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Subtitling in the Iranian Mediascape: Towards a Culture-Specific Typology - International Journal of Society, Culture ...
Subtitling in the Iranian Mediascape: Towards
                            a Culture-Specific Typology
          Masood Khoshsaligheh1a, Saeed Ameri2a, Farzaneh Shokoohmand3a, Milad
                                    Mehdizadkhani4b

                                            Abstract
                                            Given the increasing pace of dissemination of cultural
    ARTICLE HISTORY:                        content across global borders, subtitling as a cost-effective
    Received May 2020                       solution for rendering audiovisual programs is gaining more
    Received in revised form July 2020      popularity, even in societies, which have been traditionally
    Accepted July 2020                      using dubbing as the dominant modality for foreign films and
    Available online August 2020            television series. Likewise, various types of subtitling
                                            practices have developed and are used in Iran both at official
                                            and non-official outlets. While official dubbing has failed in
                                            some aspect in addressing the growing interest of Iranian
                                            viewers of foreign content, a variety of non-professional
                                            subtitling has been filling the gap, and subtitling appears to
                                            be dominating the audiovisual media market. Despite such
    KEYWORDS:
                                            developments, the necessities of professional practice of
    Non-professional subtitling             subtitling, including standardized guidelines, codes of ethics
    Amateur subtitling                      and practice, and training, have never been realized in Iran.
    Quasi-professional subtitling           In the absence of a professional subtitling tradition, this
    Professional subtitling                 article presents the status quo of non-professional subtitling
    Subtitling for the d/Deaf and hard of   into Persian and introduces the specific typology of this
    hearing
                                            practice in the Iranian mediascape.
                                                                       © 2020 IJSCL. All rights reserved.

1
  Associate Professor, Email: khoshsaligheh@um.ac.ir (Corresponding Author)
  Tel: +98-915-5012669
2
  PhD, Email: s.ameri@mail.um.ac.ir
3
  Assistant Professor, Email: shokoohmand@um.ac.ir
4
  PhD Candidate, Email: mehdizadkhani.milad@stud.u-szeged.hu
a
  Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran
b
  University of Szeged, Hungary
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56                     Subtitling in the Iranian Mediascape: Towards a Culture-Specific Typology

     1. Introduction                                           market with the advertised function. This
                                                               market provided foreign language enthusiasts

     B        esides the seven-decade-old prevalence
              of dubbing in Iran as the exclusive
              audiovisual translation (AVT) solution
     for watching foreign feature films and
     television series, a variety of Persian-language
                                                               with authentic foreign multimedia, mostly
                                                               English content, and helped them improve their
                                                               foreign language competency. That was a
                                                               convenient excuse, helping to conceal the
                                                               illegal nature of this unauthorized distribution
     subtitling practices has emerged and rose to              of selling pirated foreign films (Jalili, 2001).
     fame among Iranian audiences, especially the              However, it was legally problematic on two
     young generation, due to the expectations that            grounds. Firstly, it was violating copyright laws,
     the official dubbing has failed to fulfill in recent      and secondly, severe consequences such as
     years. Although dubbing has been practiced in             ethical issues followed from the unauthorized
     Iran since the mid-1940s, it was not until the            distribution of foreign cultural products.
     late 1990s, that Persian subtitling was born in           Another early attempt in broadcasting foreign
     the Iranian society. Over the past decade, the use        films along with Persian subtitles is MBC
     of subtitling has substantially risen in Iran. The        Persia, a satellite television channel, starting in
     increase is due to the development of                     2008. According to Naficy (2012), the subtitles
     broadband technologies and high-speed                     were of such poor quality mostly in terms of
     Internet access for the public, which in turn has         consistency, coherence, and synchronization,
     paved the way for cheap and fast access to                and the deficiencies were even notable to the
     original films and TV shows by the Internet               lay public audiences who were not competent
     downloading. Enjoying this readily available              in the source language.
     ocean of foreign cinematic programs—mostly
     pirated versions—requires a translation                   In the absence of a professional tradition of
     solution for which official dubbing could not be          subtitling in Persian, this article aims to serve
     an option as the audiences look for a fast mode,          as an introduction to the different types of
     which contains the least amount of cultural               subtitling practices in the Iranian context. The
     intervention in the original content.                     clarification of the subtitling practice would help
                                                               consistency and accuracy in the use of the related
     However, the absence of professional subtitling           terminology in the growing research
     has led to the emergence of various types of              publication on subtitling in Persian. In several
     subtitling practice in Persian. The practice has          local studies, the distinction of professional, non-
     been investigated from multiple angles, such as           professional, and amateur subtitling is not
     its use in language learning (Ameri & Ghodrati,           carefully observed, and the terms are
     2019), its application in the rendition of graphic        interchangeably used. Initially, in the following
     codes (Mehdizadkhani & Khoshsaligheh,                     section, the international literature on non-
     2019), its status quo for deaf viewers                    professional subtitling is briefly surveyed.
     (Shokoohmand & Khoshsaligheh, 2019), eye-                 Later, the main types of Persian subtitling are
     tracking     its    readability     (Zahedi     &         introduced and discussed, and real-life
     Khoshsaligheh, 2019), its pedagogy (Rastegar              examples are also presented. In the concluding
     Moghaddam & Khoshsaligheh, 2020), and its                 section,     contextual       considerations      in
     reception      through      using     multimodal          understanding these types, as well as the
     transcription (Abdi & Khoshsaligheh, 2018).               potentials for prospective types of subtitling,
     Unexpectedly, the history of subtitling in Iran           are discussed.
     has been scarcely researched, and therefore its
     birth and development are reasonably                      2. Theoretical Framework
     uncertain. According to a few sporadic
     magazine articles (Jalili, 2001; Shajarikohan,            Non-professional subtitling can be considered
     2011), the birth of Persian subtitling dates back         an umbrella term under which a range of
     to the final years of the last century. Original          subtitling practices by fans, amateurs,
     contents were made widely available on the                activities, and students are produced. In this
     illegal Iranian markets and even legal ones               sense, the number of publications on non-
     under the ambitious and bold title “Language              professional subtitling has been on a steady rise
     Learning Material”. Indeed, films were                    over the last decade including journal articles,
     unofficially subtitled and distributed in the             edited books, and encyclopedic entries (e.g.,
                                                               Dwyer, 2019; Orrego-Carmona & Lee, 2017b;
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Pérez-González, 2020). To achieve a more                 As far as translation is concerned, non-
comprehensive understanding of non-                      professional subtitling strives to bring to the
professional subtitling, some factors, as                light the foreignness of the original content
translation scholars argue (Antonini, Cirillo,           through foreignization approaches, such as
Rossato, & Torresi, 2017; Martínez- Gómez,               retention and glossing (Dwyer, 2019;
2020; Orrego-Carmona & Lee, 2017a), are to               Massidda, 2015; Massidda & Casarini, 2017;
be taken into account: training, remuneration,           Nornes, 1999). Therefore, non-professional
recruitment, ethics, and standards of practice.          translations are “closer to the original, wordier,
Non-professional subtitlers, according to                [and] more word-for-word” (Gambier, 2013, p.
Orrego-Carmona and Lee (2017a, p. 4), “do not            54). The reason appears to be clear; such a
receive and do not require monetary                      strategy will increase “the visibility of the
remuneration for the activities they perform and         mediator and the process of mediation” and can
the translations they provide”. For Evans                “increase awareness of the foreign culture and
(2020), fan translation differs from non-                encourage the viewer to engage with it on its
professional translation, as in the former, the          own terms” (Dwyer, 2019, p. 459).
strong focus is on foreign content that is               Nonetheless, Chinese fansubbing apparatus on
important for a community of fans. Non-                  the contrary to those of the Western and Iranian
professional translation is mainly concerned             fansubbing seems to be target-orientated and
with “pro-bono work for non-governmental                 promotes and applies domestication strategies
organizations” like TED (p. 177). Lee (2018)             (Chang, 2017; He, 2017) probably to serve as
contends that non-professional subtitling has            “a means to best entertain Chinese audiences”
developed as a social outcome of fansubbing.             (Lee, 2018, p. 573).
Failure or defiance to comply with commercial            Fansubbers as a category of non-professional
subtitling standards is the prime feature                subtitlers work on various motivations
associated       with       this    phenomenon.          (Cemerin & Toth, 2017; Duraner, Tunali, &
Nevertheless, recent studies (Jiménez-Crespo,            Koçak, 2017; Luczaj & Holy-Luczaj, 2017):
2017; Orrego-Carmona, 2019) claim otherwise,             altruistic or non-altruistic. They may simply
stating that non-professional subtitlers do not          wish to help others access their favorite foreign
tend to neglect or refuse mainstream subtitling          program in a language they understand, or they
conventions. This very contrast between the              just do it as a recreational activity, or to improve
scholars in this regard is the ultimate purpose of       their command of the foreign language. Others
writing this article to emphasize that first, the        are involved to be recognized as an essential
concept of non-professional subtitling is                agent in their own social circles. On occasions,
culture-specific and context-dependent and               these subtitlers are pushed into this activity due
does not necessarily refer to the same practice          to activist reasons. These subtitles—known as
in every society. More importantly, a relatively         Guerrilla       subtitles—“are      produced      by
diverse set of practices in the same context are         individuals or collectives highly engaged in
liberally and collectively referred to as                political causes” to skirt censorship or circulate
professional subtitling, which has their own             a unique narrative which can “counter-argue
differences. At the same time, they share certain        the truth reported by the powerful mass media”
similarities and consequently deserve their own          (Díaz Cintas, 2018, p. 134).
name and definition for the sake of clarity.
                                                         Non-professional       subtitling,     especially
The abusive approach of non-professional                 fansubbing has raised many ethical and legal
subtitling, in a general sense, at times includes        issues as it has violated and challenged the
experimenting with the original content                  screen media copyright laws by translating and
through “compositional parameters such as                subtitling unauthorized contents (Dwyer, 2017;
number, layout, and positioning of subtitles”,           Massidda, 2015; Pérez-González, 2014).
together with “uses of colors, typefaces,                Despite this, Pérez-González (2020) maintains
typography” (Pérez-González, 2020, p. 175),              that the works of fansubbers “are now more
not to mention “novel uses of notes and glosses          widely tolerated and, in some cases, actively
superimposed on visuals to provide explanatory           promoted by distributors and broadcasters” (p.
comments” to assist the viewers’ understating            176). In terms of Iran, Iranian legal and illegal
of the unfamiliar content (Guillot, 2019, p. 37).        commercial video-sharing websites heavily
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     rely on non-professional subtitlers due to the           Considering the Iranian context, while entry to
     lack of any professional subtitling, which has           other professions, such as engineering,
     resulted from the lack of any solid training and         medicine, and law, is strictly regulated, the
     tradition in this area, followed from a                  translation industry is barely controlled (Kafi,
     historically dubbing prevalence.                         Khoshsaligheh, & Hashemi, 2018). Concerning
                                                              the AVT markets, particularly dubbing,
     3. Subtitling in Iran                                    traditionally, translators have not been trained
     3.1. Regular Subtitling                                  in AVT for the absence of formal training.
                                                              Therefore, most dubbing translators have been
     3.1.1. Quasi-Professional Subtitling                     selected among those who have had translating
                                                              experience in written translation, especially
     Before introducing this category, a brief                literary translation. Translating for Persian
     mention of the concept of professionalism is of          dubbing is less technical and complicated than
     importance. On the one hand, if we take the              subtitling as the translators are not required to
     term profession as any occupation by which an            observe a synchronized version of their
     individual can make a living, a pragmatic yet            translation, as there is always another agent
     simplistic definition of a professional translator       responsible for the adaptation (Khoshsaligheh
     would be anyone who earns their living by                & Ameri, 2016). On the contrary, subtitling
     providing translation services (Jääskeläinen,            demands more technical know-how, and the
     2010). According to Weiss-Gal and Welbourne              translators are, at times, required to deliver a
     (2008), a real profession involves a particular          subtitling file, say .srt, created by a subtitling
     set of code of ethics, focused education                 program. Additionally, dubbing translators
     controlled by members of the profession,                 follow the regulations demanded by
     professional autonomy, possessing a strong               professional translation, so that they can be
     knowledge base, control over certain kinds of            promoted to the official translator status, and to
     work, public respect for the profession, an              be hired for the national television channels,
     influential professional association, and respect        they need to pass some exams. When it comes
     and payment which reflect professional                   to subtitling, the situation is complicated
     prestige. In this sense, it is barely possible to        compared to dubbing because subtitling
     assume to have professional subtitling in Iran or        tradition, as alluded to earlier, began to form as
     many other countries, as is discussed below.             a result of the emergence of unauthorized,
     The existing AVT literature tends to assess the          uncontrolled, and underground activities in the
     quality of translations rather than its process          late 1990s.
     (Bogucki, 2009; Pedersen, 2019). It appears              There are still questions that call for careful
     that professional subtitlers are capable of              considerations: Who is professional, and who is
     delivering a translation with high quality and           official? Are there any professional and official
     are remarkably faster, perhaps because they are          subtitlers in Iran? In consideration of the
     well aware of the standards of practice (e.g.,           criteria enumerated by Weiss-Gal and
     Orrego-Carmona, Dutka, & Szarkowska,                     Welbourne (2008), the most realistic and honest
     2018). In terms of subtitling, several studies           answer could be that there are currently no
     such as Ivarsson and Carroll (1998) and                  professional subtitlers in Iran. One reason is
     Karamitroglou (1998) as well as international            that no code of ethics is available, and there is
     associations like the European Association of            no recognition of the profession, let alone
     Studies in Screen Translation (ESIST) have               public respect. Even subtitles on national
     worked towards the standardization of                    television are not without mistakes or problems
     subtitling practices. As a result, ESIST has             with technical constraints. Another reason is the
     advocated a set of guidelines and codes for the          evident absence of focused education,
     subtitling profession. Although subtitling               controlled and guided by members of the
     companies, which provide services for                    profession. Besides, there is no professional
     language pairs other than English may have               association, which represents the professional
     their own subtitling tradition, the guidelines           prestige of the practitioners by ensuring the due
     could be used “to set some minimum standards             respect and reasonable payment. In this sense,
     in the profession and to safeguard subtitlers’           it is barely possible to assume to be somewhere
     rights” (Díaz Cintas & Remael, 2007, p. 80).             near-professional subtitling in Iran. The most
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reasonable answer to the above questions can             guidelines of the said ministry (Khoshsaligheh,
be that any official subtitler who could meet at         Ameri, & Mehdizadkhani, 2018). Nevertheless,
least the three professional translation criteria        the authors’ observations suggest that subtitles
can be entitled quasi-professional translator.           made by the video-on-demand (VOD) service
These criteria, discussed above, are service             providers      follow     the     state-advised
fees, the professional codes of practice, and the        appropriation/censorship considerations.
issue of quality. The final criterion could be
fulfilled through rigorous training or intensive         Taking advantage of interlingual subtitling on
courses provided by universities and academic            Iranian national television (e.g., Sports Channel
institutions in neighboring fields such as               and Documentary Channel) is a great initiative
translation studies—in the absence of                    (see Figures 1 & 2). However, it has been limited
audiovisual translation pedagogy. Considering            to non-fiction content so far. For instance, the
the service fees, there is no set rate for               subtitling service offered by a national
subtitling, and the fee commonly differs on a            documentary TV channel, otherwise known as
case-by-case basis and from company to                   IRIB Mostanad, provides inter/intralingual
company. Regarding the professional codes,               subtitles to make the languages of ethnic groups
AVT providers have their own conventions and             and different dialects understandable to the
regulations for the process of subtitling because        audience. From the perspective of quality, these
there is no Iranian subtitling association at this       subtitles have some shortcomings in terms of
time. However, these conventions cannot be               reading speed, timing and duration, line length,
tentatively accessed; further research should            and incorrect use of hyphens in speaker
examine these rules and compare them with                identification. However, some norms of
those of others followed internationally. It is          commercial subtitling are adequately observed,
also certain that the professional codes, if             for example, segmentation synchronization,
available, would be at best secondary to cultural        punctuation, accuracy, and the use of block
regulations of the Ministry of Culture and               boxes for the sake of legibility. It is worth
Islamic Guidance. In several studies in Iran, it         noting that even professional translators can
was found that the subtitles made by the online          make errors or mistakes. Translation is a human
subtitlers are of relatively poor quality as the         activity, and no human activity can be entirely
translators simply ignore commercial subtitling          free of errors. Nevertheless, mistakes and errors
conventions, such as rules relevant to temporal          should not lead to norms, trends, and
and spatial constraints (Ameri & Khoshsaligheh,          regularities for other subtitlers. Consequently,
2019; Khoshsaligheh & Ameri, 2017b;                      the severity and frequency of errors should be
Khoshsaligheh & Fazeli Haghpanah, 2016).                 taken into consideration when distinguishing
Another research also evidences that online              professional      translators     from     quasi-
subtitlers refuse to apply censorship and the            professional or amateur ones.

                                                  Figure 1
                       Persian Subtitles of David Beckham’s Talks on Sports Channel
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60                    Subtitling in the Iranian Mediascape: Towards a Culture-Specific Typology

                                                      Figure 2
                        Persian Subtitles of Foreign Documentaries on Documentary Channel

     The Iranian VOD services, emerging in the                It is, however, envisioned that the rapid
     mid-2010s, have been offering both subtitled             development of academic research, professional
     and dubbed foreign films and TV series, as well          training, and increasing investment in the
     as Iranian fiction and non-fiction programs. As          foreign multimedia content rendition would
     for quality, VOD services barley follow                  contribute to the professional development of
     commercial subtitling guidelines, like amateur           the practice and establishment of the due social
     subtitling (discussed below). The main                   prestige of subtitling, which consequently
     difference between VOD subtitling services               would      conclude     national    professional
     and amateur subtitling is the state-requited             associations and formation of regulations and
     “cultural gatekeeping”; VOD services are                 codes of ethics and conduct soon.
     legitimate, commercial companies and work
     under a license issued by the Iranian                    3.1.2. Non-Professional Subtitling
     government. Therefore, their provided content            3.1.2.1. Amateur Subtitling
     has to be censored to conform to the regulations
     of the distribution of foreign cultural products         Amateur subtitling is the most widespread
     (Mollanazar & Nasrollahi, 2017). A telling               category of subtitling in Iran. Amateur
     example is the subtitled version of The                  subtitlers typically work for video sharing
     Irishman (2019) produced by one of the Iranian           websites distributing pirated films and TV
     VOD services. Its subtitled file was shared on           shows and are paid for the work they produce.
     Subscene, where Iranian users voiced their               Indeed, amateur subtitling in Iran is the middle
     complaints and criticisms for the strict                 ground between, on the one hand, fansubtitling,
     censorship practiced on the translated film.             which barely confines its work within the do’s
                                                              and don’ts of mainstream subtitling standards,
     Given the basic requirements of a real                   and on the other hand, quasi-professional
     profession, the subtitles produced under official        subtitling whose producers are financially
     licenses for the national television channels,           compensated for their services.
     streaming services, and authorized companies
     are at best quasi-professional. This should be           Amateur subtitlers are typically language
     emphasized that subtitling in dubbing countries          students or fledgling subtitlers trained in other
     appears to be quasi-professional, mainly due to          relevant disciplines, especially computer
     a strong dubbing tradition. Research, for                sciences who seek a paid career (Ameri &
     example, has it subtitles made in dubbing                Khoshsaligheh, 2019). Nevertheless, due to
     countries are wordier and denser than those of           their limited yet growing knowledge in
     subtitling countries (Georgakopoulou, 2009;              translation norms and standards and the
     Sokoli, 2009). Thus, countries may follow their          absence of professional, nationally-devised
     own subtitling rules and conventions, quite              conventions for Persian subtitling in terms of
     contrary to those of another country. Given that         the technical aspects of the practice, their work
     the practice varies in different countries, it is        does not enjoy high-quality standards for
     reasonable to understand the subtitling practice         frequent translation-related and technical
     from the particular context it has originated.           problems (Ameri & Khoshsaligheh, 2019).
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In the past, before the emergence of VOD                 amateur subtitling by Iranian viewers. The
services, these subtitlers were hired by pirated         results reveal that amateur subtitling, despite
film sharing websites. The payments were                 having fairly low quality, is usually preferred
unreasonably low, but amateur subtitlers had no          overdubbing because it tends to be more
choice but to accept to build up resumes and             authentic and is faster to be produced. The same
learn the practical aspects of the craft and             hypothesis was also supported in two
develop their language skills, not to mention to         experiments (Ameri, 2020; Ameri &
make a living out of it. When most video-piracy          Khoshsaligheh, 2021) where amateur subtitling
websites were taken down by the Iranian                  did not negatively affect the viewers’ reception,
government in 2018 and 2019 for providing                immersion, and understating of the program
uncensored foreign content, the amateur                  when compared with professional subtitling.
subtitlers have been recruited by the thriving
VOD services. As observed by Ameri and                   3.1.2.2. Fansubtitling
Khoshsaligheh (2019), these subtitlers do not            Fansubtitles are mission- and community-
follow commercial subtitling norms. They are             oriented. That is, the main motivation behind
solitary workers whose collaboration is in the           producing them is promoting a genre from a
translation phase only, especially in the case of        certain culture like the Korean or the Japanese.
Netflix original TV shows where the whole                Anime or video games are a perfect example
episodes are released all at once. Although              here. These subtitles are produced on a
these subtitlers may be motivated by financial           voluntarily basis, and no monetary rewards are
rewards received from the websites, a web of             sought by the fansubtitlers (Fazeli Haghpanah
other motivations, including language learning           & Khoshsaligheh, 2018; Khoshsaligheh &
is at work.                                              Ameri, 2017b). Good examples worth
Reception studies also show that Iranian                 mentioning are subtitles produced by the
viewers appear to be satisfied with amateur              Iranian group of “The Simpsons” which aims to
subtitles. Khoshsaligheh et al. (2019)’s study is        familiarize the Iranian audiences with this
the first attempt to explore the reception of            classic American animated series (Figure 3).

                                                 Figure 3
                 Website of Fansubtitling Group Dedicated to the Simpsons Animated Series

The subtitles produced for foreign stand-up              4). These subtitles conform to some technical
comedies by users of social networking                   standards of subtitling, but they are far from
services such as Instagram and Telegram are              professional standards in terms of translation
other examples for fansubtitling in Iran. For            quality, presentation rate, line length, and
instance, Standupfa, as its name implies,                segmentation. The source cultures involved in
exclusively produces Persian subtitles for               Persian fansubtitling include Anglophone,
stand-up comedies, and shares them on their              Japanese, South Korean, and Turkish in order
Instagram page and Telegram channel (Figure              of frequency.
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62                    Subtitling in the Iranian Mediascape: Towards a Culture-Specific Typology

                                                     Figure 4
          Subtitle for Stand-Up Comedy: Chris Rock: “Nowadays We Pay for Things Which Used to Be Free”

     3.1.2.3. Funsubtitling                                   subtitles may also be used for criticism and to
                                                              openly express opinions against the existing
     Like fundubbing (Chaume, 2012; Nord,                     policies, as Chaume (2020, p. 329) nicely
     Khoshsaligheh, & Ameri, 2015), funsubtitling             mentions, “fansubbers ridicule politicians and
     involves fake verbal content in the subtitles of         leaders by creating fake subtitles”. In the
     the original program, which is not difficult to          following example (Figure 5) uploaded to
     distinguish from reality. Funsubtitling, created         Aparat.com (the Iranian version of YouTube),
     by amateurs or a group of fans, is distributed           a Korean music video by Bangtan Sonyeondan
     through computer-mediated technologies and               was funsubtitled into Persian, and the subtitles
     aims to “offer false information with the                had nothing to do with the original lyrics.
     ultimate objective of entertaining the viewer”           Rather than rendering the original content, the
     (Díaz Cintas, 2018, p. 135). The humorous and            funsubtitles in Persian reads “I am fed up with
     witty nature may not necessarily aim for                 the jealous teachers who do not allow us to nap
     entreating the audience as the use of parody in          in the class”.

                                                          Figure 5
                       Funsubtitling in Persian on a Korean Music Video by Bangtan Sonyeondan
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Besides these, one political instance of fake or            through English; yet, the English version was
fun subtitles is worth mentioning here. During              fake and had nothing to do with the original
the coronavirus pandemic, many Persian                      speech. The viewers can see how Vladimir
Telegram channels distributed and shared                    Putin is complaining about a conspiracy by
(un)reliable information about this issue as an             sinister and powerful American and European
effort to support people facing problems. Much              countries, which created coronavirus to put
information was spread through translation,                 innocent people’s life in jeopardy. Despite that,
especially original educational video clips                 the original version, which is in Russian and
subtitled into Persian. Nevertheless, unreliable            entirely unfamiliar to Iranians, is unrelated to
and false information through fake subtitling               the conspiracy of American and European
was easily distrusted. A telling example is the             countries as the speech was made by Putin in
Persian subtitles of Vladimir Putin’s speech.               2016 to honor Victory Day (Table 1).
The Russian clip was subtitled into Persian

Table 1
Fakesubes of Vladimir Putin’s Speech on Victory Day in 2016
 Persian Translation (Back-translated into English)      Original Speech (Back-translated into English)
 Today, I’m tired, I’m very tired of everything.         Dear citizens of Russia, dear veterans, dear soldiers
                                                         and sailors, dear sergeants and majors, warrant
                                                         officers.
 You’ve been trying to reduce global population          Comrades, officers, and admirals.
 growth. They’ve been doing this at the expense of       With a triumph in which the joy of memory and
 innocent lives.                                         sorrow on May 9 merged.
 Death or my homeland. Cheers                            Happy holiday great victory.

3.1.2.4. Activist Subtitling                                ridicule politicians and leaders by creating fake
                                                            subtitles that either expose their hidden agenda
Persian Activist subtitling is employed as a tool           or simply make them sound ludicrous through
to achieve socio-political goals. Thanks to the             absurd utterances” (Chaume, 2020, p. 329).
prevalence of digital media and the widespread              Activist subtitling has also been present in the
influence of social networks such as YouTube,               Iranian context, especially in recent years by
Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitter, and by far                    many anti-government protesters and pro-
Telegram in Iran, individuals or groups with                government groups. Despite being blocked in
social or political agendas increasingly tend to            Iran, Twitter has been the extensively used
resort to subtitling to further their activities.           platform for sharing videos on political and
Subtitling is the most commonly used AVT                    social issues. To voice their protest across the
mode for disseminating activist multimedia                  world, the activists need to translate their
content on a nation-wide as well as global scale            content into international languages, most often
(Baker, 2019). Subtitling in this context serves            English (Figure 6). The activist subtitlers,
not only to raise objections to the existing social         besides their hands-on activity in the translation
state and power relations but also to trigger               of the audiovisual content of their choice, tend
social and political changes and call for other             to recruit collaborations through open-calls
people to attend political events (Díaz-Cintas,             mostly for help in further dissemination of the
2019). As Chaume (2019) explains, subtitling                contents as well as translation of the same
activism     includes     “engagement,        civic         content into other languages besides English.
empowerment, and dissent shown in                           Additionally, to make sure the content reaches
audiovisual translated content” and these                   out to all walks of life, the posts are reposted on
amateur subtitles are “produced by ordinary                 Telegram, the most popular social network in
citizens on digital media platforms on the web”             Iran.
(p. 330). Elsewhere he indicates that “fansubbers
Subtitling in the Iranian Mediascape: Towards a Culture-Specific Typology - International Journal of Society, Culture ...
64                    Subtitling in the Iranian Mediascape: Towards a Culture-Specific Typology

                                                     Figure 6
                                    Two Examples of Activist Subtitling on Twitter

     Similarly, pro-government activists also take             566). The subtitles for TED are created through
     advantage of subtitling. They, for example,               AMARA which is a user-based subtitling
     translate video segments into Persian, which              platform (Jiménez-Crespo, 2017). AMARA has
     confirm the state theories about specific                 the advantage of alarming the deviations from
     activities in Iran. Alternatively, they subtitle          the subtitling standards (for example, the
     video segments into English to disseminate the            recommended reading speed is 21 cps), helping
     religious or ideological doctrine on Shi’ism or           the translator have better control over its work
     the foundations of the 1979 Islamic revolution.           (Figure 7). Nevertheless, it depends on the
     No academic research to date has examined the             translator and the reviewer to follow or ignore
     textual and technical strategies used in activist         these norms. As far as the content of these
     subtitling in Persian. However, the authors’              works is concerned, they are non-fiction, as
     observations     point     to    unconventional           TED videos are influential talks by experts and
     placement, colors, sizes, and fonts of the texts.         successful people. Interestingly, this non-
                                                               professional subtitling tool has also been
     3.1.2.5. Commission-Oriented Subtitling                   integrated into the translator training programs
     Another form of subtitling in Persian is                  of some Iranian universities, such as Allameh
     commission-oriented subtitling, which is                  Tabataba'i University and Ferdowsi University
     mainly produced for non-fiction content. Also             of Mashhad, since the environment of non-
     called “crowdsubtitles”, these subtitles are              professional translation may encourage
     “commissioned by platforms like TED” (Díaz                students to be involved more in translation
     Cintas, 2018, p. 132). According to O’Hagan               tasks. As to the quality of these subtitles, a
     (2020), TED translations are non-professional             survey of the TED website suggests a variety of
     practices, which are carried out by a large               quality in Persian subtitles. These subtitles
     number of volunteers. These activities “are               appear to stick much to the original content, as
     supported by the use of cloud-based translation           required by TED’s style guidelines. Therefore,
     platforms to provide lay translators with a user-         a word-for-word rendering is likely to happen
     friendly translation       environment”      and          even though another agent reviews them.
     translators are aided by “resources such as               Because of a very faithful translation, subtitling
     glossaries” and they have “access to machine              reading speeds are usually high, and viewers
     translation in some cases” (O’Hagan, 2020, p.             may need to pause the program or play back
M. Khoshsaligheh et al. / International Journal of Society, Culture & Language, 2020, 8(2) ISSN 2329-2210   65

some sequences to grasp the content                      TED, is 21 characters per second. More
thoroughly. In TED subtitling guidelines, the            importantly, the TED translators are simply
subtitlers are required to keep as much meaning          volunteer translators and are not paid for their
as possible, and as mentioned above, the                 work, but they are credited with their name.
maximum reading speed, as recommend by

                                              Figure 7
                      Example of Commission-Oriented Subtitling in Persian for TED

3.2. Subtitling for the d/Deaf and Hard of               quality is concerned. The reasons for this trend
Hearing (SDH)                                            are probably commissioners’ unawareness of
                                                         the professional requirements, financial
3.2.1. Quasi-Professional SDH                            pressure, or lack of SDH experts.
Subtitling for people with hearing loss is a             In Iran, subtitles produced for the d/Deaf and
professional act when the final product is               hard of hearing (DHH) have a short and
received effectively by the intended users               somewhat limited history because at the time of
(Neves, 2008). As Neves (2008) states, this              completing this article (April 2020), there is
process, in order to come to the desired result,         still no strict law enforced by the government
requires someone who has in-depth knowledge              that would make SDH obligatory in practice
of the needs of the intended users, a clear              (Shokoohmand & Khoshsaligheh, 2019).
understanding of the composition, textual                Furthermore, since Iran belongs to a dubbing
conventions of the audiovisual content                   tradition where professional subtitling has
(redundancy, relevance, adequacy, cohesion,              never been used on national television, SDH
and coherence), and “the ability to capture both         has never been part of the audiovisual media
sense and sensitivity when making difficult              landscape. However, in recent years, due to the
choices” (p. 172). Given the requirements                growing awareness about media accessibility
mentioned above and the findings of the local            rights, audiovisual products, particularly film
research (e.g., Shokoohmand & Khoshsaligheh,             and TV shows, have been slightly more
2019; 2020) on the status of SDH in Iran, the            accessible to DHH viewers. Although the total
current practitioners of SDH are not mostly              number of audiovisual programs with SDH
specialists in SDH. The current trend –where             hardly represents 1% of the market in Iran, this
subtitling is exclusively aimed for deaf                 percentage is increasing steadily with promising
viewers– is the recruitment of producers of              prospects. This percentage barely includes TV
regular subtitles whose products are hardly              programs. A national channel, IRIB TV2, has
considered professional as far as subtitling
66                    Subtitling in the Iranian Mediascape: Towards a Culture-Specific Typology

     provided an accessibility service for DHH,               television series, Brain Games, since last year.
     which is a pre-recorded news program. The                This program has been dubbed in Persian, and
     service includes short texts appear on the right         the subtitles are the word- or-word transcription
     side of the screen (Figure 8). Slow reading              of the Persian dubbing. Despite having lingual
     speed and lexically and structurally simplified          complexities that may hinder immediate
     sentences are the distinguishing features of             understanding of the content, the subtitles have
     these captions.                                          the merit of conformity to the SDH conventions
                                                              such as speaker identification, sound description,
     IRIB Salamat (Health Channel) has been                   and emotion indication (see Figure 9).
     providing subtitles for an American science

                           Figure 8                                            Figure 9
       Scrolling Texts Appearing on the Right Corner of    SDH Provided By Quasi-Professional Subtitlers for a
                          the Screen                      Persian Dubbed Version of an American Science Series

     As far as SDH in the film industry is concerned,         (Szarkowska, Krejtz, Pilipczuk, Dutka, &
     such accessibility-improving subtitles can be            Kruger, 2016), the edited forms of the dialogues
     found in just a few theaters in a few big cities         reveal the subtitler’s knowledge of users’
     in Iran and are only available as closed-captions        possible cognitive deficits. Apart from the
     on DVDs and during special open-captioned                simplified dialogue list, the SDH includes
     screenings (Shokoohmand & Khoshsaligheh,                 sound effects and song lyrics, but not
     2019). The open-captioned screenings are                 paralinguistic   and     speaker     identifying
     usually provided at the request of film                  information (Shokoohmand & Khoshsaligheh,
     producers and non-governmental associations              2019).
     of the Deaf.
                                                              For the growing demand for SDH in Iran, an
     The limited SDH provided for feature films has           Iranian SDH scholar began to practice SDH in
     distinguishing features proving the subtitler’s          2020. This action is exclusively taken to control
     awareness of the unique needs of the intended            SDH practices on VOD and DVD markets. This
     audience. A good example is the SDH produced             accessibility service, being hired by one of the
     for an Iranian film, The Bodyguard (2016),               Iranian VOD services, has been the only one in
     whose textual features show the consideration            the country that applies a certain stylistic
     that DHH mostly have to process subtitles in a           guideline, and uses the findings of local SDH
     language that they do not ‘speak’ and as a               studies. Since a national subtitling guideline has
     result, they need subtitles whose reading                been unavailable, the Netflix Timed Text Style
     difficulties have been resolved (Shokoohmand             Guide (2019) has been used (Figure 10) and
     & Khoshsaligheh, 2020). Even though in                   domesticated in some cases to apply the
     intralingual subtitles, noticing deviations from         findings of the survey study conducted by
     original dialogues causes distraction and may            Shokoohmand (2019). Subtitling background
     negatively affect viewers’ comprehension                 music, for instance, was not mentioned in the
M. Khoshsaligheh et al. / International Journal of Society, Culture & Language, 2020, 8(2) ISSN 2329-2210    67

guideline; however, it has been included in              participants requested the description of the
these subtitles (see Figure 11 [Music becomes            background music.
soft and sweet]) since the majority of the

                        Figure 10                                           Figure 11
    Speaker Identification by Hyphens and Verbalized             Description of Background Music
                      Sound Effects

As can be seen, the SDH provided so far does             produced at the request of Owj Arts and Media
not entirely have the necessities of the                 Organization for feature films The Bodyguard
professional practice of SDH. Even the SDH               and Damascus Time are by no means similar in
that has followed professional standards cannot          terms of observing SDH conventions. Although
be considered professional since they are not            there are some open-captioned screenings and
based on national codes of good practice for             DVDs carrying the option of SDH, SDH is by
SDH.                                                     no means a common practice in Iran. Therefore,
                                                         the existent amateur SDH shows some
3.2.2. Non-Professional SDH                              excellent potential for new progress.
3.2.2.1. Amateur SDH                                     3.2.2.2. Fan-SDH
Due to the Iranian commissioners’ lack of                There has also been a gradual movement
knowledge in SDH and possibly economic                   towards audience engagement in the provision
constraints imposed by them, SDH producers               of audiovisual access services for the viewers
mostly have firsthand experience of subtitling           with special needs. The SDH produced by the
for DHH viewers. As a result of this, the                fansubbers is idiosyncratic and creative, aiming
subtitles do not always embody the very                  at the free distribution of audiovisual products
essence of SDH, which is making visible all              over the Internet (Figure 12). The SDH
relevant auditory information (Neves, 2008).             provided on popular social networks, in
For instance, the SDH produced for the open-             particular, Instagram, is a telling example for
captioned screening of an Iranian feature film,          this newly emerged trend in Iran, which seems
Che (2014), apart from falling short of general          to surpass official efforts in this regard soon.
subtitling standards, does not contain SDH               This service is provided for a wide range of
specific features. Moreover, users of amateur            audiovisual programs such as TV series, talk
SDH are often faced with diverse formats of              shows, current affairs programs, and feature
subtitles that do not always manage to transfer          films. and is offered by some private initiatives
the audiovisual content successfully. This               led by DHH, referred to as “participatory
inconsistency of formats is evident not only             accessibility” by Di Giovanni (2018). The
among different products, but also throughout            Persian Telegram channel Free from Silence,
the same product (Shokoohmand &                          administrated by DHH users, has produced
Khoshsaligheh, 2019), and among the subtitles            inter/intralingual subtitles for feature films,
produced at the request of the same company.             documentaries, entertainment, and educational
To illustrate the latter, the intralingual subtitles
68                     Subtitling in the Iranian Mediascape: Towards a Culture-Specific Typology

     videos since 2017. The subtitles available on                  making local audiovisual products accessible to
     the channel have very different formats and, in                DHH viewers in recent years. For instance,
     some cases, failed to adhere to the basic                      some users of Aparat.com have been producing
     standards of subtitling (e.g., subtitle placement,             intralingual subtitles for audiovisual products,
     color, and line length) (Figure 13). The                       especially popular TV programs in the last few
     mentioned initiative is also supported by                      years.
     hearing fans of SDH. These groups have been

                            Figure 12                                              Figure 13
      Use of Asterisks (Instead of Musical Notes) in a Fan-             Fan-SDH Provided for a Feature Film
          SDH to Show Background Music is Playing

     These subtitles are transcriptions of the                      the prevalence of SDH provision for feature
     dialogue list and by no means conform to SDH                   films and TV programs. The subtitles have high
     standards. Another example for fan-SDH is the                  presentation rates. However, they adhere to a
     free service offered by the Iranian fansubbing                 handful number of the SDH conventions, such
     group, Avanegaran, which is available on the                   as sound description, tone/mood description,
     group’s website, Instagram page, and Telegram                  and speaker identification; among others (see
     channel. The sole purpose of this group, as                    Figure 14).
     mentioned on its homepage, is to contribute to

                                                        Figure 14
       SDH Provided by Non-Professional Subtitlers For Segments of a Series (on the Left) and a Talk Show (on the Right)
M. Khoshsaligheh et al. / International Journal of Society, Culture & Language, 2020, 8(2) ISSN 2329-2210       69

Besides, some Iranian singers have distributed            (see Figure 15). The one big drawback with
their music videos with captioned lyrics, and             these subtitles is the high presentation rates that
even have persuaded some Instagram users to               do not allow the viewers to follow them
post their own witty and entertaining video               comfortably.
clips with intralingual subtitles on Instagram

                                                Figure 15
          SDH Provided for a Music Video (on the Left) and a Short Comic Video Clip (on the Right)

It may be concluded that the SDH produced by              incapable of fulfilling the growing demands for
amateur subtitlers, despite having many varied            AVT services.
formats and many technical drawbacks, has had
the benefit of covering a variety of popular              Besides professionals, subtitling can be and
genres that may far outweigh the poor quality             nowadays is being produced by non-expert
from DHH’s viewpoints. The merit of covering              individuals and groups who have not been
a wide range of genres, including entertainment           trained or are involved with the practice
programs, has been supported by a survey                  unprofessionally. In an attempt to explore and
conducted by Shokoohmand (2019) in which                  categorize the existing subtitling practice in the
entertainment and lifestyle programs were                 Iranian mediascape, the four criteria of the
DHH’s favorite programs.                                  service fee, quality, relevant training, and
                                                          availability of ethical codes were considered. In
4. Discussion                                             the light of these defining conditions, barely
                                                          any audiovisual translator in Iran can be
This study was an attempt to go over the status           considered a professional subtitler; that is, a
quo of Persian subtitling in Iran and clarify the         subtitler who is hired—consequently paid
distinctive differences of quasi-professional,            reasonably—and has been trained to deliver
amateur, and fansubtitling in Persian. Figure 16          audiovisual translation services in line with the
shows an illustrative summary of the existing             commercial subtitling standards. Given the
variety of subtitling in Iran.                            Iranian context, it barely happens because AVT
                                                          training is far from perfect, as it is taught very
Persian subtitlers’ job visibility has changed a          unsystematically (Khoshsaligheh & Ameri,
lot over the past few years and there exist               2017a). The Iranian undergraduate translation
relevant requirements for high-quality and                training programs have mainly focused on
professional subtitlers to meet viewers’ needs            written text translation, and marginally involve
and expectations (Díaz Cintas, 2018),                     a few modules on the translation of multimedia
especially where the dubbing industry is                  content.
70                           Subtitling in the Iranian Mediascape: Towards a Culture-Specific Typology

     More importantly, Iran has never been a                                               guidelines. Consequently, the subtitlers do not
     subtitling country. Accordingly, there is no                                          necessarily conform to a certain guideline and
     solid subtitling tradition there and no attempts                                      only render the original content according to
     have been made to devise Iran/Persian-specific                                        their personal decisions.

                                                                                    Subtitling in Iran

                                         Regular Subtitling                                                                                SDH

                             Quasi-professional      Non-professional                                                 Quasi-professional         Non-professional
                                Subtitiling             Subtitling                                                           SDH                      SDH

                                                                                                             Commision-
       Amateur Subtitiling     Fansubtitiling          Funsubtitiling       Activist Subtitiling                                    Amateur SDH                 Fan-SDH
                                                                                                         oriented Subtitiling

                                                                 Anti-government          Pro-government
                                                                 Subtitle Avtivim         Subtitle Avtivim

                                                                    Figure 16
                                                  Subtitling Typology in the Iranian Mediascape

     In general, since none of the Iranian subtitling                                      Valdeón, 2015). Using non-professional
     services meet all the four aforementioned                                             translation platforms in the classroom may
     criteria, especially the lack of a national set of                                    suggest that the distinctions between non-
     professional subtitling codes and guidelines,                                         professional and professional subtitling would
     professional subtitling is virtually non-existent.                                    be being blurred in the future (Orrego-
     However, not all subtitles could be called                                            Carmona, 2013).
     amateur accordingly. Iranian VOD service
     providers, as well as national Television                                             This research holds far-reaching implications
     channels, which produce relatively good                                               for the accessibility service of SDH as a whole.
     quality subtitles and observe a set of ideological                                    What was discussed here revealed that whether
     principles regulated by the Ministry of Culture                                       due to negligence, lack of knowledge or
     and Islamic Guidance, retain quasi-professional                                       financial constraints, most of the existing SDH
     subtitling services. Nevertheless, unauthorized                                       does not meet the principle of ‘relevance’ for
     video-sharing websites and individuals who                                            DHH users with their special needs, and only a
     produce subtitles without maintaining the                                             minimal number of subtitles conform to
     ideological regulations, fall into the category of                                    international SDH conventions. Given this
     amateur subtitling, which typically endures                                           service is fledgling in the context of Iran, it is
     questionable quality in terms of translation and                                      crucial to establish standardized context-
     technical issues. One of the cautions emerging                                        specific guidelines to ensure the adequacy of
     from this categorization is that Iranian                                              the service in Persian. To achieve this, SDH
     researchers, especially graduate students who                                         scholars, target users, service providers, SDH
     do research on non-professional subtitling,                                           practitioners, deaf associations could collaborate
     should attend to the difference between the two                                       in formulating such guidelines. Local empirical
     varieties of subtitling. Moreover, comparing                                          studies are also needed to study subjective and
     students’ subtitles with the existent non-                                            objective data on SDH users’ experiences while
     professional subtitles could enhance the quality                                      using quasi-professional and non-professional
     of the students’ translations and raise their                                         subtitles, informing the national guideline on
     pragmatic awareness (Lakarnchua, 2017;                                                SDH. Moreover, descriptive studies analyzing
M. Khoshsaligheh et al. / International Journal of Society, Culture & Language, 2020, 8(2) ISSN 2329-2210     71

implemented strategies in actual subtitled               practitioners, and to set service fees. Oversee
programs are useful in providing SDH                     training is also crucial to pave the way for the
practitioners with educational resources, which          emergence of the sustainable profession of
would help develop their critical thinking in the        subtitling into Persian (see also Díaz Cintas &
professional context.                                    Remael, 2007, pp. 39-41). Facilitating the
                                                         communication among the amateur and quasi-
The other implication arises from fansubbers’            professional subtitlers could also be a
actions and refers to the fact that in order to          contributing factor since it helps create a
satisfy the DHH audience, the decision on                nation-wide virtual community, the same as
audiovisual content needs to be made based on            what the subtitlers benefit from in Finland
their viewing preferences. To this end, as               (Tuominen, 2015).
advocated by Neves (2008), SDH trainees
should have direct interaction with DHH people           By way of conclusion, it is worth commenting
to get insight into the expectations and needs.          that although the present work tries to be
National surveys are also crucial to generate            exhaustive and comprehensive, it is evident that
data on the audience profile and preferences.            new forms of subtitling will emerge in the
Since the reaction of DHH viewers is unknown             future, and consequently, more research is of
to the various types of SDH strategies,                  necessity to explore the subtitling landscape in
reception studies could be used to this end. The         Iran.
accessibility service of SDH is in its infancy in
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