Subtitling quality beyond the linguistic dimension

Abstract

In 1929, films with audible dialogue were introduced to audience worldwide. This chapter discusses subtitling quality in detail, especially the technical dimension and the tenets that foreground good practice in professional subtitling, from the perspective of the Chinese language and its characteristics. It explains the parameters of subtitling quality other than linguistic transfer are discussed systematically. Subtitling can be produced rapidly and is significantly low-cost compared with other translation modes, such as dubbing, because of its cheap labour expenditure. These major advantages have made subtitling the most widely adopted language transfer method in translating audio-visual productions around the world. The emergence of social media has allowed viewers to raise their concerns about quality on online forums and other social and professional platforms. Most studies concentrate on Roman alphabet languages and disregard the peculiarities of other alphabets. These studies also adopt a prescriptive and reductionist approach by focusing solely on cases of mistranslation that can be more or less representative.