CTIS Research Seminar - Reimagining Subtitling: A reception study of a new Enhanced Subtitling practice

About

Over the past decade, audiovisual content has expanded across multiple languages, featuring more creative on-screen text. This shift has increased the demand for faster subtitling and innovative techniques to handle less familiar contexts and more inventive text styles. Two key issues should be noted: first, exploratory research suggests that current subtitling often faces challenges in ensuring accessibility in unfamiliar situations (Caffrey 2009, Chiaro et al. 2008, Ramos Pinto 2025), that viewers can process more on-screen text (Caffrey 2009, Künzli & Ehrensberger-Dow 2011), and that alternative subtitling methods can offer substantial benefits (Fox 2016, Black 2020, Leveridge et al. 2024). Second, audiences are increasingly accustomed to alternative text formats and creating their own subtitles - such as on TikTok - which diverge from traditional professional standards. This evolving landscape presents both challenges and opportunities for reviewing and improving current practices. In this presentation, I will explore the concept of subtitling and share findings from a reception study conducted in a natural cinema setting with 100 participants. The study tested the effects of Standard versus Enhanced Subtitling, showing that those exposed to enhanced subtitles exhibited higher comprehension, greater engagement, more enjoyment, and a stronger willingness to watch similar content. The research emphasises the importance of transcending verbal translation when subtitling and highlights the cultural and economic value of effective subtitling. It also demonstrates that training subtitlers in multimodal analysis can improve their skills and further differentiate them from AI. Hybrid with the speaker on campus https://tinyurl.com/CTIS-T1-26-Pinto