2.2　AVT

AVT emphasizes audiovisual dimensions of the communicative mode.Unlike communication through other approach,such as printed materials,audiovisual communication implies that both the aural and the visual channels through acoustic and optical waves are simultaneously utilized (Delabastita,1989: 196).AVT,then,stresses that supplying a translation is contingent on meeting the needs of these channels (Karamitroglou 2000: 2).

In June 2012,during an interview with visiting Dong,Diaz-Cintas was asked which terms in his view were the most appropriate in defining the current study area: Film Translation,Multimedia Translation,Screen Translation or AVT.He replied,“I prefer to use ‘audiovisual translation’,because audiovisual translation is not only about the types of program but it also emphasizes the communication between the translated products and the audience”.With this in mind,“audio” refers to the information on the soundtrack,while “visual” refers to the moving; when taken together,they should be regarded as communication channels.Furthermore,“AVT” is a concept that is wide enough to encompass all translation products including DVDs,films,TV programmes,and online and mobile videos.In the history of media development,film is the main type of translated product because it was the one that was invented first.Therefore,in the beginning,scholars referred to this particular type of study in terms of “Cinema Translation”.However,with the rapid development of technology,more and more types of media have been created.In response to this changing landscape,scholars have more recently preferred to use the broader term “AVT”.Meanwhile,since the late 1990s,practitioners have focused more on areas such as “accessibility”,which is concerned with subtitling for the deaf,and the hard-of-hearing (SDH) and audio description (AD) for the blind and the partially sighted.In the light of this tendency,the development of AVT has quickly diversified,with Diaz-Cintas,as one of its leading practitioners,publishing invaluable articles and books on the topic.

Orero believes that “technological developments which have changed paper oriented society towards media oriented society have also made Audiovisual Translation the most dynamic field of Translation Studies.”(2004: VIII)For example,in the last decade,scholars in this area focused their attention on the study of TV subtitle translation,but now turning their attention on subtitling in mobile videos as well as ways in which new techniques can help them in the pursuit of better translation strategies,such as eye-tracking and scrolling.According to this research,there are five possible areas that can be referred to for the purposes of examining AVT: screenplay,film adaption,audience design,and pragmatics and poly-system theory.(https://www.daowen.com)

Scholars in the West have widely and rapidly developed the study of AVT in the last 10 years,even though the respective research perspectives have varied.Some of them have described their studies in terms of being based on a new means of AVT technology.Examples include Brauna and Orero’s (2010) article,“Audio description with audio subtitling: an emergent modality of audiovisual localization”,published in Perspectives; and O’Hagan’s (2003) article,“Can language technology respond to the subtitler’s dilemma? — A preliminary study”.Others have been inclined towards cultural awareness in AVT; for example,in his (2007) article,“Cultural interchangeability: the effects of substituting cultural references in subtitling”,also published in Perspectives,Pedersen discussed the interchangeability of cultural elements in subtitling and explained the possibility of “cultural substitution” in subtitle translation.Some,meanwhile,have given subjective reasons behind the influences upon the quality of subtitling; for example,in her 2008 survey-based article,“Subtitling 8 Mile in three languages: translation problems and translator licence”,Taivalkoski-Shilov argued that more attention should be paid to the requirements not only of translators,but also of local managers and subtitling coordinators in the pursuit of quality in subtitling.Using the findings from her survey,which was based on the comparison of Finnish,French and Russian subtitled versions of the sample film,8 Mile,the author concluded that the strict policies of some local offices of the film’s distributor may have been an obstacle to the quality of subtitling in certain countries.In her 2002 article,“Subtitling wit: The case of ridicule”,Vanderschelden chose translation examples that were focused on style,register,play on words,humour and cultural references.In the training of subtitlers,shifting their attention towards cultural elements and cultural components will help them make target subtitles more acceptable to the audience.In this current research,the importance of cultural differences found within E-C subtitling is also the key discussion point.In the process,I will try to identify effective strategies for subtitling by analysing the impact of cultural differences upon subtitling.

In 2013,Perspectives published a special issue entitled “Corpus Linguistics and Audiovisual Translation: In search of an integrated approach”.In this issue,12 articles were published whose keywords were “Corpus-based”,“Dubbing” and “Audiovisual Translation”.The authors of these articles discussed their own research into using,and understanding of,corpus in AVT study,the effective strategies of AVT translation from English into their native language,cultural awareness in AVT translation.However,when searching under “corpus-based” and “E-C animation film subtitling”,very few studies were found.In the current study,I will construct a parallel corpus to collect and analyse translated Chinese subtitles and their corresponding original English texts for the purposes of comparing the results with my research hypotheses.