Main Auditorium Rector Dhanis, Building K

Joss Moorkens

The use of automation, particularly machine translation (MT), for subtitling and other modes of audiovisual translation (AVT) has become highly contentious due to accompanying reductions to remuneration and restrictive work practices. AVT employers deny a link between reduced pay and a ‘talent crunch’, but translator organisations perceive a strong connection and have pushed back against the “unscrupulous use of MT” (AVTE 2022). The narrative of savings on cost and speed (as in ISO 2017) appears to have won out over the argument for a participatory approach to technology introduction, even for language pairs that are poorly supported by contemporary MT. 

This talk reviews best practice for the introduction of MT from the past ten years of human factors research in translation studies and compares this to the increasing automation of AVT, supporting the conclusions of the AVTE. The talk goes on to reflect on what the use of MT means for viewers. Results from our recent study (Guerberof Arenas, Moorkens, and Orrego Carmona, forthcoming) show that raw MT subtitles negatively affect viewer comprehension, engagement, and enjoyment. However, post-edited subtitles can provide a good viewer experience when translators are allowed sufficient time to make comprehensive edits to the MT output.

Finally, the talk will look at recent introductions of automation beyond MT, particularly within proprietary digital platforms. The use of algorithmic management has been transparent from some employers, listing the attributes that go towards a scoring system that will decide on future job offers, and opaque from others, with translators unable to tell whether they have full or restricted access to all jobs potentially available. Following on from work by Chesterman (2000) on expectancy norms in translation, whereby the work of a translator should align with the expectations of the end reader or audience, I consider whether AV translators whose work is algorithmically evaluated may prioritise fulfilling the requirements of the algorithm above those of the viewing audience. This tendency to follow algorithmic norms has been documented for gig work, and appears to be a consequence of algorithmic management.

Chesterman, A. (2000) Memes of translation: the spread of ideas in translation theory. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

European Federation of Audiovisual Translators (AVTE) (2022) Machine Translation Manifesto. Available at: https://avteurope.eu/avte-machine-translation-manifesto/

Guerberof Arenas, A., Moorkens, J., Orrego Carmona, D. (forthcoming). “A Spanish version of EastEnders”: a reception study of a telenovela subtitled using MT. Journal of Specialised Translation.

International Organization for Standardization (ISO) (2017) ‘ISO 18587:2017’. Available at: https://www.iso.org/cms/render/live/en/sites/isoorg/contents/data/standard/06/29/62970.htm

Joss Moorkens is an Associate Professor at the School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies in Dublin City University, where he is associated with the ADAPT Centre, Institute of Ethics, and Centre for Translation and Textual Studies. He has authored or co-authored journal articles, book chapters, and conference papers on translation technology, machine translation post-editing, user evaluation of machine translation, translator precarity, and translation ethics. He is General Co-editor of the journal Translation Spaces with Prof. Dorothy Kenny, co-editor of a number of books and journal special issues, and co-author of Translation Tools and Technologies (Routledge 2023). He leads the Technology working group (with Prof. Tomáš Svoboda) as a board member of the European Masters in Translation network and sits on the advisory board of the Journal of Specialised Translation.

Where film dialogue, creative media accessibility and a West-Flemish strongman meet

Sabien Hanoulle

The present paper presents a project that is situated at the crossroads between research into film dialogues (Kozloff, 2000) and creative media accessibility (Romero-Fresco, 2022). It wants to develop a model to write subtitles in the West-Flemish dialect and to discover to what extent a Flemish audience appreciates this kind of subtitles. Furthermore, it explores the creation of standard subtitles in a postproduction collaboration with the filmmaker. The Flemish language is characterised by a large number of very different dialects. Sometimes, these dialects find their way to the television screen, where they are consistently subtitled into standard Dutch. This inevitably means that an important character revelation function (Kozloff, 2000) disappears and part of the storytelling is lost. The reason for this practice is obviously that only a limited number of viewers understand the dialect and broadcasters want their programmes to be accessible for as large an audience as possible. But what if we could design a model to write understandable subtitles that keep elements of the original dialects, adding to the film a creative element that enriches the viewers experience? Two years ago, the author of the present paper was contacted by a Flemish documentary maker who wanted to subtitle his latest documentary, Beest (Laperre, 2023) about a West-Flemish strongman, and agreed to test the use of subtitles in which dialect words were incorporated. Whereas earlier experiments with alternative forms of subtitling have explored typographic and aesthetic borders, this project wants to study whether alternative subtitles can add a dimension of narrative character that gets lost in standard subtitling. Three clips were subtitled by a master’s student in Translation who designed a model for including dialect elements in the subtitles’ grammar, vocabulary and spelling, trying to maintain a good balance with the readability basics for subtitles. The clips were then presented to 44 test users who answered questions about their understanding and their viewer experience. It turned out that most spelling and grammar elements were well accepted but the dialect vocabulary was harder to understand. Most participants agreed that these subtitles had a clear added value to the story and its characters although they had different opinions on how many dialectish elements can be kept. 

Romero-Fresco, P. (2022) Moving from Accessible Filmmaking toward Creative Media Accessibility. Leonardo 55 (3): 304–309. 

Kozloff, S. (2000). Overhearing film dialogue. Berkeley (CA): University of California Press. 

Laperre, J. & Schriel, J. (2023) Beest [Film]. Lionheart Productions.

Sabien Hanoulle (University of Antwerp) is a lecturer in Translation at the Department of Applied Linguistics, Translators and Interpreters. She holds a PhD in Translation Studies (University of Antwerp, 2017) in the field of Audiovisual Translation and Terminology. Together with Nina Reviers, she coordinates the OPEN Expertise Centre for Accessible Media and Culture and conducts various projects in Media Accessibility.

The evolution of text elements in films: from intertitles to tailored subtitles

Rocío Inés Varela Tarabal

During the silent era, typography was in the limelight since directors relied on written text to convey linguistic information. Title cards were often designed with exquisite refinement and creativity, acknowledging the semiotic capabilities of the visual representation of text and, on occasions, even including animations. However, the importance of typographic design was left aside with the introduction of sound since most of the information formerly included in text elements was now conveyed auditorily. Nevertheless, the establishment of written text as a linguistic source for the construction of the film's narrative during the silent era had a tremendous impact not only on the history of cinema but also on the inception of audiovisual translation (AVT). Indeed, many scholars attribute the birth of AVT to the translation of intertitles in the silent era. As Chaume (2020) expressed, “as soon as the first titles were inserted in movies, translation became fundamental to the full understanding of filmic narration.” Consequently, different methods and strategies were developed to translate the various elements, which influenced the further development of the AVT industry. In the 1950s, typography recovered part of its meaning-making role with the development of the title sequences by Saul Bass and has been gaining prominence since then, accelerated by the digital revolution. Nowadays, the elements that can be added to a movie are vast and heterogeneous and can function differently towards the narrative of the film. However, the expressive power of typography has not been equally exploited in the different types of text elements, and, consequently, their visual evolution has not followed a similar trend. While some elements, such as title sequences, have evolved to be displayed on-screen with creative animations and a particular design for each film, other text elements, such as subtitles, have followed a historical tradition and maintained a consistent and uniform appearance across films. However, in recent years, driven by the supremacy of the digital world, the stylistic and narrative capabilities of typographic design that had been consigned to the title sequences have begun to be exploited innovatively in other types of textual elements, such as impact captions and tailored subtitles. Due to the presence of these elements, it is critical to take greater care during the translation process to disturb the original product as minimum as possible and generate the best viewing experience. Still, this is not generally the case since the translation is done by adding a new element (oral or written) that was not present in the original product instead of replacing the text element with its translated version. The aim of this presentation is to provide an overview of the evolution of text elements in motion pictures throughout history. To this end, a thorough analysis of over 100 audiovisual products was conducted. Pertinent examples of the expressive use of typographic design from silent films to the present day will be discussed, emphasizing the most contemporary innovative applications. Simultaneously, the relevance of the translation process in preserving the visual identity of the original product will be demonstrated.

Rocío Inés Varela Tarabal is a Ph.D. student in Communication at the Universidade de Vigo (Spain). She is a professor at the Information and Communication Faculty (UdelaR) and also works as a freelance multimedia designer. Her research focuses on typographic elements in films, especially creative subtitles. In addition, she is interested in accessible filmmaking, eye tracking, and cognitive film studies. She completed two bachelor degrees, one in Audiovisual Engineering at the Universidad Católica del Uruguay and the other one in Psychology at the Universidad de la República (Uruguay), both in 2015. Afterwards, she studied a Master in Digital Media at the University of Bremen and a Master in Multimedia Translation at the Universidade de Vigo. Currently, she is a member of GALMA (Galician Observatory for Media Accessibility) and NICA (Interdisciplinary Communication and Accessibility Nucleus). Throughout her career, she has received academic support and awards from several institutions, such as the Universidad Católica del Uruguay, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Xunta de Galicia and Universidade de Vigo.

Inclusive initiatives in the museum: SDH in the Centro José Guerrero

Eva Guarddon

According to the Spanish Instituto Nacional de Estadística, less than 2 % of people with hearing disabilities use Sing Language in this country, being subtitles the tool of choice when talking about media accessibility. Subtitles for the d/Deaf and hard of hearing (SDH) differ from normal subtitles as they call for the inclusion of paralinguistic information and should take into consideration the necessities of their target audience. The will of inclusion and the special requirements needed for that purpose have led governments and media industries to the creation of regulating policies to adapt content to this particular public, such as The Communications Act of 2003 in the UK, Section 508 & Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act in the USA, or the UNE norm 153010 in Spain, consisting on a detailed description on how to display subtitles on the screen. Due to the lack of accessibility regulations in Spanish museums, this norm is also applied in these institutions when displaying videos. The problem with this norm is that it fails to adapt the product to its environment because it is not taken into account. For this reason, the main goal of this work is the creation of a set of subtitles for a conference recorded in the museum Centro José Guerrero, called «40 Pinturas en Busca de Voz: Dos Hilanderas», exploring new and more creative practices in the display of SDH that seem to be more suitable for their environment. After studying the necessities of the target audience, I followed some of the recommendations proposed by Soledad Zárate in her work Captioning and Subtitling for d/Deaf and Hard of Hearing Audiences, which stands out for the lack of restrictions for the subtitler regarding creativity in the delivery of SDH beyond technical requirements for the d/Deaf audience and adapted them to the needs of the museum to transmit not only words but also emotions; that is, translating oral information into visual information, making subtitles more appealing to the public in general. Results are still to be studied since the subtitles created have not been yet delivered to the public and will be displayed shortly as a future project. However, I expect them to be fully readable for the d/Deaf and Hard of hearing, to mimic auditory perceptions through the visual channel for them to live the most similar experience to a hearing person, and to be aesthetically pleasant and useful for all, regardless of their abilities. The conclusions I expect to reach with this proposal are that the Spanish norms for subtitles are not updated to the recent needs of society and that new and more creative subtitles, adapted to their environment, can be more useful not only for the hearing impaired audiences but for all kinds of public. This congress offers the possibility of getting some feedback from experts in the field to be added to my study and to corroborate the information and standards I gathered to create subtitles for this museum.

Eva Guarddon graduated from the University of Granada with an English Degree in 2018, and then from the University of Córdoba with a Translation Master’s Degree in 2020. She is now a PhD Student in the University of Córdoba researching accessibility in museums for people with visual and hearing impairments. All her research is being tested in the Jose Guerrero Art Center, a museum in Granada, where she resides.

Subtitling in the platform economy

Irene Artegiani

The presentation is based on the idea that contemporary AVT cloud platforms are a representation of platform economy, with the underlying assumption that entities such as economic forces have their own agency, which intertwines with the agency of the originating entity, namely capital. I will focus on the subtitling workflow and the ways in which it is shaped by the many elements at play in this industry. The mainstream subtitling industry is heavily influenced by market forces and business models in film and streaming production – which constitute powerful non-human agents. First, a theoretical introduction will point out and define types of agency that intertwine in the current subtitling industry for mainstream international TV and streaming market. Then, through the description of a standard subtitling workflow and the analysis of the relation amongst humans, and between humans and technology, the presentation will explore the decisions and intentions behind the choices that affect workflows and use of technology, together with the implications that these have on various professionals, on their relationship with one another, and on the quality of the work that is carried out. The terminological difference between agency and intention points out the need to address the human responsibility in making choices that determine human and technology agency. Indeed, the proposed reflection is based on the idea that the most poignant relationship is that between market players: the translators’ agency and power has to coexist alongside (or sometimes fight against) the agency and power of better connected players such as production houses and post-production companies. Relying on the indirect agency of economic forces such as neoliberalism and capitalism, companies and production houses can dictate their terms with regards to (un)employment, and use of technology. 

Abdallah, K. (2010). “Translator's agency in production networks”, in Kinnunen T., Koskinen K. (eds.): Translators' Agency, Tampere: Tampere University Press. 

Abdallah, K. (2011). “Quality problems in AVT production networks”, in Serban, A., Matamala, A., Lavaur, J. M., (eds.): Audiovisual Translation in Close-Up. Practical and Theoretical Approaches. 2nd edition. Bern: Peter Lang. 

Moorkens, J. (2020). “"A tiny cog in a large machine". Digital Taylorism in the translation industry”, Translation Spaces 9 (1). DOI: 10.1075/ts.00019.moo. 

Moorkens, J. (2021). “Translation in the Neoliberal Era”, in Bielsa, E. and Kapsaskis, D. (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Globalization. London: Routledge. 

Oziemblewska, M.; Szarkowska, A. (2020). “The quality of templates in subtitling. A survey on current market practices and changing subtitler competence”, Perspectives, pp. 1–22. DOI: 10.1080/0907676X.2020.1791919 

Pielmeier, H.; O’Mara, P. (2020). “The State of the Linguist Supply Chain”. Boston: Common Sense Advisory. 

Srnicek, N. (2017). Platform capitalism. Cambridge, UK, Malden, MA: Polity.

Irene Artegiani is an Italian audiovisual translator, subtitler and researcher. She obtained a degree in Translation and Interpreting from the University of Forlì (Bologna) and MA in Audiovisual Translation from the University of Roehampton. In 2021 she completed her PhD on quality and subtitling practices in the industry, from the University of Roehampton. Her research and professional interests include translation technology and its ideological implications, as well as translation in social, humanitarian and emergency contexts. Her work experience comprises lecturer positions at undergraduate and postgraduate level, and the subtitling of documentaries and independent productions.

Pivot translation and direct translation – what’s the difference in quality? An analysis of two renditions of netflix’s paranormal into Polish

Paweł Aleksandrowicz

Streaming platforms offer more and more non-English content from the cinematography of Spain, Germany, Iceland, Turkey, Norway, and many others. At the same time, a significant percentage of their subscribers also reside in non-English speaking countries. Nevertheless, the English language still holds a dominant position in the translation process due to relay – or pivot – translation, which consists in creating English template files of non-English-language texts, and distributing them to target-language translators, who are not required to know the language of the original. The paper presents the problems that arise from using such intermediary translations. It compares two Polish translations of the Egyptian series Paranormal (2020) – the relay subtitles prepared on the basis of an English-language template, and a direct voice-over rendition. Both of these renditions are now available on Netflix, each offering a different experience to the viewers. The study compares the two renditions to show how a text which is prepared according to the standardized relay subtitling process is different from a direct translation prepared for the purposes of a voice-over version. The analysis focuses on character-specific language (which is based on the diglossia typical for Arabic languages), the transfer of sense, and the rendition of cultural items. It also investigates whether the errors typically attributed to the process of relay translation are avoidable if the translation is direct. Finally, it compares the English pivot and the Polish voice-over – both of which are direct translations – to reflect on the importance of proper intermediary renditions in a relay. The main conclusion that can be drawn from the analysis is that the popular dichotomy “relay is inaccurate, direct is accurate” is a very simplistic understanding of a complex issue. In this study, one of the direct translations was far from accurate, and so was the subsequent relay translation. Relay is a system of interconnected vessels, where the quality of later texts is strongly dependent on the quality of the texts earlier in the chain, and the end translator has very little power to identify and correct the diversions introduced by the previous translator(s) if he/she does not speak the original language. The end translation in a relay can potentially be very precise, but this is arguably difficult to achieve – at every stage of the relay, a translator is required who would be attentive enough to identify the distinctive qualities of the original, and skillful enough to recreate them in such a manner that they would be identifiable for the subsequent translator, at the same time introducing as few distortions in the text as possible. Since the distortions and mistranslations are bound to be repeated by the subsequent professionals, the relay translations are less and less accurate down the chain, and the probability of the end text being a successful rendition decreases.

Paweł Aleksandrowicz, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Applied Linguistics, Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin, Poland, and head of the Audiovisual Translation postgraduate studies therein. His main interests include audiovisual translation, especially subtitling and subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing (SDH), as well as film studies.

Modelling subtitling workflows – a roadmap for subtitling process research

Anke Tardel

Audiovisual Translation (AVT) and particularly subtitling workflows have been subject to a constant change posing a great challenge to researchers attempting to gain insights on the efficiency of production, the impact on translators’ effort, and the quality of these workflows – not only regarding product quality. While AVT research has largely concentrated on the different products and how they are being received by target audiences regarding style guides, cognitive processing, comprehension, and enjoyment, more recently the focus is shifting also towards observing and empirically researching production processes. This is being done with surveys and interviews, or with online methods such as screen recording, retrospective TAPs, keylogging, and eyetracking. With the rise of new innovative assistive technology and the digital “Cloud Turn in Audiovisual Translation” (Bolaños-García-Escribano & Díaz-Cintas, 2020; Díaz-Cintas & Massidda, 2019), the ways of how AVT products are being created, and the working conditions for audiovisual translators have been affected tremendously. This calls for more coordinated empirical evidence. Despite some pioneer work looking into measuring the productivity and efficiency of different subtitling workflows – employing template files or language technology such as automatic speech recognition (ASR) and machine translation (MT) – we hardly know anything about what is happening during these type of workflows. With AVT being such a large and complex research field, this presentation is looking into the workflows of one of the most common forms of AVT: subtitling. To gain a better overview of the different ways subtitlers and Language Service Providers (LSPs) create subtitled products, in this presentation, an adapted workflow model for subtitling is introduced and discussed. Departing from the ISO 17100:2015 standard for translation workflows, the model includes several workflows for both intra- and interlingual subtitling processes (individually and combined) harnessing different degrees of assistance, language technology such as ASR and/or MT, or splitting of tasks among several roles. The workflows in the model are being discussed with respect to the most likely suitable use cases and the roles involved. This, however, needs to be researched more extensively. Therefore, the intended use of the model is to contextualize past and ongoing research on subtitling and captioning to help place them within the overall subtitling production process and to serve as a basis for addressing research gaps where further empirical research is needed. Additionally, the model provides a starting point both for researchers and trainers looking to investigate and compare different workflows. Such a model might further give LSPs, thinking about switching to platforms and implementing new technology in their subtitling production process, an overview of the different possible workflows. Moreover it also points them to research providing empirical evidence for workflow choices. 

Bolaños-García-Escribano, A., & Díaz-Cintas, J. (2020). The Cloud Turn in Audiovisual Translation. In Ł. Bogucki & M. Deckert (Eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Audiovisual Translation and Media Accessibility (pp. 519–544). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42105-2_26 

Díaz-Cintas, J., & Massidda, S. (2019). Technological advances in audiovisual translation. The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Technology.

Anke Tardel is an advanced PhD student, research assistant, and lecturer at the Johannes Gutenberg University (JGU) in Mainz, Faculty for Translation Studies, Linguistics, and Cultural Studies (FTSK) in Germersheim where she received her degrees in Translation. Besides her studies, she has been a student research assistant since 2012, supporting various eye tracking studies and research projects. She is a lab member of the TRA&CO Center and an alumni of the Gutenberg-Akademie 2019-2022 for excellent young researchers at JGU. Her research interests include translation process research with a focus on audiovisual translation, translation revision, post-editing, and translation technologies. In her PhD project which she carried out within the eu-funded COMPASS project, she focusses on subtitling and cognitive translation studies by looking into traditional and innovative subtitling processes, workflows, and aspects of effort and quality.

The AVT pro certification: at the forefront of professionals’ agency

Noelia Marques-Cobeta, Jorge Díaz Cintas, Serenella Massidda 

A badge of quality and competence, the AVT Pro Certification was conceived as a tool able to promote professional agency for AVT experts around the world: the project’s main aim is the development of the first professional AVT qualification recognised by professional associations and endorsed by media localisation stakeholders. Envisioned with professionals’ agency in mind, the AVT Pro Certification looks to meet the demands brought about by the fast-paced changes taking place in the media localisation sector. The progressive integration of AI powered technologies in AVT workflows in recent years, has altered the traditional processes in place in the AVT industry. Furthermore, the doubling up of media productions by video streaming giants (SVOD) have dramatically increased audiovisual content forcing Language Service providers (LSPs) to expand their pools of experts in new language combinations and specialties (dubbing, subtitling, voiceover), putting the role of audiovisual translators at risk in terms of the future sustainability of the industry. The AVT Pro Certification project arises from the need for providing official recognition to the work of translators working in the AVT sector, in the same way as other qualifications certify and validate the status of translators specialised in other fields. Although professional certifications for translators and interpreters already exist, none of them addresses audiovisual translators’ competences, which involve not only a linguistic and cultural knowledge of the source and target languages, but also a range of practical IT skills that vary according to the mode of transfer in question. Ultimately, this project is aimed at setting and maintaining high professional standards by recognising professionals who possess the linguistic knowledge and technical skills necessary to provide quality language services for the media localisation industry. The AVT Pro Certification will provide professionals, employers and clients with a unique guarantee of excellence and professionalism.

Dr Serenella Massidda (presenter) is Associate Professor of Translation Studies at the University of Roehampton and Honorary Research Fellow at University College London (UK). Professional translator and subtitler, she holds a European Doctorate in Audiovisual Translation (AVT). She is executive board member of the European Association for Studies in Screen Translation (ESIST), Media for All Conference member of Scientific Committee, and Editorial Board Member of Linguistica Antverpiensia (LANS – TTS). She is the author of Audiovisual Translation in the Digital Age, the Italian Fansubbing Phenomenon, and has published widely on audiovisual translation and subtitling. She has carried out international research projects and consultancies with the media localization industry on subtitling quality, technologies and professional development such as the Netflix Hermes Project (2016–17), the Isub Project (2020–22), and the AVT Pro Subtitling Certification Project currently under development (2022–). 

Noelia Marques-Cobeta (presenter) is a Lecturer in the English and German Department of the University of Zaragoza, Spain. Her research interests include audiovisual translation and the use of subtitling to improve English language competences. Recently, she has been awarded a grant from the European Union, under the NextGenerationEU scheme, to conduct research on audiovisual translation in collaboration with Prof. Jorge Díaz-Cintas. From 2022 until 2024, they’ll be working on the design, development, testing and launching of a Professional Certification for audiovisual translators. Since January 2022, she has been an Honorary Research Associate at UCL for a three-year tenure. 

Jorge Díaz Cintas is Professor of Translation Studies and founder director of the Centre for Translation Studies (CenTraS) at University College London. Author of numerous articles, special issues and books on audiovisual translation, he also serves as Chief Editor of the book series New Trends in Translation Studies and is a member of the EU LIND (Language Industry) Expert Group. He is the recipient of the Jan Ivarsson Award (2014) and the Xènia Martínez Award (2015) for invaluable services to the field of audiovisual translation.

What language is that? The need for a new norm for subtitling multilingual audiovisual texts

Jan Pedersen

There has been a substantial development in the use of multilingualism and language diversity in films and other audiovisual texts over the last few decades (cf. e.g. Voellmer & Zabalbeascoa 2014). In the 1970s and 1980s, foreignness was mainly signalled via the use of foreign accents of English. This is most striking in the long-running BBC TV series ‘Allo ‘Allo (Lloyd & Croft 1982 – 1992, as described by Delabastita 2010), where various European languages (including English) were all stereotypically portrayed in this way. The 1990s saw greater linguistic diversity and the use of code-switching in films like Trainspotting (Boyle 1996). There was also simplification, in that modern use of language was transposed to other contexts, as can be seen in Braveheart (Gibson 1995), where the social and regional variation of Britain today was used to portray social and geographical variation in medieval Britain. The turn of the millennium saw a shift towards quasi-realistic linguistic credibility (Pedersen 2007), with films such as The Passion of the Christ (Gibson 2004), where the languages spoken in Biblical times (e.g. Aramaic, Latin and Hebrew) were used in the film. As a result of globalisation, this trend continues to grow stronger today, with many audiovisual products being coproduced transnationally, and endeavouring to represent the languages actually spoken in various countries. This can be seen in TV series such as Le Bureau des légendes (Rochant 2015 - 2020), which has French as its main language (L1), but several other languages (L3s; e.g. Russian, Arabic, and Farsi) being represented realistically, or Hit and Run (Issacharoff et al 2021) which has two L1s, English and Hebrew. There has been a great deal of research into how dubbing handles multilingualism in audiovisual content in the last decade (e.g. in Rebane & Junkerjürgen 2019 or Corrius, Espasa & Zabalbeascoa 2019), but less so for subtitling. In this mode of AVT, multilingualism is largely ignored or standardized in the translation into the target language (L2), as shown by the studies that we have seen (e.g. Magazzù 2019 or Dore 2019), and the prevalence of this practice is also testified by subtitlers. An investigation into public service and commercial guidelines for subtitling shows that these exclusively give advice on situations where multilingualism consists of the infrequent use of odd words or phrases in a third language, with a specific function, like humour, exoticism, atmosphere or character (cf. de Higes Andino et al 2019). The guidelines offer no advice on how to deal with the more widespread genuine multilingualism that we see on screen today. This leaves rooms for solutions that are controversial, as in the English subtitles of Roma (Cuarón 2018), and sometimes ill-advised, as in the Swedish AVT of the aforementioned Hit and Run. Furthermore, as the source text is part of the target text in subtitled content, L2 viewers are meant to be able to tell when an L3 is spoken. But can they? Is this realistic? Or can it be claimed that multilingualism is lost or muffled in subtitling? It seems that this is the time to start looking for a new norm for handling today’s more widespread and realistic forms of multilingualism in subtitled audiovisual texts.

Jan Pedersen is Associate Professor in Translation Studies at the Institute for Interpreting and Translation Studies at Stockholm University, where he researches and teaches audiovisual translation. He is a frequent presenter at international conferences, and his publications include the 2011 monograph Subtitling Norms for Television, as well as many articles on subtitling, translation and linguistics. He also worked as a television subtitler for many years.

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Exploring the role of “agency” in the production of easy-to-read subtitles

Carlo Eugeni

Easy-to-Read, or E2R, is a methodology (AENOR, 2018) (as well as a translation modality, a linguistic variation, or a service) for turning contents in standard language into contents that are easy to comprehend for people with reading difficulties (Bernabé & Orero, 2019). These range from people with intellectual disabilities (1-3% of the world population [Special Olympics, n.d.]) and reading disabilities (about 20% of the population [Shaywitz, 2003]) to people with low literacy, displaced people, the elderly (Saggion, 2017). Now, like many other disciplines within Media Accessibility, or MA (subtitling for the Deaf and the Hard-of-Hearing, audio description, and live captioning), E2R is adding new audiences to the list. In this framework, the demand for E2R texts will continue increasing in the next years, also as a consequence of national and international regulations, like the European Accessibility Act, the Audiovisual Media Services Directive, or the European standard Accessibility requirements for ICT products and services. If this shows the society is aware of the usefulness of E2R texts for the audience at large, this is alarming because it may mean that people without professional expertise can produce E2R texts that do not meet the needs of the target audience. For this reason, the European Federation of people with intellectual disabilities and their families Inclusion Europe has issued guidelines that enable professionals to produce E2R content that suit the needs of the target audience. These guidelines include the explicit request to involve the end-users when producing an E2R text. This need to include the target audience when producing MA services has always proved difficult to implement, particularly when the production of such services is massive. To try to meet the need for people with disabilities to take part in the production of E2R texts, the European Commission has financed the Erasmus+ project Train2Validate, or T2V, which aims to produce training materials for professional E2R validators and facilitators, whose job is to certify that a text is easy to read (https://plenainclusionmadrid.org/train2validate/). They do this by attending validation sessions, during which a facilitator coordinates the job of the validators, which consists in analysing an E2R text and checking its comprehensibility. In this speech, we intend to show how people with reading difficulties participate as agents in the production of audiovisual material subtitled in E2R language. To do so, we will, first, introduce the notions of E2R and validation; then, we will briefly illustrate the T2V project and its results; and we will finally draw on the production of E2R subtitles and the role of “agency” in this emerging form of MA. 

AENOR. (2018). Easy to read. Guidelines and recommendations for the elaboration of documents (UNE 153101:2018 EX). Madrid: AENOR. https://www.une.org/ 

Bernabé, R., & Orero, P. (2019). Easy to Read as Multimode Accessibility Service. Hermeneus, 21, 53–74. https://doi.org/10.24197/her.21.2019 

Saggion, H. (2017). Automatic text simplification (Synthesis Lectures on Human Language Technologies). Morgan & Claypol. 

Shaywitz, S. E. (2003). Overcoming Dyslexia (2nd ed.). Random House Inc., NY. 

Special Olympics. (2016). What is an intellectual disability? https://www.specialolympics.ca/british-columbia/who-we-are/about-intellectual-disabilities.

Carlo Eugeni (presenter) is Programme Manager of the MA in Audiovisual Translation and Localisation at the University of Leeds (UK), where he teaches Respeaking and SDH. He is the founder of the International Symposium on Live Subtitling and Accessibility, the chairman of the Intersteno scientific committee, and co-editor of CoMe, Tiro, and SPECIALinguaggi. Carlo has published in the fields of live subtitling, deafness, and diamesic translation and has participated in national and international research projects on accessibility, subtitling strategies, and linguistic quality control. In 2018, he received the honorary award of the Italian Association of Cochlear Implant Users APIC for his commitment in promoting the empowerment of deaf people through live and pre-recorded subtitling. He is currently Intellectual Output leader in the Erasmus+ project T2V on the training of validators and facilitators of Easy-to-Read texts and member of the ITU experts’ group in charge of respeaking in the Metaverse.

Rocío Bernabé Caro holds a professorship in barrier-free communication at the International University of Applied Science of the SDI München. She has a MA in Translation (UGR) and a MA in Accessible Documents, Technologies and Applications (UNIR). The topic of her PhD was easy audiovisual media services for all (UAB). She is Deputy Head of the Professional College of Translation and Interpreting of the SDI in Munich (Germany). She was the project leader of the EU co-funded project Live Text Access, which aimed to create certified learning materials for real-time intralingual subtitlers by respeaking and velotyping. She was project partner, accessibility manager, and leader of the Intellectual Output (IO) 2 of the EU co-funded project EASIT, Easy Access for Social Inclusion Training. She is a partner and IO leader of the EU co-funded project Train2validate. Her newest research focuses on easy Internet and end-user-centered validation processes.

Irish-language subtitling from the mid-twentieth century to today

Dr Carol O'Sullivan

The question of subtitling and the Irish language has been very topical since the mid-1990s and the foundation of the Irish-language television channel Teilifís na Gaeilge, now known as TG4. The station was founded with the view that both English and Irish would be used as subtitling languages, though this has not proven to be the case over time. What is not well known is that Irish-language subtitling was tried long before the foundation of Teilifís na Gaeilge. In the late 1940s and in 1966, there were two early experiments in Irish-language subtitling. In 1947, Alexander Korda’s distribution company released the Italian feature film Roma città aperta (Rossellini 1945) with bilingual English and Irish subtitles. The film played intermittently at cinemas round the country until 1950. In November 1966, Ireland’s national television station, RTÉ, broadcast another Italian film, Ladri di biciclette (de Sica, 1948) with Irish-only subtitles. This unleashed a storm of protest which lasted several weeks, mostly played out in newspapers. Neither of these experiments was repeated. This paper draws on press and archival sources and research on language policy to tell the story of these two experiments and to analyse the range of positive and negative reactions among Irish and English speakers. It shows that the ventures failed for a range of reasons including language politics, lack of AVT expertise and the technologies of the day. It goes on to look at more recent developments in Irish-language subtitling to show how Irish-language subtitling is still at the ‘experimental’ stage and has not, to date, become firm policy. The paper ultimately argues for the importance of looking at historical developments in AVT to shed light on current and ongoing problems.

Dr Carol O'Sullivan is Associate Professor in Translation Studies at the University of Bristol, UK. Her research interests include audiovisual translation, especially the history of subtitling; translation history more generally; and literary translation. She is also interested in how readers and viewers of translated media respond to and conceptualise translation.is Associate Professor in Translation Studies at the University of Bristol, UK. Her research interests include audiovisual translation, especially the history of subtitling; translation history more generally; and literary translation. She is also interested in how readers and viewers of translated media respond to and conceptualise translation.

‘How can i say this in fewer words?’ exploring how a cognitive theory of conceptual metonymy can be useful for understanding reduction in subtitling.

Anlaug Ersland

Historically, metonymy has been conceptualized as a feature of rhetoric, where we use the name of a person, object, event, etc., to stand for another, e.g., ‘brain’ for ‘intellect’ or the name ‘Picasso’ to refer to the artist’s work. However, with the emergence of metaphor and metonymy research within cognitive linguistics (Lakoff and Johnson 1980; Kövecses and Radden 1999; Barcelona 2003), metonymy is now regarded as a cognitive process that allows language users to communicate complex ideas economically and efficiently. This paper examines how this theorization of metonymy can shed light on the interface between two previously self-standing research areas, namely audiovisual translation and cognitive linguistics and gauges to what extent the principles of conceptual metonymy can be applied to the study of reduction in subtitling. Previous studies on reduction in subtitles have been both qualitative (examining which parts of speech are more likely to be reduced or omitted in subtitles) and quantitative (where the focus is on how much of the source text is omitted in the subtitles or how many written subtitles can viewers process within a given time). By contrast, this paper will offer new insights into how reductions in subtitles can be produced efficiently with the help of conceptual metonymy theory. The starting point for the discussion will be Radden and Kövecses’ seminal essay ‘Towards a theory of metonymy’. According to the authors, cognitive principles such as human experience, perceptual selectivity and cultural preferences allow for the use of metonymy. Among the outlined cognitive principles there are several that are particularly relevant to the study of translations, such as “typical over non-typical”, “central over peripheral”, “visible over non-visible”. In addition to this, Radden and Kövecses build on Lakoff’s (1987) theory that all knowledge of objects, events, and processes, both in the abstract and concrete realm, can be organised into idealised cognitive models (ICMs), and that we can use one part of an ICM to describe other parts of that same ICM. By using examples from the Norwegian subtitles of Sherlock (2010-2017), I will illustrate how, in certain contexts, a cognitive theory of conceptual metonymy can inform a meaningful reduction of text in subtitles, before proceeding to argue that this knowledge can be useful for subtitlers.

Anlaug Ersland is PhD Research Fellow in Translation Studies at the University of Agder. In her project "Investigating Metonymy in Audiovisual Translation", she explores theoretical and empirical approaches to the role of metonymy in subtitling, with a special focus on translation strategies, cultural aspects of translation and multimodality. She is also a member of the research group Agder Forum of Translation Studies (AFO). In 2014, she graduated from the University of Bergen with an MA in English and translation. Her thesis, "Is change necessary? A study of norms and universals in intralingual translation", examined the translation of British young adult fiction for an American audience.

Floriane Bardini, Josu Amezaga, Reglindis De Ridder, Adrià Martín-Mor

When we talk about media accessibility, we most often think of access to audiovisual content by persons with sensory disabilities. Yet, as pointed out by Deogracias and Amezaga (2016) access to audiovisual material in small and/or minority languages is an issue we should deal with too. Minority languages are a complex topic, especially in their definition, as De Ridder & O’Connell (2019) outline, because the concept of minority language itself is relative and relies on the comparison of the status of a language with that of another. Therefore, we choose to talk about minoritized rather than minority languages. 

In today’s global media context, where English-speaking content dominates, all languages, and particularly non-hegemonic languages, face challenges, but these are especially significant for minoritized languages: Audiovisual content is part of our lives to such extent that the offering or lack of relevant original and translated audiovisual material in minoritized languages can have drastic sociolinguistic consequences (Ramallo 2017). However, with profit being the main criterion behind audiovisual production and minoritized language speakers often being fluent in the dominant language in their region, minoritized languages largely depend on public policies for the promotion of local productions and the availability of translated international content. 

 These issues, along with linguistic empowerment through audiovisual media and translation, will be discussed in our roundtable. Speakers will debate the following challenges and opportunities faced by minoritized language speakers: 

• Access in minoritized languages: Policies and regulations regarding audiovisual media in minoritized languages; Challenges and opportunities on television, streaming platforms, and social media platforms to create an offer that is sociologically and sociolinguistically relevant.
• Access to minoritized languages: Representations in and of minoritized languages and cultures; Multilingualism and minorities in audiovisual media.; Audiovisual accessibility in minoritized languages. 
• Linguistic empowerment: Use of AVT, new technologies and free software to promote and protect minoritized languages; AVT as a language revitalization tool for minoritized languages. 

Invited speakers: 

• Josu AMEZAGA, University of the Basque Country 
• Reglindis DE RIDDER, Stockholm University 
• Adrià MARTIN MOR, California State University 

Deogracias, M., Amezaga, J. (2016). Linguistic Accessibility for Small Language Cinema. International Journal of Sociotechnology and Knowledge Development, 8(2). De Ridder, R., O'Connell, E. (2019). Minority Languages, Language Planning and Audiovisual Translation. Pérez-González, L. (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Audiovisual Translation. London: Routledge, 401-417. Ramallo, F. (2017). Minority Languages. Bedijs, K., Maaß, C. (ed.), Manual of Romance Language in the Media. Berlin: De Gruyter, 453-470.

Floriane Bardini (moderator) holds an M.A. in specialized translation and a PhD in Translation, Gender, and Cultural Studies of the University of Vic - Central University of Catalonia. She works as a translator and teacher of French and is an associate lecturer at the University of Vic and the University Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona). She is a member of the TRACTE Research Group at the University of Vic, where she conducts research about audiovisual translation and accessibility, language teaching and minoritized languages. 

Josu Amezaga is a Full Professor at the Department of Audiovisual Communication and Advertising of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). He is also head of the NOR Research Group (nortaldea.eus). He has published several works and taken part in many research projects about the relationships between language, communication and identity, specially regarding minority languages (both Immigrant and Regional Minority Languages). He is the PI to the project Behategia (Observatory of Basque Media), where several research works are conducted about Basque language media (behategia.eus). They include research on audiences, digital analytics, automatic translation and other subjects. He has been also the PI to ALMA - Network for research excellence in media accessibility (2020-2022), a joint project between seven research groups from different disciplines (engineering, sociology, linguistics and communication) working together on audio-visual accessibility and minoritised languages. He has been visiting fellow at the Center for Cultural Policy Research of the University of Glasgow; Macquarie University in Sydney; Victoria University of Technology in Melbourne, and Charles Sturt University in Port Macquarie. 

Reglindis De Ridder is a senior lecturer in Dutch and German Studies at the University of Stockholm. Her research interests lie in sociolinguistics, audiovisual translation, corpus linguistics, and Dutch studies. Particularly, the status of national varieties and language policy and practice as regards the use of these varieties in written and audio(visual) media in pluricentric language areas. She has recently published the volume "One size fits all"? Linguistic standards in the media of pluricentric language areas, which also covers minoritized language areas. 

Adrià Martín-Mor is assistant professor of Translation Studies in the Department of Romance, German, Russian Languages and Literatures at California State University, Long Beach. He has directed translation programs in Europe in the past, and his current research interests encompass minoritized languages, translation technologies and the political dimension of translation. He is a founding member of Sardware, a Sardinian association of volunteer localizers. As a literary translator, he has recently published Sardinian author Sergio Atzeni in Catalan. He is also the author of Beni cun me, a TV program about the languages of Sardinia broadcast by Italian TV channel RAI. As a musician, he wrote and composed the soundtrack of the program, in Catalan and Sardinian, and released it as his latest album, Lo somrís de la magrana, published under a Creative Commons licence.