Subtitling for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, Audio Description and Audio Subtitling in Multilingual TV Shows

Abstract

Multilingualism in audiovisual productions has substantially increased in recent years as a reflection of today’s globalised world. While the number of publications looking at the phenomenon from the perspective of audiovisual translation (AVT)—especially interlingual subtitling and dubbing—has grown considerably in the last decade, there seems to be relatively little research on the rendering of multilingualism from the perspective of accessibility modes, namely subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing (SDH) and audio description (AD). This article aims to investigate how multilingualism is rendered for deaf and hard-of-hearing as well as blind and partially sighted audiences, focusing on SDH and AD, as well as audio subtitling (AST). The study analyses a small corpus of TV shows available on Netflix and aims to highlight how multilingualism is made accessible both in SDH and AD. The products selected for the study had to satisfy three main criteria: they had to be a recent production, include the presence of an L1 (English) and one or more third languages and offer both intralingual SDH (closed captions) and AD. The results show that, even within the context of a single streaming platform, the strategies applied to deal with multilingualism seem to vary quite significantly both in SDH and AD/AST, ranging from neutralisation to L3 visibility.