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Subtitling quality assessment from a relevance-theoretic perspective

Subtitling quality assessment from a relevance-theoretic perspective AbstractAssessing the quality of translation is never straightforward and rarely objective. Context, audience, text type, function and lexis are only some of the criteria that need to be taken into account. In the case of constrained intersemiotic translation, subtitling being a prime example thereof, determining universal criteria for assessment is particularly testing. Often referred to as “necessary evil”, audiovisual translation (AVT) needs to avoid distracting the audience, while aiding their comprehension of the audiovisual message. This is particularly the case for additive AVT, for instance subtitling, where the translation does not replace the original, but coexists with it. Relevance Theory, a controversial but flexible approach to communication, may provide a viable framework for gauging subtitling quality. The interplay between relevance, communicative intention and processing effort can help explain the rationale behind the process of decision-making in the practice of AVT. This paper provides a theoretical foundation for the application of Sperber and Wilson’s Relevance Theory to interlingual subtitling, followed by an analysis of selected examples from a large corpus of mostly English-language movies, series and documentaries streamed on Netflix with Polish subtitles. Though the corpus is Polish-centred, the research conclusions are intended to be universal enough to apply regardless of the language pair. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Lodz Papers in Pragmatics de Gruyter

Subtitling quality assessment from a relevance-theoretic perspective

Bogucki, Łukasz
Lodz Papers in Pragmatics , Volume 18 (1): 17 – May 1, 2022
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Publisher
de Gruyter
Copyright
© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
ISSN
1898-4436
eISSN
1898-4436
DOI
10.1515/lpp-2022-0005
Publisher site
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Abstract

AbstractAssessing the quality of translation is never straightforward and rarely objective. Context, audience, text type, function and lexis are only some of the criteria that need to be taken into account. In the case of constrained intersemiotic translation, subtitling being a prime example thereof, determining universal criteria for assessment is particularly testing. Often referred to as “necessary evil”, audiovisual translation (AVT) needs to avoid distracting the audience, while aiding their comprehension of the audiovisual message. This is particularly the case for additive AVT, for instance subtitling, where the translation does not replace the original, but coexists with it. Relevance Theory, a controversial but flexible approach to communication, may provide a viable framework for gauging subtitling quality. The interplay between relevance, communicative intention and processing effort can help explain the rationale behind the process of decision-making in the practice of AVT. This paper provides a theoretical foundation for the application of Sperber and Wilson’s Relevance Theory to interlingual subtitling, followed by an analysis of selected examples from a large corpus of mostly English-language movies, series and documentaries streamed on Netflix with Polish subtitles. Though the corpus is Polish-centred, the research conclusions are intended to be universal enough to apply regardless of the language pair.

Journal

Lodz Papers in Pragmatics – de Gruyter

Published: May 1, 2022

Keywords: subtitling; relevance; audiovisual translation; decision-making; quality assessment

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