It was not possible to access the commission information for each film studied, as some of them were subtitled 15 years ago, but a general understanding of the
banlieue film subtitling industry gives some indication of discourses surrounding
the translation of the genre and the general guidelines to which the subtitlers involved are working. For example, it is useful to know whether subtitlers are usually asked to use a certain variety of English – given the large and diverse potential target audience, were these subtitles written with a British English audience in mind? Are subtitlers asked to adhere to certain guidelines, such as ESIST’s Code of Subtitling Practice, or Karamitroglou’s Proposed Set of Subtitling Standards in Europe, for example?231
Subtitler Questionnaires
The above-mentioned issues related to the commission and guidelines were addressed where possible through a questionnaire that was sent to a number of French to English subtitlers who have worked on films they may describe as belonging to the genre. There were seven respondents to the survey. It has been
231 Mary Carroll and Jan Ivarsson, ‘Code of Good Subtitling Practice’, 1998
<https://www.esist.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Code-of-Good-Subtitling-Practice.PDF.pdf> [accessed 10 July 2017]; Fotios Karamitroglou, ‘A Proposed Set of Subtitling Standards in Europe’, Translation Journal, 2.2 (1998) <http://translationjournal.net/journal/04stndrd.htm>.
noted that the banlieue film industry is rather small in comparison to Hollywood, for example; this means that there exists a smaller pool of subtitlers to work on such films, as there is not a high demand. Participants were approached via the Facebook page for the group Anglo Subtitlers in France (ASIF), and once a subtitler expressed an interest in participating in the study, they were to be sent a questionnaire via email. They were asked to offer any information they could, and to provide any additional notes or materials they felt able to.
This approach meant that the subtitlers offered varying degrees of detail in their responses. As noted before, some of the films studied were released (and therefore subtitled) a number of years ago; asking the subtitlers about their work on specific films, and strategies employed, for example, would therefore not necessarily prove fruitful, as they may not have an accurate memory of the process of working on those projects. The purpose of collecting this data was to obtain a general understanding of the professional context in which the subtitling of French banlieue cinema is carried out. The working conditions of the subtitlers informs and shapes their work on the films, and frames the close analysis undertaken in this thesis on a broader level.232 Indeed, Mason notes the
importance of acknowledging the network within which translators work, noting that ‘these are dynamic, interactive processes which, in researching translation, we cannot afford to overlook.’ 233 Hence, rather than offering individual
background information for each film to be studied, the questionnaire responses offer a picture of the industry, and a general idea of the kind of interaction subtitlers may have with production companies when working on these challenging films. The responses provided by the subtitlers of the films chosen for case study analysis included some detail regarding those specific jobs. This was followed up for further information and clarification via email, but the function of such specific information within the analysis of the subtitles is more anecdotal than informative, given the limitations of questioning a professional about their work so many years later.
232 See, for example, Kristiina Abdallah, ‘Quality Problems in AVT Production Networks’, in
Audiovisual Translation in Close-up : Practical and Theoretical Approaches, ed. by Adriana
Serban, Anna Matamala, and Jean-Marc Lavaur (Bern ; Oxford: Peter Lang, 2011), pp. 173–86. 233 Mason, p. 19.
Analysis of the information collected via the questionnaires will be primarily qualitative, since the questions were open, and required a written response. However, given the small amount of data collected, some quantitative information may be used concerning how many of the subtitlers use professional subtitling software, for example. The questionnaire is included in the appendices, and as can be seen, features questions regarding each subtitler’s background (in terms of experience and qualifications), their process of obtaining work, the sort of information usually included with the commission, time scales (deadlines, working patterns), the challenges of working with banlieue film, their work flow, the resources they use and their methods for maintaining an up-to-date knowledge of the language. There were also questions about whether they would use ‘incorrect’ syntax in a subtitle to reflect linguistic errors in the SLD, which strategies they use in dealing with the langage de banlieue, and whether their subtitles have ever been changed without their consultation. The final question was designed to ascertain how far the subtitlers are ‘responsible’ for the final version of the subtitles viewable online or on DVDLa squaleL’esquive. Finally, there was room on the form for respondents to include any additional comments they wanted to share.
On receipt of the initial responses to the questionnaire, it was recognised that more detail on certain aspects of the subtitlers’ work would be useful, and some ‘follow-up’ questions (included in the appendices) were sent in order to gain clarification about some more technical issues such as reading speeds, guidelines and workflow. Subtitlers were also asked explicitly about the variety of English they are expected to use in their subtitles.
Since the project involved collecting data from human participants, there were certain ethical issues to consider. Ethics approval was obtained for the questionnaires from the University of Glasgow College of Arts Research Ethics Committee. The participants were not vulnerable adults and were provided with an information sheet (included in the appendices), and asked to give written consent prior to responding to the questionnaire. The data collected is not sensitive in nature, and the participants will not remain anonymous - due to the nature of the interviews, and the information they provided in their responses, a subtitler could be identified through the name of a film they worked on. For this reason, the information sheet provided to participants explicitly stated that any
responses would not be anonymised. The data collected was stored on password protected devices for the duration of the research project. The participants were made aware that any data collected would be used in this thesis, and may also be used in further publications either online or in print.
Technical Considerations
Further to the discussion in Chapter One of audiovisual translation in general, and subtitling in particular, the subtitles were also examined in relation to the technical considerations that govern any act of subtitling. The technical considerations referred to here are linked to the constraints of subtitling discussed earlier and explored in De Linde and Kay’s text on The Semiotics of Subtitling; constraints of time, of space, and of synchronisation.234
The analysis consisted of an examination of the subtitles in terms of technical considerations such as reading speed and character counts. In order to facilitate the technical analysis, the subtitles were ripped from the DVDs using ‘SubRip’.235
SubRip is open source software designed to rip subtitles and their timecodes from a DVD or video file. The software uses OCR (Optical Character Recognition) with user-input to identify where and when subtitles appear. It produces an .srt file with the subtitles and timecodes.236 This .srt file will be imported into WinCAPS
Qu4ntum subtitling software, and Black Box subtitle analysis software to run certain timing checks. The Netflix subtitles were downloaded from the streaming platform, also producing an .srt file which can be analysed in the same way.
The results of the timing checks were studied in reference to the guidelines suggested by Karamitroglou in his ‘Proposed set of subtitling standards in Europe’, and the ESIST (European Society for Studies in Screen Translation)-approved ‘Code of Good Subtitling Practice’ (referred to forthwith as The Code).237 Since the Code
was written with ESIST members, and is still shared on their website today, this is seen as a model for subtitling which is encouraged by the main organisation for
234 De Linde and Kay, pp. 6–7.
235 ‘SubRip Download | SourceForge.Net’ <https://sourceforge.net/projects/subrip/> [accessed 4 November 2017].
236 An .srt file is a common subtitle file type which includes only text and timecodes, with no audiovisual material stored within the file.
research and teaching in subtitling in Europe. This document was written in 1998. However, in Chapter One it was noted that although there are some scholars advocating for more creative approaches to subtitling, subtitlers are still working to the same guidelines.238 The Code may not be commonly found on the desks of
professional subtitlers, but Díaz-Cintas and Remael note that the guidelines it contains are ‘largely regarded as standard in the profession’.239 Thus, studying the
subtitles against these recommendations is assessing them in relation both to professional standards, and the general guidelines along which most subtitles consumed by British viewers are produced. This is not to suggest that these guidelines are the most appropriate; that is a debate which will not take place in this thesis. However, where the subtitles adhere to these guidelines, they are seen to adhere to the conventions by which many subtitler trainers are working.
Karamitroglou’s proposed standards were referenced as a more detailed set of guidelines based on descriptive studies, which includes recommendations concerning reading speeds and some other technical factors not covered in The Code. Finally, Díaz-Cintas and Remael’s course book on subtitling was also referred to for recommended reading speeds and character limits, as there is some variation where these recommendations are concerned. In this stage of the analysis, the first technical aspect of the subtitles examined was the distribution of text. This includes subtitle length, segmentation, line breaks and the display of the text on screen (for example, the alignment of the subtitles on screen). Reading speed was then also be examined for each of the case study .srt files. In this stage of the analysis, particular attention was paid to those subtitles that did not adhere to the recommended maximum reading speeds, or minimum amount of time the subtitle should be on screen, for example. The main concern of this analysis was to determine whether the subtitles adhered to conventions concerning text distribution and reading speeds, and if not, whether this could have a big impact on readability for the viewer. This gave an overall impression of the viewer’s comfort when watching the subtitles, which then could be linked to factors which may arise later in the analysis. If, for instance, the subtitles featured low reading speeds, then the inclusion of unusual vocabulary or abbreviations may be justified, since the viewer would have more time to process such information. On the other
238 See McClarty., for example. 239 Díaz-Cintas and Remael, p. 80.
hand, where reading speeds were very high, it could be suggested that the viewer would struggle to read the subtitles in time, and therefore the inclusion of non- standard language, for example, might compromise the viewers’ comfort. Following this contextualisation of the subtitling of banlieue film within the professional environment and the wider norms and conventions of subtitling, the three case study films were examined in turn, and placed within the broader cultural contexts of release, and the socio-political themes they present.