The perception of subtitled humor in Italy

Abstract

Despite the central place occupied by language transfer of audiovisual products, particularly in the European cinema and television sector, audience perception of both dubbing and subtitling is a largely neglected field of study and research. When, however, we start looking into the available research on the perception of translated humor and, more specifically, of the perception of humor as rendered into another language by subtitles, we realize that this is an even more neglected and unexplored field of study. This paper will attempt to address the effectiveness of subtitles in the appreciation and perception of humor, and, more specifically, will present an overview of the scant literature and research published on this subject.

Teaching Subtitling at Jordanian Universities: An Untapped Territory

“…The type of training students received overlooked the importance of theory in translation, and the practical component focused on the production of "acceptable" target language texts. 1 Although the translation skills which students acquired were not multifarious, they were sufficient enough to meet the market demands prevalent at the time.…”

A model for Hebrew translation of British humor

“…In the past, research on humor and translation has touched on a large variety of subjects, such as the translatability of puns and wordplay (Delabastita 1996), the translation of irony (Mateo 1995), and the subtitling of screen comedy (Chiaro 2003, Antonini 2005, among many others. Furthermore, there has been much theorizing on verbally expressed humor, on the one hand, and much study of the role translational norms play in the translation process, on the other.…”

Translating identity

“…Both dubbing and subtitling operate under numerous technical constraints. For example, subtitles face the limitation of available screen space, and therefore require simplification, whereas dubbing demands synchronization of lip movement and dialogue (Antonini 2005;Chiaro 2009;Chaume Varela 2004;Kilborn 1993).…”

“…Considerably less attention has been given to localization in the form of linguistic translation processes. While a sizeable field of audiovisual translation studies exists, too many studies have addressed the comparative merits and implications of dubbing and subtitling (Antonini 2009;Chaume 2008;Danan;Heller 2013;Kilborn 1993;Koolstra, Peeters, and Spinhof 2002;Nornes 2007), and little research has closely examined adaptation processes and the texts they yield (Abdullah, 1992;Bucaria 2008;Tomaszkiewicz, 1993). Similarly, few have examined how adaptation affects the representation of marginalized identities (Boellstorff 2003;Ferrari 2010;de Marco 2009de Marco , 2012, and the complexities inherent in linguistic transfer is often overlooked.…”

“…Both subtitling and dubbing operate under considerable technical constraints, be they the limitation of available screen space for subtitles and the subsequent simplification it requires, or the desire to synchronize dialogue with lip movement in dubbing (Antonini 2005;Chiaro 2008;Kilborn 1993). These mechanics often make one method more appealing over another given a text's generic qualities.…”