Title
Exploring interlingual live subtitling from the perspectives of Chinese viewers
Conference name
Languages & the Media 2024
City
Country
Hungary
Modalities
Date
13/11/2024-15/11/2024
Abstract
Interlingual live subtitling has gained popularity recently. In significant events such as SpaceX’s first commercial spacewalk in September 2024, the Nobel Prize announcements in October 2024, and Tesla’s “We, Robot” event on October 11, 2024, many Chinese viewers witnessed these historic moments with the assistance of interlingual live subtitling. Since its debut on the Chinese streaming platform iQIYI in 2014, interlingual live subtitling has become an essential tool for Chinese viewers to access foreign content in a variety of contexts.
Despite its widespread commercial use in China, research on interlingual live subtitling is limited. While it is commonly applied in new media, interlingual live subtitling is absent from Chinese television. Additionally, respeaking–a major live subtitling technique used for TV programmes in Western societies–has not been implemented in China. Research instead on AI interpreting, automatic speech recognition (ASR) subtitles, and machine-translated subtitles are more prevalent. These trends indicate that interlingual live subtitling has not received sufficient attention in academia, and its boundaries have blurred with the advances in speech recognition, translation, and large language model technologies.
The vague definition may influence how interlingual live subtitling is perceived, designed, utilised, responded to, evaluated, and enhanced. To establish a clearer and more precise definition, this study examines interlingual live subtitling from a user-centred perspective.
The objective of this research is to explore how Chinese viewers perceive interlingual live subtitling, not only as a product (the subtitles themselves) but also as a broader phenomenon encompassing the context and the process that define its boundaries. To achieve this, a questionnaire was distributed, comprising three sections: background information, experiences with interlingual live subtitling, and preferences and motivations for using this service. Using convenience and snowball sampling, the survey was conducted on the Wenjuanxing platform from July to September 2014, collecting 710 valid responses.
Key findings emerged from the study. Firstly, users who had experienced interlingual live subtitling were primarily under the age of 40, held a bachelor’s degree, and had basic knowledge of English (can understand 20-60% of original English speech). Secondly, participants had diverse interpretations of interlingual live subtitling. For instance, some of them equated it to news headlines, Danmu (online comments moving across the screen), machine-translated text, simultaneous interpreting, voice assistants, and translation glasses. Thirdly, more than 70% of participants perceived no difference between interlingual live subtitles and traditional subtitles. Fourthly, over 40% of participants viewed interlingual live subtitling as the process where the speech of a pre-recorded video is translated into text in real-time. Fifthly, participants preferred interlingual live subtitling over other audiovisual translation modes. Additionally, most used interlingual live subtitles due to limited understanding of the original language, with 68% expressing a preference for bilingual live subtitles and 74% favouring verbatim translation.
These findings suggest that many Chinese viewers have a limited understanding of interlingual live subtitling, especially as other technology-supported services share some of its functions. As technology advances, the distinctions between interlingual live subtitling and other translation modes are likely to become increasingly blurred. Nonetheless, defining and standardising interlingual live subtitling remains crucial to improving audiovisual communication and enhance viewer experiences.
Despite its widespread commercial use in China, research on interlingual live subtitling is limited. While it is commonly applied in new media, interlingual live subtitling is absent from Chinese television. Additionally, respeaking–a major live subtitling technique used for TV programmes in Western societies–has not been implemented in China. Research instead on AI interpreting, automatic speech recognition (ASR) subtitles, and machine-translated subtitles are more prevalent. These trends indicate that interlingual live subtitling has not received sufficient attention in academia, and its boundaries have blurred with the advances in speech recognition, translation, and large language model technologies.
The vague definition may influence how interlingual live subtitling is perceived, designed, utilised, responded to, evaluated, and enhanced. To establish a clearer and more precise definition, this study examines interlingual live subtitling from a user-centred perspective.
The objective of this research is to explore how Chinese viewers perceive interlingual live subtitling, not only as a product (the subtitles themselves) but also as a broader phenomenon encompassing the context and the process that define its boundaries. To achieve this, a questionnaire was distributed, comprising three sections: background information, experiences with interlingual live subtitling, and preferences and motivations for using this service. Using convenience and snowball sampling, the survey was conducted on the Wenjuanxing platform from July to September 2014, collecting 710 valid responses.
Key findings emerged from the study. Firstly, users who had experienced interlingual live subtitling were primarily under the age of 40, held a bachelor’s degree, and had basic knowledge of English (can understand 20-60% of original English speech). Secondly, participants had diverse interpretations of interlingual live subtitling. For instance, some of them equated it to news headlines, Danmu (online comments moving across the screen), machine-translated text, simultaneous interpreting, voice assistants, and translation glasses. Thirdly, more than 70% of participants perceived no difference between interlingual live subtitles and traditional subtitles. Fourthly, over 40% of participants viewed interlingual live subtitling as the process where the speech of a pre-recorded video is translated into text in real-time. Fifthly, participants preferred interlingual live subtitling over other audiovisual translation modes. Additionally, most used interlingual live subtitles due to limited understanding of the original language, with 68% expressing a preference for bilingual live subtitles and 74% favouring verbatim translation.
These findings suggest that many Chinese viewers have a limited understanding of interlingual live subtitling, especially as other technology-supported services share some of its functions. As technology advances, the distinctions between interlingual live subtitling and other translation modes are likely to become increasingly blurred. Nonetheless, defining and standardising interlingual live subtitling remains crucial to improving audiovisual communication and enhance viewer experiences.