Lecture
When images are not worth a thousand words: from cinematic multimodality to enhanced subtitling
- Sara Ramos Pinto (University of Leeds)
- Date
- Monday 9 September 2024
- Time
- Series
- Leiden Translation Talks
- Location
-
Herta Mohr
Witte Singel 27A
2311 BG Leiden - Room
- 0.16
Abstract
The appeal of audiovisual products is largely due to the combination of visual and auditory resources, but professional subtitling continues to focus on words, assuming that non-verbal elements, such as images or sounds, are universal codes that are easily interpreted by the audience without additional mediation.
In this presentation, I argue that all the elements that co-occur with the dialogue are signs that can present different challenges for (different) viewers and that we need to find new subtitling solutions to address this challenge. I will thus take you through my research journey, starting with an exploratory reception study and the new questions it raised. The results of the study pointed to the need for a fundamental change in our understanding of non-verbal elements and the dilemma of whether or not to translate them, but what do filmmakers think about this? Is translating the meaning expressed through images and sounds too risky? Does translating these resources interfere too much with the source product or is it necessary to ensure that viewers access the full meaning potential of what they are seeing? How can we translate visual cultural references?
In the second part of the presentation, I will take through some of the highlights of the interviews I conducted with 22 film directors and the survey conducted with more than 200 subtitlers.
The final section of the presentation will take you through my action research project and the key features of the enhanced subtitling done on Fernando Vendrell's latest film, White Shadows (2023).
About the speaker
Sara Ramos Pinto is an Associate Professor in Translation Studies at the University of Leeds. She has in the past taken the roles of Director of the Centre for Translation Studies and, more recently, Director of Post-graduate Studies.
Her research focuses on audiovisual translation and translation theory as she is interested in investigating the translation and reception of multimodal products and the challenges this brings to translation practice and theory. This has led her to work at the intersection of Translation Studies and Multimodal and Cultural Studies, but also to work even more closely with film directors and distributors and professional subtitlers. Her latest AHRC funded project - UK Subtitling Audiences Network - brings together academic and industry partners from production, distribution, subtitling and exhibition of an audiovisual product.
She co-authors Introduction to Translation Studies (5th edition) with Jeremy Munday and Jacob Blakesley and has published a number of peer-reviewed journal articles, chapters and special issues in highly-regarded journals. She is a board member of ESIST, co-Editor of the Translation, Interpreting and Transfer series at LUP and co-organiser of the EST Congress 2025.