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Article published In: FORUM
Vol. 20:1 (2022) ► pp.134–157

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A diachronic corpus-driven study of fansubbing

Do the presentation standards employed by the fansubbers in Iran change over time?

 | Ferdowsi University of Mashhad
 | Kashmar Higher Education Institute
Published online: 15 June 2022
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https://doi.org/10.1075/forum.21004.tag
Abstract
What is of interest here is whether subtitling community in a country changes over time. Particularly, by taking a diachronic approach to AVT, the present paper attempts to investigate the degree of conformity of Iranian fansubbers to professional subtitle presentation standards to see if any change has happened in the behavior and characteristics of Iranian fansubbing community over time. To this end, we developed a diachronic corpus of subtitles consisting of 50 films belonging to 2008 and 2018, a decade later, to gauge variations (violations) from a set of standards. The findings suggest that generally fansubbers, although possibly unconsciously, show a higher degree of conformity to professional subtitle presentation standards over time. Concludingly, the fan AVT in Iran, in the corpus under investigation, has evolved in terms of professionalism. Finally, the changes seen in the community can call for some possible modifications required to update or revise the present standards.
Résumé
Dans la présente étude, nous cherchons à savoir si la pratique du sous-titrage d’un pays change au fil du temps. En particulier, en adoptant une approche diachronique de la traduction audiovisuelle, nous avons tenté d’étudier le degré de conformité des sous-titrages faits par des amateurs iraniens aux normes professionnelles pour voir s’il y a eu des changements notables au fil du temps. À cette fin, nous avons constitué un corpus diachronique de sous-titres de 50 films de l’année 2008 et de 2018, une décennie plus tard, pour voir les variations (violations) par rapport à un ensemble de normes. Les résultats suggèrent que généralement les « fansubbers », bien qu’inconsciemment, montrent un degré plus élevé de conformité aux normes professionnelles au fil du temps, ce qui nous conduit à conclure que la traduction audiovisuelle effectuée par des amateurs, du moins dans le corpus étudié, a évolué en Iran en termes de professionnalisme, les changements observés suggérant des mises à jour éventuelles des normes actuelles.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
    • 2.1Corpus-based AVT background
    • 2.2Fansubbing in Iran
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Problems and limitations in data collection
    • 3.2Corpus design
    • 3.3Framework and analytical tools
  • 4.Analysis of the corpus and results
    • 4.1Expected reading speed
    • 4.2Maximum single- and double-line subtitle length
    • 4.3Maximum single- and double-line subtitle duration
    • 4.4Maximum number of lines
    • 4.5Minimum duration of a single-word subtitle
  • 5.Concluding remarks
  • 6.Limitations and suggestions for further research
  • References
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