Room 2, Building R

Hosts: Agnieszka Szarkowska,  Łukasz Dutka

Pannellists: Magda Jagucka, Stavroula Sokoli, Jorge Diaz Cintas, Volker Steinbiss, Max Deryagin  

Over the past few years, we have heard a lot about the “talent crunch” in audiovisual translation and media localisation. Language service providers (LSPs) complain that they struggle to find talent – experienced linguists to fill the growing number of roles on the AVT market: subtitlers, captioners, QC-ers, template creators, post-editors, dialogue writers for dubbing, to name just a few. The talent shortage is particularly visible for less common language combinations which do not include English, for example “from Hindi to Chinese, as Bollywood hits China” (Slator 2018 Media Localization Report).

However, subtitlers’ organisations question the existence of talent crunch and argue that it’s not the lack of skilled linguists that is the problem; indeed, it is the pay and working conditions that are putting off many from joining the industry. At the same time, many companies boast of technological innovations and new ways to automate workflows. In this context, numerous individual freelancers worry that the artificial intelligence (AI) will relegate them to less prestigious and less well-paid tasks such as post-editing or will put them out of their jobs entirely.

The panel will bring together the central players of the media localisation industry: representatives of translator’s associations, language service providers, academics and educators. Together we will discuss the future of work in media localisation and accessibility. How much agency will language professionals have in the age of AI? Will subtitlers author translations with the help of AI or will AI author the text with a little help from the humans? Will linguists ride the machine or will the machine ride us? And can we all benefit equally from AI technology or will it create winners and losers?

In the panel, we will also address the question of whether there is indeed a talent crunch in media localisation today. Will the future bring more work for humans or for machines? And how localisation jobs will be reshaped in the coming years? Should companies focus on training linguists or algorithms? We will discuss the current needs of the market and how AVT trainers can respond to these dynamically changing needs. Who to recruit and where? What skills and tools should we teach the linguists of tomorrow? How to test and certify their skills efficiently? And once you have hired the right talent, how to retain them? AI?

Agnieszka Szarkowska (presenter) is University Professor in the Institute of Applied Linguistics at the University of Warsaw, Head of the research group Audiovisual Translation Lab (AVT Lab), and Honorary Research Associate at University College London. Agnieszka is a researcher, academic teacher, ex-translator, and translator trainer. Her research projects include eye tracking studies on subtitling, audio description, multilingualism in subtitling for the deaf and the hard of hearing, and respeaking. Drawing on her passion for teaching, she has co-founded AVT Masterclass, an online platform for professional audiovisual translation education. Agnieszka is a member of the European Association for Studies in Screen Translation (ESIST) and a recipient of the Jan Ivarsson Award 2022.

Łukasz Dutka (presenter), PhD, is a member of the Global Alliance of Speech-to-Text Captioning, one of the founders of AVT Masterclass, and a member of the Management Board of Dostepni.eu, an accessibility services provider. As an expert on accessibility and audiovisual translation, Łukasz specializes in live subtitling and SDH. Throughout his career, he has held various roles, including an in-house subtitler for a public broadcaster, a freelance subtitler and quality control specialist for high-profile titles, and a live subtitler at significant social events. Łukasz has also been a trainer at numerous European universities and organizations, as well as an investigator in multiple accessibility-related projects. As a trailblazer on the Dostepni.eu team, Łukasz introduced live subtitling through respeaking in Poland and was instrumental in establishing a live subtitling unit for a leading broadcaster. As a member of the ILSA project team, he contributed to the development of an open course on live subtitling. With over a decade of teaching experience, Łukasz has led training programs for businesses and taught university-level courses on audiovisual translation, interlingual subtitling, live subtitling, subtitling for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, and interpreting. He is a member of the University of Warsaw Audiovisual Translation Lab (AVT Lab), the European Society for Translation Studies (EST), and the European Association for Studies in Screen Translation (ESIST).

The pending issue of making video games accessible for cognitively disabled players

Miguel Ángel Oliva Zamora

Video games have become one of the most relevant audiovisual products in the last decades. As their status shifts from an isolated form of entertainment to a well-established industry, it is time to set the ground for guidelines and standards that ensure a design that make them enjoyable for everyone. Creating accessible video games is a social, ethical and even economic must[1]. In particular, there are three steps in which any gamer’s performance might be compromised: receiving stimuli, determining a response and providing input[2]. Among these, people with cognitive disabilities struggle when responding to what is expected from them in a video game. This kind of impairment is the least explored and thus the one that would benefit the most from a research approach[3]. On that note, this paper will illustrate how cognitively disabled gamers are currently being addressed in a double-sided way. On the one hand, we will review the issue from the perspective of the industry by analyzing current video game accessibility guidelines[4][5][6]. On the other hand, we will perform a bibliographic review to address the efforts carried out by the academia. In many cases, we will encounter that these two differ greatly, as is the case with learning difficulties. Even though many of the aforementioned guidelines include clarity of language, most developers are not aware of the accessibility services that best deal with them, such as the easy-to-understand (E2U) language. This emerging service, aimed at improving comprehension, is currently not included in any mainstream video game. In fact, most studies on the topic are very recent and focused on web sites. However, their results are promising[7][8]. Its application seems to improve the performance not only of people with developmental disabilities, but also of people with acquired ones, such as the elderly. It could even be beneficial for people with no impairments[9]. In this regard, it seems only appropriate to broaden its study to include other audiovisual products, so that we can not only prove its effectiveness across different media, but also promote its use. We will argue that a good starting point would be developing reception studies with cognitively disabled gamers to compare their performance with a version of a video game in standard language and a version in E2U language. This will lead us to discuss the benefits of this and others lines of research in order to ascertain, firstly, that video game developers take people with cognitive disabilities into account and, secondly, that implementing an accessibility service such as the E2U language can in fact mark the difference. 

Mangiron, C. (2011). Accesibilidad a los videojuegos: estado actual y perspectivas futuras. Trans, 15, pp. 53-67. 

Yuan, B., Folmer, E. and Harris, F.C. (2011), Game accessibility: a survey. Universal Access in the Information Society, 10, pp. 81-100. 

Mangiron, C. (2021). Game Accessibility: Taking Inclusion to the Next Level. En M. Antona and C. Stephanidis (Eds.), Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction. Design Methods and User Experience - 15th International Conference, UAHCI 2021, Held as Part of the 23rd HCI International 20 Conference, HCII 2021, Proceedings, 12768, pp. 269-279. Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH. 

Game Accessibility Guidelines (n.d.). Available on https://gameaccessibilityguidelines.com/ [Last accessed on 7th of July 2022] 

Can I Play That? (n.d.). Accessibility Reference Guides. Available on https://caniplaythat.com/category/resources/accessibility-reference-guides/ [Last accessed on 7th of July 2022] 

The AbleGamers Foundation (n.d.). Includification: A Practical Guide to Game Accessibility. Available on https://accessible.games/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/AbleGamers_Includification.pdf [Last accessed on 7th of July 2022] 

Karreman, J., Van Der Geest, T. and Buursink, E. (2007). Accessible website content guidelines for users with intellectual disabilities. Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities, 20 (6), pp. 510-518. 

Vollenwyder, B., Schneider, A., Krueger, E., Brühlmann, F., Opwis, K., and Mekler, E. (2018). How to Use Plain and Easy-to-Read Language for a Positive User Experience on Websites. In K. Miesenberger and G. Kouroupetroglou (Eds.), Computers Helping People with Special Needs, 6th International Conference, ICCHP 2018. Springer: Austria. 9. Schmutz, S., Sonderegger, A. and Sauer, J. (2019). Easy-to-read language in disability-friendly web sites: Effects on nondisabled users. Applied Ergonomics, 74, pp. 97-106.

Miguel Ángel Oliva Zamora holds a BA in Translation and Interpreting from the University of Granada (UGR) and a MA in Audiovisual Translation from the Barcelona Autonomous University (UAB). Before joining the research team TransMedia Catalonia, he acquired some experience in localization as project manager and copywriter for the applications of SEAT vehicles’ radio. Now, thanks to the PhD grant he has been awarded with, he is able to research video game accessibility and the implementation of easy-to-understand language.

‘I don't remember any typos, I was just trying to play’: an end-user perspective on the role of game translation

Krzysztof Hejduk, Mikołaj Deckert

The premise of this paper is neatly captured in the following observation by Mangiron (2018: 277): “The ultimate goal of game localisation is to provide players of the localised versions with an engaging and immersive gameplay experience that is similar to that of the original players.” Keeping in mind this observation – or perhaps postulate – we present our findings into how receptors can respond to the different properties of video game translation. Our general aim was to see how much the experience of playing a game can be reshaped by its localisation. We explored a total of 15 experiential and attitudinal constructs of reception (Deckert & Hejduk 2022a; Deckert & Hejduk 2022b; cf. Szarkowska & Boczkowska 2020). The experimental factor (independent variable) we opted for in this study was the presence or absence of errors in the game’s dialogue subtitles. Our reasoning is that translators may, albeit inadvertently, introduce unambiguous linguistic deficiencies into a video game, possibly reshaping the players’ reception of the target text. The exact proxy we utilised were spelling errors (Skorupska et al. 2018; Deckert 2021; cf. Figueredo & Varnhagen 2005; cf. Schloneger 2016; cf. Boland & Queen 2016; cf. Pedersen 2017: 220) deployed throughout in-game texts. As part of our study, participants played the Polish version of the video game “Distraint: Deluxe Edition” (Makkonen 2017) – an ‘authentic’ commercial game, in contrast to one designed specifically for experimental purposes (e.g. Knežević & Jovanović 2021). The game was specifically selected for the experiment to meet a set of criteria motivated by the remote protocol of the study. A total of 201 participants were tested remotely across 2 conditions: one with 25 typos added into the translation (experimental group) and one wherein the same Polish localisation had no typos whatsoever (control group). After the gameplay component of the experiment, participants completed a psychometric questionnaire called GUESS-18 (Keebler et al. 2020; cf. Phan et al. 2016) as part of a larger set of survey items. The survey also probed for other dimensions of reception, like cognitive load or plot comprehension. We also collected demographic profile data as well as experiment-specific details (e.g. participants’ gaming experience). The study moreover explored whether localisation-specific typos might have an effect on the perceptions of translation quality as well as the translator’s diligence and professionalism. Importantly, we can relate these findings to our participants’ rates of successfully identifying typos in the target texts. While these rates were significantly different between the experiment’s conditions, the rates were relatively low in either group. Generally, our study found no traceable effect of typos on the majority of player reception aspects we studied (Deckert & Hejduk 2022a; 2022b). Gaming is a booming, global industry with billions of players – in no small part due to its accessibility features and cross-linguistic transfer. Yet, localisation remains understudied from the vantage point of end-user experience (Mangiron 2018: 277). Our study feeds into the emerging field of cognitively-oriented reception research in game localisation by offering empirical evidence on the key dimensions of user experience. 

Boland, J. E. & Queen, R. 2016. If You’re House Is Still Available, Send Me an Email: Personality Influences Reactions to Written Errors in Email Messages. PLOS ONE, 11 (3), e0149885. DOI.org/f8vcvk 

Deckert, M. 2021. Spelling Errors in Interlingual Subtitles: Do Viewers Really Mind? GEMA Online Journal of Language Studies. DOI.org/gj9s4j 

Deckert, M. & Hejduk, K. 2022a. Videogame localisation, spelling errors and player reception. Translation, Cognition & Behavior 5(1). DOI.org/h422 

Deckert, M. & Hejduk, K. 2022b. Can video game subtitling shape player satisfaction? Perspectives [online first]. DOI.org/jp9m 

Figueredo, L. & Varnhagen, C. 2005. Didn’t You Run the Spell Checker? Effects of Type of Spelling Error and Use of a Spell Checker on Perceptions of the Author. Reading Psychology, 26 (4-5), 441–458. DOI.org/dxx6nn 

Keebler, J., Shelstad, W., Smith, D., Chaparro, B., & Phan, M. (2020). Validation of the GUESS-18: A Short Version of the Game User Experience Satisfaction Scale (GUESS). Journal of Usability Studies, 16(1), 49–62. https://commons.erau.edu/publication/1508/ 

Knežević, S. & Jovanović, M. 2021. Simulating a questionnaire on the framing effects in decision-making processes in a serious game. Cornell University, ArXiv Preprint. Arxiv.org/abs/2110.15011 

Makkonen J. 2017. Distraint: Deluxe Edition (PC release). JesseMakkonen.com 

Mangiron, C. 2018. Reception studies in game localisation: Taking stock in Elena Di Giovanni& Yves Gambier (eds.) Reception Studies and Audiovisual Translation. 

Pedersen, J. (2017). The FAR model: assessing quality in interlingual subtitling. The Journal of Specialised Translation Issue, July 2017(28), 210–229. 

Phan, M. H., Keebler, J. R., & Chaparro, B. S. (2016). The Development and Validation of the Game User Experience Satisfaction Scale (GUESS). Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, 58(8), 1217–1247. https://doi.org/10.1177/0018720816669646 

Schloneger, R. 2016. Is This Author Intelligent? The Effect of Spelling Errors on Perception of Authors. Linguistics Senior Research Projects., 2. Cedarville University. Core.ac.uk/display/301479739 

Skorupska, K; Núñez, M.; Kopec, W.; & Nielek, R. 2018. Older Adults and Crowdsourcing. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 2 (CSCW), 1–23. https://doi.org/ghdn5x 

Szarkowska, A., & Boczkowska, J. 2020. Colour coding subtitles in multilingual films: a reception study. Perspectives, 30, 520 - 536. DOI.org/h2vg

Krzysztof Hejduk (presenter) is a doctoral student at the University of Łódź. Awarded by the Polish Minister of Education & Science as well as the Rector of the UŁ, he graduated from his alma mater with distinguished BA and MA theses in linguistics. He is member of the Polish Cognitive Linguistics Association (PCLA) and has worked for the Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure projects (CLARIN). He presented the results of his research into AVT/MA and game localisation at international conferences as well as recently co-authored “On-Screen Language in Video Games: A Translation Perspective” (Cambridge University Press, 2022, with Mikołaj Deckert) and “Videogame localisation, spelling errors and player reception” (Translation, Cognition & Behavior, 2022, with Mikołaj Deckert). He is currently involved in several linguistic research projects, many of which centre on video game localisation, including one awarded by the National Science Centre of Poland and co-funded by the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9476-4428 

Mikołaj Deckert is associate professor at the University of Łódź, Institute of English Studies, in Poland. His research is primarily in interlingual translation, with emphasis on audiovisual translation and media accessibility, but also more broadly deals with language and cognitive processes. He serves as peer-review editor for the Journal of Specialised Translation (JoSTrans), has recently co-edited “The Palgrave Handbook of Audiovisual Translation and Media Accessibility” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, with Łukasz Bogucki) and co-authored “On-Screen Language in Video Games: A Translation Perspective” (Cambridge University Press, 2022, with Krzysztof Hejduk). He participated in a number of national and international research projects, recently as PI in the grants “Visual-verbal stimuli in video games: a translation perspective” and “On-screen language in video games: a reception perspective on translation”. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1569-2399

Paratexts and video game localisation

Xiaochun Zhang

Paratext, a term coined by Genette (1982), has been applied in analysing various phenomena across diverse cultural and media industries. However, it is often adopted with appropriations and redefinitions of the original framework conceptualised primarily towards the book medium (Švelch 2020). In the contemporary cultural industry, paratexts fill the space between text, audience, and industry, negotiating or determining interactions among the triangle (Gray 2010). In video games, paratextual elements can be in games and beyond, authorised and unauthorised by game developers. Games can also be paratextual to other more central media artefacts (Consalvo 2017). Similarly, translation can be viewed as paratext, and as text with its own paratext (Batchelor 2018). Paratexts in game localisation have been touched on in a few studies, including a reception study on the habits of Spanish players interacting with game paratexts, such as game websites and trailers (Fernández Costales 2016); the importance of paratexuality in localising massively multiplayer online role-playing games (Strong 2018); and promotional web-texts for a localised mobile game in the study of women-related translation paratexts (Lee 2020). Yet, the significance of paratexts in game localisation has not been fully addressed. This article aims to explore the creation and translation of paratextual elements in video games by conducting a case study on the game Cyberpunk 2077 (CD Projekt Red, 2020), a role-playing action game, and the way it has been localised and promoted in the Chinese market. Cyberpunk 2077 has received substantial media coverage and triggered heated debates on its localisation style in China, continuously producing paratextual content of the game. Materials including game trailers, live streams, walkthroughs, guides, interviews of game developers and the localisation team, and players’ comments on social media platforms and game forums will be considered and analysed selectively in the hope of highlighting the functions of paratexts in video games and shedding light on the role translation plays in facilitating these functions across languages and cultures.

Dr Xiaochun Zhang is Lecturer in Translation Studies at the University College London, United Kingdom. She is the principal investigator of the TransAD4Games project funded by the British Academy (2022-24) and the co-director of the Bristol Digital Game Lab. Her research interests lie primarily in video game localisation and accessibility, fan audiovisual translation, translation pedagogy, and language technology.

Global or glocal superheroes? A multimodal dubbing analysis of the PJ masks in Swedish and Dutch

Sara Van Meerbergen, Reglindis De Ridder

The impact of globalization on children's media has often been hotly debated. While some proponents welcome global media to broaden children’s horizons, some opponents warn for the potentially negative effects of an increasingly 'Disneyfied' culture for children (Davies 2004). More recently, several language and media scholars have noticed a growing counter-movement of cherishing 'the local', but also the 'localization' of global media (Machin & Van Leeuwen 2007; Borodo 2017). Van Leeuwen & Suleiman (2010:232) emphasize the importance and need for more nuanced and context-based analyses of this complex interplay between the local and the global in order to avoid "sweeping generalizations".

It is this relationship between the global and the local that is at the core of our dubbing analysis. With the help of tools informed by sociosemiotic and translation studies (Taylor 2016; Boria et al. 2020; Van Meerbergen & Lindgren 2020), the Swedish and Dutch dubbed versions of the internationally distributed Disney series PJ masks is analysed. The series is based on the French picture books by Racioppo Romuald, Les Pyjamasques, which was picked up 'locally' and remade for global distribution. This is a rather common Disney practice (Giroux & Pollock 2010). Subsequently, this series has been dubbed in different languages and broadcast, for instance, on the commercial children's channel Disney Junior and now Disney+ in both the Low Countries and Sweden, but also on Netflix and on SVT Barn, the Swedish public service broadcaster. In our comparative analysis of the Swedish and Dutch dubbing, we focus on how the series' superheroes are portrayed multimodally through words, images and voice, focusing on diversity, gender and agency. Our results show that the Dutch and Swedish dubbed variants can be considered as 'glocal' artifacts resulting from a global product being imported but also recontextualised and modified according to local needs in both language areas (Roudometof 2016).

Boria, Monica, Ángeles Carreres, María Noriega-Sánchez, and Marcus Tomalin. 2020. Translation and Multimodality: Beyond Words. Abingdon, Oxon; Routledge.

Borodo, Michał. 2017. Translation, Globalization and Younger Audiences: The Situation in Poland. Oxford: Peter Lang Ltd. International Academic Publishers.

Davies, Máire Messenger. 2004. ‘Mickey and Mr. Gumpy: The Global and the Universal in Children’s Media’. European Journal of Cultural Studies 7 (4): 425–40.

Giroux, Henry A., and Grace Pollock. 2010. The Mouse That Roared: Disney and the End of Innocence. Md: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Machin, David, and Theo Van Leeuwen. 2007. Global Media Discourse: A Critical Introduction. London; New York: Routledge.

Roudometof, Victor. 2016. Glocalization: A Critical Introduction. Abingdon: Routledge.

Taylor, Christopher. 2016. ‘The Multimodal Approach in Audiovisual Translation’. Target 28:2 (2016), pp. 222–236.

van Leeuwen, Theo, and Usama Suleiman. 2010. ‘Globalizing the Local: The Case of an Egyptian Superhero Comic’. In The Handbook of Language and Globalization, 232–54.

Van Meerbergen, Sara, and Charlotte Lindgren. 2020. ‘Pettson and Findus Go Glocal: Recontextualization of Images and Multimodal Analysis of Simultaneous Action in Dutch and French Translations’. In Children’s Literature in Translation Texts and Contexts. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

Reglindis De Ridder: I am a senior lecturer in Dutch and German Studies at the University of Stockholm. My research interests lie in sociolinguistics, audiovisual translation, Dutch studies, and corpus linguistics. After obtaining a master's degree in Translation Studies in my hometown Brussels, I decided to specialise in audiovisual translation and enrolled on a second postgraduate degree course in Screen Translation in the UK. The University of Sheffield, at that time, was the only university in Europe offering a postgraduate course in Audiovisual Translation that allowed me to focus on subtitling from and into my mother tongue, Dutch. In the UK, I also grew fascinated with the status of national varieties in pluricentric language areas and the role of translators in minority and smaller, or 'minoritised' language areas. Subsequently, I embarked on a PhD at Dublin City University in Ireland to delve more deeply into this matter. I investigated the role of television translation in minority and minoritised language cultures, on the one hand, and how language policy affects subtitles, on the other hand focussing on the Flemish Public Service broadcaster. Afterwards, I conducted postdoc research at Stockholm University's investigating audiovisual translation into Dutch for Belgian children. I also collaborated on a gender and diversity in children's dubbing in Dutch and Swedish project. Early 2023, I edited a volume on linguistic standards used in (translated) media, One size fits all?

Why love one but hate the other? The difference between dubbed animations and live action movies

Gabriela Flis, Agnieszka Szarkowska

Regardless of its long standing tradition of dubbing that has its origins in the 1930’s (Szarkowska, 2008), for many years Poland has been believed to be a voice-over country (Gottlieb, 1998), with quite a few opinion polls seemingly confirming Poles’ preference for “the ugly duckling of audiovisual translation”(Orero, 2006), simultaneously validating their contempt for dubbing. This disdain for dubbing, however, seems to have one exception – animated movies. Although not really fond of dubbing human actors, Polish audiences seem to have a soft spot for dubbed animations, with particular keenness for domestication, even if the origins of a given joke are not so clear (Leszczyńska & Szarkowska, 2018). This discrepancy may be connected to the issue of phonetic synchrony (Fodor, 1976) also known as lip sync (Whitman-Linsen, 1992). Perhaps audiences who are, unlike viewers from the FIGS countries (Gottlieb, 1998), not used to dubbing as a mode of audiovisual translation, take particular issue with the incongruencies between lip movements and audible dialogue. What is more, previous research shows that in some cases such discrepancy may even influence viewers’ gaze patterns, with Spanish viewers subconsciously avoiding looking at characters’ mouths and focusing almost exclusively at their eyes (Romero-Fresco, 2020). In order to investigate this phenomenon and compare viewing patterns of Poles watching an animated movie vs live action one, we conducted an eyetracking study using an SMI250 eyetracker. Forty Polish native speakers were randomly assigned either to a group that watched the dubbed version of Disney’s animated Mulan (1998) or the live action version with the same title from 2020. Both fragments encompassed parallel plot points, in order to eliminate as many confounding variables as possible. We measured the number of fixations made on the mouths and eyes of characters , mean fixation duration and dwell time indicative of one’s cognitive effort (Holmqvist, 2011). The experiment was also supplemented with questionnaires concerning immersive tendency, immersion and enjoyment, to better understand the correlation between dubbing, movie type and overall satisfaction. We believe that the results of our study may add to the overall discussion about the quality of dubbing in non-FIGS countries, as well as provide knowledge about audiences’ preferences, offering an experience more tailored to their wants and needs. 

Fodor, I. (1976). Film dubbing: Phonetic, semiotic, esthetic and psychological aspects. Helmut Buske. 

Gottlieb, H. (1998). Subtitling. In M. Baker (Ed.), Routledge encyclopedia of translation studies (First edition). Routledge. 

Holmqvist, K. (Ed.). (2011). Eye tracking: A comprehensive guide to methods and measures. Oxford University Press. 

Leszczyńska, U., & Szarkowska, A. (2018). “I don’t understand, but it makes me laugh.” Domestication in contemporary Polish dubbing. The Journal of Specialised Translation, 30, 203–231. 

Orero, P. (2006). Voice-over: The Ugly Duckling of Audiovisual Translation. Proceedings of the Marie Curie Euroconferences MuTra ’Audiovisual Translation Scenarios’. 

Romero-Fresco, P. (2020). The dubbing effect: An eye-tracking study on how viewers make dubbing work. Journal of Specialized Translation, 33, 17–40. 

Szarkowska, A. (2008). Przekład audiowizualny w Polsce – perspektywy i wyzwania. Przekładaniec, Numer 20-O przekładzie audiowizualnym, 8–25. 

Whitman-Linsen, C. (1992). Through the dubbing glass: The synchronization of American motion pictures into German, French, and Spanish. P. Lang.

Gabriela Flis (presenter) holds a Master’s degree in translation and interpreting from the Institute of Applied Linguistics at the University of Warsaw. For her BA thesis, she joined the team of researchers conducting an eye-tracking study on the dubbing effect, after which she won a Diamond Grand from the Polish Ministry of Education and Science, funding further research into audiovisual speech perception in dubbing. Currently, she’s pursuing a PhD in linguistics with the focus on audiovisual translation. Professionally she works as a freelance subtitler, mainly providing subtitles, SDH and surtitles in theaters. She’s also an English to Polish and Polish to English interpreter. What is more, her combined knowledge of interpreting and subtitling allowed her to work as a respeaker, providing live captions. Nowadays she’s using her education to teach classes in audiovisual translation and respeaking at the University of Warsaw.

Agnieszka Szarkowska (presenter) is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Applied Linguistics, University of Warsaw. Agnieszka is a researcher, academic teacher, ex-translator, translator trainer, and media accessibility consultant. She is the head of AVT Lab, one of the first research groups on audiovisual translation. Her research projects include eye tracking studies on subtitling, voice-over, audio description, multilingualism in subtitling for the deaf and the hard of hearing, respeaking, and modern art for all. Agnieszka is the Vice-President of the European Association for Studies in Screen Translation (ESIST), a member of European Society for Translation Studies (EST), Galician Observatory for Media Accessibility (GALMA), Intermedia Research Group, AKCES expert group and an honorary member of the Polish Audiovisual Translators Association (STAW).

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A diachronic screenshot of ‘in-tune’ cultures: a digital analysis of song translation in Italian-dubbed animated musical comedies (1970-2019)

Lucia Dino Guida

This paper sets out to explore a new joined-up approach to provide the first sustained empirical investigation into translation strategies used in Italian-dubbed animated musical comedies (1970-2019). Specifically, it presents two song case studies selected from animated musical comedies which have (a) used different animation techniques and made an emblematic contribution to both the US and Italian creative industries, and (b) been released in multiple language versions that exemplify how cultures interact in song and translation across time and space: ‘Thomas O’Malley Cat’ (The Aristocats, 1970) and ‘Into the Unknown’ (Frozen II, 2019). This paper invites reflection on Chaume’s observation that cartoon characters demand a minimal degree of synchrony as ‘they do not speak but rather move their lips randomly’ (2012: 76), also noting Romero-Fresco’s latest study on the Dubbing Effect (2020), i.e. viewers’ tendency to focus on dubbed characters’ eyes rather than their mouths. It devises a ‘thick’ method of song analysis by combining contextual, schematic, statistical, and time-bound analysis, to create a set of quantitative and qualitative data for each song across six interconnected parameters: (1) word count/musical phrase duration; (2) rhyme/prosody; (3) linguistic and/or musical culture-specific elements; (4) vocal interpretative nuances; (5) phonetic/visemic implications for lip-synch; (6) visual performance matching word meaning. It deploys innovative digital humanities techniques, i.e. time-bound analysis via Sonic Visualiser markup, combined with traditional modes of analysis, e.g. close-reading of song texts and song writers/performers/dubbers’ interviews and reviews, to establish a robust model for analysing songs as networks of cultural interaction. Drawing on Barambones-Zubiria’s comparative translation analysis framework (2009), this paper aims to detect Italian adapters’ most/least used translation techniques in the selected case studies and provide a diachronic screenshot of variation of trends in their song translation activity, in relation to the transition from 2D traditional animation to 3D computer-animated characters, whose accurate reproduction of mouth movements has demanded for an increasing degree of lip synchrony. It intends to explore the function of specific American animated film studios’ subsidiary companies (e.g. Disney Voices Character International) responsible for the global supervision and distribution of translated/dubbed versions of their media, and their role, if any, in the promotion of a more ‘universal’ rather than ‘culture-specific/over-localised’ approach in song writing and related translation policies. Tensions between the universal/culture-specific elements in songs will be observed in the comparative analysis of interlinking linguistic and musical features, and their implications specifically in terms of voice analysis and visual performance. In response to Susam-Sarajeva’s call (2008) for extending research on translation and music, this paper will interrogate how translation mediates interactions between music, text and performance, and alters the nature and perception of the song and the film in which it is included. Considering Di Giovanni’s (2003) views on representation of cultural otherness in audio-visual translation, it seeks to provide an original translation-based perspective on ‘in-tune’ cultural interactions and their impact on international film music production and transmission.

Lucia Dino Guida (presenter) is a doctoral researcher in Translation Studies at the University of Birmingham (UK). Her research aims to provide the first sustained empirical investigation into translation techniques used in Italian-dubbed animated musical comedies from 1959-2019, and investigate the related implications for voice performance and interpretation. Her project is fully funded through a competitive Arts and Humanities Research Council studentship, awarded via the Midlands4Cities Doctoral Training Partnership. Lucia’s main areas of interest include music/text/performance interactions, audio-visual translation, adaptation, song translation. She has acted as a PGR rep on the EUniWELL consortium bid with the universities of Cologne, Leiden, Nantes, Florence, Semmelweis, Linnaeus, which successfully managed to secure the funding awarded by the European Commission within the programme ‘European Universities Initiative’. Lucia currently works as teaching assistant in Italian at the University of Birmingham.

Challenges of Multilingual Dubbing into Castilian Spanish: A Corpus-Based Analysis

Irene Menendez

In today's digital age, the consumption of audiovisual content has become an integral part of our lives. Whether it is enjoying a film or binge-watching a TV series, we have become avid consumers of these works. The digital era and the rapid growth of streaming platforms has made accessing these audiovisual creations easier than ever before. With just a few clicks, we can immerse ourselves in a world of entertainment (at home or on-the-go), and explore diverse genres and stories from around the globe. Besides, the ability to access a vast collection of films and TV shows on-demand, anytime and anywhere, has inevitably transformed our viewing habits. This shift in consumption patterns has fueled the demand for high-quality Audiovisual Translation (AVT) services, ensuring that viewers can fully engage with the content they want, regardless of their language or sensory needs.My research focuses on Multilingual Audiovisual Translation (MAVT)—translation of multilingual original audiovisual works—, and it zeroes in on one AVT technique, dubbing, and more specifically on dubbing into Castilian Spanish. I chose dubbing because I wondered if the final audience watching the dubbed version of a multilingual original work received an equally multilingual final work and, if not, whether this affected their reception of such audiovisual work. That could encompass any dubbing language, but to delimit the scope of my study I narrowed it down to Castilian Spanish. The overarching project with which I want to answer my main research question, encompasses the analysis of a custom-made bilingual corpus—English multilingual original version (OV) and dubbed version (DV) into Castilian Spanish of 50 scenes extracted from feature films and series—to determine whether the DV preserves the OV’s multilingualism and to what degree, and to offer alternate dubbing solutions when deemed necessary. Then, it collects data on the audience’s reception of multilingual OV’s and their DV’s into Castilian Spanish, as well as audiovisual consumption habits by means of two online questionnaires targeting an English-speaking audience (Q1), and a Spanish-speaking audience (Q2).In my presentation I will combine part of the corpus analysis with some preliminary results of the questionnaire. More in particular, I will look at the analysis of the OV of one scene and compare that with the replies received via the online questionnaires for that same scene. I will also offer preliminary results collected on the use of streaming platforms, and the use and attitude towards dubbing and subtitles, considering different factors such as the age of the respondents, their nationality, their educational background, and the languages they speak.The final aim of the research is to offer a reference standard for MAVT into Castilian Spanish of English audiovisual works containing an L3ST, using Corrius and Zabalbeascoa (2019) as a baseline, and shed some light on current audiovisual consumption habits.

Irene Menéndez de la Rosa is a PhD candidate in English Linguistics at the University Complutense of Madrid (UCM), supervised by Dr Juan Pedro Rica, and a visiting research student at the UAntwerpen. She holds a BA in Translation and Interpreting from the UCM, and an MA in Conference Interpreting from the University of Granada. Additionally, she works as a translator and interpreter, and education agent (coordinating International Education Programs abroad). In her dissertation she offers a corpus-based comparative analysis focused on potential crisis points linked to the fluctuation of languages or linguistic variations in the English original version of audiovisual works subsequently dubbed into Castilian Spanish.

English dubbing as the new normal: a turning point in the user’s cinematic experience?

Sofía Sánchez-Mompeán

The advent of digitization and streaming is nowadays encouraging the expansion of dubbing in those countries traditionally unaccustomed to watching foreign content with dubs. This so-called “dubbing revolution” (Ranzato and Zanotti 2019) has been particularly noticeable in Anglophone territories, where the consumption of dubbed versions has soared after platforms like Netflix have expanded their repertoire of non-English content dubbed into this language (Sánchez-Mompeán 2021). Although dubbing is apparently playing a crucial role in drawing a bigger audience in these countries (Spiteri Miggiani 2021, Lee 2022), the quality of dubbed versions has been called into question by a number of viewers, who have been complaining about poor synchronisation, unnatural dialogues and artificial performances. Negative comments certainly cast doubt on the level of quality of English dubbed versions but also pave the way for exploring in more detail the connection between an unfavourable response on the part of the audience and their lack of habituation to this audiovisual translation mode. Given that English dubbing is reviving amongst users coming from non-dubbing backgrounds (Díaz Cintas 2018) and with limited exposure to translation, it is fair to assume that they might find it difficult to keep their ears open to the many quirks and the prefabricated orality typifying dubbed dialogue. Likewise, a short tradition in the dubbing industry might have an impact on the level of quality of the final version (Spiteri Miggiani 2021). 

This study offers insights into how substandard quality and the lack of a long professional tradition might compromise engagement as well as cinematic illusion and how the lack of exposure to dubbing might have a negative effect on the way the audiovisual content is received and enjoyed by English viewers. To this end, users’ take on the English dubbed versions of TV series such as La Casa de Papel, Lupin and How to sell drugs online (amongst others) has been gathered from several social networks, video-sharing platforms and fora (e.g., Twitter, Reddit, Youtube, Quora...). Data extracted allow a qualitative description of the most vilified aspects by the audience and the potential constraints that might be impairing the final versions dubbed into English. The conclusions suggest the need to improve English dubbing quality at different levels as well as the importance of habituation to make this practice work from a cognitive, linguistic and prosodic point of view. 

Díaz Cintas, J. (2018). ‘Subtitling’s a carnival’: New practices in cyberspace. The Journal of Specialised Translation, 30, 127–149. 

Lee, W. (2022). Why dubbing has become more crucial to Netflix’s business. Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2022-02-28/why-dubbing-has-become-more-crucial-to-netflixs-business. 

Ranzato, I. and Zanotti, S. (2019). The dubbing revolution. In: Ranzato, I. & Zanotti, S. (Eds.), Reassessing Dubbing. Historical Approaches and Current Trends. John Benjamins, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, pp. 1–14. 

Sánchez-Mompeán, S. (2021). Netflix likes it dubbed: Taking on the challenge of dubbing into English. Language & Communication, 80, 180–190. 

Spiteri Miggiani, G. (2021). Exploring applied strategies for English-language dubbing. The Journal of Audiovisual Translation, 4(1), 137–156.

Sofía Sánchez-Mompeán is a senior lecturer at the Department of Translation and Interpreting, University of Murcia (Spain). She holds a PhD and MA in Audiovisual Translation (University of Roehampton) and a BA in Translation and Interpreting (University of Murcia). She has been awarded several recognitions such as the Gerhard Weiler Prize and the Martha Cheung Award for her research on the field of audiovisual translation. She is the author of The Prosody of Dubbed Speech. Beyond the Character’s Words (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) and has published several papers on a number of renowned journals. She is a member of the research groups GALMA (Galician Observatory for Media Accessibility) and TECTRAD (Technology and Translation). She has also lent her voice to adverts and animated short films, and has worked as a freelance translator, subtitler and proofreader. Her main research interests include the dubbing-prosody interface, creative practices in dubbing, and the translation of non-verbal cues in audiovisual translation.

The role of the translator in the dubbing of teen series: the case of Sex Education and Euphoria

Mar Ogea-Pozo, Carla Botella Tejera

Teen series centre their plots on young teenage stories and represent the maturation process and the identity of each generation (Fedele, 2021; Raya et al., 2018), so it is important to have characters who speak the exclusive jargon of their congeners. This portrayal of young people's mindset and speech, however, may vary across cultures, as each group establishes its own linguistic and referential frameworks to address certain topics and taboos, leading to different and distinctive pragmatic purposes and subtleties (Fuentes, 2015). Therefore, language becomes a living and creative tool for communication (Santos, 1997, p. 457) which every audiovisual translator must be able to interpret so as to endow the target text with the same dynamism and connotations. One of the most difficult challenges could then be to transfer the subtleties that make up the characters’ personality and idiosyncrasy. And, what is more important, given the strong oral nature of dialogues, these transferences should preserve orality and remain as natural as possible for the target audience to accept them. Otherwise, and also linked to the dubbing process, spectators may suffer from what is known as the “dubby effect”, that has been described as “anything that is not speech-like –jarring diction or awkward wording– or is conspicuously out of time with how actors’ mouths are moving on screen” (Goldsmith, 2019 cited in Sánchez-Mompeán, 2021, p. 185). This article aims to highlight the human role in the translation process by looking into fundamental aspects such as the identity of the characters, the presence of sexual language, cultural taboos, neologisms, young adults' sociolanguage, and the ephemeral and changing nature of this language. For this purpose, the language used by the protagonists of Sex Education (Nunn, 2019) and Euphoria (Levinson, 2019), two teen series that have become a great success recently, will be categorised and analysed, based on an interview conducted with the translator of both series for this investigation, and resorting to previous studies on this topic (Botella & Ogea, 2022; Ogea & Hidalgo, 2021; Igareda & Aperribay, 2012), as well as to the taxonomies available for the study of taboo language (Fuentes-Luque, 2015; Cestero, 2015; Ávila-Cabrera, 2014; Surià, 2014; Allan & Burridge, 2006, etc.) and of the juvenile lexicon (Mitkova, 2007; Rodríguez, 2002, etc.) in order to create our own taxonomy of the language of relationships and to study its translation from English into Spanish. The results demonstrate the rapidly changing and evolving nature of the language of teenagers, as well as the key role played by the translator in this cultural mediation work, in order to create a target audiovisual text that maintains the characteristics of the series and meets the audience expectations.

Mar Ogea-Pozo (presenter) is an audiovisual translator and holds a BA in Modern Languages and Translation & Interpreting Studies from the University of Salford, as well as a MA in Audiovisual Translation: Dubbing and Subtitling from the University of Seville and a MA in Specialised Translation from the University of Cordoba. In 2016, she finished a PhD thesis on the subtitling of intercultural documentaries. She has worked as an in-house and as a freelance audiovisual translator, and currently she is a lecturer at the University of Cordoba (Spain), as well as in the Master's Degree in Audiovisual Translation: Localization, Subtitling and Dubbing of the University of Cádiz and the Master's Degree in Specialised Translation of the University of Cordoba. She is a member of the research group Oriens HUM940 and the research group TRADIT. She is the chief editor of Transletters, International Journal of Translation and Interpreting, and the coordinator of TradAV, a teaching innovation project on audiovisual translation from a multidisciplinary approach. 

Carla Botella Tejera (presenter) is a certified Translator/Interpreter and she holds a Ph.D. in Translation and Interpreting from the University of Alicante (2010). Her dissertation was on the translation of audiovisual intertextuality. She also holds a MA in New Technologies Applied to Education (2010) and a Postgraduate Diploma in Multilingual Advertising Transcreation (2020). In 2016 she became full-time Lecturer at the Translation and Interpreting Department of the University of Alicante. In the last few years, Carla has published several articles on audiovisual and creative translation, didactics, humour and intertextuality. She has been the academic director of the ESUA Diploma on Subtitling of the University of Alicante, and currently she is co-director of the Cinema and Audiovisual Club at the same university. She is a member of the ARENA (Accessibility, Audiovisual Translation and Language Learning) teaching innovation group, the TRADIT (Didactic Audiovisual Translation) research group at the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED) and the TEATRADSUAL research group from the University of Alicante. Carla is the editorial coordinator of the Encyclopedia of Translation and Interpreting (ENTI), and she is part of the editorial board of the Monografías de Traducción e Interpretación (MONTI) journal.

(Main)streaming English dubs: trailblazing, trends, and training new talent

Lydia Hayes

English dubbing has been proliferating on streaming platforms since late 2016. Soon thereafter, Chaume (2018: 87) remarked upon the emerging trend on Netflix to dub non-English-language content into English, which has been considered a marketing strategy to attract viewership of ‘foreign’ content and termed ‘the dubbing revolution’ (Moore 2018 in Ranzato and Zanotti 2019: 3). ‘Revolution’ is a notably apt term used to describe English dubbing, given its disruptive as well as cyclical meaning. That is to say that the novelty of dubbing as a mode of localisation for the into-English directionality is in fact illusory. What is actually in question is the resurgence and revamping of a practice. Whereas subtitling has long been the norm for localising live-action fiction into English, dubbing was prevalent from the 1930s through the 1970s, when it was used for European cinema, Kung Fu films, and Spaghetti Westerns (Hayes 2021). Meanwhile, dubbing has remained to be the preferred mode of localisation for specialised products, which are often animated, such as cartoons and videogames. 

Despite these past and present realities, Anglophone viewers tend to be less familiar with the dubbing mode or, at least, are unaware of their exposure to it, as dubbing is camouflaged in animation and live-action dubs are generally far removed in time and not revisited. Many viewers are therefore watching English dubs on streaming platforms, aka subscription video-on-demand services (SVoDs), for the very first time. This pseudo novelty has created a space for experimentation and different accent strategies availing of native as well as non-native accents are emerging as a unique characteristic of English dubbing (Hayes and Bolaños-García-Escribano 2022). 

 In this presentation, I will give an overview of the English-language dubbing industry, addressing its historical evolution and delving into its current state of affairs. I will discuss the dubbing practices that studios working for Netflix, and other streamers, have developed over the past five years. I will discuss trends in the English dubs of Castilian-Spanish, Scandinavian, and German originals. Then, I will explain how the lack of convention in the English-dubbing industry and the novelty of this mode of AVT for the majority of viewers have facilitated an acceptance of dubbing among native Anglophones and how, on the other hand, viewer agency has determined the use of some accent strategies and not others. Drawing on questionnaire findings (Hayes 2022), I will argue how the reality of English being de facto lingua franca has given rise to foreign varieties of the language, whose usage in some English dubs may render it less psychologically demanding for viewers of dubs to suspend their ‘linguistic disbelief’ (Romero-Fresco 2009: 49). Furthermore, I will consider Romero-Fresco’s (2020) dubbing-effect observation, on the whereabouts and distribution of viewers' visual attention, querying the potentially unique case of ‘foreignisation’ strategies in English dubs. Lastly, I will explain how accent strategies in English dubbing have influenced my training courses on script translation and adaptation for English dubbing, imparted to master’s students at the University of Bristol and freelancers at ZOO Digital.

Lydia Hayes is a contracted consultant to localisation company ZOO Digital, for whom she works as the curriculum designer within the educational branch of the company: ZOO Academy. Her work involves in-house course creation and external university liaisons. Lydia is also a lecturer on the MA in Translation at the University of Bristol (UK). Her teaching focuses on subtitling and script adaptation for dubbing, as well as on journalistic and literary translation, and she teaches students predominantly with a Spanish-English language specialisation. Lydia is also a Reviews Collaborator for the Universidad de Córdoba’s (Spain) Translation Studies journal Hikma. Her expertise from doctoral research at UCL lies in Spanish dubbing, English dubbing, Variationist Sociolinguistics, and Phonetics.