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As the first chapter has briefly illustrated, televisual dialogue has specific characteristics and functions. These, therefore, should be transposed in the translated version of the audiovisual product in order to obtain the same effect on the audience the original writer(s) intended to. However, subtitling is a form of audiovisual translation that presents many constraints – especially regarding the space the translation should occupy – which render this task difficult, and the main task of this chapter is to clarify their nature.
2.1 Audiovisual translation and subtitling
The expression “audiovisual translation” refers to all those translation techniques that aim to transfer the original dialogues of an audiovisual product into another language. Subtitling is one of such techniques, and it is an example of what Perego (2005) calls titolazione, which consists in preserving the original dialogue and adding a transcription. In particular, Gottlieb (2001b:
87) defines it as “the rendering in a different language of verbal messages in filmic media, in the shape of one or more lines of written text presented on the screen in sync with the original message”.
He also identifies five parameters which must be present at the same time and which distinguish subtitling from the other forms of audiovisual translation. It is in fact: a) written, b) additive, c) immediate, d) synchronous, and e) polymedial. It is additive because the translated text is added to the film and is present at the same time with both the original dialogue and the soundtrack; it is immediate and synchronous because it is displayed at the same time as the dialogue and gives no possibility of re-reading what has been displayed before; finally, he defines it as polymedial because it is only one of the transmission channels of the message, which is conveyed also through the video and the audio (Gottlieb, 1992).
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As all forms of audiovisual translation, subtitling presents advantages and disadvantages. Its most significant benefit is surely the fact that the source language is not distorted in any way, but it is also praised because it can be considered as an important language-teaching tool, as the original dialogue is always present and accessible, and because it costs less than dubbing.
It however presents some disadvantages, in particular the fact that the effort of reading and listening at the same time may be disorienting for the viewer – even though subtitles nowadays are becoming more and more ‘user friendly’.
Another negative aspect is the simplification of the language: simple lexis is preferred to more complex words, and punctuation is conventionalised.
2.2 Characteristics of subtitles
While creating subtitles for any type of audiovisual product, the subtitler and/or the translator must take into consideration a number of technical constraints.
First of all, the written text has to be shorter than the audio, not only because of the limited space available, but also because the viewer needs the necessary time to read the captions and at the same time remain unaware that he or she is actually reading. Therefore, the convention presuppose that subtitles should consist in one or two lines of 30 to 40 characters, which are generally displayed at the bottom of the screen; care is taken for the upper line in two-line subtitles to be shorter than the lower one, so as to keep eye movement to a minimum.
The letters are usually white, spaced proportionally with a grey-coloured shadow, and the exposure time of each subtitle should be enough to permit comfortable reading, thus they generally remain on screen from three to five seconds for one line, and four to six for two lines. A longer time on the screen would imply further reduction in the following ‘sub’, so it should be avoided.
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As regards punctuation, there are general criteria specifically referred to subtitling, but they are not considered as strict rules. However, they have a fundamental role in helping the viewer understand the contents of an audiovisual product. The punctuation marks which possess specific syntactic, semantic and rhythmic values in subtitling are full stop, comma, semicolon, colon, suspension points, question mark and exclamation mark. Dashes are generally used to distinguish each character’s intervention. Other graphic devices that can be employed are the type and dimension of characters: capital letters usually indicate words or phrases uttered loudly, while italic is generally used for distant voices or voice-offs.
Another crucial requirement which, according to Perego (2008), should be taken into consideration when creating subtitles is segmentation. Because of the fact that there seem to be no unanimously recognized and valid criteria, segmentation is often left to the subtitler’s expertise and common sense.
However, this often leads to arbitrary broken lines, which can compromise the viewer’s text processing and render the meaning more difficult to understand:
respecting the syntactic structure of the target language, in fact, helps the viewer remain focused. In particular, at phrase level Perego underlines the importance of reducing to a minimum the cases of determiner-head or pre- modifier-head splitting (1), and the fact that verb groups are supposed to maintain their own graphic consistency – e.g. the main verb and its auxiliaries should not be disjoined over different lines (2).
(1) Ho visto il film di Fellini martedì scorso. Non è uno dei suoi migliori.
I saw the Fellini film last
Tuesday. It is not one of his best (Perego, 2008: 9) (2) Glielo dirò, ma forse dovrai
accontentarti delle patatine.
I’ll tell him, but perhaps you’ll have to
be satisfied with chips (Perego, 2008: 12)
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At clause level, on the other hand, Perego noticed arbitrary text segmentation in the presence of coordinators and subordinators, which are often separated from the clause they introduce (3):
(3) Come puoi fare la marmellata e fingere che non sia successo niente?
How can you make jam and
pretend nothing happened? (Perego, 2008: 12)
2.3 Translation strategies
As pointed out by Perego (2005) the translational dimension is just one of the three aspects which characterise the subtitling process – the other two being the reduction process and the diamesic modification the original text is subjected to – even though the public recognises it as the most prominent. It is therefore marked by peculiar characteristics and communicative purposes, as well as by specific translation strategies, among which simplification and textual reduction seem to be the most frequent.
Following the same line, Antonini (2015) identifies three principal operations that the translator must carry out in order to obtain effective subtitles: elimination, rendering and simplification. Elimination consists in cutting out all those elements that do not modify the meaning of the dialogue, such as hesitations, false starts and redundancies, as well as removing any information that can be understood from the visuals. Rendering refers to dealing with features such as slang, dialect and taboo language, which are often eliminated. Finally, simplification consists in condensing and fragmenting the original syntax to promote comfortable reading.
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