Creactive. Haute couture subtitling

Deaf audiences are heterogeneous. It is possible to draw different profiles depending on the location of the alteration within the ear, the degree of hearing loss caused by this alteration and the onset of the hearing loss. The location of the alteration may produce an alteration in the hearing quantity or may affect the ability to hear sounds, besides reducing the quality of the sound heard. The degrees of hearing loss vary from mild to profound. The former directly affects clarity and produces some difficulty following speech in noisy situations, although the brain still receives and identifies sounds; while the latter makes people unable to hear any speech at all, and they need to rely on visual cues (signing or lip-reading) to maintain communication. The moment when the hearing loss appears is of special importance. Particularly early hearing loss has an impact on the cognitive, communicative, linguistic, and social development of the child.

Therefore, conventional SDH alone seems insufficient to cover the needs of ALL those who are unable to hear.

Creactive subtitles originated from the urge to provide an effective subtitling code according to the capabilities of deaf children, which differ from those of deaf adults, due to their age, maturity, language appreciation and reading skills. Creactive subtitles are a completely newly designed subtitling code targeted at younger (deaf) audiences. They are designed ad hoc and present extralinguistic information visually, by means of comics’ language conventions. They are an innovative proposal that changes the manner subtitles have been commonly conceived, since they are tailor-made for the particular needs derived from deaf children’s sensory disability. Despite they respect the technicalities of conventional SDH, such as time-coding, character restriction or time limitations, creactive subtitles break the rest of the norms of subtitling.