By Mara Campbell and Sebastián Arias Sometimes it takes us ages to realize that we have been doing something inefficiently for a long time and nobody said a thing (probably because they didn’t notice). Generally, we can’t even establish the exact moment it started happening or who began doing it differently. My colleague and co-author […]
Demand for Non-English Subtitlers Rocketing
By Kelly O’Donovan Subtitles were always a part of post-production, but the demand wasn’t so intense until recently. For the most part, subtitled movies and documentaries travelled to film festivals or were distributed abroad. However, in the last five years, global content streaming platforms such as Netflix and Amazon Prime have exploded the subtitling scene. […]
A different kind of audiovisual translation: Intralingual respeaking
By Dietlinde DuPlessis Any trained interpreter knows an exercise called “shadowing” which is used to prepare students for simultaneous interpreting. It consists of listening to spoken text and repeating spoken words as exactly as possible. It is harder than it might sound because one must listen and speak at the same time. It helps to […]
Audio Description as an Aesthetic Innovation
By Joel Snyder and Deborah Fels In his introduction to the second edition of “The Mastery of Movement”, Rudolph Laban wrote: “What really happens in a theatre does not occur only on the stage or in the audience, but within the magnetic current between both these poles.” (Laban, 1950.) He suggests that the performers on […]
ATA 60 Recap: Audio Description: The Visual Made Verbal
By Joel Snyder Audio Description is a kind of literary art form. It’s a type of poetry–a haiku. It provides a translation—a verbal version of the visual: the visual is made verbal, and aural, and oral. Using words that are succinct, vivid, and imaginative, we convey the visual image that is not fully accessible to […]
ATA 60 Recap: Roma: Intralinguistic conflicts – In Essence
By Luz Gómez Interest in this in presentation arose when a variety of media sources focused on the linguistic and cultural angles of the Iberian subtitles in Alfonso Cuaron’s film Roma, and their subsequent infamy. Although a non-Spanish speaker might consider this matter superficial, it’s an excellent example of how two variants of a language […]
ATA 60 Recap: Audiovisual Accessibility: What Translators Need to Know
By Gabriela Ortiz This article is a summary of the presentation at the ATA Conference in Palm Springs and, as the title suggests, it is an introduction to audiovisual accessibility. It is arranged as a series of questions and answers to walk you through this field. Why should we care about accessibility? Two notions are […]
ATA 60 Recap: Cloud Subtitling: An Overview
By Pablo Fernández Moriano Desktop subtitling tools have been with us for quite a while now, but what about the cloud? Is it possible to complete the subtitling process entirely online and with professional results? How well do the current online tools cater to the requirements of professional subtitling? What aspects and functionalities are important […]
ATA 60 Recap: Deadpool 2: translating an Rrated film from English into Castilian Spanish
By Pablo Fernández Moriano When translating a film like Deadpool 2, several issues come into play that are determined both by the nature of the dubbing process and the very nature of the film. The dubbing process Spain is traditionally a dubbing country. Although subtitles are growing in popularity, the main localization process for distributing […]
On the Audiovisual Radar: ATA 60
AVD-Related Presentations and Workshops on ATA60 October 24, 2019 Are you a CAD (Certified Audio Describer)? Joel Snyder This session offered an overview of the fundamentals of audio description and how interested individuals can become professional audio describers. Subtitle Editing: Walking the Fine Line Between Red-Pen Pedantry and Facilitating Audience Immersion Vanessa Wells This […]
Deep Focus 5: Editorial
by Ana G. González Meade Dear readers: During the annual ATA60 Conference, we commemorated our second year attending as one of the official divisions. Yet this time around, for the first time, with the fabulous addition of our very own Distinguished Speaker, Pablo Romero-Fresco, who is a researcher, Honorary Professor of Translation and Filmmaking; author […]
Deep Focus 5: Letter from our Administrator
Learning and Breaking the Rules By Deborah Wexler After the ATA Conference this year, I stayed in beautiful Palm Springs for a couple of days to see the sights. I wasn’t disappointed with the three fantastic places I visited: the Indian Canyons, the Palm Springs Art Museum, and its Architecture and Design Center. In the […]