CHIARO, Delia, HEISS, Christine, and BUCARIA, Chiara, eds. (2008): Between Text and Image: Updating Research in Screen Translation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 292 pages DÍAZ CINTAS, Jorge, ed. (2008): The Didactics of Audiovisual Translation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 263 pages

“Audiovisual translation comes of age,” proclaims Jorge Díaz Cintas in his introduction to Between Text and Image: Updating Research in Screen Translation, citing the ubiquity of the screen in modern society and the technological developments that have made audiovisual products pervasive in the past decade. The need for audiovisual translation (AVT) to bring these products to wider audiences has grown accordingly; this has occasioned a corresponding surge of interest in research on AVT as a subdiscipline of translation studies, one that has its own concerns and methodologies. Evidence of the current enthusiasm for AVT can be found in the decision by John Benjamins to publish two edited collections of essays on this field in 2008: the previously mentioned Between Text and Image, which grew out of a conference on recent research in screen translation held in Forlì, Italy; and The Didactics of Audiovisual Translation, a volume edited by Jorge Díaz Cintas that focuses on translator training for audiovisual material. The first publication, edited by Delia Chiaro, Christine Heiss and Chiara Bucaria, highlights the pioneering role of the University of Bologna in bringing together research on film and on translation starting as early as 1993. The Department of Interdisciplinary Studies in Translation, Languages and Cultures recently developed Forlixt 1, a multimedia corpus that combines electronic versions of films with transcripts of the dialogue and subtitles to allow researchers to extract data on audiovisual translation patterns and strategies. As of June 2006, it contained 30 feature-length fiction films, including original productions in Italian, German, and French; the transcriptions amount to about 300,000 words, making it comparable in size to other Italian spoken corpora. Two articles on Forlixt 1 are included in the first section of Between Text and Image, along with a paper describing INTCA, a prototype for a Catalan-English electronic dictionary of interjections, based on a corpus of television sitcoms in Catalan and in English dubbed into Catalan. These articles point to the potential of electronic and multimedia corpora as highly sophisticated AVT research tools. The other sections present articles grouped according to approach: linguistic; empirical; cultural and psycholinguistic; and socio-economic. Noteworthy are the empirical studies by Rachele Antonini, Chiara Bucaria, and Flavia Cavaliere that draw on the methods of marketing research to examine audience perception of AV products. For example, Antonini questioned viewers on how well they understood “dubbese,” the standardized spoken Italian found in dubbed films and television programs, in response to concerns about its impact on language learning, particularly among children. Also noteworthy is an essay by Elena Di Giovanni in the section on cultural and psycholinguistic approaches, which makes a heartfelt plea for “abusive subtitling” – a term coined by Abé Mark Nornes (1999) to refer to subtitling that draws attention to itself and does not hide the film’s foreign origin – as particularly appropriate for documentary films on human rights. While most of the papers focus on present or future concerns, Between Text and Image contains a rare look back at historical trends in AVT research – a sign of the growing maturity of the field. Written by Yves Gambier, the paper pinpoints 1995 as a watershed for AVT for three reasons: the centenary of cinema, which was marked by various publications and conferences; activism by linguistic minority groups in Europe, who recognized the role of audiovisual media in promoting identity; and technological changes, particularly the transition from analog to digital media. Gambier also discusses the challenges facing both researchers and practitioners, noting that certain key concepts of translation studies, such as text, authorship, and translation norms, need to be rethought …