitles and whether the way people cope with subtitled content depends on their familiarity with subtitling and on their knowledge of the language of the film soundtrack. We tested 74 English, Polish and Spanish viewers watching films subtitled at different speeds (12, 16 and 20 characters per second). The films were either in Hungarian, a language unknown to the participants (Experiment 1), or in English (Experiment 2). We measured viewers' comprehension, self-reported cognitive load, scene and subtitle recognition, preferences and enjoyment. By analyzing people's eye gaze, we were able to discover that most viewers could read the subtitles as well as follow the images, coping well even with fast subtitle speeds. Slow subtitles triggered more re-reading, particularly in English clips, causing more frustration and less enjoyment. Faster subtitles with unreduced text were preferred in the case of English videos, and slower subtitles with text edited down in Hungarian videos. The results provide empirical grounds for revisiting current subtitling practices to enable more efficient processing of subtitled videos for viewers.
Media Accessibility researchers who analyze existing subtitled materials or who create them in the lab for experimental purposes often report on the average subtitling speed of their samples as a ...measure to describe the rate at which their materials were delivered to viewers. However, they not always describe the methodology behind their calculations, which may be problematic because the literature shows no uniformity in the way that the average subtitling speed is estimated. This paper delves into the notion of average subtitling speed as used in Media Accessibility research. It first looks at the role of subtitling speed in guidelines issued by the industry and regulators. Then it moves on to explore how the average subtitling speed is approached in the scholarly literature, which shows three different methods to calculate this parameter. The comparability and interchangeability of those methods is then analyzed from a statistical standpoint. A reflection follows on the use of the average subtitling speed as a measure to inform about the speed of subtitling samples, before concluding with some methodological recommendations that may help improve the way that the average subtitling speed is reported in scholarly works.
The demand for intralingual subtitles for television and video content is increasing. In Finland, major broadcasting companies are required to provide intralingual subtitles for all or a portion of ...their programming in Finnish and Swedish, excluding certain live events. To meet this need, technology could offer solutions in the form of automatic speech recognition and subtitle generation. Although fully automatic subtitles may not be of sufficient quality to be accepted by the target audience, they can be a useful tool for the subtitler. This article presents research conducted as part of the MeMAD project, where automatically generated subtitles for Finnish were tested in professional workflows with four subtitlers. We discuss observations regarding the effect of automation on productivity based on experiments where participants subtitled short video clips from scratch, by respeaking and by post-editing automatically generated subtitles, as well as the subtitlers’ experience based on feedback collected with questionnaires and interviews.
Lay summary
This article discusses how technology can help create subtitles for television programmes and videos. Subtitles in the same language as the content help the Deaf and the hard-of-hearing to access television programmes and videos. They are also useful for example for language learning or watching videos in noisy places. Demand for subtitles is growing and many countries also have laws that demand same-language subtitles. For example, major broadcasters in Finland must offer same-language subtitles for some programmes in Finnish and Swedish. However, broadcasters usually have limited time and money for subtitling. One useful tool could be speech recognition technology, which automatically converts speech to text. Subtitles made with speech recognition alone are not good enough yet, and need to be edited. We used speech recognition to automatically produce same-language subtitles in Finnish. Four professional subtitlers edited them to create subtitles for short videos. We measured the time and the number of keystrokes they needed for this task and compared whether this made subtitling faster. We also asked how the participants felt about using automatic subtitles in their work. This study shows that speech recognition can be a useful tool for subtitlers, but the quality and usability of technology are important.
Translators face some problems when they translate swear words and taboo expressions, as they belong to different cultures and they have different impacts on the audience. Although some studies ...examined the problems faced in translating swear words and how to deal with them, little is known about studies that examined the strategies employed in translating such words and expressions from English into Arabic. Therefore, this study examines the strategies employed in translating such words and expressions from English into Arabic in the “Training Day” movie; and to assess the quality of subtitling these expressions. Samples from the movie were selected and analyzed. The results of the study showed that the subtitler used different strategies to subtitle swear and taboo words and expressions. Two of the most common strategies were found to be translating the swear and taboo words euphemistically, and by omission. As regards, the quality of the subtitles, they were found to be of good quality. This study concludes by proposing a model for subtitling swear words and Taboo expressions.
Subtitling; Swear words; Taboo words, Subtitling strategies; Quality assessment; Training Day movie; Model for subtitling.
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