Review of Routledge Handbook of Audiovisual Translation (2018)

Fan YANG

Nanjing University of Science and Technology

Despite the increasing academic interest in audiovisual translation (AVT) since the mid-1990s, it is often deemed to be a new discipline with strong dependence on practice rather than theory (Cho, 2014). Such a viewpoint is also predominantly held in the translation research academia of China, where AVT is still in its infancy and literary translation research is given central prominence. In 2018, Routledge publishedRoutledge Handbook of Audiovisual Translation, aiming to provide readers with a thorough, systematic, and timely overview of the subjects that arise from audiovisual translation research. As the first encyclopaedia in audiovisual translation and one of the latest volumes collected in the series ofRoutledge Handbook of Translation and Interpreting, its successful publication can be seen as a landmark showing that AVT has developed into a fully-fledged strand of Translation Studies.

The book contains four main parts, with each part engaging with a key issue in audiovisual translation research. The first part concentrates on the modalities of audiovisual translation. It starts with a chronological overview of the evolution of audiovisual translation modalities which goes hand in hand with the development of film from its silent era to the sound period (Chapter 2). After that, nine modalities are introduced in nine chapters, with each chapter organised according to a similar structure: they set out to introduce definitions and features of the modalities, followed by an overview of the most prolific areas of interest in research for each of these modalities, ending up with suggestions for new directions in research associated with them. To introduce these nine chapters in brief, Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 respectively focus on the two most widely used AVT modalities — subtitling and dubbing. Chapters 6 to 8 draw attention to three modalities that are designed for the benefits of special audiences: Chapter 6 on subtitling for deaf and hard of hearing audiences (SDH), where a special set of subtitles provided to help audiences identify speakers and their speech, the sound effects, and music in the audiovisual texts; Chapter 7 on respeaking — a speech recognition-based form of subtitling for people with hearing impairment; Chapter 8 on audio-description (AD), a service that uses a soundtrack to comment on the action on the stage or film for the blind and visually impaired audiences. Lastly, Chapter 5, Chapter 9, Chapter 10 and Chapter 11 examine modalities that are used for the sake of specific audiovisual translation contexts. Chapter 5 looks into voice-over (i.e. when the voice-track of the target language is heard over the top of the original recording), which is often used in documentary translation; Chapter 9 introduces surtitling (i.e. subtitles put above stages or on seatbacks of theatre and opera) used for theatrical translation; Chapter 10 on game localisation, a new practice and research area in relation with audiovisual translation; Chapter 11 on film remaking, which usually is not included in the scope of translation research, yet is often discussed by scholars in film studies as a way of translation.

The second part of this Handbook contains eight chapters introducing a range of theories which, though not established within translation studies, are productive to assist researchers in exploring audiovisual translation. This part begins with Chapter 12 that stresses the relationship between media technology and audiovisual translation, seeking to draw a picture of media-induced transformations in audiovisual translation with the help of theories related to mediality. Media technology makes audiovisual texts unique and thereby brings constraints (e.g. spatiotemporal constraints) and challenges to translators. How do translators cope with the constraints set by audiovisual texts? Chapters 13, 15, 16 and 17 give their answers with the aid of various theories. Chapter 13 uses concepts from discourse and conversation analysis to explain the differences between spontaneous dialogues in everyday speech and fictional dialogues in audiovisual texts, where there arises a question concerning how characters’ interpersonal relations and characterisation in audiovisual texts are rendered through the translation of fictional dialogues. Chapter 15 demonstrates how narratology provides a new point of view to analyse the function of translation in rendering the narration of the source audiovisual texts to the target audiences. Chapter 16 shows how pragmatic theories such as speech act theory, politeness, and implicature can be useful tools to uncover filmmakers’ intentions and to analyse whether and how translations maintain the director’s intention. With a detailed case study on audio description, Chapter 17 shows how multimodal cohesion is conveyed in the original text and relayed in audio description and subtitles for the hard of hearing. In comparison to Chapter 13, Chapters 15, 16 and 17 are based around a well-established dimension of AVT research — audiovisual texts, while Chapter 14 chooses to focus on a relatively new dimension—the audience’s reception of translation. Recent years see a rising interest in reception research in AVT scholarship. This chapter foregrounds this under-researched area from a psycholinguistic and cognitive perspective. This section finishes with Chapters 18 and 19. Both discuss audiovisual translation from a social perspective: Chapter 18 looks into the intersectional relationship between cultural identity, linguistic variation, and audiovisual translation based on the context of subtitling translation in Hong Kong SAR, China; Chapter 10 pays particular attention to gender identity, seeking to explain the way that language represents and performs gender identity in audiovisual products.

The third section reviews a range of methods in audiovisual translation research. Chapter 20 and Chapter 21 demonstrate the power of corpora in conducting the quantitative analysis of audiovisual texts. In Chapter 20, the first half covers the main conceptual and technical issues involved in corpus-based translation studies, including the function of corpus in audiovisual translation research, criteria of corpus compilation, and tools for corpus analysis; the second half introduces approaches to corpus analysis, followed by an example on the use of corpora to measure the naturalness of dubbed texts. Chapter 21 goes on to explicate this computer-aided tool with main attention paid to multimodal corpora, which do not only contain verbal data, but also visual and acoustic elements. Chapter 22 and Chapter 23 explore methods used to gauge the audience’s reception of audiovisual translation. Chapter 22 focuses on the eyetracking method, which in recent years has gained increasing attention in AVT scholarship. Reception studies is also at the heart of Chapter 22, where quantitative or experimental research methods such as eye-tracking are advocated to be applied together with qualitative methods in research, so as to shape a more comprehensive perspective. Chapter 24, as the last chapter in this section casts a glance at the ethnographic approach, which encourages researchers to be part of the translation-producing process in order to observe the collaborative feature of audiovisual translation. Drawn on a fieldwork case, this chapter shows readers the methodological challenges faced when adopting this approach in research.

The last section sheds light on several areas which expand the horizon of audiovisual translation research and highlights the significant role of audiovisual translation in society. Chapter 25 focuses on the relationship between audiovisual translation, minority languages, and language planning. Seeing audiovisual translation as a language planning tool, this chapter offers various examples to show how minority languages are marginalised and proposes the possible strategies adopted by minority language communities to develop their languages through audiovisual translation. Chapter 26 charts the development of both interlingual translation and intralingual translation of audiovisual popular music and lists some methodological approaches to assist future studies. Both Chapter 25 and Chapter 26 draw attention to issues on which only a small number of translation scholars have come to reflect. By contrast, Chapter 27 focuses on fansubbing which has attracted more scholarly attention. This chapter firstly explores the development of fansubbing and examines the current trends associated with the topic. After that, it presents a case study of fansubbing activity on Viki.com website. The last part of this chapter addresses the issue of fansubbing and video game translation hacking, which is generally neglected by scholars. Both Chapter 29 and Chapter 30 relate audiovisual translation to the pedagogic issue — Chapter 29 on the training of audiovisual translators and Chapter 30 on the role of audiovisual translation in foreign language learning. In Chapter 29, after giving a review of recent developments in audiovisual translation training, it proposes a competence-based approach to the training of audiovisual translators, before articulating practical guidelines for the development of subtitling and dubbing courses. Chapter 30, based on a new research finding, argues that involving language learners in subtitle production can bring better learning outcomes than the traditional approach of merely showing learners subtitled audiovisual materials. Chapter 31 gives voice to accessible filmmaking, an approach under which the translation of films is produced concurrently with primary film production. Although accessible filmmaking existed during the silent film era and has been replaced by a new industrial model, this chapter recognises the merit of this old model and suggests establishing collaboration between translators and filmmakers so as to give consideration to translation during the pre-production or production stages of film-making, rather than delaying until the post-production or distribution stage. Chapter 32 discusses the impact of technological changes such as the development of media tools on audiovisual translation. An interesting contrast can be drawn between this chapter and Chapter 12, which also focuses on the relationship between technology and audiovisual translation with more attention paid to the theoretical side.

In this handbook each entry gives readers further reading links and pointers towards related topics. All entries were written by world-leading scholars in AVT research whose knowledge and expertise comprise an apt compilation for this comprehensive, authoritative and accessible book. In this sense, the handbook is an ideal academic tool for both students and young scholars in translation studies. Meanwhile, it also addresses the needs of scholars and experts from other related disciplines such as film studies, and hence is able to effectively reach a broader audience. One shortcoming is that, despite contributions from two Chinese scholars who provide a de-westernised point of view, most research is based on the European context, and hardly studied outside the context of European languages. This, in a way, reflects the necessity to further promote the awareness of audiovisual translation research outside Europe.