A música e os ruídos na legendagem francesa para surdos e ensurdecidos

In addition to images, audio plays a key role in creating meaning in a movie plot. The sound universe of a movie consists of three basic elements: speech, music, and noise. Without the aid of subtitles that also translate sound effects besides speech, deaf or hard-of-hearing audiences do not have access to those features on audiovisual productions. Therefore, the subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing (SDH) must inform the speaker and the sound effects. Audiovisual accessibility has been discussed in France since 1986 through the “Freedom of Communication” Bill. Given the French tradition in SDH, this study sought to examine the translation of sound effects in three French films on DVD: “Nos jours heureux” (2006), “Les femmes du sixième étage” (2010), and “L'écume des jours” (2013). For the analysis, their sound effects were annotated with discursive tags for the following categories: gap music, screen music, qualified music, non-qualified music, sounds made by men, sounds made by objects, nature sounds, sounds made by animals, and fictional sounds and silence. The annotated files were analyzed with the Concord tool on WordSmith Tools 5.0. The data revealed that the sound effects in the French SDH on the studied films were translated taking into account the function of each sound within the movie, which means a higher quality translation. Not leaving these functions aside may help subtitles-in-training to produce easily understandable subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing audience.