Formatos Comerciales y Grandes Superficies en Asturias

According to Ivarsson (1992:106), subtitlers “have the same copyright under the Berne and World Conventions as writers and therefore have the right to see their names on works that are published”. Indeed, Point 5.h, Section III of the UNESCO’s (1976) Recommendation on the Legal Protection of Translators and Translations and the Practical Means to improve the Status of Translators reinforces this right by explicitly stating:

the name of the author of the translation should appear in a prominent place on all published copies of the translation, on theatre bills, in an-nouncements made in connexion with radio or television broadcasts, in the credit titles of  lms and in any other promotional material.

Alongside this acknowledgement, it would also be desirable for the translated product to include a mention of the date when the subtitles were done, since they do not always coincide with the production year of the  lm. Subject to their consent, the names of subtitlers should appear in the credits, nor-mally at the end of the programme, but sometimes also at the beginning. In some cases, subtitlers may decline to have their names acknowledged in a particular production when they disagree with the changes made during the revision process.

However, the general opinion is that the best subtitles are those that the viewer does not notice. From this perspective, the subtitler’s task seems to be a contradiction in terms: to provide a translation that is written a posteriori on the original programme,  ashes in and out at the bottom of the screen, but pretends not to be there. In what can be considered an attempt at invisibil-ity, many subtitled programmes do not offer in their credits the name of the subtitler or the subtitling company, although this practice varies enormously and some countries are more respectful than others. This forced invisibility tends to have a negative impact on the social recognition of subtitlers which is most patent in the lack of copyright for their work. Countries like Spain (Díaz Cintas 2003:103-104) and Greece (Papadakis 1998) do not recognize this activity for copyright, with a rather ironical situation in Spain where dubbing does generate royalties. In some other countries, subtitlers do own the rights to their work, although it is becoming common practice in the profession to sign them away to the commissioning company.

There are many ways of promoting the subtitling profession, and these are only some ideas: including the name of the translator in the credits of the programme, including their details in national  lm databanks, creating an annual prize for the best subtitled and dubbed programmes as is done in the literary world, publishing works with the names of the programmes and the translators, creating websites with this information, etc. Castellano (2000), for instance, is a sort of encyclopedia of dubbing in Italy, compiling information on translators, dubbing actors, and dubbing directors of  lms and sitcoms.

As for websites, professionals working in dubbing seem to be ahead in this respect, with sites such as www.eldoblaje.com, www.dubbing.de, and www.

doublage.qc.ca among many others.

The lethargy that has traditionally pervaded the profession is these days be-ing replaced with some activity aimed at safeguardbe-ing audiovisual translators’

working conditions. We have in recent years witnessed the creation of several associations such as the Danish FBO-Forum for Billedmedieoversættere, the Norwegian NAViO, and the Valencian Associació Professional de Traductors, Adaptadors i Assessors Lingüístics (APTAA) (see Appendix 3). Perhaps one of the most ambitious is avtranslators.org, an association of union representatives exchanging news in the  eld of audiovisual translation and information on agreements, contracts, working conditions and prices (www.avtranslators.org).

It can be seen as an initiative building on Point 7, Section III of the UNESCO Recommendation (1976), which also calls for the creation of these associa-tions, suggesting that:

Member States should also promote measures to ensure effective repre-sentation of translators and to encourage the creation and development of professional organizations of translators and other organizations or as-sociations representing them, to de ne the rules and duties which should

govern the exercise of the profession, to defend the moral and material interests of translators and to facilitate linguistic, cultural, scienti c and technical exchanges among translators and between translators and the authors of works to be translated.

2.3.5 Training

The well-being of the subtitling profession depends, as in many other pro-fessional disciplines, on the sound training of experts in the  eld. If only some thirty years ago the teaching, learning and researching of translation in educational institutions was a rare occurrence, nowadays it is an unquestion-able reality. The discipline has advanced and translation has been part of the educational landscape for some time now. From an initial over-emphasis on literary texts, we have slowly moved on to cover many other areas such as localization, economic, scienti c, technical, and legal translation.

However, despite the growing importance of AVT in our daily lives, many universities have been rather passive in the preparation of students in this area, and dubbing, subtitling and voice-over have been largely ignored in the curricula. Lack of interest, prohibitive software prices, absence of teacher expertise, vested interests, or mere blindness may be some of the reasons behind this state of affairs. The end result has been that audiovisual transla-tion could only be learnt hands-on, in-house, outside educatransla-tional institutransla-tions, with little academic backbone. Nowadays, the situation seems to be changing and many universities in different countries have taken up the challenge of teaching AVT, mainly subtitling, dubbing and voice-over (Mayoral Asensio 2001a; Díaz Cintas and Orero 2003). This is a very promising development that is now starting to bear fruit. Nonetheless, these subjects tend to be taught marginally – intensive (summer) courses, extra seminars – making it dif cult to go beyond the introductory stages. One of the challenges ahead for AVT is to root it  rmly in university curricula.

At undergraduate level the courses are offered as options within a degree in translation, and their content tends to favour practice over theory. Given the high costs involved and the speed at which technical changes take place, the use of subtitling and dubbing software equipment has always been one of the thorniest issues. University management has never been willing to invest large sums of money to buy subtitling software that may need regular updates.

Hence, some institutions have worked, and continue to work, on paper whilst others have managed large groups of students with just a few open-access subtitling stations from different manufacturers. In order to overcome the

 nancial constraints, some universities have developed their own subtitling software. From the industry perspective, these programs may lack some func-tionality, but they have two major advantages for the educationalist: they are much cheaper and they are designed with the student in mind, making them

much simpler to use; an advantage that cannot be stressed enough if we think of the limited time available at University for training.

Discussion point 2.5 below offers an insight into what some companies believe to be essential qualities of a good subtitler. We share the opinion that a subtitler has to be a professional able to carry out all the tasks involved in subtitling, independently of the fact that some companies might commission only the translation. Students should be trained to time, to translate and to come up with a translation that respects all the media limitations of subtitling.

They should also be familiar with subtitling software programs. It is simple:

the better the preparation, the better the chances of getting a job.

2.4 Discussion points

Training

2.4.1 Visit the website of at least three institutions offering postgraduate studies on AVT.

[You can  nd a sample list on: DVD > Chapter 2 > Discussion points

> Discussion point 2.4.1]

X What subjects do they offer?

Y What are, in your opinion, their strongest points?

Z And what are their weakest features?

[ Would you change their structure, adding or deleting some of the modules?

\ In general, what do you think about these programmes?