User:Ghada Ahmed91/sandbox/Audiovisual Translation Studies

Media and digital technology have played a crucial role in the age of communication and globalization. In parallel with this source of digitalization, audiovisual translation (AVT) has emerged and set as a newcomer area of interest. This field received little attention and research in the beginnings as it didn’t fit into text-type classifications or language-function categories which dominated the translation studies field (Zabalbeascoa, 2008) Audiovisual translation has several modes such as subtitling, dubbing, subtitles for deaf and hard-of-hearing, audio-description, sign language, video-game localization, museum translation and so on. The first contributions to the concept of AVT as a field of study were made by Laks (1957) and Babel (1960) and the first research was conducted by Fodor (1976). However, this area has been firming up its foundations as an area of profession and research since the twentieth century, “identifying domains of concern, evolving methodologies, developing greater rigour in research, finding and finding interdisciplinary partners” (Perez-Gonzales, 2019). Grasping an inside look at AVT and its modes easily helps in understanding that such a field has widely experienced changes and progress in the processes of production and content distribution. On the one hand, Chaume (2018) points out that “descriptive translation studies has helped researchers understand how AVT is shaped” through the cultural approaches that were drawn from it, focusing on ideology, otherness, postcolonialism and other issues. Subtitling, for instance as an AVT modality, has moved from the stage of intertitles into a greater extent of working on films and other audiovisual materials. Over the previous and the latest century, AVT is witnessing different opportunities and challenges led by digitization market needs. That is, it has encountered changes of norms regarding products of its several modes, developing more areas of research proving that AVT research has matured, as well as the research tools and digital formats following translation technologies and automatized processes. Also, even the core definitions and terminology in AVT have had certain changes among scholars over time. The most interesting fact about the evolvement of a field as such is taking it way further to conduct research experiments linking it to other fields such as psychology, media, activism, and education and learning languages. Studying the history of audiovisual translation and all the journey its modalities have gone through since 1905s supports the idea that it is being developed and has recently attracted the interest of more professionals and scholars of translation.