Subtitling

Jorge Díaz Cintas

Imperial College

Table of contents

1. The technical dimension

2. The linguistic dimension

3. Types of subtitling

4. New trends

References
Related articles

doi: 10.1075/hts.1.sub1
► Translations: German, Spanish, French, Polish, Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian
Handbook of Translation Studies Volume 1 (2010), pp. 344–349. | ISSN 2210-4844
© 2010–2016 John Benjamins Publishing Company

In the context of today’s multimedia society, audiovisual translation (AVT) is

gaining great visibility and relevance as a means of fostering communication
and dialogue in an increasingly multicultural and multilingual environment. AVT
is the umbrella term used to refer to the translation of programmes in which the
verbal dimension is only one of the many shaping the communication process.
The concurrence of different semiotic layers through the visual (images, written
text, gestures) and audio (music, noise, dialogue) channels makes the
translator’s task particularly challenging in this field. Of the several modes
available to translate audiovisual programmes (Gambier 2003), subtitling is
arguably the most commonly used because it is cheap and fast. Other
professional practices are interpreting, voiceover and dubbing.
By way of definition, subtitling consists in rendering in writing the
translation into a TL of the original dialogue exchanges uttered by the different
speakers, as well as of all other verbal information that is transmitted visually
(letters, banners, inserts) or aurally (lyrics, voices off). Subtitling can be seen as a
supplement to the original programme, which, unlike in dubbing, remains intact
in the target culture for all to watch and to hear. All subtitled programmes are
therefore made up of three main components: the original spoken/written
word, the original image and the added subtitles. Subtitlers are expected to
come up with solutions that create the right interaction among these
components and they must take into consideration the fact that viewers have to
read the written text at a given speed whilst also watching the images at the
same time. The constraining nature of the audiovisual environment has always
been brought to the fore when discussing this type of translation, leading
scholars in the past to label it as an example of ‘constrained translation’ (Titford
1982) or even ‘a necessary evil’ (Marleau 1982).

1. The technical dimension

Generally speaking, subtitles do not contain more than two lines, are displayed
horizontally – usually at the bottom of the screen though in some countries like
Japan they can also be vertical – and appear in synchrony with the image and
dialogue. The synchronisation process is known as spotting, cueing, timing or
originating and it may be carried out by the translators themselves or by
technicians who know the subtitling program.
The time a subtitle stays on screen depends both on the speed at which the
original exchange is delivered and on the viewers’ assumed reading speed.
Tradition had it that the best practice should be based on the so-called ‘6 second
rule’ (Díaz Cintas & Remael 2007: 96–99), whereby two full lines of around 35
characters each can be comfortably read in six seconds. For shorter periods of
time, proportional values are automatically calculated by the subtitling software,
bearing in mind that no subtitle should stay on screen for less than one second
so as to guarantee that the eye of the viewer can register its presence.
Although these parameters still enjoy some currency in the industry,
particularly on television, the viewers’ increased exposure to reading text on
screen and enormous technical advances in recent decades have brought
considerable changes. The sacred rule of having a maximum of two lines in a
subtitle so as to minimise their impact on the photography is being broken daily
by the emergence of three, four and even five-liners, notably in the subtitling
being done on the internet. The traditional positioning of subtitles at the bottom
of the screen is also being challenged as they are beginning to be displayed on
different parts of the screen.
 Likewise, restricting the number of characters per line to 35, 39 or even 43 is
not an important factor anymore. Most professional subtitling programs work
now with pixels, allowing for proportional lettering, which means that subtitlers
can write as much text as possible, depending on the font size being used and
the actual space available on screen.
Perhaps surprisingly, viewers’ reading patterns and abilities have not been
thoroughly investigated in subtitling, and there is apparently a general
consensus in the profession that the 6-second rule dictates a rather low reading
speed. With the advent of DVD and mobile technology, the mushrooming of
screens around us, and the proliferation of audiovisual programmes, it seems
fair to accept that today’s viewers are ‘better/faster’ audiovisual readers than
those of previous generations. Besides the lengthening of lines, shorter
exposure times and faster reading speeds are all a consequence of this belief. It
is not uncommon to keep two-liners for a maximum of 5 seconds, and to apply
reading speeds that hover around the 180 words per minute (wpm) or 15 to 17
characters per second (cps), as opposed to the traditional 140 wpm or 12 cps. As
can be expected, all these technical changes have had a knock-on effect on the
way the actual translation is carried out.

2. The linguistic dimension

Whilst respecting the technical specifications discussed above, subtitles must
provide a semantically adequate account of the SL dialogue. The fact that
viewers do not normally have the possibility of back-tracking to retrieve
information has a great impact in the way subtitles are presented on screen.
Ideally, if they are to be easily understood in the short time available, each
subtitle ought to be semantically self-contained and come across as a coherent,
logical and syntactical unit. To boost readability, both spotting and line-breaking
ought to be carried out in such a way that words intimately connected by logic,
semantics or grammar should be written on the same line or subtitle whenever
possible.
Unless speakers deliver their utterances really slowly, reduction is arguably
the main strategy in use by subtitlers. Reductions can be partial, where
condensation of the original is paramount, and total, when part of the message
is deleted. In both cases, decisions have to adhere to the principle of relevance
and make sure that no information of vital diegetic value is deleted. Any
solutions should take the iconic information into account and avoid translating
what is explicitly conveyed through the image. Although subtitles cannot
translate absolutely everything that is said, they must strive to capture the
essence of what is said. As aptly put by Gottlieb (1998/2001: 247): “In subtitling,
the speech act is always in focus; intentions and effects are more important
than isolated lexical elements”.
The transition from oral to written poses certain challenges and raises the
question of whether non-standard speech, like accents and very colloquial traits,
can be effectively rendered in writing. More often than not, this type of linguistic
variation is neutralised in the subtitles. Swearwords and other taboo
expressions are also particularly sensitive to this media migration as there is the
tacit belief that they are more offensive when starkly reproduced in text than
when verbalised, which in turn tends to lead to the indiscriminate deletion of
most effing and blinding in the TL subtitles.
Because of the concurrent presence of the original soundtrack and the
subtitles, and especially when translating from a well-known language like
English or from one linguistically close to the TL, subtitling finds itself in a
particularly vulnerable situation, open to the scrutiny of anyone with the
slightest knowledge of the SL. One strategy used to deal with this is for subtitles
to follow, as far as possible, the syntactic structure of the source text so as to
reinforce the synchronisation and to preserve the same chronology of events as
in the original utterances.
A worrying practice in the industry is the recourse to English as a pivot
language to translate from some languages (Czech or Japanese) into others
(French or German) following an English translation rather than the original
soundtrack. Errors or misunderstandings in the English translation will most
likely be replicated in the other languages, and nuances and interpretations will
also be filtered through English.
The imperative of having to synchronise dialogue and subtitles, the need to
stay within a maximum of two lines per subtitle, and the widespread belief that
the best subtitles are the ones that are not noticed, have been frequently
invoked to explain why subtitlers cannot make use of metatextual devices, such
as footnotes or glosses, to justify their solutions. However, this assumption
seems to be being challenged by new practices, where glosses inside the
subtitles and explanatory notes on top of the screen are freely used (Díaz Cintas
2005).

3. Types of subtitling
From a technical perspective subtitles can be open, when they are delivered
together with the image and cannot be turned off, as in the cinema, or closed,
when they are optional and can be added to the programme at the viewer’s will,
as on most DVDs. The process of merging the subtitles with the images has
evolved considerably over the years (Ivarsson & Carroll 1998: 12–19) and today’s
main methods are laser, whereby the subtitles are burnt onto the celluloid, and
electronic, whereby the subtitles are projected onto the film.
Subtitles can appear on screen as a block and off again, known as pop-on
subtitles, scroll horizontally, or roll-up. According to the time available for
preparation, subtitles can be pre-prepared ahead of the programme’s release, or
(semi/real)live if they are produced at the same time as the programme is being
broadcast.
From a linguistic point of view we can distinguish between intralingual
subtitles, also known as captions in American English, where the language of the
subtitles and the programme coincide and interlingual subtitles, where the
spoken/written message of the original programme is translated into a TL.
Bilingual subtitles are part of the latter category and are produced in
geographical areas where two or more languages are spoken, as in Finland
(Finnish and Swedish) or Jordan (Arabic and Hebrew).
The best known type of intralingual subtitles is aimed at audiences with
hearing impairment and is widely known as subtitling for the deaf and the hard-
of-hearing (SDH). They are a step forward in guaranteeing greater democratic
access to audiovisual programming and, in many countries, their output is
regulated by legislation. Although they share many features with standard
subtitling, they also make use of some unique attributes (de Linde & Kay 1999;
Neves 2005). On television, they normally change colour depending on the
person who is talking or the emphasis given to certain words within the same
subtitle, whilst on DVD they resort to labels to identify speakers. It is not
unusualy to come across subtitles of up to three or even four lines, and
accommodate more than one sepaker in the same line. Crucially, not only do
they reproduce the speaker’s dialogue, but they also incorporate paralinguistic
information that deaf people cannot access from the soundtrack, such as the
revving of an engine, steps on a staircase, indications concerning music,
laughter, or whispering. Their positioning is also important and they can be left
or right justified so that speakers can be easily identified or to indicate where a
given sound is coming from.
Thanks to greater social awareness, SDH is one of the forms of audiovisual
communication which has undergone spectacular growth in recent years on all
media. In addition to a higher turnover, with some TV stations subtitling 100% of
their output, SDH has also crossed linguistic barriers and interlingual subtitling
for hearing impaired audiences is now a reality on some DVDs.

4. New trends
Subtitling is so dependent on technology that any technical advances have the
potential to encroach both on the subtitling process from the practitioner’s
perspective as well as on the perception that viewers have of subtitling as a
product. In this sense, digitisation and the availability of free subtitling software
on the net have made possible the rise and consolidation of translation
practices like fansubbing, which in turn are having an incidental effect on how
formal conventions are applied. Subtitles have been traditionally rather
humdrum in terms of positioning, font type and layout. This new way of
approaching subtitles as part of a budding participatory culture is pushing the
boundaries of creativity and shaking the foundations of traditional subtitling.
Only time will tell whether these conventions put forward by the so-called
‘collective intelligence’ (Lévy 1997) are just a mere fleeting fashion or whether
they are the prototype for future subtitling. The impetus provided by 3D
technology may well open the door to more interactivity and cr3aTVty in
subtitling.
Recent developments in voice and speech recognition have made possible
the appearance and booming of respeaking as a professional practice to subtitle
programmes that are broadcast (semi/real)live, such as the news or sports. The
wider breadth and scope of genres being distributed audiovisually – corporate
videos, scientific and technical documentaries with a high level of lexical
repetition – makes the incipient use of translation memory systems and
automated translation in subtitling a very promising development.
In terms of research, the didactic potential of subtitling to learn and
consolidate a foreign language has been a particularly active line of enquiry in
recent times (Díaz Cintas 2008). In an attempt to bolster their quantitative
findings and gain an insight into the cognitive efforts presupposed by reading
subtitles, some researchers are resorting to the application of new
methodologies and tools, like corpus studies and eye-tracking.
Since the late 1990s subtitling has been a most inspiring field in which to
conduct research and more recently also for netizens to communicate in
cyberspace. Far from waning, this interest is still aflame and as strong as two
decades ago, if not stronger.

References
Díaz Cintas, Jorge
2005 “Back to the future in subtitling.” In MuTra 2005 – Challenges of
Multidimensional Translation: Conference Proceedings, Heidrun Gerzymisch-
Arbogast and Sandra Nauert (eds). www.euroconferences.info/
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May 2010]. TSB
(ed.) 2008 The Didactics of Audiovisual Translation. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John
Benjamins doi: 10.1075/btl.77 BoP
Díaz Cintas, Jorge & Remael, Aline
2007 Audiovisual Translation: Subtitling. Manchester: St Jerome. TSB
Gambier, Yves
2003 “Introduction: Screen transadaptation: Perception and reception.” The
Translator 9 (2): 171–189 doi: 10.1080/13556509.2003.10799152

Gottlieb, Henrik
1998/2001 “Subtitling.” In Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, Mona
Baker (ed.), 244–248. London & New York: Routledge. TSB
Ivarsson, Jan & Carroll, Mary
1998 Subtitling. Simrishamn: TransEdit. TSB
Lévy, Pierre
1997 Collective Intelligence. Mankind’s Emerging World in Cyberspace. Transl. by
Robert Bononno. Jackson: Perseus Books.
de Linde, Zoe & Kay, Neil
1999 The Semiotics of Subtitling. Manchester: St Jerome. TSB
Marleau, Lucien
1982 “Les sous-titres… un mal nécessaire”. Meta 27 (3): 271–285
doi: 10.7202/003577ar

Neves, Josélia
2005 Audiovisual Translation: Subtitling for the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing. London:
Roehampton University. Ph.D. Thesis. roehampton.openrepository.com/
roehampton/handle/10142/12580 [Accessed 10 May 2010]. TSB
Titford, Christopher
1982 “Sub-titling: constrained translation”. Lebende Sprachen 27 (3): 113–116.

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