Results from interviews from the "Exploring subtitle reading process with eye tracking technology" project

1. What makes a good subtitle?
Understanding people's views
on subtitling quality.
Olivia Gerber-Morón
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Agnieszka Szarkowska
Centre for Translation Studies, UCL
Accessibility in Film,
Television, and Interactive
Media Conference
14-15 October 2017, York

2. What are your ideal subtitles?

4. Speed rate
“It is very frustrating and disconcerting to see
how the subtitle disappears from the screen
when we have not yet finished reading it, or to
end up with a feeling of stress because we have
been forced to read too fast and have not had
the time to enjoy the images […].”
(Díaz Cintas & Remael, 2007: 95)

6. Line-breaks
”When we segment a sentence, we force the
brain to pause its linguistic processing for a while
[…] we should try to force this pause on the brain
at a point where the semantic load has already
managed to convey a satisfactorily complete
piece of information.”
(Díaz Cintas & Remael, 2007: 173)

8. The study
▪ Experiment 1: Subtitle presentation rate
with Hungarian audio
– Different speeds: 12 characters per second (cps), 16 cps, 20 cps
▪ Experiment 2: Subtitle presentation rate
with English audio
– 12 cps, 20 cps
▪ Experiment 3: line-breaks
– Segmentation and line-breaks
– Two or three lines

9. Participants
▪ 97 people
– 77 Hearing
• 30 English
• 21 Polish
• 26 Spanish
– 10 Hard of hearing
– 9 Deaf
▪ Aged 19-74

10. Dependent variables
▪ Comprehension/recall
▪ Cognitive load
▪ Enjoyment
▪ Preference
▪ Eye tracking measures
▪ And post-test interview

11. Why interviews?
▪ To gather more useful feedback
from participants after the experiment
▪ To consider inspirational ideas
for further research
▪ To implement suggestions to improve
subtitle quality
▪ To provide a space to participants
to express their opinion about subtitling

12. 1. General questions about AVT habits
2. Speed
3. Segmentation (line-breaks)
4. Ideal subtitles
Structure of the interview

13. ▪ Many hearing participants tend
to prefer slower subtitles
▪ Synchronization
▪ Keywords and gist of the scene
▪ Complexity of the film
Results - Subtitle speed
with unfamiliar original soundtrack

14. Generally I prefer it to have as much text as
possible because if you’re speaking in a
language I don’t understand I feel like I’m
missing out on some of the information if the
subtitles don’t have enough text, so I’d rather
like have it to be as informative as possible.
English hearing participant
“

15. Results - Subtitle speed
with familiar original soundtrack
Deaf people:
Verbatim for ENG/HUNG
Comparing subtitles and
lip reading
Synchronization
Pace of the voice
Hearing people:
Verbatim
Comparing subtitles and
audio
Synchronization
Subtitles as a backup
plan

16. “ When I’m watching something I understand
I’d like to be able to read exactly
what I’m hearing, and when I’m watching
something that I don’t understand
I prefer there to be minimal words
in the subtitles so that I can get a gist of
what’s being said and still be able to follow
the scenes of the movie.
English hearing participant

17. Line-breaks:
Shape/syntax
Continuity
“Natural thoughts”
Fast/Slow readers
Results – Segmentation
Number of lines:
Genre
Habit

18. Results – Segmentation
In general, participants of all the groups stated
that they prefer two-line subtitles and line-breaks
that follow syntactic and semantic rules.

19. “Line breaks have their value,
yet when you are reading fast,
most of the time
it becomes less relevant.
Deaf participant

20. I felt that it almost helped to split those because it
encouraged you to move on to the next sentence,
you had to follow it through, so when “Prime
Minister” was split I actually thought it was easier to
engage in what was being said because you’re
forced to continue...
English hearing participant
“

21. “I didn’t like that layout, it annoyed me because
they didn’t end the sentence with grammar, like
they’d have a comma and then they’d have
another word after it, or just one letter after it and
that was really annoying, to see that one instead
of just putting it all on the bottom line.
English hearing participant

22. “Asymmetric shape helps a lot, why?
It’s like speech; when you are speaking you
always give hints about if you are continuing the
phrase.[...] Asymmetric shape visually helps [...]
and it facilitates this thing of... this sense of
continuing.
Spanish participant

23. What are your ideal subtitles?
Hearing people
Synchronization
Translation
Easy to read
Hard of hearing & Deaf
Layout: black-box
Verbatim
Orality
– Pauses
– Interjections

24. I think when subtitles are good you don’t
think about it at all, you just read them. So I
think the measure of good subtitles is when
you don’t really think about it at all, you just
take in what’s being said.
Polish participant
“

25. So what?
▪ Ideas for future lines of research:
– Experiments with complex audiovisual material
– Test different genres
– Test fast-paced dialogues + duration
▪ Familiarity with the original soundtrack determines
preference for verbatim or shorter subtitles
▪ Many participants stated that asymmetric shape helps for
continuity in reading subtitles
▪ Habit plays an important role on the perception of subtitles

26. www.facebook.com/SureProject
This project has received funding from the European Union’s
Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme
under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No. 702606