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The purpose of this volume is to look at how languages and cultures are
represented through audiovisual translation (AVT). Empirical, case-study-
based research over recent decades has given us a lot of data on the kinds of
transformative actions carried out on audiovisual texts by the operations of
dubbing and subtitling, which are the principal modes of AVT. But a related
question also needs to be addressed—namely, the way in which AVT is itself
represented in the paratexts of films.
This may seem a slightly rarefied topic, when we already know that AVT
shares in the invisibility problem of translation as a whole (Venuti 1995,
2008; Nornes 1999, 2007). But it is timely to look again at the visibility, or
otherwise, of AVT. The United Kingdom, where I am based at time of writ-
ing, has recently seen a rise in visibility both in literary translation (Tonkin
2017: 8) and in subtitling, particularly on television (Frost 2011; Lawson
2016; Tate 2016). The DVD format, which revolutionised the consumption
of AVT, turned 20 in 2017, in which time it has seen a substantial reduction
in market share1 in favour of streaming and downloading. There has been
a surge in interest in fan-produced and user-produced AVT. It is therefore a
useful moment to consider how all of this has affected the profile of AVT.
I argue in this chapter that AVT enjoys certain forms of visibility in the pa-
ratexts of film that invite analysis and that speak to the ways in which those
translations represent other languages and cultures. At the same time, these
forms of visibility contend with other film-paratextual practices which tend
to ignore or sideline AVT.
What Is the Film Paratext?
The concept of paratext was introduced by Genette in his 1982 work
Palimpsestes (Genette 1997: 3) 2 and developed in Seuils (literal meaning:
thresholds; 1987). Genette’s concept is a book-based one which takes for
granted the status of the book as a privileged cultural artefact. The paratext
frames, and indeed sometimes substitutes for, our reading of a book; no
book can exist without some kind of paratext. Genette draws a distinc-
tion between peritext, which is located “within the same volume” (Genette
13 “New and Improved Subtitle
Translation”
Representing Translation in
Film Paratexts
Carol O’Sullivan (University of Bristol)
266 Carol O’Sullivan
1997: 4) and ‘epitext’, which is “located outside the book” (ibid.: 5). Peri-
texts may include titles, authors’ names, epigraphs, prefaces or postfaces,
chapter titles or notes and so on. Epitexts include letters, diaries, promo-
tional interviews, posters and external textual material which has in some
way a framing function.
Genette already foresaw an application of the concept of paratext to
film (Genette 1997: 407), but, as has been argued elsewhere, his distinc-
tion between peritext and epitext is problematic for film (Tybjerg 2004:
486; O’Sullivan 2011: 158–9). Subtitles are particularly difficult to clas-
sify in Genettian terms; while for many decades subtitles were physically
burned onto the print of the film whose dialogue they translated, today’s
viewer can choose between a selection of subtitles, or between subtitles and
no subtitles. The intertitles of silent film are similarly problematic in their
paratextual status; they were often shipped separately to the film; they are
often missing from surviving film prints and have to be reconstructed; they
are very often reworked in translation.
Genette’s concept of paratext is very author centred (Klecker 2015: 403)
and casts the author as the ultimate authority over their work. Genette’s
model is therefore much more concerned with understanding how authors
consider that their works should be read and understood than with un-
derstanding how books are promoted in the marketplace. Film, as Alberto
Pezzotta has observed (1989: 6), requires a more market-oriented view of
paratexts (as indeed does literature, but that is beyond the scope of this
chapter).
It has been asserted, in an excellent recent piece by Cornelia Klecker
(2015: 404), that the distinction between peritext and epitext “can be eas-
ily transferred” to film. I am not sure I agree. Undoubtedly, there are some
film paratexts which sit intuitively easily with Genette’s distinction, e.g. title
sequences as peritexts; posters and promotional interviews as epitexts.3 But
film does not share the stability of the book format. The home video revolu-
tion did, admittedly, create homologies between film and book by introduc-
ing the film that could be owned in an accessibly priced copy and exhibited
on easily available technologies—we talk about ‘owning’ a film as we own
a book—but compared to the centuries of continuity in the book format,
film formats have changed very rapidly over the decades. Projection of film
prints, with 35mm being the standard gauge, in the first half of the twenti-
eth century was followed in the second half by a choice between cinema or
television viewing. From early on, there were also ‘substandard’ home or
club viewing formats of 16mm, 8mm, Super 8 and so on. VHS tapes were
popularised in the first half of the 1980s. DVDs were introduced in 1997
and have already been partly superseded in home viewing by streaming and
downloading.
For this reason, our assumptions about what film paratext is (and indeed
about what film viewing is) are in part generational. My generation bought
and collected films; they were “available to rent or buy on video” from my
“New and Improved Subtitle Translation” 267
childhood. Pezzotta observes that with the coming of home video, “il film
[. . .] acquista l’equivalente della copertina del libro—mentre prima era un
oggetto anonimo e ingombrante, chiuso in scatoloni metallici” [“film [. . .]
acquires the equivalent of the book cover—while before it was a clumsy
anonymous object, shut away in metal cans”] (1989: 9).
Since film paratexts have been in a near-constant state of evolution
through the history of the cinema, elements of the paratext may be peri-
textual in some exhibition contexts, or time periods, and epitextual in oth-
ers. The Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer wished to avoid including
opening credits in several of his films, including La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc
(1928), Vredens Dag (1943) and Ordet (1955) in order to promote greater
immediacy of experience for viewers. As Casper Tybjerg (2004: 482) points
out, however, during Vredens Dag’s first run in Denmark, audiences had
access to the film’s cast and crew details both through a folder published
by the cinema for the film’s launch and in the form of the usual ‘program
booklet’, much like a theatre programme: “Dreyer himself could have been
said to have decided to make this cast list [. . .] part of the epitext” (ibid.).
In recent years, subtitles have become more often epitextual than peritex-
tual. For DVDs and Blu-rays, peritexts include language menus and cover
art. Special features are both epitextual (part of the package) and peritextual
(because optional): you can watch a film on DVD without ever watching
them, and they may be present in some editions and not in others. Epitexts,
which include reviews, advertising and promotional material, directors’
comments and trailers, may become peritextual when adopted for home
viewing formats in the form of directors’ commentaries and bonus features.
I conclude, following Georg Stanitzek, that different media formats have
different paratextual configurations. Stanitzek’s key distinction (2005: 38–
40) is between film and television, but I would argue that all the different
formats—films projected in their theatrical versions, films on VHS, films on
DVD, films on streaming sites—are framed paratextually in different ways
and invite different angles of analysis.
There are very good reasons for continuing to use the concept of para-
text, while realizing that it has not only medium-specific properties but also
period- and format-specific properties. In this chapter, I will be considering
the visibility of translation in a number of different paratextual environ-
ments, all of which contribute, or have contributed to, film spectatorship
and the representation (or non-representation) of translation in the film
marketplace.
Peritext and Translation
We can most easily speak of the peritexts of film in the context of traditional
theatrical exhibition, where the spectator is present in a cinema to see a film
screened according to parameters determined by the distributor and the cin-
ema management. This contrasts with more interactive environments, such
268 Carol O’Sullivan
as viewing online, where the viewer can start, stop, rewind, etc., at will, or
watching a DVD or Blu-ray, where the viewer navigates a series of menu
options.
The main peritexts of translation in the context of theatrical exhibition
are attributions of subtitling or dubbing authorship. Details of the dubbing
were often found in the opening credits in the early decades of sound, but
are now more likely to be found in the closing credits.4 Subtitling authorship
attribution is very patchy, even within a single target market (O’Sullivan,
forthcoming). In the early years of sound, it was more common for subti-
tlers to be named in the credits of a film, perhaps by analogy with (inter)title
writers in the silent period, some of whom were stars in their own right. Up
until at least the 1960s, subtitle credits were sometimes to be found in the
opening credits of a film, either as a superimposed title or as part of a credit
sequence which was localised into the target language. Now they are more
often to be found, where they are included, at the end of films. Where they
are available, they allow the audience at least to be aware of a ‘translating
presence’ in the transmission of a film; where they are not present, they re-
inforce the overall invisibility of AVT.
A key factor facilitating the invisibility of AVT today is the fact that these
translator credits in the cinema are not usually reinforced by other para-
texts. By contrast, in the 1930s and 1940s, it was not uncommon for sub-
titlers’ names to appear in newspaper advertisements (Weidmann 2014);
Mai Harris, the doyenne of British subtitling from the 1930s to the 1960s,
is mentioned as author of the subtitles in several press reviews of her films.
Herman G. Weinberg, the best-known subtitler in the United States in the
same period, is frequently mentioned in reviews. Today, interviews with
subtitlers are rare, and the interviews that do get published tend to be in
relation to a subtitler’s professional practice in general, and the particular
challenges of translation for subtitling, rather than as part of the promotion
of a particular film. No ‘author function’ is conferred on the audiovisual
translator.
Choose Your Own Translation
The field of translational paratexts is more complex when it comes to DVD
or Blu-ray viewing. Perhaps the most immediately obvious peritextual site
of translation is the DVD menu. DVD menu choices revolutionised the vis-
ibility of dubbing over subtitling; in theory at least, the DVD format offered
up to 8 different dialogue tracks and up to 32 different subtitle tracks
(O’Hagan 2007: 157). Although discs have sometimes offered a transfer
of an already hard-subtitled film, with no more optionality than a ‘play’
command, such discs are in the minority. Almost all DVD menus offer at
least intralingual or SDH subtitles for the film; most feature film DVDs
offer language options as well. In dubbing territories, these usually include
a choice between subtitled or dubbed options in the target language. DVD
“New and Improved Subtitle Translation” 269
makes these tracks available through an interface designed to allow users to
set the terms on which they watch the film, within the parameters laid out
by the architecture of the interface. The format often offers the possibility
of viewing a film with a dubbed soundtrack and subtitles simultaneously.
With Blu-ray presentation, technical advances are beginning to allow for
viewers to reposition subtitles according to their preference (e.g. within or
outside the frame) and even to resize the subtitles (Sanchez 2015: 143–144).
After many decades when researchers and cinephiles relied on occasional,
sometimes difficult-to-repeat theatrical viewings and rather impressionistic
memories of films for their work, the DVD format was to revolutionise the
study of AVT (Kayahara 2005).
At the same time as it was making it much easier to study AVT, the DVD
format arguably gave rise to an over-dependence on DVD versions as the
object of study for AVT researchers. I use the term ‘over-dependence’ not
because valuable work has not been done on AVT through the study of
DVDs—the format has been fundamental to the development of AVT
studies—but because the DVD format, by its very nature, has a number
of limitations in respect of its representation of translation. For instance,
DVD menus tend to have a very monolingual idea of the source and target
languages: these menus struggle with the multilingualism present in films
or with meeting the language needs of a heterogeneous range of spectators.
This means that the DVD’s representation of a film’s linguistic landscape
and its translation is often quite reductive (O’Sullivan 2011).
Another problem for the (re)presentation of translation in home view-
ing formats is that disc menus may not frame the choice of translated ver-
sions as a choice about translation. Some DVDs do—e.g. with terms such
as ‘language options’ or ‘language set-up’ in the case of English-language
DVDs—but others may simply speak of a ‘set-up’ which turns translation
into a technical category akin to the choice of a mono or stereo soundtrack.
Even more problematically, the provenance of translations on DVD and
Blu-ray formats is seldom revealed; we rarely know who subtitled the film
and in practice never know exactly when those translations were produced.
This means that considering the question of retranslation, which is one of
the key potential areas of visibility for translators, becomes methodologi-
cally difficult.
Retranslation
Retranslation is an intrinsic feature of AVT. This has not, to date, been
much investigated in AVT studies, which have tended to think in terms of
the dubbed and the subtitled version of a film. However, it is common for
the same film to be subtitled more than once into a single language for the-
atrical exhibition, for DVD release, for television, on reissues of restored
films). It is also not uncommon for films to be dubbed more than once
into a single language (e.g. older Disney titles). The issue is now receiving
270 Carol O’Sullivan
some well-overdue attention (e.g. Zanotti 2011, 2015; Di Giovanni 2016;
Mereu Keating 2016). Dubbing, in particular, has been assumed by previ-
ous scholars to be something that only happens once; Zanotti’s work shows
that at least in Italy, redubbing is becoming more frequent, with DVDs
of films including The Godfather or Grease released with alternative dub
options (Zanotti 2011: 152). More classic films, such as Frankenstein or
The Mummy, have also been released in Italy in recent years with the option
of watching the “doppiaggio d’epoca” (vintage dubbing). In this way, trans-
lation becomes part of the textual proliferation represented by the DVD,
which has been called “le lieu où se déploient et se recomposent enfin les
modes d’existence pluriels du film” (the site where the plural modes of exis-
tence of the film are deployed and reassembled) (Quaresima 2008: 141)
The introduction of DVD technology led not only to a huge increase in
research into AVT but also a surge in translation itself. The requirement
to produce electronic subtitle files for DVD release meant that many films
which had been subtitled in the analogue era had to be resubtitled from
scratch. DVD also provided new subtitles not only for older films but also
for films that had had a theatrical release; the different screen size meant
that subtitles needed at least to be reformatted for television viewing, and
in practice, subtitles were often recommissioned. However, this labour of
retranslation was all but invisible in the medium itself. Unlike in print lit-
erature, where retranslation is often marked by extensive paratextual ap-
paratus and position statements by translators, in the new DVD medium,
retranslation generally went unremarked.
The main exceptions are the ‘prestige’ publishers, such as Criterion, Mas-
ters of Cinema, BFI and Second Run, who have added value to their DVD
and theatrical releases by offering new and improved subtitles, and have used
these as a marketing gambit (cf. Martin 2017). These new, often restored edi-
tions of classic films frequently boast ‘new and improved subtitles’ or ‘newly
translated English subtitles’ as one of the reasons for buying the film. The
implication is that previous subtitles were of poor quality; resubtitling is al-
ways about improving. It was usual in the 1930s and 1940s to subtitle only
the most relevant dialogue; many lines of dialogue were routinely unsubtitled.
This practice continued into the 1950s and 1960s, but it is now accepted that
films should be as fully subtitled as is practical. As a result, many ‘new im-
proved’ subtitle versions are denser than previous versions. Occasionally, this
is made explicit in a film’s paratext, as with the Criterion Collection release
of Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev (1966) with “new English subtitles translating
40% more dialogue” as it says both on the DVD cover and on the website.5
Other norms have also changed over the decades. Songs were not rou-
tinely subtitled in the early decades of sound, when their purpose, indeed,
was often to make films internationally ‘sellable’ by reducing the proportion
of spoken dialogue. It is now, however, known that songs can be themati-
cally important in a film. One example is Jean Renoir’s La grande illusion
“New and Improved Subtitle Translation” 271
(1937), first released in the United States in 1938 and re-released several
times as better film elements became available. This film has been subtitled
into English several times, most recently by Lenny Borger for Rialto’s 1999
re-release. The film is set in a series of prisoner-of war camps during the
First World War. The film contains several songs. These include the song
“Marguerite”, sung at the concert party and other fragments of songs sung
by the music-hall star Carette, who plays one of the prisoners. They also
include the song “Il était un petit navire” sung by Jean Gabin’s character,
Lieutenant Maréchal, later in the film when he quarrels with his companion
during their escape. The subtitles also include a number of plays on words
and cultural references which were omitted in previous versions. The higher
quality and increased nuance of the new subtitles was remarked on by a
number of reviewers:
Besides looking so good, the restored “Grand Illusion” has had its
subtitles overhauled too. The typography is less intrusive, colloquial-
isms are preserved and the tone is far more sophisticated. In the older
version . . . Rauffenstein, who considers Boeldieu his equal, dismisses
Maréchal’s and Rosenthal’s officer status as “A gift of the French Rev-
olution.” With the new subtitle—“A charming legacy of the French
Revolution.”—you can practically see him sniff.
(Anderson 1999)6
The former subtitles were inadequate, most notably in the dialogue of
the POW who is a former vaudevillian and who speaks in puns and
snatches of song. Borger comes as close as is imaginable to rendering his
chatter in English. And all of the dialogue seems cleaner, more pointed.7
It is above all in this shift from peritextual to epitextual visibility that we
can consider the label of ‘new and improved subtitles’ as effectively rep-
resenting the work of AVT. It is not irrelevant that Borger, in addition to
subtitling the film, received a prominent credit for this in the pressbook,
which he also compiled. This combination of subtitles, subtitler credit and
subtitler involvement in the film’s wider paratextual presentation allowed
reviewers and commenters to engage with the new subtitles as a meaningful
feature of the film. Borger has subtitled a number of films for Rialto, which
has allowed a certain continuity in the visibility of translations with this
distributor.
Subtitles must constantly contend with the cognitive environment of
subtitling, which requires that subtitles be as unobtrusive as possible in
order to work effectively as part of the multimodal text. As the distin-
guished subtitler Henri Béhar has commented, “If the subtitles aren’t in-
visible, you fail” (Rosenberg 2007). Creating a space for subtitle visibility
can therefore be a mixed blessing. The only instance I am aware of in
272 Carol O’Sullivan
which a film was released with two sets of subtitles by named subtitlers is
the Criterion Collection’s release of Akira Kurosawa’s 1957 film Throne
of Blood, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The disc offers two
subtitle translations: one by Linda Hoaglund, who translated a number of
other films for Criterion, and the other by film historian and Kurosawa ex-
pert Donald Richie. The sleeve notes also include translators’ notes by the
two subtitlers. Hoaglund’s approach is avowedly creative and foreignis-
ing, characterised by archaisms, swear words and other marked linguistic
choices. Richie’s subtitles are designed to be unobtrusive. The two have
also both subtitled other films by Kurosawa, including Seven Samurai.
Fan responses to Hoaglund’s subtitles for this film were negative (Martin
2017) to the point where subtitles were modified after the film’s re-release
(ibid.: 28). In this case, we may say that the profile of translation was very
effectively raised, revealing
the importance of subtitles to the core fan base of Criterion collectors,
to whom translation is far from a minor issue, and the significance of
this niche market to the Criterion Collection, whose leaders clearly
understand that in spite of their ambition for mass-market penetration,
the particular demands of their most loyal customers must be met.
(Ibid.)
The Translational Paratexts of Cult Film
These fan discourses reveal a number of positions on translation, not all of
which chime with recent moves towards more target-oriented approaches
to translation. The perception of fidelity is still extremely important to fans,
and fans’ knowledge of the films and their previous versions is likely to
be extensive. When the Criterion Collection released a box set of Japanese
films called When Horror Came to Shochiku, aimed at a ‘cult’ audience,
some fans were dismayed that a particular earlier dubbed version, which
was the version in which some fans had first encountered the film, was not
included as a DVD extra (Egan 2017). Kate Egan argues convincingly that
this represents a double standard in Criterion’s approach to AVT, which
privileges subtitled releases over dubbed ones, which were traditionally
considered less ‘authentic’ and less prestigious (ibid.: 77). Ironically, fans’
enthusiasm for particular early translations of films mirror film fans’ general
commitment to the idea of the ‘original film’ in its most authentic version. In
the case of fans who are invested in a particular approach to AVT, and in the
teeth of distributors’ attempts to ‘improve’ audiovisual products, a certain
nostalgia for ‘originality’ has simply been displaced from the original film
to its translation.
The earlier example showed how the nature of the DVD or Blu-ray as
a consumer product also has potential for raising the visibility of transla-
tion through viewer engagement. Another good example of an epitextual
“New and Improved Subtitle Translation” 273
controversy which raised the profile of AVT can be found with 2008 Swed-
ish thriller Let the Right One In, directed by Thomas Alfredson. This was
released in the United States by Magnet on DVD with a set of subtitles dif-
ferent to those which had accompanied the film on its US theatrical release.
A post on the Icons of Fright website (RobG 2009) provided a close com-
parison of the two versions, and fans were unhappy with the differences.
Later that month an announcement was made that the distribution label,
Magnet, would be manufacturing the DVD with the theatrical subtitles
from then on. Fan pressure had both acknowledged the differences between
the two sets of subtitles and obliged the distributor to provide a preferred
set. Interestingly, the suggestion from posted comparisons between the two
sets of subtitles (ibid.) indicates that it was the more extensive, and therefore
plausibly more faithful, theatrical subtitles which were preferred. In this
case, the retranslation was far from an improvement.
As we can see, paratexts about subtitling are not restricted to high-status
cultural products; there is a body of editions of (largely Asian) cult film
whose paratexts engage with the specific history of ‘Hong Kong’ and anime
subtitling. These paratexts have the potential to increase awareness of
translation issues among audiences, though we must also ask how much
individual editions, however interesting, can create real change in popular
perceptions of AVT in an era of streaming and downloading where paratex-
tual opportunities for making translation more visible are fewer and further
between. I have written elsewhere (O’Sullivan 2013) about the phenomenon
of cult film releases which deliberately incorporate obsolete or inadequate
previous subtitled versions. The 2007 Discotek Region 1 DVD release of
Herman Yau’s Ebola Syndrome (1996) offers conventional English subtitles
and “crazy Hong Kong subtitles”, accessed via the usual DVD menu. Wil-
son Yip’s Bio Zombie (1998, released on Region 1 DVD by Tokyo Shock in
2000) also offers a choice of English subtitles, although it does not make a
feature of this on the cover of the DVD. The viewer can choose: Cantonese
original dialogue, an English dub, Cantonese dialogue with English subtitles
or Cantonese dialogue with ‘Engrish’ subtitles. The ‘Engrish’ subtitles are
the original subtitles for an earlier Mei Ah DVD release. These two subtitle
tracks diverge very extensively (see O’Sullivan 2013).
The intense viewer engagement which characterises the fanbase for Asian,
and particularly Japanese, films can also be illustrated by an interesting pa-
ratextual feature on the
2005 Region 1 Animeigo release of Incident at Blood Pass, also known
as Machibuse, which offers ‘Japanese with full subtitles’ and ‘Japanese
with limited subtitles’. One might think that this involved a choice between
denser/more detailed and, more sparing, subtitles, but on enquiry to Ani-
meigo, it transpired that the ‘limited subtitles’ were headnotes translating
cultural references, plus titles for in-vision verbal material, without any dia-
logue titles. The full subtitles included all of the above, plus dialogue titles.
I was informed by the company that they have many viewers with enough
274 Carol O’Sullivan
Japanese to enjoy listening to the dialogue, but not necessarily enough Japa-
nese to read Japanese script in inserts and captions easily, or catch cultural
references. They therefore included this feature on this and other DVDs
to cater for the specific language knowledge and cultural interests of their
target audience. Here it is clear that the increased visibility of AVT in film
paratexts is not only a source of audience awareness of AVT but also a result
of it.
Behind the Scenes
Dubbing has greater appeal as an observed process than subtitling; this
may be one reason why dubbing appears in films themselves, as part of the
plot, more often than subtitling (e.g. Denys Arcand’s 1989 Jesus of Mon-
tréal). The process of dubbing in particular has considerable entertainment
potential in itself. The DVD format, with its ceaseless search for new and
improved extra features, offered an excellent opportunity for raising the
visibility of dubbing. Paratexts for dubbing are aimed at both mainstream
and more niche audiences. A successful and widely disseminated epitext of
the 2013 Disney film Frozen was a video clip ‘mash’ of the song “Let It Go”
sung in 25 of the 41-odd languages in which the film was localised.8 At the
time of writing, the video has nearly 70 million views, suggesting that the
appeal of this foregrounding of dubbing, and the different dubbing voices
and languages, was very considerable.
Another example of a paratextual foregrounding of dubbing can be found
in the “coulisses du doublage” (backstage at the dubbing studio) format.
A good example can be found on the 2000 French Region 2 DVD edition
of the Aardman Entertainment stop-motion animated feature Chicken Run.
The DVD extra feature, “Les secrets du doublage des voix françaises”,9 run-
ning just under 27 minutes, presents the filming of the dubbed version star-
ring Gérard Dépardieu, Josiane Balasko and Valérie Mercier. This includes
extensive footage from the filming of the voice-over and interviews with the
actors. Much of this kind of epitextual material has now moved online and
can be found on sites such as Allociné.
Conclusion
We have observed so far that 1) certain appealing affective aspects of AVT
are being used as secondary ways of marketing audiovisual artefacts, 2)
paratextual discussions of AVT are in particular used to market to a cult/
geek and to a high-culture market and 3) the discourse of ‘new and improved
subtitles’ to some extent reflects a more complete representation of source
text dialogue in subtitles.
Clearly, the paratexts of films offer considerable scope for foregrounding
AVT, but there are several ways in which this paratextual space also works
against the visibility of film translation:
“New and Improved Subtitle Translation” 275
1) Translation is anonymous. Where no attribution is made to subtitler,
laboratory, dubbing director, scriptwriter or actors, the impression is
reinforced that AVT functions as a mere conduit, as opposed to a me-
diation and reframing of the audiovisual text.
2) Sometimes, paratexts actually seek to conceal the translated text. This
is notably the case with trailers, as B. Ruby Rich has shown in a 2004
article (Rich 2004).
3) It is sometimes the case that translational phenomena are made avail-
able in the paratext, but not seen in translational or linguistic terms.
An example is the inclusion of vintage translated credit sequences on
the 2016 BFI Region B Blu-ray of Jean-Luc Godard’s 1964 feature
Bande à part. As Casper Tybjerg (2004) has shown, credit sequences
are part of the work of translation of a film. The BFI Blu-ray labels
the extra feature as “The Outsiders: Alternative Presentation of UK
Theatrical Release Credits”, which tends to situate this translational
feature as part of an alternative cut, rather than an alternative lan-
guage version. The same happens with the 2015 BFI DVD re-release
of Roberto Rossellini’s Journey to Italy. The DVD includes as a
bonus feature, “the alternative, Italian cut” of Viaggio in Italia, run-
ning at 83 minutes (the English-language version runs 100 minutes).
Here, effectively, the user is presented with the option of watching
a version of the film in Italian, but it is not presented as ‘the Italian
version’.
The conflation of textual variance and translation is very understandable
in re-releases of classic films, because very often the translation coin-
cides with a restoration. Thus Michael Atkinson (1999), reviewing the
Rialto re-release of La grande illusion, enthuses, “This living, breath-
ing, 61-year-old experience is running in the most pristine version this
nation’s ever seen. (That includes new subtitles, which clarify the puns
and uncloak the frank sexual references.)” It does, however, risk obscur-
ing the breadth of the role of AVT in the international circulation of
films. Films are not only dubbed or subtitled but also recut, shortened
and censored; their credit sequences or insert shots may be reshot for
another language market; they may have additional credits for a subtitler
or the cast and crew of a dubbed version. There is thus a risk that current
representations of AVT offer a relatively restricted picture of what these
processes entail and how they are intrinsic to the work of filmmaking and
distribution.
Where paratexts do engage with translation, they may have the potential
to increase awareness of translation issues among audiences, but it is also
necessary to acknowledge the extent to which the paratexts of film disguise
and de-emphasise AVT. The current intense activity by fans and amateurs
in the area of AVT may spur a more critical awareness of the modalities of
translation in film and help with the overall task of film “to produce insights
276 Carol O’Sullivan
into the cultures and languages represented”, as Marie-Noëlle Guillot puts
it (2012: 479), by helping to raise awareness of the ways in which those
representations are inflected through translation.
Notes
1 After years of declining DVD sales (Sherwin 2010, Wallenstein 2016), in 2017,
streaming sales overtook DVD sales for the first time (Sweney 2017).
2 Cornelia Klecker makes the point that this was not the first use of the term ‘para-
texte’ by Genette; he had used it in 1979 in Introduction à l’architexte, but was
unhappy with his definition of it. We can therefore consider his use of it in Palimp-
sestes to be the first use of the term in the sense in which it is now known.
3 Pezzotta includes under the heading of paratextual elements of film: title, direc-
tor’s name, opening and closing credits, dedications, distributors’ logo, place of
projection (at the time he wrote his article, home video was only taking off), post-
ers, press advertisements, trailers, television channels and programming contexts
and press books.
4 There are a number of interesting examples of ‘cartons de doublage’ or dubbing cred-
its at www.objectif-cinema.com/blog-doublage/index.php/Cartons-de-doublage.
5 The film’s webpage can be found here at time of writing: www.criterion.com/
films/300-andrei-rublev.
6 I am grateful to Mr Borger for these and other materials relating to his translation
of this film.
7 Extract from a review in the New Republic of 23 August 1999 by Stanley Kauff-
mann kindly provided by Lenny Borger.
8 At time of writing, the URL for the clip on YouTube is https://youtu.be/
OC83NA5tAGE under the title “Disney’s Frozen—‘Let It Go’ Multi-Language
Full Sequence”.
9 Available at time of writing at www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKNzAj2QiWc.
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Filmography
Andrei Rublev. Andrei Tarkovsky. Mosfilm, Soviet Union. 1966
Bande à part. Jean-Luc Godard. Anouchka Films/Orsay Films, France. 1964.
Bio Zombie. Wilson Yip. Brilliant Idea Group (BIG)/Cameron Entertainment Ltd.,
Hong Kong. 1998.
Chicken Run. Peter Lord/Nick Park. Aardman Entertainment, UK. 2000.
Ebola Syndrome. Herman Yau. Jing’s Production, Hong Kong. 1996.
Frankenstein. James Whale. Universal, USA. 1931.
Frozen. Jennifer Lee/Chris Buck. Walt Disney, USA. 2013.
Godfather, The. Francis Ford Coppola. Paramount, USA. 1972.
“New and Improved Subtitle Translation” 279
Grande Illusion, La. Jean Renoir. RAC, France. 1937.
Jesus of Montréal. Denys Arcand. Max Films Productions, Gérard Mital Produc-
tions, NFB Canada. 1989
La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc. Carl Theodor Dreyer. France. 1928.
Låt den rätte komma in. Thomas Alfredson. EFTI, Sweden. 2008
Machibuse [English title Incident at Blood Pass]. Hiroshi Inagaki. Mifune Produc-
tions, Japan. 1970.
Ordet. Carl Theodor Dreyer. Denmark. 1955.
Throne of Blood. Akira Kurosawa. Toho, Japan. 1957.
Viaggio in Italia. Roberto Rossellini. Italia Film, Junior Film, Sveva Film, Italy. 1954.
Vredens Dag. Carl Theodor Dreyer. Palladium, Denmark. 1943.
