Video recordings can be subtitled in three ways: with first language (L1) subtitles, with second language (L2) subtitles, or with first language plus second language (bilingual or L1+L2) subtitles. The first two types of subtitles are widely discussed in previous research with regard to how they affect language learning. However, the effects of bilingual subtitles have not been widely studied. This study aims to examine the pedagogical effects of bilingual subtitles on vocabulary acquisition in the L2 classroom. A seven-week quasi-experimental study was conducted with four English-major classes in year-3 in a Chinese university: three experimental groups and one control group. Students in the three experimental classes were exposed to three documentary films on very similar topics with the three different types of subtitles in turn. They then took a vocabulary test relating to the lexical items encountered in the films. At the end of the experiment, they were given a questionnaire to explore their opinions towards differential subtitles in relation to their language learning. The results demonstrated a significant advantage of bilingual subtitling in videos for students’ receptive vocabulary knowledge and recall at post-test and this advantage was maintained at delayed post-test. The bilingual subtitles probably are more effective than monolingual subtitles with regard to students’ vocabulary acquisition in short-term and long-term. Also, bilingual subtitles were preferred by a majority of students in respect of video understanding and vocabulary learning. L2 subtitles were favoured by more students for improving their listening comprehension. Pedagogical implications for the use of differential subtitles in the L2 classroom are discussed.

Master of Science / Department of Psychology / Richard J. Harris / Memory processes have undergone extensive investigation using various experimental methods. While working memory studies have profoundly influenced the development of new cognitive theories, including the Dual-Processing Theory (Mayer & Moreno, 1998), limited research has investigated the effects of subtitled messages on multimedia comprehension. Previous eye movement research has investigated the ability of observers to attend to the multiple sensory inputs associated with multimedia viewing (D’Ydewalle, Van Rensbergen & Pollet, 1987; D’Ydewalle & De Bruycker, 2007); however, eye movement research only scratches the surface of cognitive abilities associated with multimedia learning. In order to satisfy the need for more subtitling research two studies were performed to investigate the effects of subtitled movies on the comprehension of movie content. Both investigations involved the presentation of 10-minute movie clips from A Few Good Men and See No Evil, Hear No Evil. Participants completed three types of multiple-choice recognition questions for each movie, including: pictorial-only questions, verbal-only questions and combined-information questions. Experiment 1 was designed to investigate the difference between levels of comprehension, when verbal information was presented only in the participants’ native language (i.e. English soundtrack and/or subtitles). Results of Experiment 1 indicate that participants performed significantly better on verbal-only and combined-information questions when their native language was present in the subtitles as opposed to the soundtrack. These findings confirm previous findings that reading verbal information in subtitles is more efficient than listening to the soundtrack. Comparison of performance on the pictorial-only questions across presentation formats in Experiment 1 showed participants in the English soundtrack with no subtitles condition performed significantly better than all other conditions. Although Experiment 1 provides a basic understanding of how native language soundtracks and subtitles influence comprehension of movies, subtitled media are primarily used when viewing a movie with verbal information from a foreign language. Experiment 2 built on the results of Experiment 1 by incorporating an unfamiliar language (i.e. French). The question sets used in Experiment 1 were also used in Experiment 2; however, two French vocabulary tests were also used in Experiment 2 to measure incidental foreign language acquisition. Consistent with the results of Experiment 1, participants performed significantly better on verbal-only and combined-information questions when their native language was in the subtitles. This finding extended the conclusion that native language verbal information presented visually (i.e. subtitles) yields better performance on questions requiring verbal cues than native language verbal information presented orally (i.e. soundtrack) to foreign language material. Comparison of performance on the pictorial-only questions across presentation formats in Experiment 2 showed no significant differences. Comparison across the two experiments reflected a distraction effect associated with the presence of a foreign language. Performance on the French vocabulary tests was very poor across all conditions and yielded no significant differences, suggesting that the tasks may have been too difficult.

No description available.

The present thesis focuses on the translation of sociocultural phenomena in movie subtitles. The paper is of a theoretical-empirical nature. Firstly it outlines the basic terms, namely "dialect", "sociolect" and "realia" and describes their function in movie dialogue. Subsequently the attention is given to the technical and linguistic characteristics of subtitling. The paper then examines the ways of translating the given sociocultural aspects from both descriptive and prescriptive perspectives. In the empirical part, actual examples of the transfer of substandard sociolects and realia, stemming from the movies Entre les murs and Un prophète, are analyzed and commented on. Keywords: movie translation, subtitling, sociocultural phenomena, substandard language, realia

<p>The aim of this study is to investigate how subtitles might affect students understanding of spoken English. A comparison was made between four classes at Polhemskolan, an upper secondary school in Lund, Sweden. Each class was shown two different scenes from the movies …And Justice for All and The Verdict. Two of the classes were shown the scenes with subtitles and the remaining two without subtitles. During the test the students also filled out a questionnaire with questions about the information disclosed in the scenes. The students’ results were discussed with the help of the Acquisition and Learning theory and different theories dealing with listening comprehension.</p>

The aim of this study is to investigate how subtitles might affect students understanding of spoken English. A comparison was made between four classes at Polhemskolan, an upper secondary school in Lund, Sweden. Each class was shown two different scenes from the movies …And Justice for All and The Verdict. Two of the classes were shown the scenes with subtitles and the remaining two without subtitles. During the test the students also filled out a questionnaire with questions about the information disclosed in the scenes. The students’ results were discussed with the help of the Acquisition and Learning theory and different theories dealing with listening comprehension.

When subtitles are burned into a video, an error can sometimes occur in the encoder that results in the same subtitle being burned into several frames, resulting in subtitles becoming frozen. This thesis provides a way to detect frozen video subtitles with the help of an implemented text detector and classifier. Two types of classifiers, naïve classifiers and machine learning classifiers, are tested and compared on a variety of different videos to see how much a machine learning approach can improve the performance. The naïve classifiers are evaluated using ground truth data to gain an understanding of the importance of good text detection. To understand the difficulty of the problem, two different machine learning classifiers are tested, logistic regression and random forests. The result shows that machine learning improves the performance over using naïve classifiers by improving the specificity from approximately 87.3% to 95.8% and improving the accuracy from 93.3% to 95.5%. Random forests achieve the best overall performance, but the difference compared to when using logistic regression is small enough that more computationally complex machine learning classifiers are not necessary. Using the ground truth shows that the weaker naïve classifiers would be improved by at least 4.2% accuracy, thus a better text detector is warranted. This thesis shows that machine learning is a viable option for detecting frozen video subtitles.

「Fansubs」というのはファンが翻訳した字幕のことである。
 本稿では日本のテレビドラマの「Fansubs」の特徴を調べる為、3つのテレビドラマの日本 語の台詞と、ファンが作った字幕を比べている。原文のテキストが翻訳と字幕制作でどの ように変わったかを情報の増減や誤訳など9つのカテゴリーに分類し、字幕テキストを 分析した。作成したのがプロの翻訳者ではなく、または非常に短期間で作成されたこの 「Fansubs」は、公式のテレビやDVDの字幕よりも誤訳などのエラーが非常に多いことが分 かった。 / "Fansubs" are subtitles translated by fans. In this thesis the characteristics of fansubs of Japanese TV-dramas are investigated by comparing the original dialog of three TV-dramas to their subtitles produced by fans. The subtitles were analysed using 9 categories to classify the change of information level that the original text had undergone in the translation and subtitle production. The fansubs in this study, whether it is because the translators are not professionals or because they were produced in a very short time, were found to contain a much larger number of mistranslations than what is ususaly found in official TV or DVD subtitles.

The aim of the thesis is to describe the problematics of the amateur subtitling. We focus especially on French films subtitling. We concentrate on production, distribution, reception of amateur subtitles and we compare them with the official environment. Further we analyze subtitles of the movie La Haine by one professional and two amateur translators and examine the translation of unconventional French and realii. These days amateur subtitling is a widespread phenomenon. However not many people are familiar with it and understand it. This thesis is supposed to inform about the amateur subtitling environment.

The master's thesis deals with simultaneous film interpreting and pre-prepared electronic subtitles at film festivals in the Czech Republic. Simultaneous film interpreting used to be a widespread mode of audiovisual translation at film festivals. However, today it has been mostly replaced with subtitles; these are often pre-prepared electronic subtitles manually projected under the film screen by a so-called subtitle launcher. These types of audiovisual translation are generally characterized in the theoretical part of the thesis. In the empirical part, the research first focuses on film interpreting at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. As films are no longer interpreted at the festival, the research method of interviews with the then interpreters was chosen. Based on the information obtained from the interviews, it is described how films were interpreted and what working conditions interpreters had. General information on film interpreting was also gathered during the interviews. The second chapter of the empirical part deals with pre-prepared subtitles: first with the process of subtitle launching and subtitle launchers' working conditions, and then with the audience's opinion, which was elicited in a questionnaire survey at the Summer Film School Uherske Hradiste. The questionnaire...