Observations on the formation mechanisms of subtitles

Drawing from the present trends in language analysis, the Italian subtitled versions of a small number of films in Spanish are examined, in order to detect the mechanisms and criteria underlying the subtitling process. The process is seen as the result of three complementary operations: translation, conversion from the oral into the written channel and adaptation/abridgement of the text in accordance with the technical constraints imposed by the new medium. The study has revealed that insufficient attention is paid to the pragmalinguistic aspects and to the interactive dimension of verbal communication. This is due to a conception of Language which puts too much emphasis on the propositional content and little or no attention on the meta-enunciative instructions for an adequate decoding of the communicative intentions of the speaker, or on the general structure of the discourse. As a consequence, the level of cohesion and coherence of the text is often altered and its sociolinguistic variations neutralized.