New book reveals audience responses to film subtitling

Do subtitles have an impact on how audiences understand the movie? A University of Nottingham academic published a book on viewers' interpretations of dynamic interactions represented in films via subtitling. Xiaohui Yuan, a lecturer in Translation and Interpreting Studies at The University of Nottingham, shared her views in the latest book Politeness and Audience Response in Chinese-English Subtitling on how the face negotiation is dealt with when subtitling between Chinese and English. Her book aims to explore and understand how people use verbal and non-verbal languages in society to manage interpersonal relationships across cultures, how it is delineated in Chinese and English films respectively and what Chinese and British viewers' interpretations of dynamic rapport interactions represented in films via subtitling are. Yuan said: "The research is highly original and fills the gap in several areas of Audiovisual Translation and Intercultural Studies. Particularly, it has for the first time established a composite model to explain people's relationship management features in Western and Far Eastern cultures. Chinese and English are markedly remote from each other in both linguistic and cultural terms. The research is also the first using Chinese-English data to successfully demonstrate the representation of those interpersonal features in the process of subtitling and how it facilitates viewers' correct or incorrect comprehension of protagonists' personality, attitude and intentions." - Audience response data shows cultural differences.