Non-professional Subtitling

Through a series of questions and responses, in this dialogue-based article we aim to stimulate reflection on indirect translation within the audiovisual translation community, offering perspectives on this practice. We start by delving into the historical roots of indirect translation in the industry, questioning how far back such practices extend. Then we shift the focus to the challenges translators face in indirect translation workflows, to the potential contributions of research to the ongoing debates surrounding indirect translation, as well as to how indirect translation and machine translation intersect. Finally, looking to the future, we examine potential developments in indirect translation workflows and consider how educational programs can adapt to meet the changing demands of the industry.

This study focuses on creative practices in media accessibility. It examines the differences between the conventional approach to subtitling for the D/deaf and hard-of-hearing (SDH) and an emergent creative approach experimented with by Netflix, with a special focus on the descriptive quality of SDH tags. It explores the extent to which SDH subtitlers steer away from standard norms and practices when granted creative freedom by the client and the extent to which their authorial input is visible. A secondary aim is to observe whether there is also an element of authorial intent suggesting the possibility of some kind of agenda. To this end, this study engages in an in-depth comparative analysis of two episodes of the Netflix TV series Stranger Things, one belonging to the first season, following the conventional approach, and the other to the fourth season, in which subtitlers were given free rein. The SDH tags in each episode were singled out, quantified, and categorized according to Chaume's (2004) taxonomy of filmic signifying codes (linguistic, paralinguistic, musical, special effects, sound arrangement, photography, mobility, planning). The analysis also reveals which categories are impacted the most by the creative input. The main findings reveal how subtitlers adopting this freer approach tend to stress the communicative meaning of the SDH tags, enhancing the hearing-impaired users' experience. To achieve this, they use a vaster number and variety of adjectives (compared to conventional practices) while trying to create terms that resonate on a sensory level with the specific genre and plot.

Nowadays Netflix is considered one of the most spread and popular streaming platforms around the globe. Over time the platform played a significant role in encouraging cross-cultural interaction, globalizing Korean cultural patterns, and presenting them to Western cultures. The research aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of Netflix's role in spreading Korean cultural patterns worldwide which is reached by qualitative content analysis and audience reception analysis. Korean content analysis reveals the most spread themes such as social issues, family dynamics, economic inequality, and traditional Korean values. Audience comments are collected about one of the most popular Korean shows, Squid Game. Audience feedback analysis showed that Korean content on Netflix became more interesting because of universal and broad themes that grab viewers' attention, deepening their understanding regarding Korean societal structure and struggle, cultural nuances, traditional values, and moral norms. Moreover, Netflix globalized cultural patterns like the Korean language and storytelling techniques through subtitling and dubbing which turned Korean content on another level.

Unofficial K-pop fan subtitlers engage in play labor, typically receiving no monetary compensation for their efforts. Instead, they derive value from recognition within their fandom, reflected in likes, followers, and social visibility. Unlike professional translators, these fansubbers operate with a high degree of autonomy, facing minimal external pressure, allowing them to translate according to their preferences. This research investigated how these subtitlers approach the translation of taboo words-terms associated with acts, objects, or relationships that society tends to avoid (Crystal, 2018). Specifically, it explored whether the absence of power dynamics influences their choices to tone down taboo language. Drawing on Slamia's (2020) classification, taboo words were categorized into several groups: sexual terms (including references to reproductive organs and sexual acts), cursing (swear words and obscenities), religious profanities, racial or ethnic slurs, and death-related taboos. The study built on Lovihandrie et al. (2018) to outline various translation strategies: omission (deleting taboo elements), substitution (replacing taboo terms with culturally appropriate expressions), euphemism (using softer language), taboo-for-taboo (directly translating a taboo term into another taboo), borrowing (retaining the original term), and using more general terms. The analysis examined 145 instances of taboo words in randomly selected K-pop music videos with Persian hard subtitles from YouTube. These subtitles were compared to official English translations, focusing on taboo language. The findings revealed the following distribution of strategies: omission (6.8%, 10 instances), substitution (24.1%, 35 instances), taboo-for-taboo (31%, 45 instances), borrowing (13.7%, 20 instances), more general terms (3.4%, 5 instances), and euphemism (20.6%, 30 instances). While 31% of subtitlers opted for a direct taboo-fortaboo translation, the majority employed strategies that toned down or modified the taboo terms, indicating that despite their autonomy, many subtitlers adhered to societal norms in their translations.

Cet ouvrage a pour objet l’étude du sous-titrage de la série télévisée italienne Gomorra. Sa finalité est celle de repérer les stratégies adoptées pour restituer en français le dialecte napolitain, les références au crime organisé et les termes à fort contenu culturel.
Après une première partie dédiée aux spécificités sociolinguistiques de la série, dans la deuxième partie nous présentons 150 écueils traductionnels en langue source, auxquels nous avons juxtaposé trois différentes performances de traduction. Partant d’une approche descriptive, nous avons analysé l’adaptation officielle, les sous-titres des fansubbers et la traduction automatique proposée par DeepL à partir des sous-titres italiens. La troisième partie compare la qualité de ces trois formes de restitution, sous l’angle de l’équivalence fonctionnelle, de l’acceptabilité linguistique et de la lisibilité. Les résultats de notre étude tendent à montrer que seuls les professionnels travaillant directement sur le texte source arrivent à restituer les traits distinctifs de la série de manière globalement satisfaisante, grâce à leur connaissance du napolitain, à leur maîtrise des normes techniques, à leur dosage raisonné entre approche sourcière et cibliste, ainsi qu’à leur capacité à reformuler et à renoncer à des segments jugés comme non pertinents.
Toutes ces études de cas, réalisées sur 50 heures de scènes filmées, peuvent constituer un excellent allié dans la formation initiale ou continue de tout traducteur audiovisuel, puisqu'elles proposent des solutions efficaces à un casse-tête traductionnel ancien : la restitution en français des dialectes italiens. Elles permettent de défendre également les capacités de la créativité humaine, ainsi que le travail minutieux des professionnels, vis-à-vis de la concurrence de l'intelligence artificielle et des plateformes illégales de streaming. L’ouvrage vient ainsi combler l’absence de travaux sur la traduction française des variétés diatopiques italiennes représentées à l’écran et sur la qualité traductionnelle des sous-titreurs amateurs dans la combinaison italien-français.

In today's vast digital landscape, where the online world knows no bounds, website localization has emerged as a critical imperative for companies worldwide to effectively promote and sell their products. However, the evaluation of website localization quality in Persian remains an underexplored domain. This study aims to fill this gap by providing insights into the assessment of localization within the Iranian context while considering the global context as well. To do so, this investigation examined Sumsung's website localization quality, incorporating Gutiérrez-Artacho and Olvera-Lobo's (2017) indicators, as well as additional criteria such as website usability and cultural adaptation. The findings revealed that due to the complex and time-consuming nature of the localization process, Samsung has adopted a strategic approach that can be described as globalization or reverse localization, rather than a comprehensive culturalization approach commonly discussed in translation studies. By neutralizing its content, Samsung has effectively navigated the challenges posed by the cost and resources required for localization. This strategic decision allows Samsung to maintain a consistent and inclusive brand image across different markets. This study contributes to the field of translation studies in terms of reality-based theorizing by shedding light on the localization practices of a prominent multinational company. Finally, the findings offer valuable insights for companies seeking to enhance their website localization strategies and effectively engage with diverse users in an increasingly globalized world.

This thesis delves into the intricate realm of audiovisual translation, focusing on the translation of extralinguistic cultural references (ECRs) in Romanian subtitles. Through a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches, we investigate the varying strategies employed by professional subtitlers and non-professional enthusiasts in rendering ECRs in two distinct films, "The Trial of the Chicago 7" and "Lost in Translation." Drawing from the theoretical framework proposed by Ian Pedersen in "Subtitling Norms for Television" (2011), our study aims to comprehend the impact of foreignization and domestication techniques on the preservation of cultural nuances and the accessibility of the target audience. We analyze the translation strategies used in both professional and amateur subtitles, assessing potential distortions of meaning and errors. Moreover, our research examines the comprehensive landscape of audiovisual translation, its historical evolution, linguistic intricacies, cultural implications, and the intricacies of subtitling, including the phenomenon of fansubbing. The findings shed light on the complex process of ECR translation, underlining the critical balance between maintaining the original cultural essence and ensuring the comprehensibility for the target audience.

Translation studies has explored the complex and nuanced aspects of professional translation. In the early 1990s, a new paradigm emerged in cultural studies, characterized by a burgeoning interest in the intersection between fan culture and media production, which later became a source of inspiration for translation scholars, who extensively documented the mechanism of fan translation. Recent scholarship on fan translation has expanded its scope to encompass not only the process of translation performed by fans but also the reception and interpretation of their work by audiences. The aim of this paper is to offer a cutting-edge survey of current scholarship in non-professional subtitling reception by discussing key issues of non-professional subtitling and examining theoretical frameworks that explain reception and audience in audiovisual translation.

This paper explores the current trends in audio-visual translation, in particular, movie subtitling from English into Sorani Kurdish in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. It is hypothesized that subtitling English movies into Sorani Kurdish is performed using various methods, i.e. there is no one standard method that is adopted. This is based on the second hypothesis that the majority of subtitled movies into Sorani Kurdish are carried out by unprofessional subtitlers. The results of the study show that the majority of the subtitlers replace the English captions of previously subtitled movies by Kurdish translations, using different devices and word processors. Thus, the study exhibits that there is no one standard established method for subtitling English movies into Sorani Kurdish. It further shows that Kurdish subtitlers lack professionalism in terms of English-Kurdish subtitling. 

This paper intends to investigate the strategic approaches towards the third culture elements, which are regarded as a sign of literary heterolingualism, in the translation into Polish and Dutch of "Pachinko" written by Min Jin Lee, a Korean American author who currently lives in New York. Since the plot of the novel written in English is set in Korea and Japan, all elements of Korean and Japanese origin are considered third culture elements in the translation process. The aim of the analysis conducted against the backdrop of anthropocentric Translation Studies is to present the similarities and differences in the translation techniques concerning the third culture elements, as well as to introduce the factors determining the choice of a specific translation approach.

This study takes a norm-based approach to analyzing the dubbing and non-professional subtitling of English swearing into Persian in an American movie. The article revolves around three main theoretical frameworks, i.e., Wajnryb (2005), Toury (1995, 2012a, 2012b), and Chesterman (1997). After analyzing the strategies in rendering the original swearing into Persian, the researchers achieved a model of four basic strategies: (a) direct translation with strong force, (b) direct translation with weak force, (c) deletion, and (d) foreignization. On the whole, the results of this research showed that both dubbed and non-professional subtitled versions were target language-oriented with deleting the original swearing as the most frequent strategy. But, the vulgarity and the degree of offensiveness of swearing in the original version were to some extent euphemized in the dubbed version. On the other hand, the non-professional subtitled version, in comparison with the dubbed version, employed...

Although dubbing is the official and dominant modality of translating foreign films and television series in Iran, amateur subtitling has been increasingly used by the Iranian audience for audiovisual products that are not dubbed, or at least not soon enough or not without substantial ‘cultural appropriation.’ Given the increasing attention paid to viewers’ reception in the domain of audiovisual translation, this study attempts to explore the reception of Iranian viewers of the non-professional subtitling into Persian. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches were employed for the present research. Initially, the qualitative analysis of the focus groups conducted with consumers of such products suggested five main themes: translational, translatorial and technical expectations as well as the advantages and disadvantages. The quantitative analysis of the survey data confirmed the five themes in the second phase of the study.

Given the increasing pace of dissemination of cultural content across global borders, subtitling as a cost-effective solution for rendering audiovisual programs is gaining more popularity, even in societies, which have been traditionally using dubbing as the dominant modality for foreign films and television series. Likewise, various types of subtitling practices have developed and are used in Iran both at official and non-official outlets. While official dubbing has failed in some aspect in addressing the growing interest of Iranian viewers of foreign content, a variety of non-professional subtitling has been filling the gap, and subtitling appears to be dominating the audiovisual media market. Despite such developments, the necessities of professional practice of subtitling, including standardized guidelines, codes of ethics and practice, and training, have never been realized in Iran. In the absence of a professional subtitling tradition, this article presents the status quo of n...

The number of studies addressing non-professional or amateur subtitling or fansubbing has increasingly multiplied over the past years, underlying its relevance in the present world. This is partly because a growing number of audiences worldwide now watch TV series and films with subtitles by amateur subtitlers, which are freely shared online, and Iranian viewers are certainly included. In Iran, to get around the “cultural gate-keeping” policy advocated and strictly enforced by the state in the national media system, from the early 2010s onward, numerous Persian-language websites have embarked on a new initiative whereby original, especially American tv series and films are made available for download together with their Persian subtitles. Despite the upsurge of this phenomenon in the Iranian context, there is limited literature and research on Persian non-professional subtitling. To fill this knowledge gap, this article aims to examine and analyze the different practices that are cl...

In the age of participatory culture and post-translation, the liberalization of the domain of audiovisual translation (AVT) was only a matter of time. The key four factors which have contributed to this demotic turn include: Linguistic Competence, Availability, Immediacy, and Free-of-Chargeness. Amateur and fan-produced translations increasingly gain in popularity. Meanwhile, the expectations of the industry towards professional translators has become more challenging than ever. The aim of the presented paper is to explore whether these changes call for a more market-driven approach towards AVT in the age of the opening of the industry for other agents.

Growing needs in localising audiovisual content in multiple languages through subtitles call for the development of automatic solutions for human subtitling. Neural Machine Translation (NMT) can contribute to the automatisation of subtitling, facilitating the work of human subtitlers and reducing turn-around times and related costs. NMT requires high-quality, large, task-specific training data. The existing subtitling corpora, however, are missing both alignments to the source language audio and important information about subtitle breaks. This poses a significant limitation for developing efficient automatic approaches for subtitling, since the length and form of a subtitle directly depends on the duration of the utterance. In this work, we present MuST-Cinema, a multilingual speech translation corpus built from TED subtitles. The corpus is comprised of (audio, transcription, translation) triplets. Subtitle breaks are preserved by inserting special symbols. We show that the corpus ...

Although dubbing is the official and dominant modality of translating foreign films and television series in Iran, amateur subtitling has been increasingly used by the Iranian audience for audiovisual products that are not dubbed, or at least not soon enough or not without substantial ‘cultural appropriation.’ Given the increasing attention paid to viewers’ reception in the domain of audiovisual translation, this study attempts to explore the reception of Iranian viewers of the non-professional subtitling into Persian. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches were employed for the present research. Initially, the qualitative analysis of the focus groups conducted with consumers of such products suggested five main themes: translational, translatorial and technical expectations as well as the advantages and disadvantages. The quantitative analysis of the survey data confirmed the five themes in the second phase of the study.

Experimental studies on AVT have grown incrementally over the past decade. This growing body of research has explored several aspects of AVT reception and production using behavioural measures such as eye tracking, as well as venturing into physiological measures such as electroencephalography (EEG), galvanic skin response, and heart rate. As a novel approach to the field of AVT, the experimental approach has borrowed heavily from other fields with established experimental traditions, such as psycholinguistics, psychology, and cognitive science. However, these methodologies are often not implemented with the same rigour as in the disciplines from which they were taken, making for highly eclectic and, at times, inconsistent practices. The absence of a common framework and best practice for experimental research in AVT poses significant risk in addition to the potential reputational damage. Some of the most important risks are: the duplication of efforts, studies that cannot be replic...

Growing needs in localising audiovisual content in multiple languages through subtitles call for the development of automatic solutions for human subtitling. Neural Machine Translation (NMT) can contribute to the automatisation of subtitling, facilitating the work of human subtitlers and reducing turn-around times and related costs. NMT requires high-quality, large, task-specific training data. The existing subtitling corpora, however, are missing both alignments to the source language audio and important information about subtitle breaks. This poses a significant limitation for developing efficient automatic approaches for subtitling, since the length and form of a subtitle directly depends on the duration of the utterance. In this work, we present MuST-Cinema, a multilingual speech translation corpus built from TED subtitles. The corpus is comprised of (audio, transcription, translation) triplets. Subtitle breaks are preserved by inserting special symbols. We show that the corpus ...

This article explores the historical forces contributing to the existence of multiple and/or unauthorized Persian literary translations. Using an autoethnographic method, I argue that it will be more constructive to shift the focus from the legal and ethical narratives of foreign literature in Iran to a reconceptualization of translators as a subculture of media fans. introduction: iranian copyright battles I n april 2018, The Paris Review reexamined how a limited screening of the Iranian film Pari (Dariush Mehrjui, 1995) in New York in 1998 was halted at the request of J. D. Salinger’s lawyer.1 Pari was a free adaptation of three stories by the American writer: “Franny,” “Zooey,” and “A Perfect Day for Bananafish.” Salinger notoriously detested movies, but both this article and a New York Times piece at the time of Pari’s release blamed Iran’s lack of official adherence to international copyright standards as the main culprit for the unfortunate event.2 Beyond the glitz and glamor ...

Given the increasing pace of dissemination of cultural content across global borders, subtitling as a cost-effective solution for rendering audiovisual programs is gaining more popularity, even in societies, which have been traditionally using dubbing as the dominant modality for foreign films and television series. Likewise, various types of subtitling practices have developed and are used in Iran both at official and non-official outlets. While official dubbing has failed in some aspect in addressing the growing interest of Iranian viewers of foreign content, a variety of non-professional subtitling has been filling the gap, and subtitling appears to be dominating the audiovisual media market. Despite such developments, the necessities of professional practice of subtitling, including standardized guidelines, codes of ethics and practice, and training, have never been realized in Iran. In the absence of a professional subtitling tradition, this article presents the status quo of n...

ABSTRACT
At the turn of the century, the explosion of over-the-top (OTT) services such as Amazon Prime, HBO Now, Hulu and Netflix, along with the never-ending production of a wide variety of serialized formats, have swiftly raised the demand for AV content localisation across the globe. In the gargantuan void produced by the fast pace of technological and cinematic changes, while Language Service Providers (LSPs) were exploring viable options offered by new technology, amateur subtitlers around the globe were already forging alternative, internet-based localisation workflows, clockwork, perfect mechanisms able to deliver hundreds of fansubs within unprecedented tight turnaround times. This chapter will provide an account of the state of the art of amateur practices around the globe to date.

Given the increasing pace of dissemination of cultural content across global borders, subtitling as a cost-effective solution for rendering audiovisual programs is gaining more popularity, even in societies, which have been traditionally using dubbing as the dominant modality for foreign films and television series. Likewise, various types of subtitling practices have developed and are used in Iran both at official and non-official outlets. While official dubbing has failed in some aspect in addressing the growing interest of Iranian viewers of foreign content, a variety of non-professional subtitling has been filling the gap, and subtitling appears to be dominating the audiovisual media market. Despite such developments, the necessities of professional practice of subtitling, including standardized guidelines, codes of ethics and practice, and training, have never been realized in Iran. In the absence of a professional subtitling tradition, this article presents the status quo of non-professional subtitling into Persian and introduces the specific typology of this practice in the Iranian mediascape.

Given the increasing pace of dissemination of cultural content across global borders, subtitling as a cost-effective solution for rendering audiovisual programs is gaining more popularity, even in societies, which have been traditionally using dubbing as the dominant modality for foreign films and television series. Likewise, various types of subtitling practices have developed and are used in Iran both at official and non-official outlets. While official dubbing has failed in some aspect in addressing the growing interest of Iranian viewers of foreign content, a variety of non-professional subtitling has been filling the gap, and subtitling appears to be dominating the audiovisual media market. Despite such developments, the necessities of professional practice of subtitling, including standardized guidelines, codes of ethics and practice, and training, have never been realized in Iran. In the absence of a professional subtitling tradition, this article presents the status quo of non-professional subtitling into Persian and introduces the specific typology of this practice in the Iranian mediascape.

The aim of this paper is twofold: to discuss the advantages and inconveniences of email interviews, an underexploited research technique in translation studies, on the one hand; and to present professional subtitlers' opinions on quality-related aspects on the other. Twelve professional subtitlers working for German-speaking countries participated in an email interview consisting of five open-ended questions on recent developments in the profession, quality assurance, differences in quality perceptions between subtitlers and customers, and the competences needed to carry out subtitling jobs in the era of streaming services. The results show that participants appreciate the ease and convenience associated with email interviews as well as the greater reflection time and control over what information is disclosed. Email interviewing presents advantages for the researcher too, who is able to conduct several interviews in parallel, increase the size and range of samples, and eliminate the need for transcription. On the other hand, researchers may experience a lack of control over the research process, and especially its temporal dimension. As regards the subtitling-related aspects of the study, the interviewees' responses highlight a series of changes that have affected professional subtitling culture in recent years and hence also quality issues: the introduction of machine subtitling, crowdsourcing, pressure on prices, the increasing importance of relay subtitling via English, as well as faster subtitles through less editing in an attempt to allow less experienced subtitlers to enter the market. These results will be discussed from both an ethics and training point of view.

Although dubbing is the official and dominant modality of translating foreign films and television series in Iran, amateur subtitling has been increasingly used by the Iranian audience for audiovisual products that are not dubbed, or at least not soon enough or not without substantial 'cultural appropriation.' Given the increasing attention paid to viewers' reception in the domain of audiovisual translation, this study attempts to explore the reception of Iranian viewers of the non-professional subtitling into Persian. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches were employed for the present research. Initially, the qualitative analysis of the focus groups conducted with consumers of such products suggested five main themes: translational, translatorial and technical expectations as well as the advantages and disadvantages. The quantitative analysis of the survey data confirmed the five themes in the second phase of the study.

The number of studies addressing non-professional or amateur subtitling or fansubbing has increasingly multiplied over the past years, underlying its relevance in the present world. This is partly because a growing number of audiences worldwide now watch TV series and films with subtitles by amateur subtitlers, which are freely shared online, and Iranian viewers are certainly included. In Iran, to get around the "cultural gate-keeping" policy advocated and strictly enforced by the state in the national media system, from the early 2010s onward, numerous Persian-language websites have embarked on a new initiative whereby original, especially American tv series and films are made available for download together with their Persian subtitles. Despite the upsurge of this phenomenon in the Iranian context, there is limited literature and research on Persian non-professional subtitling. To fill this knowledge gap, this article aims to examine and analyze the different practices that are closely associated with Persian amateur subtitling. This includes building a profile of Iranian amateur subtitlers, along with an account of their working process, followed by a description of fansubbed products. The data are gathered using an open-ended questionnaire with a criterion sample of Iranian non-professional subtitlers, a survey of Iran-based video and subtitle sharing websites, and a close examination of the common features found in fansubbed Persian products, including reading speed and fansubbers' experimentation with the original. El sistema de subtitulación aficionada iraní: Una investigación cualitativa Resumen La cantidad de estudios que abordan la subtitulación no profesional o aficionada, o fansubbing, se ha multi-plicado en los últimos años, lo que subraya su relevancia en el mundo actual. Esto se debe en parte a que un número creciente de espectadores en todo el mundo ahora ve series de televisión y películas con subtítulos compartidos en línea por subtituladores no profesionales e Irán no es una excepción. Desde principios de 2010 en adelante, en Irán, numerosos sitios web en lengua persa se han embarcado en una nueva iniciativa para 1 This article has its basis on the project "An Empirical Investigation into Persian Non-professional Subtitling", endorsed by the Faculty of Letters and Humanities at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad.

The interconnectivity made possible by the technological advancements of the past three decades has changed the way how audiences engage with audiovisual content around the world. On the one hand, viewers have become empowered consumers who are also engaged in the distribution of content; on the other, companies serving global audiences have emerged as key players in the audiovisual market. With more access to content, through piracy or official channels, new consumption habits, such as binge watching, have become common among viewers. Non-professional subtitling has played a key role in the expansion of the audiovisual market, the configuration of international audiences and the development of new viewing traditions. By looking at non-professional subtitling as a constituent of the international media flows, this chapter proposes Translation Studies should look at the reception of non-professional subtitles at a global scale to understand the interplay between non-professional subtitling, its producers/users and the audiovisual market, as well as the societal impact of the phenomenon. Since its inception in the last century, television and the form of entertainment that it provides have morphed significantly, mostly due to the thriving development of the technology that makes it possible. Nowadays, watching television has expanded to become an overarching experience that occurs across platforms, media and resources engaging various social, technological and human agents at a globally interconnected level. In the world of transmediality, newspapers and

This monograph investigates subtitling from two perspectives. It first presents the current state of research in the field of subtitling, before studying the workflow of subtitling projects and the collaboration between the different actors involved in such projects. Data was collected through an online survey of subtitlers in the German-speaking countries. The second part of the study deals with the reception of subtitles. Within the framework of an empirical study, the cognitive load and acceptance of two types of subtitles were measured: standard subtitles vs. experimental subtitles, as can be found in fansubs. The results of the survey show that there are a number of aspects concerning the status and working conditions of subtitlers that have the potential for optimization, according to subtitlers themselves. Inferential statistical tests show moreover that two subcultures can be identified, each with its own norms and professional perspectives: subtitling for the hearing, and subtitling for the deaf and hearing impaired. Data analysis from the study on subtitle reception confirms the hypothesis that the reception capacity of subtitle users is generally underestimated in the specialist literature. The data also suggest that current subtitling norms might simply be preferred because users are accustomed to them.

Voice-over is mostly a practice-oriented profession in the industry, but seems to have failed to achieve the deserved academic recognition. This study aimed at examining the voice-over practice or more specifically what types of synchrony strategies could be found at a sample of two English nature documentaries voiced-over into Persian. The paper began with an overview of the seminal literature on voice-over, with a focus on the typology of synchrony in voice-over. In the following, the analysis of the coded segments from the corpus of the voiced-over version of the two documentaries was offered and discussed. The findings revealed that the voiced-over version preserved isochrony at the beginning more frequently, but the translation did not respect the available time slot, and continued for a few seconds after the original segment had finished, so isochrony was achieved merely partially. The corpus of the voiced-over version failed to completely preserve kinetic synchrony, yet it enjoyed a high level of action synchrony as well as literal synchrony. This unprecedented study hopes to help initiate a line of inquiry in this under-researched area in the Persian context and it affords new insights into the theory–practice gap discussion in the voice-over field.