FLOUTING CONVENTION: Fansubbersinclude a lot of information on-screen16 TheLinguistAUGUST/SEPTEMBERwww.iol.org.ukCREATIVE TRANSLATIONAdriana Tortoriello asks whether professionalsubtitlers have anything to learn from fansubbingUntil recently, the world was divided intosubtitling and dubbing countries. With theNineties DVD revolution, however, thedividing line between these two blocks wasblurred. Suddenly, even audiences intraditionally dubbing countries could accessaudiovisual products in subtitled versions, tothe joy of many a film buff. More than a decade later, things havemoved on again, and new ways of producingand relating to subtitles have emerged. Theindustry demands increasingly faster andcheaper turnarounds, and in this context,professional subtitlers often struggle tosurvive, or choose to leave the field.But aside from the worrying decline inrates, there are two aspects of subtitlingpractice today that are likely to have aconsiderable impact on the subtitling process itself: developments in professionalsubtitling technology and the relatively new -and mushrooming -phenomenonknown as fansubbing. Technological advances are leading to twovery interesting modalities of production:automatic timing and respeaking (ie, livesubtitling through speech recognition). Whilethe latter is primarily related to subtitling forthe deaf and hard of hearing, which isbeyond the scope of this article, the formershows great promise in the context ofinterlingual subtitling as well.Automatic Subtitle Timing is one of themain features developed by SysMedia (now part of Screen Subtitling Systems) fortheir state-of-the-art subtitling software,WinCAPS, one of the most broadly used inprofessional subtitling.The auto-timingfunction enables subtitles to be timed directlyto the audio of the programme, as long asThe right way to sub?the soundtrack is clear enough. This allowsthe user to obtain a timed and spottedsubtitle file more quickly than with anyconventional timing method, and that file canthen be used as a template for translation. This represents the sort of technologicaladvance that can support the subtitler, andthe subtitling process, in order to meet thedemand for faster turnaround at lower rates.While we are far from a fully automatedprocess, we are getting closer to a situationin which technology supports a faster way ofsubtitling. Far from impinging on quality, thismight be the key to devoting less time to thetechnical side of subtitling, and more time onthe quality of translation. One-stop-shopWhen I started subtitling, in the late Nineties,I worked for one of the major internationalsubtitling companies at the time, the now-defunct Visiontext. In those days we workedwith VHS, watched on a TV set, and arudimentary subtitling software whose namehas long been lost in the mists of time. Thetranslated programme would then behanded to a number of other players, whowould take it to the final stages ofproduction. Subtitling a film from start tofinish would take up to two weeks. Nowadays, subtitling has become a one-stop-shop, performed by one person on onePC. The profile of the subtitler has changedgreatly - linguistic abilities alone are nolonger enough, one needs to betechnologically savvy and able to becomeconversant with the relevant technology veryquickly. Keeping up-to-speed withtechnological advances is now an importantelement of a profession subtitler's work.Qualifications:A background in translationis an advantage, but specific training inaudiovisual translation (AVT) and subtitling- on both the linguistic and the technicalside - is usually required. Increasingly,universities offer AVT at Master's level,either as the main focus (eg, atRoehampton University) or as optionalmodules (as at Imperial College London).Some, including Imperial, offer one-dayintensive courses. Experience:Many companies offerstudent placements. They are usuallybadly paid but provide free training andhands-on experience that can proveinvaluable.Finding a job:Competition is fierce andrates are fairly low. Don't look only tocompanies that do subtitling anddubbing; consider games localisation,transcreation and website localisation. WAYS INTO SUBTITLING

Vol/51 No/4 2012AUGUST/SEPTEMBERTheLinguist17CREATIVE TRANSLATIONrange from glosses to explain obscurecultural references to 'prologues' at thebeginning of the programme to outline thetranslation choices and acknowledge thename (or nickname) of the subtitler -something that very often does not appearon commercial DVDs.The main problem is that the readingspeed becomes extremely high, and takingin all this information can be very hard. This is partly because freeware programs are farless sophisticated than professional ones and most lack a feature indicating thereading speed. On the plus side, however,this sort of subtitling is much more innovativeand creative. Considering the number of yearscommercial subtitling has been around,innovations are conspicuous by their absence and, increasingly, a number ofvoices are highlighting the possibleadvantages that could come from somesynergy between the professional andamateur worlds. Fansubbing might become'a rich source of inspiration for professionallycreated audiovisual translations,' says AlinaSecara.1'Conventional subtitles are boring',states Jorge Díaz Cintas, adding thatfansubbers' creativity could bring fresh air to'the sobriety of traditional subtitling'.2Traditionally, subtitles were meant, likeVictorian children, to be discreet. Fansubbersare bold and happy to do away with theinvisibility of subtitles and subtitlers alike.Although they exist in a legally grey area -often their position has been challenged andsome websites have been closed down -they flaunt their identity. They place subtitles all over the screen anduse a variety of orthotypographic means toconvey additional features. Capitalisation andphonetic spelling, for instance, allow them toincorporate paralinguistic features in theirtranslations. And last but, in my view,definitely not least, their use of glosses toexplain cultural references allows them toproduce subtitles that are more foreignisingthan traditional ones, giving greater access tothe culture of the original programme.The two aspects discussed in this article -technological advances on the one hand,and the world of fansubbing on the other -might well be seen as unrelated. However, Ibelieve that the innovations brought aboutboth by technology and by fansubbing mightcome together in contributing to the creationof a new subtitling modality, one thatincorporates the needs and expectations of21st-century industry and audiences alike.Notes1Secara, A, 2011, 'R U Ready 4 New Subtitles?Investigating the potential of social translationpractices and creative spellings' in LinguisticaAntverpiensia10, 153-1742Díaz Cintas, J, JosTrans17, January 2012,www.jostrans.org/issue17/int_cintas.phpThere is, however, another side to thestory. While the advantages of the latesttechnological developments are apparent,state-of-the-art subtitling software can beexpensive and therefore inaccessible. But the internet era has yielded anotherpossibility: the world of freeware - freesoftware, accessible to all and easilydownloadable. And while subtitling freewareis far from ideal for professional subtitlers, ithas not escaped the attention of amateursubtitlers or 'fansubbers'. Although its earliest manifestations dateback to the 1980s, fansubbing has onlyrecently become established as a widespreadphenomenon that looks set to stay. There aretwo main reasons for its exponential growth:the dwindling quality of commercial subtitleson DVDs and the desire to offer a subtitledalternative to programmes that, in somecountries, are only dubbed. Fansubs differ from traditional subtitles in anumber of ways - most, if not all, resultingfrom the fact that, not being constrained bythe demands of the industry, fansubbers arefreer to experiment with content and format.While traditional subtitles tend to stick to onefont, one colour and a maximum number ofcharacters and lines per subtitle, fansubsdisplay a variety of fonts, sizes, colours andlines of text, they sometimes usecapitalisation and emoticons for emphasis,and at times resort to phonetic spelling. Moreover, they flout another basicconvention of subtitling: no additionalinformation or footnotes are allowed in asubtitled programme; subtitles translate onlywhat is said in the dialogue and/or displayedon the screen. Fansubs, on the other hand,tend to add a number of elements, whichFansubbers are bold,and happy to do awaywith the invisibility ofsubtitles. They flaunttheir identity