Advantages & Disadvantages of Subtitling

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Advantages & Disadvantages  of Subtitling

Subtitles can be shortly defined as “an abbreviated version of the dialogue, which is projected on the screen”.

Advantages of subtitling

–     Subtitling is far less expensive than dubbing, which is why smaller countries tend to favour this mode of transfer. It is worth mentioning that voice-over, where both the original and the translated versions can be heard, is even less expensive than subtitling and is widely used in countries such as Russia and Poland.

–     When they started to use subtitles, the Scandinavian countries discovered that listening to the original dialogue made it possible for the viewers to improve their language skills. In 1987, a research project was carried out on 4200 students of English from nine European countries. This research revealed that students from “subtitling countries” were better at listening comprehension than students from “dubbing countries.

Disadvantages of subtitling

–     The audience cannot see the screen. They have to pay too much attention to the translated words at the expense of the other surrounding elements such as the sound, the movie set or the characters.

–     Subtitles are mainly criticised because they omit elements of the original dialogue.

–     It is easy for viewers who know both the original and subtitled versions to detect mistakes. However, it is far more difficult to improve subtitles in a concise way.