Challenges facing subtitlers
The seemingly unstoppable rise of online streaming services has opened up a whole new world of international films and series, and with this has come an increased willingness for audiences to engage with content originally created in other languages. As of 2023, less than 50% of Netflix content was originally produced in English, with 80% of platform users claiming to watch subtitled content at least once per month. Correspondingly, the market for closed captioning and subtitling solutions is reportedly set to grow to an impressive $US 476.9 million by 2028, up from $US 282 million in 2021, according to CCCI.
If you’re one of the increasing number of people watching audiovisual content produced in their non-native language, you’ll already be used to reading subtitles, but have you ever wondered how they’re created? In this month’s translation industry updates, we’ll be looking at some of the unique challenges faced by translators who subtitle audiovisual content, and discovering more about how some of these challenges can be mitigated.
One of the most basic technical limitations of subtitling is the unfortunate need to cut down content. The different rate at which we speak and read words means that it’s often necessary to condense some parts of a dialogue to make sure the subtitles match the rhythm of the conversation and don’t tire out the reader. Over and above this, subtitlers normally have to work to fairly tight character restrictions which are designed to ensure that the subtitled content is of an easily readable length and able to fit within the space of the screen.
This can lead to the difficult question of what content to retain and what to leave out, bearing in mind the need to keep enough context to allow the viewer to fully understand the nuances of what is happening. In the case of translating from fairly concise languages such as English into languages which by nature have very long agglutinative words, such as Hungarian and Turkish, the issue of character limits and creating acceptable line breaks is obviously even more difficult.
Timing is also a key consideration. The punchline of a joke might fall at a different point in different languages depending on factors like the word order of a sentence, or whereabouts in that sentence the verb is positioned. This might make it harder to engineer the subtitles so that the audience reads to the punchline around the same time that the characters on the screen laugh. More technical considerations also include the fact that in many films it is common for a shot or a scene to change while characters are still talking, yet it’s generally poorly regarded for subtitles to cut across these changes, further complicating the work of subtitlers.
Added to this are more culturally-specific considerations. Even within fairly small regions of the world there can be considerable cultural variation between different language communities, and this effect is often amplified when the geographical and linguistic distances between the originating culture and the audience culture are greater. By nature a film created in a different language is likely to represent a different view of the world, and some references that would be natural to one audience might need a greater degree of explanation (or outright substitution) in order to make sense to another audience. While text translation can to some extent facilitate this in the sense of adding additional information or translators’ notes, there is not really a practical equivalent in subtitling given space limitations, which means that more creative or abstract ways might need to be sought to get a particular point across.
Along similar lines is the challenge of using subtitles to convey a visual element of the source material that might not be evident to a viewer from a different cultural background, such as an element of a character’s body language or gestures, or any visual cues that are referenced as part of the dialogue. Keeping up with all of this is also made harder by the unfortunate reality that for many of us in the audience, reading subtitles already distracts us from what’s happening on screen, and this loss of the visual context provided by the acting can leave us even more reliant on the information provided by the subtitles.
But perhaps the biggest challenge facing subtitlers is the visibility of the source material. Unlike with text translations, or dubbed audiovisual content, the unique challenge of subtitled audiovisual material is that the translated subtitles run alongside the original audio, which means that the audience is effectively presented with the source and target material at the same time. In many cases, at least some members of the audience are likely to have some level of familiarity with the original language, particularly when we consider that there are a number of reasons why a person might choose to activate subtitles when they already understand some of the original-language content: as an extra level of support, as a learning aid, because they find it easier to follow that way, because they’re watching along with someone who doesn’t understand the original language, and so on.
This means that any discrepancies in the subtitled content - whether this takes the form of spelling errors, omissions or perceived inaccuracies - are likely to be picked up on, and when we consider the huge international reach of many popular films and TV series, any slip-ups are likely to be spotted by potentially millions of people. All of this adds potential pressure to subtitlers, particularly when coupled with the unfortunate reality that many viewers who criticise subtitles may be genuinely unaware of some of the limitations that we have described previously in this article.
When you think about all of this together, it’s a lot. Yet subtitles have been, and continue to be, readily and widely accepted, which implies that subtitlers are successfully mitigating these challenges most of the time.
Do you watch content in other languages, and if so, have you ever disagreed with the way that audiovisual content has been subtitled? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
Happy translating, and see you again for next month’s updates!
Sources
What’s on Netflix
TBI
Recommended by LinkedIn
CCC International LLC
LatinoBridge
Go Global
Matinée Multilingual
TranslaStars