Subtitling for D/deaf and hard of hearing in “Fire on the Ski Slope”

Abstract

Subtitling for D/deaf and Hard of Hearing ( also known as closed captioning, is a field in Audiovisual Translation that only begun in the last 40 years It aims to allow the D/deaf and Hard of Hearing to have a better viewing experience when watching films. Although the use of closed captioning in films has been increasing, they are mostly used in dramatic films and rarely in documentaries. Furthermore, closed captioning is also more widely done in western countries Therefore, this project aims to explore the use of Mandarin SDH in documentaries. The main aim of this project is to create a holistic viewing experience for Mandarin speaking D/deaf and Hard of Hearing audience through a complete closed captioning of an episode of Nat Geo’s series “Seconds from Disaster” which happened in Kaprun, Austria, on 11 November 2000 The “Seconds from Disaster” series was chosen because the documentaries can be enjoyed by audience of a wide range of ages. The episode is available on Youtube with auto captions provided but they are found inaccurate Therefore, for this project, the English subtitles were firstly produced before they were translated to produce the Mandarin SDH. In the final Mandarin SDH, a total of 698 captions were produced and the various translation and captioning challenges and techniques are discussed in this paper This project allows a better understanding on how to create more efficient captions especially for documentaries that are content-heavy which includes choosing which sounds to include and how to express the sounds in words, while bearing in mind the kind of viewing experience the intended audience will have.