Attitude of the Lithuanian Audience towards the Mainstream Audiovisual Translation Modes

Abstract

Technological advances resulted in the emergence of Audiovisual Translation (AVT) as the most dynamic field within Translation Studies. A significant increase in the amount and variety of audiovisual production has necessitated research on the mainstream modes of AVT in many countries, Lithuania among them. However, the attitude of the Lithuanian audience towards AVT modes such as subtitling, dubbing and voice-over, has not been investigated so far. Thus, this particular study aims at identifying the Lithuanian attitude in order to find out what factors essentially influence the choice of the Lithuanian viewer. The investigation is based on a survey-questionnaire method involving 300 randomly chosen respondents. The empirical results are discussed applying methodology of Koolstra, Peeters and Spinhof (2002) and their classification of the mainstream AVV methods into three different categories of information processing, aesthetics, and learning effects. In the light of our experiential study subtitling has more disadvantages in the information processing category, whereas its advantages are revealed in the categories of aesthetics and learning effects. The findings suggest that the most significant advantages of dubbing are attributed to the aesthetic category; meanwhile the disadvantages of dubbing are associated with learning effects. Although voice-over is highly valued for its authenticity and objectivity by prominent scholars worldwide, the Lithuanian audience does not consider these factors to be of the utmost importance. Finally, the present study pinpoints the advantages of AVT methods for the blind and visually impaired, the deaf and hard-of-hearing, and non-Lithuanian audience.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.sal.0.24.6417