The audience's reluctance to wait for the international release of audiovisual products, coupled with the easy access to audiovisual material and subtitling tools on the Internet, has triggered an increase in the production and use of non-professional subtitling. However, up to now, we know little of how people receive the subtitles and how much they understand when watching products with non-professional subtitles. This paper presents the results of a study that explores the audience reception of subtitled TV series using professional and non-professional subtitling. Fifty-two participants were shown three excerpts from The Big Bang Theory with three subtitle versions: the professional version extracted from the Spanish DVD and two non-professional versions produced by two different nonprofessional subtitling communities. Data were collected through questionnaires, eye-tracking and interviews. The results show that non-professional subtitles do not necessarily affect the audience reception negatively. Further, both eye-tracking and self-reported data yielded interesting insights into audience's reception. Based on the findings, it is possible to say that there are non-professional translations that are as good as their professional counterparts.

This paper analyzes the consumers in the context of non-professional subtitling (NPS). Using web scraping techniques to collect data about the downloading rate of non-professional subtitles we explore the behavior of consumers. Drawing on the case of the subtitles for House of Cards in Addic7ed.com, a popular multilingual non-professional subtitle distribution website, we describe the consumption of non-professional subtitles and the users' response. After outlining the situation of the international audiences for audiovisual products and the relevance of consumers as the driving force behind NPS communities, we analyze the collected data in terms of their interest in the originality of the content and their wish to access the content immediately after it is available. Our findings indicate that the users of non-professional subtitles are highly engaged consumers, eager to access the content as soon as possible and interested in watching it in its original language (English), even with intralingual (same-language) subtitles.

The emergence of international audiences and the activities of prosumers are modifying international media flows. Consumers have become active mediators in the distribution of audiovisual contents through the Internet, overstepping official distribution channels. As an efficient way to overcome linguistic barriers, non-professional subtitling plays an important role within this framework. In order to analyze how the new environment is altering users' behavior and attitudes, this article looks at the case of video consumption and non-professional subtitling use in Spain. By drawing on questionnaires, interviews and documentary sources on the Internet, the article aims at providing a general picture of current consumption habits of audiovisual material in a globalized society. It explores users' engagement with audiovisual content, their attitude towards subtitling and nonprofessional subtitling, and how they manage their expectations and adapt to the new conditions.

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