Intralingual open subtitling in Flanders. Audiovisual translation, linguistic variation and audience needs

This article presents an overview of the main findings of an interdisciplinary research project carried out by scholars from a department of translation and interpreting, a department of communication science and a department of linguistics. The project investigated Dutch open subtitling of native speakers of either northern Dutch or a Flemish (regional) variant of Dutch on Flemish television. Its corpus consisted of 793 programmes or 380 hours of broadcasting time. The project consisted of three substudies. Study 1 aimed to find out what kinds of television programmes and speakers were subtitled. Study 2 aimed at gaining information about the actual source and nature of the intralingual subtitling so recorded. Finally, in Study 3, a viewer survey was carried out in order to investigate the reception of intralingual subtitling in Flanders, in terms of its desirability and enhancement of viewer experience.