Publication Title
Subtitling norms in Greece and Spain. A comparative descriptive study on film subtitle omission and distribution
Publication Type
PhD thesis
Year of publication
2011
City
University
Degree
Language(s)
English
Modalities
Abstract
Are subtitling practices different in Greece and Spain? And if so, how and why? These are the questions that instigated this study in the first place. In the attempt to answer them, first a theoretical framework is established and conceptual tools are provided, including the notion of recoverability, categories of temporal relations between subtitles and utterances, as well as subtitle types, most notably the type termed ―zero.
This research is based on three general hypotheses: that the most suitable approach for such a query is a descriptive product-focused methodology based on norm theory; that there are regularities in the subtitling practice; and that subtitling norms are of a different nature in Spain, a dubbing country, and Greece, a subtitling country.
Methods include the use of a questionnaire directed to subtitlers in both countries and a quantitative analysis of the Greek and Spanish subtitles aligned with the utterances from ten US blockbusters produced from 1993 to 2003. The quantitative study analyses differences in subtitle numbers, subtitle distribution and duration, number of characters per subtitle, number of subtitles consisting of full-sentences and temporal relationships between utterances and their respective subtitles.
Regularities revealed by quantitative results point to norms whose operation is investigated through sample analysis. This qualitative analysis aims: to exemplify the recoverability hypothesis and how it seems to affect subtitlers‘ decisions to use omissions; to illustrate how pauses and shot changes may influence the distribution of subtitles; and to answer some of the questions raised in the quantitative analysis. Combining textual (subtitled film analysis) with extratextual (questionnaire results and literature review) sources of norms enables arriving at safer conclusions.
Overall, the number of subtitles is recurrently higher in Spanish but this does not necessarily mean that Greek versions translate less. This phenomenon is caused by differences both in subtitle distribution and in the use of omissions. The consistency of regularities in all ten of them seems to point that norms revealed in this study operate in most movies that have been subtitled in Greece and Spain at the turn of the millennium.
The findings contribute to the advance of AVT studies by foregrounding two national subtitling practices and by proposing conceptual tools which may also have some bearing on general translation studies. The findings can be used in applied translation studies not only for the explanation and prediction of the way subtitles are manifested, but also in the training of subtitlers. What can be considered a further contribution of this study is the corpus itself which could be used in future qualitative or quantitative analyses.
This research is based on three general hypotheses: that the most suitable approach for such a query is a descriptive product-focused methodology based on norm theory; that there are regularities in the subtitling practice; and that subtitling norms are of a different nature in Spain, a dubbing country, and Greece, a subtitling country.
Methods include the use of a questionnaire directed to subtitlers in both countries and a quantitative analysis of the Greek and Spanish subtitles aligned with the utterances from ten US blockbusters produced from 1993 to 2003. The quantitative study analyses differences in subtitle numbers, subtitle distribution and duration, number of characters per subtitle, number of subtitles consisting of full-sentences and temporal relationships between utterances and their respective subtitles.
Regularities revealed by quantitative results point to norms whose operation is investigated through sample analysis. This qualitative analysis aims: to exemplify the recoverability hypothesis and how it seems to affect subtitlers‘ decisions to use omissions; to illustrate how pauses and shot changes may influence the distribution of subtitles; and to answer some of the questions raised in the quantitative analysis. Combining textual (subtitled film analysis) with extratextual (questionnaire results and literature review) sources of norms enables arriving at safer conclusions.
Overall, the number of subtitles is recurrently higher in Spanish but this does not necessarily mean that Greek versions translate less. This phenomenon is caused by differences both in subtitle distribution and in the use of omissions. The consistency of regularities in all ten of them seems to point that norms revealed in this study operate in most movies that have been subtitled in Greece and Spain at the turn of the millennium.
The findings contribute to the advance of AVT studies by foregrounding two national subtitling practices and by proposing conceptual tools which may also have some bearing on general translation studies. The findings can be used in applied translation studies not only for the explanation and prediction of the way subtitles are manifested, but also in the training of subtitlers. What can be considered a further contribution of this study is the corpus itself which could be used in future qualitative or quantitative analyses.