Subtitling revision. Ingrained perceptions and market realities

Subtitle revision may be envisaged as an intrinsic part of the quality control and quality assurance processes in the audio-visual translation industry. However, as demonstrated by Robert and Remael (2016: 596-597), this notion may not always accurately reflect the actual working realities of subtitlers in Europe. More often than not, the revision step in the quality control chain (hereby defined as a post-translation activity completed by someone other than the original subtitler of an audio-visual product, rather than as self-revision of one’s own subtitles) is either conflated with proofreading or altogether omitted. Due to constrained economic budgets, a lack of trained translators and revisers for minority languages or a very fluid notion of translation quality, this task may not be performed by trained revisers, but rather constitute an additional burden on other subtitlers, who may be asked to revise their colleagues’ work for a reduced fee. On the other hand, for some AVT providers, revision may be classified as the stringent adherence to the company’s style guide and QC checklists and performed by dedicated in-house quality control personnel. This means that the final product is often shaped more by the practical market realities than the theoretical underpinnings of what is considered to be good practice in terms of subtitle quality. And yet, never in history has the need for qualified AV translators, revisers and proof-readers been more acute or more urgent. The sheer volume of translated media products circulating the globe exerts pressure on local AVT markets to produce an ever-increasing number of translated subtitles to match the competitive conditions and the demand of their audiences.
This evolution of the global audio-visual industry has further been reflected in the development of new varieties of AVT services, from live subtitling and audio-description to the advance of machine translated or auto-generated captions on social media sites.
However, research into human-performed subtitle revision and its working conditions remains scarce (Robert & Remael, 2016: 601), as opposed to global subtitling translation flows (see Kuo, 2014 and 2015) or small-scale local studies of subtitler experiences (Nikolić, 2010, Abdallah, 2011, Tuominen, 2018). This study aims to complement the extant literature on the subject by delving into revision processes and procedures as performed by professional revisers in Croatia. It will do so by focusing on subtitle revision as a context- dependent activity tied to specific local conditions. Such an approach follows the academic notions of audio-visual translation as a social practice occurring and embedded in its specific social, economic and cultural context (Heilbron & Sapiro, 2007: 104) and likewise, the view of subtitlers’ cognition as embodied, extended, grounded and embedded in its particular context (cf. Risku 2014: 336 and 2017: 291-292).