Subtitling Norms for Television

In most subtitling countries, those lines at the bottom of the screen are the most read medium of all, for which reason they deserve all the academic attention they can get. This monograph represents a large-scale attempt to provide such attention, by exploring the norms of subtitling for television. It does so by empirically investigating a large corpus of television subtitles from Scandinavia, one of the bastions of subtitling, along with other European data.
The aim of the book is twofold: first, to provide an advanced and comprehensive model for investigating translation problems in the form of Extralinguistic Cultural References (ECRs). Second, to empirically explore current European television subtitling norms, and to look into future developments in this area.
This book will be of interest to anyone interested in gaining access to state-of-the-art tools for translation analysis, or in learning more about the norms of subtitling, based on empirically reliable and current material.

Aline Remael, Hogeschool Antwerpen:
Subtitling Norms for Television is a comprehensive and carefully researched academic study that will soon occupy the bookshelves of translation studies scholars, researchers in AVT and AVT practitioners alike. It takes the time to introduce and contextualise subtitling within AVT, but then moves on into the very specialized area of subtitling norms and extralinguistic cultural references (ECR’s), by the way of descriptive translation studies, drawing on a vast corpus of original material and a sound theoretical framework. Indeed, the book places subtitling, and AVT more generally, squarely within descriptive translation studies, demonstrating the relevance of its concepts and methodology for AVT, but also the relevance of technology-driven AVT for Translation Studies. In addition, Jan Pedersen’s meticulous analysis of subtitling strategies and the parameters that influence them is prime teaching material, and of great interest to practitioners in search of translation solutions. Finally, and equally importantly, the book raises new questions and is written in an engaging and accessible style that I truly hope will inspire many.