Media for All - Anvers

L’Ataa prendra part à la conférence internationale « Media for All » qui se tiendra à Anvers du 22 au 24 octobre 2009 sur le thème « Quality Made to Measure ».

Voici un résumé de l’intervention que Samuel Bréan y fera,
in English.

Subtitling the inaudible?
Subjectivity in audiovisual translation

Subtitlers often leave certain portions of the audiovisual text untranslated, whether for reasons of lack of space (i.e. time) available or by choice. It may thus seem paradoxical to focus on the opposite scenario: when the subtitler chooses to translate elements that are hardly perceptible, or even completely inaudible, to a native speaker watching the film.

A recent British DVD edition of Une femme mariée (Jean-Luc Godard, 1964) provides several instances of such a subtitling, which can be usefully compared with other translations of the film. Godard’s oeuvre is notoriously complex, mixing sound, image and text in elaborate ways. It often poses challenges to translators, arguably culminating in his Histoire(s) du cinéma (1989-1998): “As ‘unwatchable’ and as ‘unlistenable’ in many respects as Finnegans Wake is ‘unreadable’, the first two parts of Godard’s Histoire(s)… are also almost as hard to translate as the Joyce book.” (Jonathan Rosenbaum). This paper will therefore also draw examples from other films by Godard to shed a light on the choices made by the subtitler of Une femme mariée, and help us to see the crucial role played by subjectivity in subtitling.

Rappel : l’an dernier, nous avions pris part à la conférence sœur de Media for All, Language and the Media, un rendez-vous qui nous avait permis de revoir nos excellents confrères scandinaves et polonais et de nouer d’autres liens, notamment en Serbie, en Espagne et en Grèce.

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