Towards Teaching Audiovisual Translation in Universities

Audiovisual Translation (AVT) recently found its proper place in Translation Studies and is in fashion among scholars, researchers and students. Not only more and more students have focused their M.A thesis and even their Ph.D. thesis on AVT topics but also an increasing number of universities are offering postgraduate programs centering upon AVT ( like Spanish and English universities). Training AVT trainees is a vital issue in the scope of multimedia translation in order to supply societies' requirements with well-educated and well-qualified translators. Thus, the important aim of the present study was to closely examine training in AVT as a university major. The researcher did his best to propose training models (four modules) for teaching Subtitling, Dubbing, Voice-Over and Subtitling for Hard of Hearing, and for Video Game Industry. In all four modules, theoretical, linguistic and technical matters are considered. The linguistic matters are somehow the same in all four types of AVT, for examples, rendering highly cultural components and peculiarities of language. However, the technical matters or skills in each module differ. In the module of dubbing, familiarizing trainees with special software such as, DubIt, Windows Movie Maker, Virtual Dub, Goldwave, Audacity ,etc. is essential ,hence, it demonstrates that trainees should possess a wealth of knowledge in ICT and be eager to learn new and update software or programs. The main problem in Dubbing is lip-synchrony (lip-sync, kinesic-synchrony, isochrony) which by means of some special techniques and skills like: Repetition, Change of Word Order, Substitution, Omission, Gloss and so forth, is conquered. Then, in the module of Subtitling, acquainting trainees with particular software as FAB, Spot, Win CAPS, Subtitle Workshop and so on is vital. Moreover, Subtitling covers some special steps as 1.Spotting (Synchrony of text with image), 2.Frames between subtitles, 3.Reading speeds (The amount of information in any subtitle) 4. Templates (Maximizing resources). Some others technical skills involve layout, duration, punctuation of subtitles. With regard to Voice-over, the same software as used in dubbing is used in voice-over classes. But, in voice-over, trainees have to learn specialized terminologies (Sports expressions, Wild Life expressions). In this module, the trainees are required to increase their Listening Comprehension Skills since, in some cases (interviews) there might be no transcript to work with and trainees should create that transcript. And the main technical skill is Voice-over synchrony which includes fitting the translated messages and leaving a few seconds at the beginning and end of the original soundtrack. Finally, an optional module for Hard of Hearing Subtitling and Video Game Industry was suggested. As it is obvious, in translation Curricula of Iranian universities there is only one course on AVT and it would be impossible to place all of these modules in one course. As a result, the researcher proposed to increase the number of AVT courses into at least three ones to cover both subtitling and dubbing and voice-over or by following Spain and English universities and institutes establishing M.A of AVT. Thus, the translator, based on Universitat Autٍnoma de Barcelona's translation programs, suggested four 15-session courses on AVT embracing the mentioned guidelines, skills and techniques.

کلیدواژه ها:

Module ، Teaching ، Dubbing ، Subtitling ، Voice-over