Page 11 - e-Expert Seminar Series: Translation and Languaje Teaching

Media Localisation in the 21st Century
Frederic Chaume Varela (Universitat Jaume I, Spain)
BIODATA: Frederic Chaume is Professor of Audiovisual Translation at the Universitat Jaume I (Castelló, Spain), where he teaches audiovisual translation theory, dubbing and subtitling, and Honorary Professor at University College London (UK). He has also taught regularly at the universities of Roehampton and Imperial College London (London), Las Palmas, Malaga, Granada and Seville (Spain). He has published extensively on Audiovisual Translation. For the past 20 years he has also been working as a professional translator for different dubbing and subtitling companies.
ABSTRACT: In the field of media communication, digitalization facilitates the creation, production, distribution and potential manipulation of new audiovisual contents. Digitalization has also led to the multiplication of audiovisual distribution platforms and devices. The staggering number of hours of audiovisual content localized every single day, and the fast pace with which this is taking place, have brought a wider and better choice for audiences, as well as a growing diversity in audiovisual content consumption, and in the use of different translation practices. Different target cultures use different audiovisual transfer modes to bring foreign texts closer to their audiences. Audiovisual translation modes respond to the way a particular culture wants to consume a foreign audiovisual text. And these modes are deeply rooted in cultures, since habits and tastes are not easily changed in a short space of time. Modes of audiovisual translation are understood as all types of audiovisual text transfer between two languages and cultures (interlingual) or within the same language and culture (intralingual, such as the accessibility modes: subtitling for the deaf and the hard of hearing, audiodescription for the blind and visually impaired, respeaking, audiosubtitling, etc.). Essentially, translations of audiovisual texts entail introducing a target text with the translation or reproduction of the dialogues and inserts (captioning) on or next to the screen, or by inserting a new soundtrack in a different language and either cancelling out the original soundtrack of the source
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