Tapping the Power of Foreign Language Films: Audiovisual Translation as Cross-cultural Mediation

What picture is given by foreign-language films via subtitling or dubbing of how people talk and negotiate interpersonal meaning and interaction in other languages - address one another, agree/disagree, apologize, participate in social talk, professional talk, etc.? How do foreign-language film audiences understand foreign films and respond to the linguistic and cultural representations conveyed through subtitling or dubbing and audiovisual translation (AVT)? How do these representations affect personal attitudes and personal or professional intercultural living? What is the value of AVT as a tool for cross-cultural literacy?

The proposed network will address these topical but neglected concerns, in research and by the public. It is predicated on four basic observations:

- the circulation of foreign-language films relying on subtitling or dubbing to reach their public has increased immeasurably with digitization and global dissemination;
- our research understanding of how subtitling and dubbing work as an expressive medium and represent other languages is fragmented;
- we know barely anything from research or the industry of the impact on audiences of subtitling and dubbing as a medium for cross-cultural exchange, despite films' global availability;
- there is limited public or industry recognition of subtitling and dubbing's role in making access to foreign films possible and shaping film audiences' intercultural experience.

The network will engage with the concerns embedded in these observations on two fronts - cross-disciplinary research and knowledge exchange and impact. Its main activities will be three events on themes interconnecting the objectives listed in the previous section and defined by the concerns outlined below. They will involve cross-disciplinary expertise from academic research (AVT and film studies, intercultural pragmatics, psycho- and cognitive linguistics) and the industry (AVT professionals, film and media stakeholders) in a mix of research and impact-oriented activities (research workshops, pilot educational outreach, focus groups, public presentations and roundtables). Research participants will be drawn from centres in the UK and abroad, to establish the network as an international platform, in line with its concerns and research ambitions.

Films are significant vehicles exposing the public through AVT to modes of expression and being other than their own. They have acquired unprecedented currency as a medium for cross-cultural exchange. They are widely promoted as such, mostly with no reference to what makes access possible for audiences with no knowledge of languages other than their own. The British Film Institute gives pride of place to 'cultural exchange' in its international strategy, for example, with no mention of what makes cultural exchange possible. From a research perspective, we are only beginning to understand how subtitling and dubbing depict language use - how, in their make-belief form shaped by medium constraints (eg synchrony, space, time) and different linguistic and cultural encoding across languages, they are harnessed, via the target text, to source texts and naturally occurring interaction. We know next to nothing of how the interlingual representations conveyed to audiences affect their perceptions of, and responses to, otherness, particularly in view of the cultural mismatch between the foreign seen on screen and the pragmatic expectations triggered by subtitled/ dubbed text in their own language. In reception, AVT research studies have focused largely on psycholinguistic processes (eg reading speeds, display times, text segmentation in subtitling), and, in the industry, on audience profiling or preferences for one modality or the other.

There are few issues currently more topical than intercultural understanding and tolerance. Research into how foreign films fit into the project of promoting it is overdue.

The network project has two main impact goals:

1) to draw to public attention the cross-cultural impact on society of cultural products accessible on an ever larger scale via audiovisual translation, and to raise the profile of AVT with the public and film industry, from its current status as a covert and often misconstrued access medium to a key mediator of interculturality;

2) to promote AVT as a tool for cultural mediation and interculturality.

With these goals, it aims to enhance understanding of processes and attitudes that strike at the heart of public life: how we respond to other cultures and their people in multicultural societies and how this impacts on our personal and professional lives makes headlines almost every day, and keeps large numbers of governmental and other agencies busy.

Knowledge exchange between the research community and stakeholders outside academia is fundamental to the project's impact and underpins these goals: how AVT is understood is patchy, based on technical and linguistic simplifications and misconceptions that come in the way of doing interlingual subtitling and dubbing justice as mediums of intercultural literacy. To change how AVT is perceived and responded to is a priority for the network. It is reflected in the design of the activities for its three interrelated events, which combine interdisciplinary research workshops and public-faced engagement with third-sector stakeholders' and the public, training and educational outreach. Benefits will be reciprocal: the experience of non-academic beneficiaries and their input are a key ingredient for the research that the network proposes to develop. Non-academic beneficiaries encompass different constituencies at different levels:

a) communities and the wider public at local East of England/UEA level, and beyond with London-based public activities - talks and public roundtables, at Cinema City Norwich and the BFI St Stephen Street venue; priming at the 3rd Norwich City of Interculture (NCI) public event organised by the PI's School at the Forum, main local public-events venue (with workshops, poster displays, AVT and Interculture poster competition) (26-27 Feb 2016);

b) third-sector organisations, also at local and national level and their wider publics (Cinema City in Norwich, BFI/BAFTA in London) - representatives will be involved in the activities detailed in a), and follow-ups;

c) schools and foreign language teaching staff and learners, locally and beyond - templates for cross-cultural literacy through AVT activities will be piloted locally, then disseminated and developed via the UEA/PPL Outreach and other portals (eg Routes into Languages)

d) AVT industry stakeholders, practitioners - with representatives in both research and public-faced activities; Translators Associations will be associated with the project's AVT profile-raising campaign.

Dissemination will engage the media locally and nationally, thus the general public on a broader scale.

The PI brings to the project extensive experience of impact-generating projects engaging public communities, professionals and public sector agencies, as main organiser of a range of public-faced events: Let's Talk Public Roundtables and Professional and Community Translation panel as part of her Cross-cultural Pragmatics at a Crossroads conference series (2006, 2011, 2013) (www.uea.ac.uk/lcs/research/cross-cultural-pragmatics-at-a-crossroads-iii); Research & Engagement seminar series with professionals and third-sector stakeholders (launched Dec 2011 with 'Interpreting and Translating in Police Contexts' and input from the Norfolk Constabulary and INTRAN translation agency). The project will be able to capitalise on the impact infrastructure in place in the PI's School, with its well-established Outreach and NCI networks and events, sponsored by local and other organisations (eg Yakult) and the AHRC (2013; www.uea.ac.uk/lcs/city-of-interculture#video/0/)