Abstract
In a technologically driven, multimedia society, audiovisual assets are increasingly omnipresent. Subtitling is a powerful tool to minimise language barriers and promote language learning, linguistic diversity, and multilingualism. Subtitling: Concepts and Practices by Jorge Díaz-Cintas and Aline Remael is a timely and welcome contribution to tracing the advancements in theory and practice that characterise subtitling today, while also exploring trends ahead. The book was published in tandem with an interactive companion website that offers additional learning materials and exercises as well as free access to leading subtitling programmes Wincaps Q4 and OOONA. Readers will be equipped to start subtitling themselves or to appreciate foreign language audiovisual products with greater depth.
The book comprises nine themed chapters. Opening with the definition of audiovisual translation and its terminological evolution over time, Chapter 1 mainly reconceptualises the notion of subtitling. Chapter 2 provides an overview of the professional ecosystem: subtitling workflows employed by major players, including Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+ and HBO, are outlined. Chapter 3 explores the semiotics of subtitling. It foregrounds the key principle that “all the filmic sign systems and their visual and aural representations or modes must be taken into account when translating verbal text, in order to create a new meaningful multisemiotic and multimodal whole” (p. 65). Chapter 4 elaborates on the technical dimensions of subtitling, including the code of good subtitling practice and the main spatial and temporal constraints. Of particular interest is the exploration of the technical attributes that distinguish the subtitle types used on different media platforms, i.e., cinema, television, and Video on Demand. Centred around the importance of legibility and readability for viewers’ watching experience, Chapter 5 presents the conventions related to the formal and textual features of subtitling, from specific rules about punctuation to the exploitation of other stylistic resources. Chapter 6 covers the linguistic dimension of subtitling and conceptualises the practice as a form of textual localisation that necessitates rewriting and hinges primarily on the activation of a set of techniques that lead to text reduction, such as condensation, reformulation, and omission. This is because viewers need sufficient time to read the subtitles, enjoy the on-screen action, and listen to the soundtrack concurrently. Chapter 7 focuses on subtitling language variations and songs. Chapter 8 turns its focus to the subtitling of cultural references, humour, and ideology. Finally, Chapter 9 outlines some of the most recent technological progress taking place in the realm of subtitling, such as automatic speech recognition and machine translation.
Overall, Subtitling: Concepts and Practices contributes to research in translation studies in general, and to audiovisual translation in particular. It is well organised and laid out in a most useful way, and the writing is approachable. This book will be an invaluable resource for academics, students, practitioners, and translators, especially those who are interested in linguistics, media, accessibility, and communication studies.
