Target. International Journal of Translation Studies - Volume 28, Issue 2, 2016

This paper aims to identify theoretical and methodological issues, challenges and opportunities posed by the specific nature of research on audiovisual translation (AVT) developed within the framework of Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS). For this purpose, it offers a brief presentation of the overarching principles of DTS; a selective overview of research on AVT in the 21st century, considering the main achievements and challenges involved in such research; and a discussion of some theoretical and methodological issues, challenges and opportunities faced by Descriptive Audiovisual Translation Studies.

The volume of Audiovisual Translation (AVT) is increasing to meet the rising demand for data that needs to be accessible around the world. Machine Translation (MT) is one of the most innovative technologies to be deployed in the field of translation, but it is still too early to predict how it can support the creativity and productivity of professional translators in the future. Currently, MT is more widely used in (non-AV) text translation than in AVT. In this article, we discuss MT technology and demonstrate why its use in AVT scenarios is particularly challenging. We also present some potentially useful methods and tools for measuring MT quality that have been developed primarily for text translation. The ultimate objective is to bridge the gap between the tech-savvy AVT community, on the one hand, and researchers and developers in the field of high-quality MT, on the other.

This paper will explore the multimodal approach to audiovisual translation (AVT). It must first be stressed, however, that most research on multimodality has not as yet focused on questions of translation. The Routledge Handbook of Multimodal Analysis ( Jewitt 2009 ), which contains articles by most of the leading figures in the field, while representing a major step forward in multimodal studies, does not tackle translation head on. The word ‘translation’ does not even appear in the index. Over a relatively short time span, most of the major contributions to the field have been more purely linguistically based and intent on providing keys to the understanding of the interplay of semiotic resources such as words, images, gesture, music, light, etc. (see O’Toole 1994 ; Kress and van Leeuwen 1996 ; Martinec 2000 ; Unsworth 2001 ; Baldry and Thibault 2006 , etc.). The work of these scholars, however, has provided an impetus to developing ideas on how to exploit multimodal analyses in the area of AVT. Thibault’s work, for example, on the ‘multimodal transcription’ provided this author with the basis for investigating how the integration of semiotic modalities in a film text could assist the subtitler in making those all-important decisions on what to retain and what to discard when faced with time constraints. Other scholars have studied the co-articulation of words and image in their discussion of how different modalities realize social functions and make meaning ( O’Halloran 2008 ; Bednarek 2010 ), emphasising the importance of supplementing purely linguistic analyses with studies of all the other semiotic resources that make up a multimodal text. Findings will inevitably be reported verbally but the analyses need to explore the concept of integration and how other resources can interact with language and, crucially, how translators can be made sensitive to the entire semiotic impact of a multimodal text.

In this article Action Research (AR) is addressed to determine its limitations and affordances as a research approach in audiovisual translation studies. A specific case of Participatory Action Research (PAR) is presented in the context of a Museum Project in Portugal – the MCCB project –, serving as a focus for the discussion of the main characteristics of AR: planning, putting into action, reflecting upon and starting anew, in spiralling continuums that start with the AR project itself but that go beyond it to spin off into new research and development projects.

Recent developments in Translation Studies and translation practice have not only led to a profusion of approaches, but also to the development of new text forms and translation modes. Media Accessibility, particularly audio description (AD) and subtitling for the deaf and hard-of-hearing (SDH), is an example of such a ‘new’ mode. SDH has been evolving quickly in recent decades and new developments such as interlingual SDH and live subtitling with speech recognition bring it closer to established forms of translation and interpreting. On the one hand, interlingual SDH reintroduces Jakobson’s (1959) ‘translation proper’ while the use of speech recognition has led to the creation of a hybrid form that has affinities with both subtitling and interpreting. Audio description, for its part, cannot even be fitted into Jakobson’s ‘intersemiotic translation’ model since it involves translation from images into words. Research into AD is especially interesting since it rallies methods from adjacent disciplines, much in the same way that Holmes ([1972] 1988) described TS when it was a fledgling discipline. In 2008, Braun set out a research agenda for AD and the wealth of topics and research approaches dealt with in her article illustrate the immense complexity of this field and the work still to be done. Although AD and SDH research have developed at different paces and are concerned with different topics, converging trends do appear. Particularly the role of technology and the concept of multimodality seem to be key issues. This article aims to give an overview of current research trends in both these areas. It illustrates the possibilities of technology-driven research – particularly popular in SDH and live-subtitling research – while at the same time underlining the value of individual, human-driven approaches, which are still the main ‘modus operandi’ in the younger discipline of AD where much basic research is still required.

This article considers theoretical and methodological questions of language and translation policy in the dissemination of audiovisual products across languages. This is an area where scholarly research is inevitably playing catch-up with rapid change both in the language industries and in film and television production. For example, we have a general sense of ‘dubbing territories’ and ‘subtitling territories’ but in reality the picture is more complex. Norms changed in the course of the home entertainment revolution, with the arrival of the DVD format in the late 1990s ostensibly increasing viewer choice and flexibility of translation provision. The relocation of much audiovisual material to an online environment has also generated fundamental changes in the way that works circulate, with volunteer translators and automated translation processes playing a larger role. Policy developments in access translation have meant that there have also been great changes relatively recently in the availability of SDH subtitling, audio description and other modes of access translation.

This is a very broad field which raises many compelling research questions. At the same time, its very breadth does not lend itself to a comprehensive overview. The article will therefore aim to provide an orientation to, rather than a summary of, the theoretical and methodological challenges of research on this topic.

Psycholinguistic investigations of translated audiovisual products have been conducted since at least the 1980s. These mainly concerned the role of subtitles in the processing of language in the context of language acquisition, literacy, and education. This article provides an overview of some of the most productive lines of research from a psycholinguistic angle in audiovisual translation (AVT), focussing on studies that investigated the positive effects of subtitles on language performance, but also on a growing body of behavioural research on the cognitive processing of the language of subtitles. The article evaluates a number of methodologies in some of the most prominent studies on the processing of subtitles, primarily making use of eye tracking, and then provides some thoughts on future directions in psycholinguistic studies on the processing of the language of AVT.

In this article, audiovisual translation (AVT) is considered contrastively from a cross-cultural pragmatics perspective, in its uses of language across languages and cultures. This inevitably broaches questions of linguistic and cultural representation, critical in a world in which the global availability of cultural products is ever greater. They are a main focus in this paper, with related questions about the development of subtitling and dubbing language as idiosyncratic varieties and expressive media, and implications for representation and its impact on audiences. AVT research has had many challenges to confront in its early days and these are relatively uncharted territories. Yet current developments like fansubbing and other crowdsourcing activities are re-defining the name of the game and heralding significant changes, in AVT practices and in the ways they and the products and responses they generate are accounted for in research (as evidenced in emerging re-evaluations of quality and subjectivity, e.g.; see Pérez-González 2012 , 2014 ). These are central concerns in mapping the way forward.

Inspired by the belief that cognitive and pragmatic models of communication and discourse processing offer great potential for the study of Audiovisual Translation (AVT), this paper will review such models and discuss their contribution to conceptualising the three inter-related sub-processes underlying all forms of AVT: the comprehension of the multimodal discourse by the translator; the translation of selected elements of this discourse; and the comprehension of the newly formed multimodal discourse by the target audience. The focus will be on two models, Relevance Theory, which presents the most comprehensive pragmatic model of communication, and Mental Model Theory, which underlies cognitive models of discourse processing. The two approaches will be used to discuss and question common perceptions of AVT as being ‘constrained’ and ‘partial’ translation.

Within academia gender analysis has been circumscribed mainly to Social Sciences. For years the focus of this analysis has been on the unbalanced representation of men and women as perceived through the use of the (sexist) grammatical and linguistic patterns of a language – for example, in literature – and the use of the images selected to portray male and female bodies – in the case of the mass media. With time, an interest in the implications that also the translation of written and audiovisual texts may have on the representation and perception of gender has grown, and attention has gradually shifted from the literary translation field to the audiovisual one. In the last decade, the study of audiovisual translation discourse from a gender perspective has ranged over a number of genres (TV series, films and commercials) and has resulted in a fruitful debate around the manifold approaches from which gender bias may be investigated, questioned and eventually reversed. In particular, De Marco (2012) has shed light on how much the consideration of audiovisual translation (AVT) as a social practice may benefit from implementing theories inherent to the multifaceted disciplines of Linguistics, Gender Studies, Film Studies and, obviously, Translation Studies. The present article discusses the extent to which such an interdisciplinary and ‘engendering’ approach may contribute to building a valid methodological framework within which AVT can be explored. At the same time, it highlights the limitations entailed by the difficulty of applying the same approach to the study of such a practical area – AVT – in which gender priorities are not perceived as important as other professional priorities.