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MaxVH
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Dec 07, 2021 4:27 pm

Academic research in creative subtitling

Sat Feb 26, 2022 1:13 pm

Hello everyone!

I'm new on this forum and in fact I created my account in the aim of writing this topic.
I'm a french film director currently studying in a masters in Portugal. I'm on my way to graduation and in addition of my practical film direction work I'm doing a research thesis on creative subtitling and its implementation in the contemporary film industry.
The concept of creative subtitling describes alternative audiovisual translation methods emancipated from certain industry norms and directives. It also promotes subtitles as an aesthetical or narrative tool for the filmmaker. Famous examples would be Slumdog Millionaire, Night Watch, The French Dispatch, Man on Fire, Sherlock, Annie Hall...
For my research I select literature on the topic mainly from film studies, I watch and evaluate films and carry out interviews (professional subtitlers, post production supervisors, VFX artists...). I wanted to conduct one with a an active contributor from an online community such as opensubtitles.org. and understand his methods, motivations, views on his practice and his opinion on how the film industry considers subtitles in general. Knowledge on creative subtitling is a plus but not necessary. In a sense, what all of you contributors do in this community is creative subtitling.

So I'm looking for someone that is eager to share in any shape or form, I'm used to conduct interviews on videocall but it can take any other form and I'm also willing to respect the person's anonymity. So I can also write the questions in advance and receive a set of written answers for example. My priority is to find an experienced subtitler that is also enthusiastic and interested in the research. The form of the interview I will conduct is secondary as long as I get useful information. Of course before the interview I can share more details about the work and research already done.

This research project is aimed at recognizing alternative subtitling practices, whether it is the process (the person making subtitles) or the outcome (traditional or creative subtitling). I'm very admirative on the incredible work that fansubbers provide for so many years. I've been watching anime for more than 10 years only thanks to the continuous work of fansubber communities. As a cinephile, I can sometimes only find rare movies in some corner of the internet and websites such as opensubtitles.org are a blessing to find the right subtitles.
This research is also helping me develop a feature film project that I use as a case study throughout my thesis and for which I project to use creative subtitling techniques.

Your contribution would be duely pointed out in an acknowledgement section and I will share the work once it is done of course, that's as much as I can do! If you guys are interested I will share a link to my finished work in this thread once it will be completed (by this summer).

If you are interested you can either answer in this thread or write me a private message.

Thank you for your attention and hopefully this type of initiative will help subtitling practices to evolve and gain more recognition in the industry !

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