Di Giovanni, Elena and Gambier, Yves (eds) (2018). Reception Studies and Audiovisual Translation. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, pp. 353+xii, 25 €. ISBN 978 9027200938.

In recent years, the issue of audience and acceptance has increasingly become the focus of discussion in the field of audiovisual translation (AVT). It is against this background that the book under reviewcame into being. Thus, this book, edited by Elena Di Giovanni and Yves Gambier, is the first book to systematically explore the issue of acceptance in the field of AVT.

The volume is a collection of 15 contributions divided into four sections. The first section, “Defining reception studies”, mainly describes the development of reception studies in the field of audiovisual media. The opening chapter, by Hill, discusses the development of media acceptance research conducted in the past decades and points out that media acceptance research is constantly changing both theoretically and conceptually. In Chapter 2, Biltereyst and Meers conduct a diachronic study of the acceptance, feelings and experiences of cinema audiences. In the last chapter of this section, Chapter 3, Gambier discusses in detail the development of reception studies and AVT studies.

The second section, “Methodology in reception studies and audiovisual translation”, focuses on user-oriented research methods from different perspectives. The first chapter, by Tuominen, mainly discusses several research methods commonly used in reception research, such as questionnaire surveys, interviews, observation and focus groups. In Chapter 5, Kruger and Doherty provide a critical review of physiological, psychometric and performance measures to study the cognitive processing and reception of AVT products. The following chapter, by Valdeón, explores three linguistic approaches in AVT, namely pragmatic, discourse and multimodal analysis. In the last chapter of this second section, Zanotti summarises the status of AVT reception studies from a diachronic perspective and explores the role of AVT in shaping audiences' experiences of watching movies.

The third section, “AVT modalities and reception studies”, focuses on four different AVT modes: dubbing, subtitling, subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing and audio description. The first chapter, by Giovanni, outlines the methods that can be used in the study of acceptance of dubbing and conducts a review of studies on the acceptance of dubbed movies and TV products. In Chapter 9, Nikolíc introduces the new developments of reception studies in interlingual subtitling, especially those based on empirical studies, and suggests future lines of research. In Chapter 10, Romero-Fresco summarises the studies conducted on the field of subtitling for hearing impaired people from a diachronic perspective. In Chapter 11, Giovanni focuses on the acceptance of audio description and proposes an interdisciplinary approach to this study.

The last section, "Hybrid media and new audiences" discusses the hybrid media and new audiences emerging as a consequence of the technological development. In the first chapter, Pöchhacker conductsa comprehensive analysis of media interpretation as a mode of AVT, especially the interpretation phenomenon in TV programs. In Chapter 13, Mangiron discusses the few studies on game localization acceptance conducted so far within the framework of translation studies. The following chapter, by Fernández-Costales, explores how users can receive and appreciate AVT content on mobile devices. The closing chapter, by Orrego-Carmona, traces technological advances over the past decades and how they have changed the circulation and dissemination of audiovisual products worldwide as well as audiences' consumption habits.

The book makes a very valuable contribution to AVT studies. It distinguishes itself through the following two features. Firstly, it covers almost all fields of AVT, such as subtitling, dubbing, subtitling and audio description for people with hearing and visual impairment, media interpreting, video game localization, mobile screen translation, etc., and it elaborates on and discusses in detail the research on acceptance in each particular field. Secondly, it covers almost all of the qualitative and quantitative research methods used in the study of AVT reception so far, such as questionnaire surveys, interviews, focus groups, observation, comprehension or recall tests, eye tracking, heart rate measurement, EEG measurement and other novel empirical research methods. It also deals with discourse analysis, pragmatic analysis and multimodal analysis methods. 

Although this book covers a wide range of subjects, it also has some limitations. For example, the contributions primarily conduct literature reviews of studies in the field of reception studies and AVT, and thus, the book does not contain much innovative empirical research.

All in all, this book provides readers with a comprehensive and systematic overview of the development and current situation of the research field of AVT reception. It provides a good reference and inspiration for scholars of AVT studies.

Acknowledgements
This research was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, HZAU (2662018QD056).

Juan Zhang
School of Foreign Language, Huazhong Agricultural University
E-mail: zhangjuan.xg@163.com

Zhonglian Huang
Center for Translation Studies, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies
E-mail: zlhuang1604@163.com