Subtitle

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A subtitle can refer to one of two things: an explanatory or alternate title of a book, play or film, in addition to its main title, or textual versions of a film or television program's dialogue that appear onscreen.

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As an additional title

In books and other works, a subtitle is an explanatory or alternate title. For example, Mary Shelley used a subtitle to give her most famous novel, Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus, an alternate title to give a hint of the theme. There are at least eight books in English that carry the subtitle Virtue Rewarded. Subtitles for plays were fashionable in the Elizabethan period, and Shakespeare parodied this vogue by giving Twelfth Night the pointless subtitle What You Will, implying that the subtitle can be whatever the audience wants it to be. In print, subtitles often appear below the title in a less prominent typeface or following the title after a colon.

Some modern publishers choose to forgo subtitles when republishing historical works, such as Shelley's famous story, which is often now sold simply as Frankenstein.

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Examples

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In films and television

Image:A film with subtitles.JPG Image:Untertitel.jpg

Subtitles are textual versions of the dialogue in films and television programmes, usually displayed at the bottom of the screen. They can either be a form of written translation of a dialogue in a foreign language, or a written rendering of the dialogue in the same language - with or without added information intended to help viewers with hearing disabilities to follow the dialogue. Sometimes, mainly at film festivals, subtitles may be shown on a separate display below the screen, thus saving the film-maker from creating a subtitled copy for perhaps just one showing.

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The process of subtitling

Translation subtitling is very different from the translation of written text. When a film or a TV programme is subtitled, the translation subtitler watches the picture and listens to the audio (sometimes having access to a written transcript of the dialogue as well) sentence by sentence. He/she then writes subtitles in the target language that convey what is said, rather than being an exact rendering of how it is said, i.e. meaning is more important than form. This is due both to the fact that the dialogue must be condensed in order to achieve an acceptable reading speed (if there is not enough time to both read the subtitles and watch the programme, the whole purpose of subtitling is lost), and the fact that spoken language often contains unimportant verbal padding which is only confusing if kept in the written subtitles.

Similarly, subtitles in the same language as the dialogue are often (but not always) edited for reading speed and better readability. This is especially true if they cover a situation where many people are speaking at the same time, or speech is very unstructured, as the human brain has difficulty absorbing unstructured written text quickly.

Today professional subtitlers usually work with specialised computer software and hardware, where the video is digitally stored on a hard disk, making each individual frame instantly accessible. Besides creating the subtitles, the subtitler usually also tells the computer software the exact positions where each subtitle should appear and disappear, although for most cinema film, and in some countries also for electronic media, this task is traditionally done by separate technicians. The end result is a subtitle file containing the actual subtitles as well as position markers indicating where each subtitle should appear and disappear. These markers are usually based on timecode if it is a work for electronic media (e.g. TV, video, DVD), and on film length (measured in feet and frames) if the subtitles are to be used for traditional cinema film.

The finished subtitle file is used to add the subtitles to the picture, either directly into the picture (open subtitles); embedded in the vertical interval and later superimposed on the picture by the end user with the help of an external decoder or a decoder built into the TV (closed subtitles on TV or video); or converted to tiff or bmp graphics that are later superimposed on the picture by the end user (closed subtitles on DVD).

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Subtitles vs. dubbing and lectoring

The two alternative methods of 'translating' films in a foreign language is dubbing, in which other actors record over the voices of the original actors in a different language, and lectoring, a form of voice-over for fiction material where a narrator tells the audience what the actors are saying while their voices can be heard in the background. Lectoring is common for television in Russia, Poland and a few other East European countries, while cinemas in these countries show films dubbed or subtitled.

The preference for dubbing or subtitling in various countries is largely based on decisions taken in the late 1920's and early 1930's. With the arrival of sound film, the film importers in Germany, Italy, France and Spain decided to dub the foreign voices, while the rest of Europe selected to display the dialogue as translated subtitles. The choice was largely due to financial reasons (subtitling is inexpensive and quick, while dubbing is very expensive and thus requires a very large audience to justify the cost), but during the 1930's it also became a political preference in Germany, Italy and Spain; an expedient form of censorship that ensured that foreign views and ideas could be stopped from reaching the local audience, as dubbing makes it possible to create a dialogue which is totally different from the original.

Dubbing is still the norm and favoured form in these four countries, but the proportion of subtitling is slowly growing, mainly to save cost and turnaround-time, but also due to a growing acceptance among younger generations, who are better readers and increasingly have a basic knowledge of English (the dominant language in film and TV) and thus prefer to hear the original dialogue.

In the traditional subtitling countries, dubbing is generally regarded as something very strange and unnatural, and is only used for animated films and TV programmes intended for pre-school children.

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Live subtitles

Live subtitling (live captioning) of news, sports events and live debates is becoming increasingly common, especially in the UK and the US, as a result of regulations that stipulate that virtually all TV eventually must be accessible for those with hearing disabilities.

Such subtitles, which need be displayed within 2-3 seconds of the audio they represent, are usually produced by specially trained, court stenographers, using stenotype or velotype keyboards. However, the most recent development is using specialised voice recognition software, into which an operator re-speaks the dialogue being heard. In the UK the re-speak technology has advanced so quickly that about 50% of all live subtitling is currently (2005) being done through re-speak.

In order to minimise the unavoidable delay, live subtitles are usually displayed as scrolling text instead of being presented as one- or two-line subtitle blocks. It is unavoidable that live subtitling contains more errors than pre-produced subtitles, as there is no time to correct a typing error or a mishearing (the operator's or the computer's). However, the benefits for viewers with hearing disabilities are considered more important than error-free subtitles.

Live translation subtitling has so far (2005) only been tried publicly a few times, usually involving a simultaneous interpreter who listens to the dialogue and quickly translates it aloud, while a stenographer types down the interpreter's words. The unavoidable delay, the unavoidable typing errors, the lack of editing, and the high costs, mean that the number of times live translation subtitling is regarded as necessary are very few. Letting the simultaneous interpreter speak directly to the viewers is usually both cheaper and quicker.

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Closed subtitles

Optionally-appearing subtitles are called "closed" subtitles. Subtitles that cannot be turned off are "open".

Closed captions is the American term for closed subtitles specifically intended for the hard-of-hearing. These are a transcription rather than a translation, and usually contain descriptions of important non-dialogue audio as well ("Car horn"). From the expression "closed captions" the word "caption" has in recent years come to mean a subtitle intended for the hard of hearing, be it "open" or "closed". In British English "subtitles" usually refers to subtitles for the hard-of-hearing (HoH), as translation subtitles are so rare on British cinema and TV; however, the term "HoH subtitles" is sometimes used when there is a need to make a distinction between the two.

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SDH subtitles

"SDH" is an American term introduced by the DVD industry. It's an acronym for "Subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing", and refers to regular subtitles in the original language where important non-dialogue audio has been added, as well as speaker identification (useful when you can't tell from the picture alone who is saying what you see as subtitles). The only significant difference for the user between 'SDH" subtitles and "closed captions" is their appearance, as traditional "closed captions" are non-proportional and rather crude, while SDH subtitles usually are displayed with the same proportional font used for the translation subtitles on the DVD. However, closed captions are often displayed on a black band, which makes them easier to read than regular DVD subtitles. DVD's for the US market now sometimes have three forms of English subtitles: SDH subtitles, straight English subtitles intended for hearing viewers, and closed caption data that is decoded by the end-user’s closed caption decoder.

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Subtitling as a practice

In several countries or regions nearly all foreign language TV programs are subtitled, instead of dubbed, notably in:

In Wales channel S4C provides subtitles in English for Welsh language programmes as well as subtitles in Welsh for deaf people.

In Wallonia (Belgium) films are usually dubbed, but sometimes they are played on two channels at the same time: once dubbed (on La Une) and once subtitled (on La Deux).

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Subtitles as a source of humor

Occasionally, movies will use subtitles as a source of humour.

  • For example, in Austin Powers in Goldmember Japanese dialogue is subtitled using white type that blends in with white objects in the background. An example is when white binders turn the subtitle "I have a huge rodent problem" into "I have a huge rod".
  • Likewise, in The Impostors one character speaks in a foreign language, while another character hides under the bed. Although the hidden character cannot understand what is being spoken, he can read the subtitles. Since the subtitles are overlaid on the film, they appear to be reversed from his point of view. His attempt to puzzle out these subtitles enhances the humour of the scene.
  • The movie Airplane! and its sequel feature two inner-city African Americans speaking in barely comprehensible jive, with English subtitles. However, the movie viewer can sense that the subtitles do not match the context of the speech; when they talk in sexually explicit slang, inaccurate sanitized text appears below.
  • The Carl Reiner comedy The Man with Two Brains also features comedic use of subtitles. After stopping Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr (Steve Martin) for speeding, a German police officer realises that Hfuhruhurr can speak English. He asks his colleague in their squad car to turn off the subtitles, and indicates towards the bottom of the screen, commenting that "This is better - we have more room down there now".
  • In the opening credits of Monty Python and the Holy Grail the Swedish subtitler switches to English and promotes his country, until the introduction is cut off and the subtitler "sacked". The DVD version of the same film, the viewer could choose, instead of hearing aid and local languages, lines from Shakespeare's Henry IV, part 5, if they "people who hate the film".
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Controversy

One recent controversy about the necessity of subtitles involved the Mel Gibson movie The Passion of the Christ. All the dialogue in this film was in Aramaic, Latin and Hebrew instead of modern English. Gibson initially intended not to include subtitles, in the belief that the audience already knew the story, but the distributors ordered him to include them, arguing that audiences would refuse to watch a film whose dialogue was entirely untranslated.

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Subtitle formats

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For software video players

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For media

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See also

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External links

da:Undertekst de:Untertitel et:Subtiiter eo:Subtekstoj es:Subtítulo fr:Sous-titrage ja:字幕 nl:Ondertiteling pt:Legenda fi:Tekstitys ru:Субтитры Template:DisambigRecommend

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