L'enseignement du sous-titrage. Défi technologique ou appel à l'imagination?

Subtitling - a considerable growth industry in the last few years, given the number of new television channels, satellite use, etc. - is of unquestionable importance, not simply for the deaf but as a means of encouraging a wider proficiency of languages. All the more reason, then, for translators to provide a high quality product, and for the provision of serious and constantly updated training courses for new generations of professionals. Course-costs are at present extremely high, due to the necessary equipment - computers, videos and DVD, sequence videos, Internet access, etc. Courses lacking these supports thus proliferate, tending to be highly theoretical and very similar to traditional translation courses. Translators understandably ask themselves why they should bother. The skills are very different: in traditional translation the translator has only to negotiate with the text in front of him/her while subtitling requires the consideration of a number of factors: text, image, sound, rhythm, line simultaneity, etc., requiring two types of competence, linguistic and technical. In traditional translation courses the main emphasis is initially on the quality of the linguistic transference: in subtitling, on spatial reduction and contraction, omnipresent factors which require a perfect knowledge and awareness of both the target language and translation techniques.