Subtitlers can work freelance or in-house for any of the following agents:
Subtitling companies (see Appendix 1).
Production and distribution companies dealing with lms, trailers and other audiovisual material that is shown on cinema screens.
Film festivals.
DVD and VHS distribution companies.
Private and public television stations.
Publicity companies.
Production companies dealing with corporate videos.
Firms working with multimedia products.
Companies working in the interactive software industry (also called entertainment software industry, or game industry).
Freelancing tends to be the most common form of employment for subtitlers, and only in countries where the volume of subtitling is very high are subtitlers hired in-house. When working freelance, subtitlers can be paid per whole pro-gramme, per minute of propro-gramme, per number of words, or per number of subtitles. Rates vary from country to country, and company to company, and translators ought to inform themselves about the going rates to avoid unfair competition and destroying the market with unnecessarily low rates.
There are several factors that impinge on the subtitlers’ remuneration.
When asked to translate from the screen without a dialogue list, they should charge more for their work, since the task will take considerably longer. Some translators’ associations recommend a surcharge of some 30 to 50%, although this is not always possible and some bargaining might be called for.
Subtitlers ought to have suf cient time to do proper research on termino-logy and cultural referents as well as to revise their own work. The less the time allowed for doing the translation, the higher the rates should be. Once again, this desideratum is not ful lled in practice and it usually depends on the bargaining power of individuals. The medium is another factor affecting rates; subtitling feature lms for cinema release normally commands higher rates than subtitling for television, lm festivals or the DVD industry.
Some of the biggest changes in AVT come hand in hand with globaliza-tion and technological developments. Today it is not necessary to live in the same city, or even country, of the client or subtitling company. Computers and Internet have opened up new avenues unknown until relatively recently, allowing subtitlers to offer their services to companies anywhere in the world,
and rms to contract their workforce wherever they prefer. Pros and cons can be attached to this situation. The great advantage for translators is the increase in the number of potential clients that can be contacted without having to leave home. The downside is that competition also grows and, in some cases, companies prefer to recruit their workers in countries where labour costs are lower.
2.3.2 Globalization
The global marketing and expansion of the audiovisual industry also means that the product becomes increasingly diversi ed. Two obvious products of the joint forces of globalization and technological advances in the domain of audiovisual media are DVDs and computer games. Whereas the diversity of the world ‘out there’ seems almost limitless, the commercial world of DVD production seems to be pulling subtitling into the opposite direction. As large multinationals dominate the market, more standardization is called for and subtitlers’ creativity is curbed. As discussed above and in chapter 4, the use of templates no longer allows the subtitler to decide about spotting or timing.
Subtitlers are restricted to translating the English subtitles that are delivered with the lm, or with an extensive dialogue list and glossary but without the
lm. This certainly allows them to work faster and still requires creativity in order to produce idiomatic target language subtitles of a similar length, but opinions on the desirability of this state of affairs vary.
Many of the big international subtitling companies have their main of ces in cities like London and Los Angeles, nerve centres of the audiovisual world.
The idea that the decisions on the translation into a given language are taken in the country where the language is spoken is becoming fast démodé. For clients with audiovisual programmes that need to be subtitled into several languages, a normal occurrence in the DVD industry, the easiest, quickest and cheapest way to go about it is to approach a big subtitling company that can do all the languages, rather than sending the programmes to different countries where the languages are spoken. They leave the programme in the of ce in London and collect it at the time agreed. It is the duty of the subtitling company to contact and nd professionals in the languages requested. In some cases, the work will be conducted by email, and in others, subtitlers and revisers will be called in to guarantee the quality of the nal product.
Globalization has also brought along the application of new parameters that are decided outside the country where the programme is nally watched.
A greater degree of standardization can be observed in the conventions applied when subtitling the same programme into several languages for DVD distribu-tion. Given that many subtitling tracks are commercialized together on the same DVD and can be accessed by anyone anywhere, the tendency is to use the same conventions in all languages, even though in some cases they might be at odds with domestic practice. This relatively new development raises questions about
the balance among languages (and cultures) in the audiovisual world, since not only are programmes and lms produced in English, but their translations are also being done and decided in the country of origin. The jargon used in the profession is certainly telling, with concepts such as ‘master’ and ‘genesis’ to name the timed English subtitles used for translation; and ‘territories’ to refer to the countries where the translated programmes are distributed. The problem is even further compounded if we think that some lms from lesser-spoken languages are subtitled using English as a pivot language.
In a drive to save money, another practice being implemented by some companies consists in ‘converting’ languages that are spoken in different parts of the globe, e.g. Castilian Spanish into Latin American Spanish, French into Canadian French, Portuguese into Brazilian Portuguese, Roman Serbian into Cyrillic Serbian and vice versa. The subtitles are initially done from the SL into one of these languages, say Portuguese, and then ‘converted’ into Bra-zilian Portuguese. The timing of the subtitles is the same in both languages and the task consists in changing only the words and expressions that are too local and might not be understood by the other language community. Also in expansion is the use of a ‘neutral’ variety of the language that could satisfy the needs of several countries where the same language is spoken. Many DVDs are now distributed with a subtitling track in Castilian Spanish and another one in Latin American Spanish which is meant to reach all countries in America. Little research has been done into the morphological, syntac-tical and lexical characteristics of this language variant or into the way it is perceived by viewers.
Ivarsson (1992:11) deplores that “ lm directors and TV producers seldom show any interest in what happens to their works once they are exported to other countries”, an idea also shared by Krogstad (1998). After recognizing that contemporary lms are increasingly being produced for the international market, he goes on to state: “Still, it doesn’t seem to be an integral part of the planning of a lm that its reception abroad depends on the quality of the verbal transmission” (ibid.:63). It is high time this situation changed. In an increasingly globalized market, with the great potential for boosting box of ce receipts abroad, translation is a fundamental part of the international success of a movie. Many directors still have to wake up to the reality that the translation process is an artistic factor on which more control needs to be exerted and in which it is worthwhile investing the necessary amount of money, generally very little compared with the overall budget. Subtitling, as well as dubbing, has to be understood as an integral part of the process of the artistic creation of a lm and not as a mere appendix subject to market forces.
2.3.3 Deadlines
Although projects in subtitling are virtually always urgent, deadlines vary according to the distribution channel. When subtitling lms to be screened in
the cinema or broadcast on television, translators tend to be allowed more time than when working for the DVD industry, where the rhythm has accelerated considerably in recent years because of the distribution companies’ drive to release the DVD very soon after the cinema launch. Film festivals are notori-ously frantic and subtitlers can be asked to do a lm in a couple of days, or even in just a few hours overnight. If time pressures are great, it is not uncommon to divide a lm or programme into several sections and give them to different translators. Needless to say, unless a thorough revision is done at the end, this practice can lead to a lack of cohesion and coherence in the subtitles, e.g. the same terms being translated in different ways by different translators.
It is rather dif cult to tell exactly how long it takes, on average, to subtitle a normal length lm of some 90 minutes. The time put into it will depend on factors such as the density of the dialogue, the dif culty of the topic, and the date it has to be shown. In a normal situation, the spotting of a lm can take some two days, and the translator is given between four and seven days to produce the target language subtitles. Depending on the number of subtitles, their laser engraving onto the lm copy and washing takes around ten times the length of the lm, so to subtitle a 90-minute production will last between 15 and 20 hours. The nal simulation can be done in a morning or an afternoon.
All in all, the whole process of subtitling a full-length lm can last some 12 to 15 days from the moment it has been placed with the subtitling company.