Indagine sui “pivot subtitles”. Confronto tra due tecniche di sottotitolaggio.
Università di Bologna, SSliMIT Forlì
Questa tesi è stata effettuata nell’ambito del progetto di ricerca Subtitleproject.
This thesis was carried out under the auspices of the Subtitleproject .
Abstract:
The aim of this thesis is to present an introduction to pivot subtitling, the technique of creating subtitles by using extant subtitles, previously created in a pivot language different from the language spoken in the original version of an audiovisual text. The idea of analysing this aspect of subtitling arises from my personal experience of stage at the Cineteca of Bologna, where I worked as a subtitler for the fourth edition of the Human Rights Nights Film Festival, from January to April 2004. During this period I had the opportunity to practice and learn this subtitling method, which is frequently used by subtitlers working for the Cineteca of Bologna. The present work is divided into four chapters. The first chapter is entirely devoted to subtitling: firstly it traces back its history, focussing especially on the Italian landscape; then it outlines its main features, and the different phases encountered by the subtitler in a traditional subtitling process, where subtitles are created by using as source text the dialogues of the original version of an audiovisual product. The same approach was adopted to describe pivot subtitling: in the first part of the second chapter the peculiarities of this technique are highlighted, particularly its advantages and disadvantages in relation to the traditional method. The second part of the chapter illustrates the various phases characterising the work of the subtitler dealing with pivot subtitles. The third chapter introduces the experimental work I decided to undertake. Firstly it describes the various phases of the project, namely the choice of the audiovisual texts I worked on, and the methodology I adopted to create Italian subtitles by using both traditional and pivot subtitling. It then presents the resulting two versions of Italian subtitles I obtained for each of the three short films I worked on. The last chapter focuses on the concept of quality: after having illustrated the factors which define the quality of subtitles, a comparison between the two versions of Italian subtitles I presented is made. This analysis ends with my conclusions, where I summarise the reasons for the diffusion of pivot subtitling, namely the economic and temporal factors, I sum up the criticisms which affect this technique, and take into consideration the results of my experimental work. The final thought emerging from this thesis is that pivot subtitling could provide acceptable results, as long as we work with languages that share the same cultural background.
