intralingual open subtitling in Flanders: audiovisual translation, linguistic variation and audience needs

Abstract

This article presents an overview of the main findings of an interdisciplinary research project carried out by scholars from a department of translation and interpreting, a department of communication science and a department of linguistics. The project investigated Dutch open subtitling1 of native speakers of either northern Dutch or a Flemish (regional) variant of Dutch on Flemish television. Its corpus consisted of 793 programmes or 380 hours of broadcasting time. The project consisted of three substudies. Study 1 aimed to find out what kinds of television programmes and speakers were subtitled. Study 2 aimed at gaining information about the actual source and nature of the intralingual subtitling so recorded. Finally, in Study 3, a viewer survey was carried out in order to investigate the reception of intralingual subtitling in Flanders, in terms of its desirability and enhancement of viewer experience.