“This fast-paced consumption, which characterises today’s media culture, is enabled, among others, by the expansion of video streaming services and video-on-demand platforms. In turn, the abundance of audiovisual products and the necessity to make them accessible to all audiences increases the demand for audiovisual translation (AVT) which needs to be prompt, while maintaining all other quality requirements.
In this environment, AVT professionals need to develop a skill-set which goes beyond the acquisition of technological literacy and linguistic aptitude to embrace adaptability, which may be hard to achieve when the audiovisual programme deals with sensitive and/or controversial topics because of the emotional impact inflicted upon the translator.”
“To look into this issue, we designed an online questionnaire which was completed by 170 professional and amateur subtitlers.”
“Schäffner (1997) examines sensitive texts from the perspective of the reaction they prompt in a reader (or viewer, in the case of audiovisual texts) and argues that any text causing irritation or confusion can be considered sensitive.” Exemplos recentes meus: Infância (Graciliano Ramos), Rayuela (Cortázar)…
“It should be noted that the study focuses on negative emotions, as these are assumed to have the most drastic impact on subtitling performance.”
“In areas such as public service interpreting (PSI), healthcare interpreting and, more specifically, mental health interpreting, professionals often face emotionally demanding situations and are affected when relaying traumatic experiences (Hsieh and Nicodemus 2015; Doherty et al. 2010). Similar observations can be made when it comes to emotionally-loaded cases involving interpreting, as in the Nuremberg trials, where simultaneous interpreting first appeared, and in the interpreting conducted in Nazi concentration camps during World War II (Tryuk 2016). The fact that interpreters experience distress and anxiety at some point in their careers has been affirmed in related studies (Loutan et al. 1999; Valero-Garcés 2005; Doherty et al. 2010).”
“meaning that individuals with higher EI tend to be more creative.” Jussara’s EI or QE: 0.
“the emotional potential of audiovisual texts is relatively greater than that of a literary text because of the different layers of information involved.”
“In addition, given the tight deadlines governing the subtitling industry (Georgakopoulou 2009), rarely is there the luxury of time to first watch the programme and then translate it. Therefore, subtitlers often need to switch between the different hats of viewer and translator while experiencing the text for the first time, which arguably allows them less time to crystallise the viewing experience and to follow a more clinical approach in subtitling.”
“Out of the 16 amateur subtitlers in the sample, only three answered that their performance is affected by their emotions.” Típico.
“It is possible that the participants misunderstood the option of humour as referring to a linguistic challenge in subtitling, and not to a potentially emotion-eliciting aspect of the audiovisual text. Taking this into account, the fact that humour was the option with the most responses (80 – 47%) can be interpreted in two ways: either humour is one of the most challenging elements to relay in subtitling, as has been confirmed in the relevant literature (Díaz Cintas and Remael 2007; Chiaro 2010), or humour embedded in sensitive material, e.g. jokes that can be considered obscene, profane, racist or sexist, elicits a more intense emotional reaction.”
“This sentiment of desensitisation may also be evident in the fact that 36 participants (21%) chose not to answer this question, making it the question with the lowest response rate in the questionnaire. Another interpretation for the low response rate would be that the participants, as language professionals, are comfortable with such aspects of language and their non-responsiveness to sensitive language is a meditated stance they adopt to demonstrate their professionalism.”
“Out of these 133 participants, 24 of them proceeded to report an example where their performance was shown to be affected in one way or another. More specifically, they acknowledged that they sometimes have physical reactions to the material (e.g. crying, feeling nauseated) and, thus, have to take frequent breaks while subtitling, or they avoid looking at the screen, focus solely on the audio, and work quickly through the material. Others defer part of the project to other subtitlers and refuse to take on similar projects in the future. In fact, these participants’ narratives are similar to those that answered that their performance was affected by their emotions.”
“The fact that some participants answered that their performance is not affected by their emotions and yet showed evidence of such effect in their free-text responses suggests that some may initially misperceive the extent of the emotional impact experienced when subtitling sensitive material. Alternatively, as it was noted above, a reluctance to admit the impact of emotions on subtitling performance may be connected to the subtitlers’ sense of professionalism and the attitude it entails. Notably, 10 out of the 133 participants that gave a negative response highlighted the subtitler’s responsibility to remain impartial and persevere with the translation, thus demonstrating how norms of the field of translation are often internalised by its agents.”
“I don’t linger much on the translation. I don’t think how to render it best. I just want […] to get it over with” !!!
“Overall, 16 participants (9%) remark that they tend to take frequent breaks in order to cope with the emotional impact, which results in their being less productive and needing more time to complete the job. This may also cause them to ask for an extension to the deadline, if circumstances allow it, or resort to a last-minute translation, as happens with the subtitlers that delay working on the sensitive material. Six participants (3%), all professional subtitlers, note that they refuse work that they know will have such a strong emotional impact on them. Admittedly, this presupposes an established presence in the subtitling industry and a good rapport with one’s clients, so that there is the professional, and financial, flexibility to turn down work. Indeed, the participants that made this point have more than 10 years of subtitling experience.”
“Given that the subtitles co-exist with, and heavily depend on, the visual channel, it is obvious that an obscured image may negatively impact the translation. Furthermore, templates usually contain an abbreviated version of the dialogue, and thus do not correspond to the full onscreen content. As a participant attests, when working through torture scenes, they ‘avoid watching, which makes [their] work prone to error’” Não entendo: como pode trabalhar com isso?
“Twelve of these participants reported that they may consciously tone down language that they find too offensive, particularly in regard to racial discrimination and swearing. The participants’ responses indicate that this also occurs when the depicted images are especially emotive (e.g. images of slaughterhouses or active war zones). Therefore, although language in isolation seems to leave many participants emotionally unaffected, perhaps because translators are trained and expected to be able to handle abusive, offensive, and colourful language, coping with images is arguably more challenging.”
“Eleven participants (6%) highlighted that their performance improved because they felt an even greater responsibility to convey the intended message to the target viewers. As the participants noted, despite the intense emotional impact they experienced, they persevered in order to do justice to the ST, either to match its high cinematographic quality, in the case of fictional films/TV series, or to raise awareness of the issues involved, in the case of documentaries. One participant points out that they took extra care ‘to convey the speakers’ message to the target audience’ when subtitling a documentary about Ugandan child soldiers, in order to communicate their life stories as accurately as possible. Similarly, another participant notes that the emotions of sadness and helplessness they experienced when working on a documentary about cancer patients helped them produce more natural subtitles because they felt that they were the patients’ voice for the target audience. The same participant highlights that in cases where they are overwhelmed with emotion, their empathy with the depicted characters is strengthened, which, in their opinion, ultimately has a positive effect on their subtitling performance.”
“The emotions that the subtitlers in our study experience most commonly are sadness, anger, and disgust, and the topic that emotionally affects them the most is abuse. In terms of imagery, scenes of rape, torture, and animal abuse appear to be particularly sensitive for most participants. In contrast, language usage (e.g. swearing) does not seem to have a significant emotional impact on the majority of the participants.”
“Given that an emotional impact can either hinder or enhance subtitling performance, as discussed above, it seems necessary that subtitlers learn how to process and cope with the elicited emotions first so that they can reap the potential benefits of emotional impact.”
“Further research can also examine relevant training practices that could benefit subtitlers, either in an institutionalised academic context or in the professional environment.”
Seclusão Anagógica 