Jankowska, Anna

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Ressenyes Quaderns. Revista de Traducció 19, 2012 425Şerban, Adriana; Matamala, Anna; Lavaur, Jean-Marc (eds.)Audiovisual Translation in Close-up: Practical and Theoretical ApproachesBern: Peter Lang AG, 2011.Translation studies. It is more and more difficult to take in all that is happening Audiovisual translation (AVT) is one of the most rapidly growing research areas in 426 Quaderns. Revista de Traducció 19, 2012 Ressenyeshas counted each swearword in the spoken dialogue and each subtitled swearword as a single «instance». As far as I am aware one of the rules in subtitling is the rule of no-repetition. Therefore even if, as Greenall claims, there is enough time and space, the subtitler is very unlikely to –pardon me– translate «Fuck, fuck, fuck» as «Knulle, knulle, knulle». secondly, in my belief the quantitative should at least indicate how many swearwords were actually omitted because of AVT constraints. There are far more translator-independent constraints in AVT than in literary translation. Therefore painting everything with the same brush seems rather unfair and in my opinion obscures the results of an interesting study. The third contribution in this section, by Adriana Tortoriello, is a good example of what AVT research could and should be like. First of all Tortoriello analyzes the subtitled dialogs along with gestures and paralinguistic elements. secondly while analyzing the strategies implemented by subtitlers to preserve semiotic cohesion, she goes after the examples of explicitation and collocation rather than the eternal «reduction, condensation and elimination strategies» (p. 63). Thirdly, an interesting choice of films (Italian and senegalese) allows her to observe how strategies change depending on the source culture of the film. It is a well written article and it offers a number of practical guidelines which could be used in AVT didactics.Zoë Pettit explores the relation of the network of signs of an audiovisual text in three translations (english subtitles, French subtitles and dubbing) of the south African film Tsotsi. The results show that translations generally tend to match the on-screen action. What is interesting is that the variations Pettit notices are neither lan-guage-dependent nor do they depend on the type of translation, but they seem to be the result of the individual decisions made by translators. As much as I value the arti-cle from the scientific point of view, I have to say that inserting all examples in just within AVT. Thematic and special issues come in handy in deepening one’s knowl-edge of a specific area. Unfortunately at the same time they reduce our perspective and general insight. The volume under review, a follow-up to the conference «Audiovisual Translation: Multidisciplinary Approaches» hosted by the University of Montpellier, France, in 2008, has the unde-niable advantage of presenting the reader with a wider perspective of AVT.This collection of articles, edited by Adriana Şerban, Anna Matamala and Jean-Marc Lavaur, contains fifteen selected publications and is divided into five parts.The first part comprised of four arti-cles, addresses AVT and discourse analy-sis. The first one, co-authored by Veronica Bonsigniori, silvia Bruti and silva Masi, presents results from research on «english greetings, leave-takings and good wishes in dubbed Italian». The authors focus on a corpus from British and American films as well as Italian films and films dubbed into Italian. They come to the conclusion that conversational routines are not merely informative elements but also crucial indi-ces of the social relationship between char-acters and that conversational routines are keys to orality. Overall it is a comprehen-sive and well written paper.In the second contribution, Annjo K. Greenall takes up the topic of non-transla-tion of swearing into norwegian. The author compares the transfer of swearing in an Irish novel –The Commitments– and in the film based on this book. she notices that swearing in the film’s subtitles was cut by half when compared with the literary translation and mentions various possible reasons for the non-translation, such as limitations of time and space, etc. even though the article itself is interesting, I need to express some gripes about the research. First of all, in the quantitative analysis, the author refers to the rather vague notion of «instances of swearing» (p. 53). Judging from one of the examples mentioned (p. 56), it is possible that she Ressenyes Quaderns. Revista de Traducció 19, 2012 427one table is a rather problematic and dis-tracting solution for the reader.Foreign language acquisition is one of the most popular arguments brought out in the eternal discussion on the superiority of subtitling over dubbing. The second part of the volume under review consists of two contributions which do not take a stand in the discussion, but deliver facts on the impact of subtitles on foreign language learning. elisa Ghia presents the results of her study on the effect of exposure to inter-lingual subtitles on the acquisition of for-eign language syntax. Her experiment follows the assumption that «language acquisition driven from exposure to audio-visual input occurs mostly as a background process» (p. 96). Therefore during the experiment the twenty-two Italian eFL learners were asked to watch fifteen Amer-ican or British films with Italian subtitles under ordinary viewing circumstances (one per week and without re-watching difficult passages). The findings show that watching foreign language films with interlingual subtitles actually does influ-ence the acquisition of syntax but also gen-eral comprehension and production skills. The findings are promising, the reasoning is clear and the article is simply well writ-ten and interesting.Annamaria Caimi explores the possi-bility of learning through a cognitive anal-ysis of the subtitles. The author created an interesting proposal of a lesson plan which involves pre- and post-viewing tasks. The plan was actually put into practice by the author, who formulates useful guidelines for students, teachers and translators based on this experience. I must say that the con-cept itself is very convincing and I can see how it could be applied also in AVT train-ing. Unfortunately, the article does not mention how this method actually enhanced the linguistic competences of the experiment participants or what was their attitude to such teaching formulae.Quality in AVT is a topic that has not produced much interest. Articles in part three of this book shed some light on this topic from three different perspectives: performance, effect and working environ-ment. The first article in this part is co-authored by Adriana Pagano, Fabio Alves and Vera Lúcia santiago Araújo. The authors present the findings of their pilot experiment which set out to compare the performance of translation students and professional subtitlers as far as their cogni-tive rhythms, the quality of the produced subtitles and linguistic choices in terms of register are concerned. The article com-ments on the findings from each one of the three stages. notwithstanding the ambi-tiousness of the project I must say that the article seems overloaded and therefore at times superficial. The data gathered by the authors could serve for three more elabo-rate articles.Pierre Dumouchel, Gilles Boulianne and Julie Brousseau try to answer the ques-tion how to measure quality in live closed captioning. Their article begins with an extensive presentation of existing measures which apparently do not take into account summarization nor lexical, syntactic and semantic mistakes. The authors propose a new metric which, as opposed to the previ-ous ones, concentrates on the quality of preserved meaning. The authors claim that their metric is applicable to any captioning method and that it has been successfully applied in a live-subtitled Parliamentary debate.The last contribution in this section, by Kristiina Abdallah, presents an insid-er’s view on how the AVT production net-work works. Applying the actor-network theoretical framework, Abdallah shows how a network consisting of clients and translators was formed and how different understandings of quality within the net-work can lead to an ultimate failure. It is an eye-opening and comprehensive study which shows how different elements –i.e. clients, subcontractors as well as different social, political and economic elements– interact. 428 Quaderns. Revista de Traducció 19, 2012 RessenyesIn spite of the fact that the need of reception studies within the AVT was stressed many times, not many scholars have ventured into this terrain. This need is addressed in the fifth part of this collection of articles, which includes two contribu-tions. The first contribution, by Tiina Tuominen, focuses on subtitles reception strategies. Tuominen showed the Ameri-can film –Bridget Jones: The Edge of Rea-son (2005)– with Finnish and swedish subtitles to eighteen research participants. Research results reveal that subtitle recep-tion is a fairly easy, subconscious and superficial process. What is more, viewers admit to overlooking mistakes as long as there are not too many of them and as long as they do not «force them to stop or slow down the reading».Dominique Bairstow’s article presents the results of research aimed at examining the film comprehension effects resulting from the presence of subtitles. Her experi-ment involved presenting an extract from the Alfred Hitchcock film North by North-west (1959) in original version and with French subtitles to native speakers of eng-lish and French with a high level of French and a low fluency level in english respec-tively. The results, based on a film-com-prehension questionnaire, confirmed that for viewers fluent in the film’s dialogue language, subtitles are distracting rather than helpful and vice versa. However, she also discovered that the processing of visu-al information by the French viewers in the presence of english subtitles was actually boosted. It is a well written article; howev-er I have one serious doubt: the author claims to have measured the proper under-standing of the film. Is there really some-thing like «proper understanding» of a film? The fifth part, dedicated to audio description, consists of four articles. It begins with Paula Igareda’s contribution on a description of emotions and gestures. Working on the assumption that current practices are very often based on «guide-lines not supported by any scientific evi-dence» (p. 224), Igareda puts forward a proposal of classifying and identifying emotions conveyed by gestures and facial expressions and implements it to analyze a corpus of five spanish spoken films. Based on her research she proposes possible solu-tions for audio description. This article crosses the border of theory and ventures into the land of practice by giving audio describers food for thought and practical tips. The contribution by Pilar Orero focus-es on the challenges that diverse languages might pose in AD. Orero bases her digres-sion on eric Khoo’s film Be with Me (2005) and does not make do with audio subtitles of the foreign languages spoken in the film. she analyzes various examples where communication is carried out through spoken, tactile and written lan-guages and shows how is the message ren-dered in AD. When I come to think about it, her article is actually stating the obvi-ous. However, I would dare to say, that many will not notice this «obviousness» unless someone clearly points it out to them, just as Orero does in her article. Def-initely worth reading, especially by present or future audio describers.Recently we have been able to observe a change of attitudes towards stiff AD guidelines. This idea, that has been germi-nating for some time now, blossomed dur-ing the Media4ALL conference in London (June 2011), where it was agreed that there is a need for a more creative approach towards AD. These circumstances make the contribution by John-Patrick Udo and Deborah Fels even more interesting. The authors describe an experiment in creating unconventional (written by the director, written from the perspective of a character from the play, etc.) audio description for life theatre. Their article is interesting, inspiring and –which should be men-tioned– ahead of its time. nevertheless it would be very interesting, if not necessary, to run reception studies, because regardless Ressenyes Quaderns. Revista de Traducció 19, 2012 429of how «fun, interesting and fulfilling» (p. 278) it could be for the audio describers itis necessary to guarantee at least a similarlevel of entertainment for the audience.In their contribution Agnieszka Chmiel and Iwona Mazur take a closer look at the pioneering years of audio description in Poland, giving special attention to the quality of the scripts. The article starts with a presentation of the origins and the state of the art of AD in Poland. Unfortunately this information is rather outdated. How-ever, this shortcoming could be regarded as an indicator of the rapid changes that have taken place in Poland since 2008. The main part of the article presents results of qualitative analysis of seven Polish audio described programs against english guide-lines. In general the authors come to a con-clusion that Polish audio descriptions «comply with the majority of the guide-lines», but they also identify mistakes and errors. Although it is a well written article, my feeling is that the most interesting part is yet to be published. As Chmiel and Mazur indicate this publication is only part of an AD-Verba project and one of the next steps reception studies among blind and partially sighted audiences.In the introduction of the volume under review, the editors stress that the aim of the book is to offer the reader «a meaningful contribution to audiovisual translation in both its theoretical and prac-tical dimensions» (p. 12). It is my pleasure to say «mission accomplished». This book offers a handful of fresh ideas for those interested in general AVT development and research directions. It could be espe-cially useful for students searching for MA thesis inspiration.Anna JankowskaJagiellonian UniversityUnesCO Chair for Translation studies and Intercultural Communication

Audiovisual translation in close-up : practical and theoretical approaches

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Audiovisual translation in close-up : practical and theoretical approaches

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