Reading speed in subtitling for hearing impaired children: an analysis in Spanish television

Abstract

Reading speed is one of the essential parameters to consider when designing subtitles for a hearing impaired audience. Images, subtitles and spoken dialogue are the three sources of information in a subtitled audiovisual text. These three sources of information, along with the reading capacity of the audience, make up the basic characteristics of the medium (De Linde and Kay 1999). Hence, it seems essential to comprehend and characterise the reading ability of the audience in order to create relevant subtitles. The present article seeks to investigate speed of D/deaf1 and hard of hearing subtitling (SDH)—also known as captioning—for children. It seeks to do so by describing, analysing and evaluating the SDH broadcast by the three channels exclusively dedicated to the youngest audience in Spain. The analysis is compared with the UNE Standard 153010 and put into context by drawing on existing studies in the field.