Efficient Use of Linguistic and Situational Contexts for Enhanced Understanding of the Content of English Screen Subtitles

Abstract

Research in the production of powerful screen subtitles receives more attention from those who are interested in movies business for the benefit of viewers worldwide. Arguably viewers hardly benefit from screen subtitles due to the inconsistency between scenes and the pragmatic meaning of subtitles. Specifically, the study aims to examine the extent to which understanding pragmatic meaning of screen subtitles largely depends on understanding linguistic and situational contexts elements. The force of context is assumed to have powerful effect interpretation of the source text. Both descriptive and experimental methods were adopted. These included a test and paper-and-pencil-questionnaires where participants provided their impressions about the effect of context in eliminating pragmatic meaning of screen subtitles. Participants were experienced viewers of subtitled films. Results showed that linguistic forms and contextual cues together form a powerful element in understanding the pragmatic meaning of screen subtitles. Results also revealed that communicative translation fits the screen translation giving more attention to the effect of context. The association of context and communicative translation makes subtitles globally more economical and intelligible. Context forms a central pragmatic element for film language to be intelligible. Keywords—Interpretation, context-dependent-interpretation, International context, scenes, linguistic context DOI: 10.7176/JLLL/92-03 Publication date: October 31 st 2022