Where Are the Subtitles? Metalepsis, Subtitling and Narration

Abstract

One of the purposes of writing this book has been to help restore to audiovisual translation the visibility which, like most modes of translation, it actively seeks to avoid. Both the authenticising subtitles discussed in the previous chapter and conventional post- subtitles depend for their effect on their almost subliminal impact. According to Donald Richie ‘any oddity, any term too heightened, as well as any mistake, calls attention to this written dialogue. I won’t even use exclamation points. The language should enter the ear as the image enters the eye’ (quoted in Nornes 1999: 31). The subtitler Henri Béhar says that if subtitles ‘aren’t invisible, you fail. The titles should subtly give people the impression that they are understanding the characters speaking, not reading words on the screen’ (quoted in Rosenberg 2007). Anecdotally, we know that this can be the case. If a translation is too visible, it becomes itself an object of scrutiny and its capacity to fulfil the function for which it has been commissioned is diminished. In the case of a time- bound translation mode like subtitling, too great an obtrusiveness will compromise the ability of the viewer to ‘read’ the audiovisual text and to process the subtitles themselves. The critical invisibility of subtitles is a necessary consequence of the transparency explicitly aimed at by subtitlers.