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SPA traducción audiovisual - investigación |
contents
Introduction | History of AVT | AVT modalities | Technical and professional aspects | Linguistic aspects | Multilingualism | Text genres, discourse analysis and multimodality | Problems of audiovisual translation: Norms, techniques and constraints | The impact of digitalization | Accessibility and AVT | Video game localization | AVT didactics and learning languages through AVT | Potential for research
Audiovisual translation (AVT) is a professional activity covering all types of linguistic and semiotic transfer between audiovisual texts. Although its arrival on the academic agenda was relatively recent –at the end of the twentieth century– the explosion of modalities, platforms, electronic devices, new windows, consumer and interaction options and trends has led to a dramatic rise in attention to the subject from professionals, trainers and researchers in a broad range of fields. As a result, AVT has gone from an incipient, marginal area of interest to one of the most important branches of translation studies. In this entry, we present a broad picture of the areas to which AVT researchers have paid most attention, as well as other potential fields of study now ripe for development: from the history of AVT and the features of the various modalities, to its professional and didactic application, by way of integrating video game accessibility and localization or the impact of digitalization in the production, transfer and consumption of these texts.
Despite the extensive literature on the history of film, there is little research on the history of AVT describing the role of translation in the globalization of cinema and the reception of foreign films in importing countries. Knowledge of this history and its influence in AVT processes is essential to our understanding of modern practices: from the birth of the silent movie and the first intertitles (and their translations) and later, the early subtitles, the shift to the ‘talkies’ and initial approaches to film distribution in other countries through multilingual or dubbed films, the triumph and consolidation of dubbing, voice-over and subtitling, up to the arrival of television and the various iterations of home video (VHS, DVD, Blu-Ray, etc.). And that is before we come on to the explosion of the internet and video on demand (VOD), devices such as smartphones and tablets or the rise of 3D cinema and the necessary transformation of AVT conventions, together with other formats such as video games, all of which call for new ways of approaching dubbing and subtitling.
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| Intertitles, the trigger of audiovisual translation. |
In recent decades, several interesting studies have shed light on aspects such as the function of AVT in film over the years, the influence of technological changes, the reasons why a certain AVT modality is chosen over another in some geographical areas or political regimes, or the explanations underlying the different conventions that regulate AVT practice around the world. Authors whose groundbreaking work has contributed to developing this field of study include Izard (1992), Ávila (1997), Chaves (2000) and Ballester-Casado (2001). Notable research in the last decade includes work by Gutiérrez Lanza (2012, among many others) on Spain under Franco, Fuentes-Luque (2012, among others) on Latin America and Cornu (2014) on France, as well as collections of articles compiled by Martínez-Sierra (2012a) and O’Sullivan and Cornu (2019). The first of these collections provides a critical review of the discipline in which the article authors assess the past, describe the present and predict the future of AVT. The second is the first book devoted entirely to the study of the history of AVT on a global scale, spanning the period from the silent movies up to the 1950s, and exploring topics such as linguistic transfer, editing, censorship and paratextuality, among others.
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| Laks (1957) Le sous-titrage de films. |
Three decades after Laks (1957) self-published the first book on subtitling and twelve years after the first monograph on dubbing (Fodor 1976), Mayoral, Kelly and Gallardo (1988) breathed new life into this field of research with their valuable introduction of the concept of “subordinate translation” to define AVT in particular, a concept that they adapted from the term “constrained translation”, coined by Titford (1982) specifically for the modality of subtitling. After this turning point, various authors began to write about the specifics of dubbing and subtitling (Luyken, Herbst, Langham-Brown et al. 1991), and at the same time, called for the analysis of AVT as an independent field of study, distinct from literary translation (Herbst, 1987, focused on the question of synchronies, whereas Delabastita, 1989, analysed translations according to the cinematographic codes of audiovisual text). Zabalbeascoa (1993), the first author to develop the concept of constraints and build on it with the functionalist concept of priorities, contributed to laying the foundations of AVT as an area of study both in Spain and internationally. These authors approached AVT by identifying and describing the specific characteristics of the audiovisual texts (previously examined in the area of communications studies) and how they relate to the translation process, concluding that this translation macromodality needed its own research methodology. In the following sections, we review many of the aspects that have attracted researchers’ interest and that are inherent to the main modalities of AVT.
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Technical and professional aspects
One prolific line of research is that of professional practice. Interest was especially high in the early stages of this branch of study when, in order to devise a valid methodological framework to explain the norms of dubbing and subtitling, the industrial process –what happened and how– had to be taken into consideration. As well as technological, sociological, legal and economic aspects, other factors examined include the market, fees, working conditions and the agents involved in the chain of production. Among the most recent and up-to-date contributions are the manuals by Díaz-Cintas in the field of subtitling (Díaz-Cintas and Remael 2007, among others); manuals by Chaume (2012) on dubbing and by Martínez-Sierra (2012) on AVT; an update of the process by Ferrer (2016), who revises Karamitroglou’s (2000) foundational model of analysis; Spiteri-Miggiani’s (2019) most recent work, which provides a detailed explanation of all the steps in the current process of translation for dubbing from a truly professional and international perspective; and the collaborative publications by Cerezo, Chaume, Granell et al. (2016) and Torralba, Tamayo, Mejías-Climent et al. (2019), two volumes that map the conventions of dubbing and subtitling in Spain through interviews and surveys with the agents involved in the process.
As for other modalities of AVT, Franco, Matamala and Orero (2010) examine the professional and technical aspects of voice-over, particularly the synchronization process; Mateo (2007, among many others) describes the characteristics of surtitling, a form of AVT used mainly in opera and theatre; and Romero-Fresco’s (2011) work examines respeaking.
As well as examining and describing the AVT process, another broad area of research is concerned with linguistic issues, particularly in the language of dubbing and subtitling. In the case of dubbing, we refer to a kind of “prefabricated orality”, written to be read as though it were a spontaneous oral register in fictional texts. This register is known as dubbese in English, doppiaggese in Italian and synchronien in French, and as such it can be described using the four traditional levels of language: phonetic, morphological, syntactic and lexical. For many years the label dubbese has had negative connotations. Dubbing language sounded artificial because it was influenced by the original text and language, which confined its definition to the analysis of calques and the use of anglicisms in dubbing and subtitling (Gottlieb, 2001). However, today the term is understood in a much broader sense: by considering it as a register, dubbing language has its own calques, but it is also determined by the specific characteristics of audiovisual language and by the legacy of dubbing history. Additionally, many of its features follow the norms of the target language (including the language used in previous dubbings), rather than those of the source text.
In this field, the first contributions include those of Chaume (2001, in which he proposes the term “prefabricated orality” to refer to this register), Romero-Fresco (2006, among many others, in which he proposes replacing the term orality with naturalness), Freddi and Pavesi (2009), Baños (2014, 2016, among many others), Pavesi (2014, part of a long history of essential contributions on translation routines and doppiaggese), and most recently, the work of Marzà and Prats (2018), among many others, particularly authors analysing dubbing in Catalan (Bassols, Rico and Torrent, Izard, Matamala, Santamaria, Chaume, Zabalbeasoca, etc.) and also in Italian (Bruti, Spadafora, Freddi, Monti, Spiteri-Miggiani, etc.).
One broad, interesting niche area that remains to be explored is that of “neutral Spanish”. This is also an artificial language register that combines features of the most widely used Spanish dialects, mainly American, that emerged in the first dubbings made in Hollywood. It later became an economical way of producing a single version for the whole Spanish-speaking world which, as no one geographic variation predominates, no regions are excluded. While this non-existent register failed to take hold in Spain, (although it did not disappear until the 1990s), it did become established in Latin America, where Scandura (2020) has examined whether its survival may be related to questions of censorship and patronage.
Unlike the case of the language of dubbing, little research has explored the language of subtitling. Many of the criticisms levied at subtitles are grounded on their lack of orality markers (for example, dialect features) and that the translations tend to stick close to the standard register, which subtitlers attribute to the constraints imposed by the medium and the need to limit the text. There are, however, a few studies on this translationese in subtitling, such as the one by Bartoll (2012), who analyses how registers and dialects are expressed in subtitles.
Another field ripe for AVT research is the translation of multilingual films and series. Corrius (2005) pioneered the concept of L3 –or third language– in audiovisual transfer, in addition to the two languages involved in the translation: the source text (L1) and the target text (L2). L3 refers to any other language that appears in one or both texts. Several authors have followed this research stream, proposing different ways of representing L3 in the translation, particularly when L3 coincides with L2. De Higes (2014) makes a descriptive, systematic study of the translation of L3 into Spanish, a line now followed by various authors with a descriptive, multimodal methodology to investigate, on the one hand, the multilingualism in each stage of the dubbing process, and on the other, the ideological reasons underlying the representation of multilingualism in source texts and in their translations (De Bonis, Baldo, Sanz-Ortega, Zabalbeascoa, among others).
Text genres, discourse analysis and multimodality
As well as exclusively linguistic aspects, AVT research also adopts discursive approaches in order to show the ideological reflection in choice of language. Martínez-Sierra (2008) used this type of pragmatic approach in dubbing research, especially in work related to humour. His discursive focus and semiotic analysis of images gives us a holistic understanding of how humour is transferred between languages and cultures. In turn, research into audiovisual genres and translation has also gained academic ground through studies aiming to identify the specific characteristics of certain audiovisual genres and relate them to the translation process. Agost (1999) provides a classification of audiovisual genres based on Hallidayan principals with implications for translation. Other authors focus on specific genres: sitcoms and television series, cartoons, documentaries, reality shows and westerns.
The concept of multimodality has proved pivotal to our understanding of AVT in general, with outstanding contributions from Chaves (2000), Taylor (2003), Chaume (2004, 2012), Díaz-Cintas and Remael (2007), Perego (2009), Martínez-Sierra (2008, 2012b, among others), Martí-Ferriol (2010), Santamaria, Bassols and Torrent (2011), Martínez-Tejerina (2016) and recently, the special issue InTRAlinea 19, coordinated by Martínez-Sierra and Cerezo (2017), in which authors build bridges between film studies and translation studies. These contributions seek to decipher the varied signifying codes present in audiovisual texts and link them to the specific problems of AVT.
Problems of audiovisual translation: Norms, techniques and constraints
Analysing the problems of translation in the fields of dubbing and subtitling is a never-ending task, and most studies tend to approach them bearing in mind the limitations imposed by the media and the audiovisual constraints that condition the translation solutions in each AVT modality. Research has been carried out through this lens into, for example, humour (in the Spanish arena, studies by Zabalbeascoa, Fuentes-Luque, Martínez-Sierra, Botella and Martínez-Tejerina have laid the foundations for analysis of translating humour, as well as the recent special edition of MonTI 9, edited by Martínez-Sierra and Zabalbeascoa 2017; of note at an international level are works by Attardo, Chiaro, Delabastita, Dore and Vandaele, to name but a few); linguistic variation (doctoral theses by Arampatzis and Romero-Ramos on dialects and by Soler and Ávila-Cabrera on offensive language; Ellender’s monograph); film titles (including, for example, work by Spanish researchers such as Fuentes-Luque, González-Ruiz, Santaemilia and Soler, etc.); adaptations and remakes (for example, the most recent publication by Rodríguez-Espinosa, 2018); puns, word play and idioms (from the pioneering articles by Zabalbeascoa to the most recent from Sanderson or Martínez-Tejerina 2016); proper names (work by Martínez-Garrido, among others); cultural references (as well as many of the abovementioned authors, Pedersen, 2011, Ranzato 2016 and Igareda’s 2011 classification). Other topics that have attracted less scholarly interest include the translation of songs (authors such as Comes, García-Jiménez, Brugué or De los Reyes, as well as international contributions that can be found on the University of Roehampton’s Translating Music portal), intertextuality (not dealt with as extensively as other translation problems, although with notable contributions from Spanish researchers such as Botella, Rodríguez-Espinosa, Lorenzo, and Lorenzo and Rodríguez), translator representation and the visibility of foreign languages in audiovisual media (Cronin 2009; O’Sullivan 2011), advertising (Valdés 2004, among many others; González-Ruiz and Cruz-García 2010) or censorship, analysed in the special issue of Meta edited by Díaz-Cintas (2012b). For information on authors who have worked in these fields in Spain’s official languages, see Chaume (2020).
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| Film censorship takes a wide range of different forms. |
The concepts of method, norm, strategy/technique and constraints were first examined by Ballester-Casado (2001, based on the classic contribution by Goris 1993, who presented the first classification of audiovisual translation norms); other authors analyse some translation problems and associate them with norms and the domestication-foreignization continuum; Chaves (2000) first applied a taxonomy of translation techniques to dubbing; Gutiérrez Lanza (2005, among others) laid the foundations for a powerful descriptive methodology to analyse censorship in dubbed films; Pedersen (2011) explores subtitling norms in Europe with a special focus on Scandinavia, where this modality has a strong hold; Martínez-Sierra explores the interaction of audiovisual signifying codes and their interaction on the domestication-foreignization continuum (2015), proposing and justifying the notion of a translation tendency as opposed to the concept of the norm; Martí-Ferriol (2010, 2012) links all these notions together to present a classification of translation norms and techniques applied to AVT, compares dubbing and subtitling translation methods quantitatively and qualitatively, reinterprets the domestication-foreignization continuum and highlights the power of constraints in the translation solutions adopted; Espasa (2008) examines the concept of audience design in dubbing as a base for studies into reception of translations; Gutiérrez Lanza (2002) uses the concept of patronage to describe dubbing under authoritarian regimes, Marzà (2009) uses it for dubbing of minority languages, while Baños (2016) applies it to configure the linguistic model of the dubbing register in Spanish. Most studies attempt to trace norms through quantitative (and sometimes qualitative) analysis.
The implications of digitalization for both the translation process and the translation product have a considerable influence on AVT research. Subtitling, for example, is so closely linked to technology that any technical advance sooner or later has a direct impact on professional practice in terms of, for instance, availability of new formats and typographic fonts (creative translation, McClarty 2012), translators’ working conditions, audience perception of subtitles (improved visibility), access to several versions in different languages, etc.
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| Creative subtitling, a new field of research (Source: McClarty 2012). |
In turn, VOD services have revolutionized the way audiovisual products are edited, distributed, marketed and consumed. Research in this area has focused on the possibilities digitalization opens up for AVT professional and teaching practices, particularly in the development of computer applications and resources (Matamala 2005; Roales 2016). Developments of note include González-Iglesias’s (2012) software program, Black Box, for the analysis and editing of subtitles; Martí-Ferriol’s (2014) tool to calculate subtitle reading speeds, which reports results in CPS (characters per second) and WPM (words per minute); and the NER model to assess subtitles (Romero-Fresco, 2011).
At the same time, several European research teams are working to incorporate translation memories into the subtitling process. For instance, Melero, Oliver and Badia (2006) developed a multilingual translation service, eTITLE, in a European project on multilingual subtitling of audiovisual material. In turn, Matamala (2015) has led several projects exploring voice recognition and translation technologies in documentaries and voiceovers, showing that machine translation can also be used in AVT, if specific textual conditions are followed (Martín-Mor, Piqué-Huerta and Sánchez-Gijón 2016).
The digitalization explosion has also brought about what we might call a digital culture. Consumer participation as co-creators in the audiovisual production process has grown exponentially in the last decade. The concept of Web 2.0 invites users to take part in creating and translating audiovisual content, in generating new ideas and in interaction through collective intelligence, which encourages reflection on the concepts of empowerment and intervention and classifies passive consumers as active consumers or prosumers (Pérez-González 2014; Orrego-Carmona 2015).
Both digitalization and empowerment influence, to give just one example, a new way of understanding and presenting subtitling, known as creative subtitles. These creative subtitles are given functions that do more than simply communicate (texts placed in any part of the screen, titles that emerge from elements within the plot, dialogues placed next to characters’ mouths, etc.) and influence aspects such as multilingual film translation or the concept of accessible filmmaking (Romero-Fresco 2013). Creative subtitles have their origins in fansubs (Orrego-Carmona 2015; Dwyer 2017, among others), an increasingly popular phenomenon that has also spread into dubbing (Chaume 2012) through fandubs, also known as fundubs, gag dubbing or parodic dubbing when they have a humorous function.
Finally, digitalization also encourages volunteer subtitling, commissioned by some non-profit associations or crowdsourcing platforms such as TED, Universal Subtitles and Khan Academy (Díaz-Cintas 2012a).
Research in this field can be broadly divided into the accessibility of audiovisual media in general and of accessible modalities in particular: subtitling for deaf and hard of hearing people (SDH) and audiodescription (AD) and, to a lesser extent, respeaking (Romero-Fresco 2011, among many others) and audiosubtitling (Braun and Orero 2010). The first studies mainly focused on legal issues and the history of accessibility in the media, conventions and professional practice in SDH and AD, differences between accessible and traditional modalities, quality, didactics and theoretical approaches, such as multimodality. For references on these subjects, we refer readers to entries on translation and accessibility in this encyclopaedia.
After the pioneering work of Neves (2004), the first major publication conceived to shed greater light on this area of study was that of Díaz-Cintas, Orero and Remael (2007), which included articles mainly centring on monolingual SDH and AD. Matamala and Orero’s (2010) book included studies, analyses, tests, validations, quantitative results and applications of a nationwide Spanish study into the accessibility and usability of subtitles; in turn, the articles in Remael, Orero and Carroll (2012) analysed the most recent technological advances in the field of AVT and accessibility, showcasing a multidisciplinary approach widely adopted today in the discipline, which reflects the plethora of subjects included in the recent literature.
Latterly, researchers have turned their attention to the needs and characteristics of the people these products are designed for through reception studies based on surveys (Tamayo, 2015) or eye trackers (Szarkowska, Krejtz, Klyszejko et al. 2011; Fresno 2016, among contributions from various authors), and on interpretation in sign language. One very interesting research area is accessible filmmaking, a term coined by Romero-Fresco (2019) that refers to possible channels for integrating AVT and accessibility in the filmmaking process through collaboration between filmmakers and translators. Accessible filmmaking focuses on the visual and verbal elements filmmakers should take into account to make sure their films are accessible not only to audiences with visual or hearing disabilities, but also to those with other languages. The ITACA research project (2016-2019) explored this idea in depth and analysed the degree of accessibility in news programmes through reception studies with potential audiences.
The process of video game localization involves adapting all aspects of the video game –not only linguistic but legal, cultural and functional aspects– to ensure the product retains its essence when it is transferred to a different culture. In this complex localization process, both the mechanics of the game and its playability must be maintained for the target culture user. In general terms, video game localization includes translating various aspects: tools (menus, etc.), on-screen text and subtitles, graphics with text, filmic and acoustic resources, written text (instructions, packaging text), the video game website and the help menu. Research in this area has proliferated in recent decades, with notable contributions from Mangiron (2013, among many others; Mangiron and O’Hagan 2013, a pioneering work in the discipline that examines all aspects associated with video game localization) and Bernal Merino (2014, among many other contributions from this author), a volume that provides an updated account of the video game localization process and analyses some controversial subjects). Granell, Mangiron and Vidal (2017) take a didactic approach to this research subject, which is also explored by Mejías-Climent (2020).
AVT didactics and learning languages through AVT
The teaching and didactics of AVT has become one of the fastest growing areas in translation studies in recent years, especially among Spanish researchers. Pioneered by Agost, Chaume, Hurtado (1996, 1999), subsequent notable contributions include Zabalbeascoa (1997, among others); Bartrina and Espasa’s comprehensive and detailed study (2003, among others); the landmark volume edited by Díaz-Cintas (2008); and a range of other proposals for evaluating audio descriptions (Marzà 2010) and respeaking (Romero-Fresco 2014), or manuals such as the one by Martínez-Sierra (2012b, for students, covering the five main AVT modalities). Cerezo (2012) thoroughly mapped the needs of instructors, professionals and companies; other authors have contributed work on the didactics of SDH and AD, and on the didactics of translating advertising. On teaching video game localization, the work of Granell (2011, among others) is of note.
At the same time, the relationship between AVT and foreign language learning is now firmly on the research agenda. Díaz-Cintas’s (1995) groundbreaking paper was followed by several contributions championing the role of AVT in language acquisition processes (Incalcaterra-McLoughlin and Lertola, 2014). The benchmark in this field of study is without doubt Talaván (2013, among numerous contributions). Notable topics explored include the use of AD as a language development tool (Ibáñez-Moreno and Vermeulen 2013); proposals on the use of software; work examining accidental language learning; and Torralba’s (2016) thesis on language acquisition in bilingual contexts through translation for dubbing and subtitling. Large-scale projects of note include LeViS and ClipFlair, both funded by the European Union, and PluriTAV, financed by the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and coordinated by Martínez-Sierra (2016-2019), which explores language acquisition through AVT from a multilingual perspective.
This entry leaves no doubt that AVT has now reached a state of maturity. What was an incipient area of study in the 1990s, still feeling its way on shaky ground, is now one of the most attractive research fields. Having identified and described the characteristics of audiovisual text and demonstrated how it influences audiovisual translation operations, and having incorporated AVT into the translation studies framework, academics began to show an interest in setting out research lines and mapping AVT in an attempt to give shape to the broad, fertile landscape described in the previous points, but inevitably there are still rich seams to be mined.
The research potential of AVT remains huge. Today, some of the areas of study calling for researchers’ attention are the history of AVT and archive research in AVT, a field which also includes the practices of redubbing and resubtitling, and the reasons why these practices are in demand.
Similarly, although descriptive studies of translation have enabled scholars to provide an accurate picture of AVT in its various fields, there is still a need for studies using large-scale audiovisual and multimodal corpora. The language of dubbing is one field that can be researched with the help of digital corpora, as well as many of the translation issues mentioned in this entry (songs, film titles, humour, cultural references, intertextuality, linguistic variation, multilingualism, etc.). Quantitative and qualitative data (for example, contextualized microtextual samples and questionnaires and interviews about the translation process) are needed to carry out a descriptive study and researchers are advised to compile a catalogue in order to formulate tentative norms.
In the case of dubbing, a promising new research line is the role of translation in dramatization and interpretation, particularly in relation to the naturalness of the dubbing. Historically, research into the uttering of dialogues has remained on the sidelines of academic enquiry in dubbing, as it is not directly dependent on translators or dubbing adaptors because the interpretation has always been in the hands of actors and dubbing directors. However, there is now an incipient trend to associate notions of dialogue naturalness and dubbese with suprasegmental features such as intonation, tone, tonicity and prosody, as well as paralinguistic signs, including alternants, differentiators, etc. New lines of research are now coming through in doctoral theses (Palencia Villa) and books (Montero Domínguez) and especially in Sánchez-Mompeán (2020).
In addition, the impact of the cultural turn in AVT cannot be ignored. This turn has shifted researchers’ attention towards the ideological motivations underlying translation solutions. Academic enquiry in this line requires combined studies (to avoid anecdotal approaches) that apply methodology from descriptive studies of translation and shed light on subjects such as censorship, patronage, identity, stereotypes and gender (De Marco 2012; Minutella 2021), as well as genetic analysis (Richart 2009; De los Reyes 2015; Zanotti 2019). Similarly, in recent years new ground is opening up in what has been termed the social turn in AVT (Pérez-González 2014; Dwyer 2017), based on activism, commitment and empowerment of users, spearheaded by non-professional subtitling and dubbing.
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| Application of the eye tracker devise in research on the reception of translated audiovisual texts (source Orrego 2015). |
Finally, the last decade brought new research on the cognitive process in AVT operations. Although some interesting studies have been carried out on reception (as well as the collection edited by Di Giovanni and Gambier, 2018, others of note are Fuentes-Luque on the reception of humour; González-Ruiz and Cruz-García on regional accents and cultural representation; De los Reyes on dubbing in children’s films; and Ameri, Khoshsaligheh and Farid, 2018 on the perception of dubbing in Iran), the incorporation of technology has brought ATV research in line with that carried out in other areas of translation (and in other disciplines), where resources such as eye trackers had previously proved useful for exploring the human brain. Kruger, Szarkowska and Krejtz (2015), Perego (2016) and especially Kruger (2016) present comprehensive states of the art and describe the potential of this research line. Orero and Vilaró (2012) use eye trackers to analyse reception of small details in original and translated films, while they are applied by Orrego-Carmona (2015) to observe audience reception of non-professional subtitles and by O’Hagan and Sasamoto (2016) to evaluate the appearance of on-screen text as a way of complementing the plot. We are now also seeing the first studies into the integration of machine translation in AVT processes, for example, to carry out an experiment on AD (see work by Matamala).
Technology can also be used to analyse audience responses in the promising field of accessible filmmaking, as well as in dubbing, where it is interesting to discover whether viewers constantly watch the mouths of screen characters or, on the contrary, whether too much attention has been paid in the past to phonetic synchrony or even isochrony. Technology can help research take a giant step forward, but it can also help students and instructors to learn and teach AVT by taking cognitive data into account, something that to date has not been possible.