Multilingualism in Sao Tomé and Principe: Use of Subtitling Approach

Abstract

Summary Sao Tome and Principe (STP) is a developing country where several languages coexist, although only one of them, Portuguese, serves as the official language. The rest of the languages are limited to private use and many of them are at risk of disappearing. As a pilot experiment to find formulas for the preservation of these languages, this work takes Forro Creole as a reference. Forro is no longer transmitted from parents to children, nor is it studied in schools, and it is mainly the elderly who maintain it. At the same time, elders form a social group that suffers abandonment and discrimination from their community. In this context, we wondered whether subtitling would be useful to preserve and promote Forro Creole and to contribute to the integration of the elderly into society; what the linguistic perceptions of Forro-speaking elderly and non-elderly Santomeans are; and, finally, what experts in International Cooperation (IC), Audiovisual Translation (TAV) and Linguistic Cooperation (LC) think of the possibilities of subtitling in this area. The results show the participants’ perception of Forro, the situation of elders and subtitling, and lead to a final proposal: the recording of videos in Forro, subtitled in Portuguese and aimed at children whose protagonists would be elders who would encourage Forro learning and the ancestral culture through stories or songs that could be screened in schools or in the communities as a mobile cinema.