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- Volume 9, Issue 3, 2023
Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts - Volume 9, Issue 3, 2023
Volume 9, Issue 3, 2023
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Introduction
Author(s): Jorge Díaz Cintas, Alessandra Rizzo and Cinzia Giacinta Spinzipp.: 289–297 (9)More Less
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¡Sub! localisation workflows (th)at work
Author(s): Serenella Massidda and Annalisa Sandrellipp.: 298–315 (18)More LessAbstractOver the last few years, cloud-based environments have simplified traditional localisation workflows and have made it possible for virtual teams of audiovisual translation (AVT) professionals to work together from all corners of the earth (Díaz Cintas and Massidda 2019). In addition, AI-powered technologies have been integrated into localisation workflows to accelerate translation processes: this has led to a progressive automation of AVT practices and has created brand new roles for language professionals. This paper presents the preliminary results of the international pilot project ¡Sub! Localisation Workflows (th)at Work (2020–2022). A series of experiments was conducted in the spring of 2021 to compare three different workflows in the subtitling of documentaries: traditional (i.e., using only subtitling software), semi-automated (using automatic speech recognition and captioning) and fully automated (relying on automatic speech recognition, captioning and machine translation). The experiments involved twenty-four final-year MA students and recent graduates from UNINT and Roehampton University (twelve of them working from English into Italian and twelve from Spanish into Italian), in subtitling teams that included a project manager, a spotter, a subtitler, and a reviser. All the work was recorded via screencast technology and documented in a project logbook, a quality assessment form, and a workflow summary sheet. The aim of the experiments was to identify the most effective workflow equation, i.e., the one able to deliver the best quality output in the tightest turnaround time. This paper illustrates the experimental set-up and materials and discusses the preliminary results emerging from a quantitative and qualitative analysis of our data.
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SDH as a pedagogical tool
Author(s): Antonio Jesús Tinedo Rodríguez and Anca Daniela Frumuselupp.: 316–336 (21)More LessAbstractAudiovisual products have gained ground in the last few decades, becoming a crucial part of our life nowadays. This research paper was carried out as part of the piloting phase of the TRADILEX project, which stands for Audiovisual Translation as a Didactic Resource in Foreign Language Education. The study aims to foster awareness on media accessibility through the application of Subtitling for the Deaf and the Hard of Hearing (SDH) as a didactic resource to explore its pedagogical potential in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom. A set of six SDH-based lesson plans were designed and implemented for students to develop their integrated language skills and to foster their equity, diversity, and inclusion awareness, with a special focus on accessibility. The Initial Test of Integrated Skills (ITIS) and the Final Test of Integrated Skills (FITIS) were designed within the framework of the TRADILEX project and used to measure the development of each participant’s language skills together with qualitative ad hoc questionnaires to gather their impressions about the intervention. Results show that participants have improved both their foreign language and subtitling skills, and gained more awareness regarding equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) issues. Thus, the current study stands as a proof for the potential of Didactic Audiovisual Translation (DAT) to develop both EFL and personal skills, which are crucial for the 21st century language education.
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Introducing inclusive subtitles
Author(s): Gabriele Uzzopp.: 337–351 (15)More LessAbstractIn recent years, numerous variations of subtitling approaches, which have been variously defined as enriched, creative, dynamic, emotive (Neves 2018), but also ‘creactive’ (Sala Robert 2016), have been put forward by scholars in the attempt to diversify and expand the audiences’ access to audiovisual products through subtitles. Also, there has been a significant growth in international film festivals which, alongside long-established festivals, have contributed to providing audiences with a cultural window on the world. In Italy, for example, there are hundreds of film festivals, which vary in terms of size, subject-matter, and genre.
Against the backdrop of recent research on audience(s) attending film festivals (Di Giovanni 2020), accessibility studies (Greco 2018), and preferences and familiarity with various types of subtitles for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing people (Romero-Fresco 2015), this paper aims to introduce the notion of inclusive subtitling and to propose guidelines and applications within the context of accessible film festivals and cultural events. The corpus for this empirical study consists of the short films competing in the eleventh and twelfth editions of the Sicilia Queer Film Fest, inclusively subtitled. Results will prove that ‘inclusive subtitles’ have the potential to cater to more varied needs, embracing settings such as film festivals, theatres, museums, galleries, and similar cultural contexts. In line with Greco’s (2018) universalist approach, and in contrast with the recent introduction of the term by Martínez-Lorenzo (2020) applied to minoritised languages, inclusive subtitles is an expression that refers to intralingual or interlingual subtitles, open or closed (with the aid of external tools, such as an app) and applied specifically to film festivals.
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The Chinese Oliver Twist
Author(s): Lisi Liangpp.: 352–378 (27)More LessAbstractThis article sheds light upon subtitling as the audiovisual translation (AVT) mode applied to three subtitled versions of Oliver Twist. The comparison takes place within the subtitling context of two officially sanctioned versions (i.e., the musical and the film) and the non-professional and transcreated versions released on social media platforms. Research has been carried out within audiovisual translation studies with the scope of verifying issues relating to the translation of characters’ names (appellation), religious terminology, and songs, which are subject to changes and innovative transformations when transcreated. There is an increasingly high demand for viewer-generated participation in the translation of audiovisual productions as opposed to traditional passive viewing experiences (Di Giovanni and Gambier 2018, vii–viii). The significant rise of user-oriented modes of translation released on popular video-sharing platforms has not been systematically researched. Attention is primarily paid to the Chinese subtitles produced for Oliver Twist’s most recent film adaption directed by Polanski (2005). These subtitles reinterpret and redirect the product’s cultural and temporal specificities and complexities to reinforce Chinese cultural heritage (Liang 2020, 26). A particular role is played by transcreation in subtitling as a translation method that is able to embrace the richness of Oliver Twist in its various adapted forms: theatre, cinema, and social media platforms. Drawing upon the concept of abusive subtitling coined by Abé Mark Nornes (1999), the paper investigates the definition of transcreation within subtitling procedures and scrutinises technological advances and multimodal creativity within the context of Oliver Twist. In this sense, transcreation as a fan-driven practice in subtitling has the scope of giving visibility to artistic works in a more creative way, as well as of presenting them tinted with individualised characteristics which cater to the various demands for a variety of audiences.
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Carry on Caesar
Author(s): Irene Ranzatopp.: 379–397 (19)More LessAbstractThe variations on broadly fixed formulas used to represent such characters as the one portraying the Roman emperor, Julius Caesar, are all the more conspicuous for their, sometimes, almost imperceptible nuances. This article will illustrate some meaningful examples of filmic Caesars, focusing on the linguistic representation of this character, often handled as a stock character. The larger definition of stock characters, which includes but is not limited to stereotypes, encompasses a set of both visual and linguistic formulaic features which depend on identity constructions or social positions, to put it in Quantz’s terms (2015). The character Julius Caesar is often made to follow what film historians have called a general ‘linguistic paradigm’, by which British actors with posh accents, in post-war Hollywood epics of the 1950s, are frequently cast as wicked Roman tyrants or simply as members of the establishment opposed by the ‘hero’ of the tale. Departures from a schema can be however just as revealing in order to pinpoint recurrent themes, and they will be explored by focusing on the comic rendition of Caesar as interpreted by Kenneth Williams in the 1964 British comedy Carry on Cleo, and on the analysis of its outrageously racist and sexist Italian translation.
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Accessibility and reception studies at the Macerata Opera Festival
Author(s): Francesca Raffipp.: 398–418 (21)More LessAbstractThis essay discusses an audience reception study carried out within the framework of media accessibility to evaluate the experience of blind/partially sighted patrons and their (sighted) accompanying persons in the context of the Macerata Opera Festival (MOF). Adopting a qualitative analytical approach, feedback was collected from individuals in the sample who completed post-hoc self-report questionnaires, and three interdependent variables were measured: (a) comprehension and recall, (b) cognitive load, and (c) psychological immersion. This qualitative analysis was combined with a descriptive methodology, using attitudinal data to evaluate the lived experience of individuals, notably their appreciation and preferences. Results revealed that there was no substantial divergence in the values of the variables recorded for the two groups in the sample: blind/partially sighted and sighted (accompanying) patrons. Additionally, audio descriptions and tactile tours increased psychological immersion, without provoking cognitive overload. Furthermore, high levels of appreciation and preferences were related to comprehension and recall, cognitive load, and psychological immersion. This confirms the effectiveness of audio descriptions and tactile tours in enhancing the engagement and empowerment of blind/partially sighted members of the audience.
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Authorial (audio) description
Author(s): Alessandra Rizzo and Cinzia Giacinta Spinzipp.: 419–449 (31)More LessAbstractThe unprecedented growth of audiovisual translation practices in the creative industries has boosted the role of creativity which has taken centre stage and become the emblem of global cultural policies. The study addresses the role of creativity in the digital space of Netflix as a means of cross-cultural mediation and communication, and as a multidimensional tool in audio description (AD), in order to provide the end-users (the blind and visually impaired audiences) of digital audiovisual products with participatory and engaging forms of access to the audiovisual ‘planet’. The aim is to investigate whether and how creativity is used to transmit culture-specific references (CSRs) from a translation perspective within a highly discussed TV series streamed on Netflix. To do so, the rendering of the most significant CSRs in the Korean Netflix series Squid Game (SG) as transferred into the English and Italian ADs will be examined.
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Review of Dore (2022): Humour in Self-Translation
Author(s): Maria Luisa Pensabenepp.: 450–453 (4)More LessThis article reviews Humour in Self-Translation
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Entering the Translab
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