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This study investigates the balance between naturalness and accuracy in the Indonesian fan-sub of Kung Fu Panda 4. It examines the subtitling strategies employed by fan translators, utilizing Gottlieb’s (1992) subtitling strategies and Larson’s (1984) principles of translation quality. Adopting a descriptive qualitative approach, the research analyzed 139 lines from the movie, focusing on their cultural and linguistic complexity. The findings reveal that paraphrasing was the most frequently applied strategy (63.31%), followed by transfer (15.11%), expansion (9.35%), condensation (7.91%), and imitation (4.32%). These strategies enabled fan translators to adapt the source text while preserving its meaning, ensuring the subtitles were culturally and linguistically suitable for the Indonesian audience. Most subtitles were rated as moderately natural (79.86%) and moderately accurate (50.36%), with a smaller portion achieving high ratings. The study underscores the need to enhance naturalness and accuracy while emphasizing the importance of incorporating subtitling strategies in translation education to address real-world challenges.

This book provides readers, students and teachers with a clear and concise guide to understanding the concepts of offensive and taboo language and how this type of language can be subtitled into Spanish used in Spain. It combines theoretical and practical approaches and covers technical matters, as well as those of censorship, (ideological) manipulation, translation strategies and techniques, the treatment of offensive and taboo language and how to conduct research in this field. It includes an array of examples from recent films and TV series to present the reader with real samples of subtitles broadcast on digital platforms today. In addition, each chapter includes exercises with which the reader can put theory into practice, as well as possible solutions in the form of answer keys. It will be of use not only to researchers and students, but also to future audiovisual translators seeking to acquire further knowledge in the transfer of offensive and taboo language.

People watch subtitled audiovisual materials more than ever before. With the proliferation of subtitled content, we are also witnessing an increase in subtitle speeds. However, there is an ongoing controversy about what optimum subtitle speeds should be. This study looks into whether viewers can keep up with increasingly fast subtitles and whether the way people cope with subtitled content depends on their familiarity with subtitling and on their knowledge of the language of the film soundtrack. We tested 74 English, Polish and Spanish viewers watching films subtitled at different speeds (12, 16 and 20 characters per second). The films were either in Hungarian, a language unknown to the participants (Experiment 1), or in English (Experiment 2). We measured viewers' comprehension, self-reported cognitive load, scene and subtitle recognition, preferences and enjoyment. By analyzing people's eye gaze, we were able to discover that most viewers could read the subtitles as well as follow the images, coping well even with fast subtitle speeds. Slow subtitles triggered more re-reading, particularly in English clips, causing more frustration and less enjoyment. Faster subtitles with unreduced text were preferred in the case of English videos, and slower subtitles with text edited down in Hungarian videos. The results provide empirical grounds for revisiting current subtitling practices to enable more efficient processing of subtitled videos for viewers.

This article introduces EsPal: a Web-accessible repository containing a comprehensive set of properties of Spanish words. EsPal is based on an extensible set of data sources, beginning with a 300 million token written database and a 460 million token subtitle database. Properties available include word frequency, orthographic structure and neighborhoods, phonological structure and neighborhoods, and subjective ratings such as imageability. Subword structure properties are also available in terms of bigrams and trigrams, biphones, and bisyllables. Lemma and part-of-speech information and their corresponding frequencies are also indexed. The website enables users either to upload a set of words to receive their properties or to receive a set of words matching constraints on the properties. The properties themselves are easily extensible and will be added over time as they become available. It is freely available from the following website: http://www.bcbl.eu/databases/espal/ .

Although coherence has been widely studied in computer-mediated communication (CMC), insufficient attention has been paid to emergent multimodal forms. This study analyzes a popular commentary system on Chinese and Japanese video-sharing sites – known as danmu or danmaku – where anonymous comments are superimposed on and scroll across the video frame. Through content and multimodal discourse analysis, we unpack danmu-mediated communication analyzing the newest interface (on Bilibili.com), the comments, the interpersonal interactions and the unusual use of the second-person pronoun. Results show that despite the technological constraints (hidden authorship, unmarked sending date and lack of options to structure comments), users construct order in interactions through repetition, danmu-specific expressions and multimodal references, while using playful language to make fun. This study provides an up-to-date analysis on an increasingly popular CMC medium beyond well-studied social networking sites, and broadens the understanding of coherence in contemporary CMC.

While subtitles are considered a primary learning support tool for people who cannot understand video narration in foreign languages, recent advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have played a pivotal role in automatic subtitling on online video platforms such as YouTube. This study examines the effects of three different types of subtitles in the Thai language (i.e., auto-subtitles, edited subtitles, and no subtitles) on learning comprehension, cognitive load, and satisfaction to determine whether it is feasible to use AI technology as an auto-subtitles system to facilitate online learning with educational videos. To that aim, 79 Thai secondary school students from three Mathayom 5 (Grade 11) computer science classrooms participated in this study. This study used the static group comparison, which is the Posttest-Only Control Group Design. The results of this study found that the auto-subtitles system that generates Thai language subtitles for English educational videos has greater feasibility of implementation to facilitate online learning when compared to editorial subtitles by Thai natives. Therefore, Thai subtitles generated by the auto-subtitles system in English educational videos can facilitate students’ learning comprehension, cognitive load, and satisfaction.

High subtitle speed undoubtedly impacts the viewer experience. However, little is known about how fast subtitles might impact the reading of individual words. This article presents new findings on the effect of subtitle speed on viewers’ reading behavior using word-based eye-tracking measures with specific attention to word skipping and rereading. In multimodal reading situations such as reading subtitles in video, rereading allows people to correct for oculomotor error or comprehension failure during linguistic processing or integrate words with elements of the image to build a situation model of the video. However, the opportunity to reread words, to read the majority of the words in the subtitle and to read subtitles to completion, is likely to be compromised when subtitles are too fast. Participants watched videos with subtitles at 12, 20, and 28 characters per second (cps) while their eye movements were recorded. It was found that comprehension declined as speed increased. Eye movement records also showed that faster subtitles resulted in more incomplete reading of subtitles. Furthermore, increased speed also caused fewer words to be reread following both horizontal eye movements (likely resulting in reduced lexical processing) and vertical eye movements (which would likely reduce higher-level comprehension and integration).

People watch subtitled audiovisual materials more than ever before. With the proliferation of subtitled content, we are also witnessing an increase in subtitle speeds. However, there is an ongoing controversy about what optimum subtitle speeds should be. This study looks into whether viewers can keep up with increasingly fast subtitles and whether the way people cope with subtitled content depends on their familiarity with subtitling and on their knowledge of the language of the film soundtrack. We tested 74 English, Polish and Spanish viewers watching films subtitled at different speeds (12, 16 and 20 characters per second). The films were either in Hungarian, a language unknown to the participants (Experiment 1), or in English (Experiment 2). We measured viewers' comprehension, self-reported cognitive load, scene and subtitle recognition, preferences and enjoyment. By analyzing people's eye gaze, we were able to discover that most viewers could read the subtitles as well as follow the images, coping well even with fast subtitle speeds. Slow subtitles triggered more re-reading, particularly in English clips, causing more frustration and less enjoyment. Faster subtitles with unreduced text were preferred in the case of English videos, and slower subtitles with text edited down in Hungarian videos. The results provide empirical grounds for revisiting current subtitling practices to enable more efficient processing of subtitled videos for viewers.

Every day, millions of viewers worldwide engage with subtitled content, and an increasing number choose to watch without sound. In this mixed-methods study, we examine the impact of sound presence or absence on the viewing experience of both first-language (L1) and second-language (L2) viewers when they watch subtitled videos. We explore this novel phenomenon through comprehension and recall post-tests, self-reported cognitive load, immersion, and enjoyment measures, as well as gaze pattern analysis using eye tracking. We also investigate viewers’ motivations for opting for audiovisual content without sound and explore how the absence of sound impacts their viewing experience, using in-depth, semi-structured interviews. Our goal is to ascertain whether these effects are consistent among L2 and L1 speakers from different language varieties. To achieve this, we tested L1-British English, L1-Australian English and L2-English (L1-Polish) language speakers (n = 168) while they watched English-language audiovisual material with English subtitles with and without sound. The findings show that when watching videos without sound, viewers experienced increased cognitive load, along with reduced comprehension, immersion and overall enjoyment. Examination of participants’ gaze revealed that the absence of sound significantly affected the viewing experience, increasing the need for subtitles and thus increasing the viewers’ propensity to process them more thoroughly. The absence of sound emerged as a global constraint that made reading more effortful. Triangulating data from multiple sources made it possible to tap into some of the metacognitive strategies employed by viewers to maintain comprehension in the absence of sound. We discuss the implications within the context of the growing trend of watching subtitled videos without sound, emphasising its potential impact on cognitive processes and the viewing experience.

Supported by technology, subtitling has moved beyond a formal audiovisual exercise in linguistic equivalence towards a complex mode of cultural mediation. This study explores the power of blended subtitling as an art which allows the translator/subtitler to step out of comfortable invisibility and embrace creativity in rendering humour, idiomatic richness, and emotional layers to ensure audiovisual resonance across linguistic and cultural boundaries. The importance of creative subtitling as an approach that enhances accessibility and audience engagement will be illustrated with examples created in Filmora Wondershare by the authors of the study, Eliza Claudia Filimon and Robert Marcu, to emphasise how subtitles mirror tone and style to drive narrative impact.