An Experiment on Amateur and Professional Subtitling Reception in Iran

Abstract

Over the past decade, audiovisual translation has welcomed the swift shift towards experimental reception studies, and interdisciplinary approaches which draw on media psychology theories, such as immersion are becoming the new trend in audiovisual translation. Nonetheless, studies on amateur subtitling reception are recent and scarce, notably in dubbing countries like Iran, where both dubbing and amateur subtitling are co-existing. This paper reports the results of an experiment examining whether a select group of Iranian viewers may report different reception and immersion when watching a professionally subtitled vs. non-professionally subtitled audiovisual material. To this end, around sixty Iranian viewers attended the experiment and reported their reception and immersion through a questionnaire. Overall, the results suggested that amateur subtitling did not negatively affect the viewers’ immersion in the program. Viewers’ comprehension and some subtitling reception variables (subtitling reading difficulty, duration, and subtitling overall quality) were nevertheless challenged by the amateur subtitles since the participants had a better comprehension and reception when watching the program with professionally produced subtitles. Other findings indicated that (constant) exposure to foreign cinematic programs and (un)familiarity with subtitling had no significant effect on the viewers’ reception and immersion.