Abstract
As professors of audiovisual translation (AVT) in higher education institutions in Portugal, we have been concerned with the teaching of AVT, namely subtitling. In an attempt to prepare our students for the job market, we follow a constructivist approach, in line with Kiraly’s (2005) project-based learning. A dimension we cannot overlook in this context is the identification and analysis of subtitling errors, which we elaborate on according to Kuo (2014), Robert and Remael (2016) and Pedersen’s (2017) research. Thus, we chose a sample of nine films that were the target of our students’ projects from the last five academic years and pinpointed their errors, by following the analysis grid we put together for this purpose, which is based on temporal and spatial constraints, and stylistic, typographical and translation considerations. With this exercise in mind, we were able to conclude that segmentation and reading time of subtitles pose the greatest difficulty for our students.
Highlights
The didactics of translation and audiovisual translation (AVT) has been a topic for reflection from the 1980s and the 1990s onwards when it became a subject of interest for the academia and its novelty and intricate technical demands posed difficulties on university professors
We presented our experience as professors of AVT and made use of our students’ final projects as invaluable material to reflect upon the teaching of subtitling within higher education, and the best way to assess the quality of students’ work, attempting to ascertain whether they would be prepared to face the job market
This necessity is due to the ever-presence of AVT in the film polysystem, as well as within the larger cultural system, in line with Even-Zohar’s theory (1978)
Summary
The didactics of translation and audiovisual translation (AVT) has been a topic for reflection from the 1980s and the 1990s onwards when it became a subject of interest for the academia and its novelty and intricate technical demands posed difficulties on university professors. We could cite Kuo (2014), Robert and Remael (2016), and Pedersen (2017), who will provide a basis for our reflections on the assessment of subtitling Bearing this in mind, we aim at analysing our students’ AVT projects completed over the past five academic years so as to ascertain whether, at the end of the course, they had acquired the ability to meet the necessary norms and technical requirements to become professional subtitlers, based on an error-oriented approach. We sought to determine if they were capable of being critical towards their work, since they were expected to identify their difficulties and the means by which they overcame them These shall be compared to the actual errors found at the evaluation stage. Our ultimate objective is to improve and redirect our future teaching practice and to contribute, if possible, to the current AVT didactic concerns
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