----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I am commencing a survey of viewer preferences for subtitling and/or dubbing of foreign-language films and videos. I am also interested in hearing from multilingual subscribers, on how the exigencies of subtitling/dubbing distort the semantic meanings of original soundtrack dialogues (and narrations in the case of dubbed voice-overs). Specific examples would be appreciated. I'm looking for the best and the worst. Respondents may post directly to me <[log in to unmask]>, or to Screen-List if they feel their comments to be of general interest to the group. To start things off: My worst experience of subtitling was with an ancient and apparently very popular VHS copy of Fellini's _And the Ship Sails On_. The subtitles were cut off at the bottom by the video underscan, and my partner and I found ourselves trying to peer 'over' the bottom edge of the TV screen. Naturally, the white letters were washed-out against light scenary (Fellini loved light!). We wound up watching the video on our 13-inch TV from a distance of three feet (we normally view from about ten). The subtitles contributed less than 30% to our grasp of the story, though we had to completely depend upon it for what snatches of dialogue we were able to discern. We had the suspicion that a significant amount of the dialogue wasn't subtitled. Nevertheless we loved the film and enjoyed hearing the original soundtrack. The scope and purpose of my study is as follows: Films and videos distributed in foreign countries are, by nature, bilingual. Some kind of translation to the host language must be provided. This may be done by dubbing, subtitling, or both. I propose to analyze the relative effectiveness of the various strategies of bilingualism in films and videos, focusing on the problems of subtitling as an issue of visual communications. Good quality dubbing requires coordination of the translation with lip-synching, i.e. a translation must be found in which the spoken words match the lip movements in a reasonably convincing manner. To satisfy this condition, the semantic meaning of the dialogue may have to be distorted. Good dubbing is much more expensive than subtitling, and technically risky because even slight imperfections are extremely noticeable and destructive of narrative credibility (this risk does not, of course, apply to voice-overs). Subtitling, on the other hand, allows the original spoken dialogue to carry considerable emotional weight and retain the cultural flavor of a film. In verbose dialogue, editing of the translation may be required in order to control the sheer volume and pacing of subtitles which the audience is being asked to read. The main typographic issues of subtitling are legibility and obtrusivenenss. Both of these issues are affected by such things as aspect ratio, size and resolution of the movie or TV screen. I will consider film and video subtitling separately. David Smith [log in to unmask] David Smith [log in to unmask]