Duration
2016-2019
Principal investigators
Margarita Ledo Andión (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela)
Enrique Castelló Mayo (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela)
Participants
Universidade de Vigo, GALMA
Education department, Government of Navarra
Funding body
MINECO – Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (Proyectos de Excelencia y Proyectos Retos, CSO2016-76014-R)
Budget
€61,426
Supporters
Background:
The European Union is characterised, among other things, by its cultural and linguistic diversity. Le Corf (2013) highlights that in the context of filmmaking this diversity is a feature that distinguishes the European film industries from those of monolingual regions such as North America.
Description:
EU-VOS aims to remedy this situation by taking a systematic approach to subtitling in the European sphere. This translates into five general objectives:
- Survey and compare subtitling policies for minority languages at European, national and regional levels.
- Determine the main barriers to and motivations for the accessibility of minority language cinema and review approaches which consider subtitling a hinderance in the distribution of minority language films.
- Explore innovative approaches to linguistic accessibility in cinemas in particular and to audiovisual translation in general, including universal design, partial and creative subtitling.
- Evaluate minority language subtitles produced at regional, national and European levels, focusing on their quality and integration into the film.
- Gather different approaches from researchers, institutions and professionals and develop a strategy for subtitling in non-hegemonic languages across Europe, to be shared with all stakeholders.
For gathering their data the researchers will rely on a systematic literature review as well as the Delphi method, i.e. interviewing international experts on the topic, hosting round tables and creating written questionnaires for the experts to fill in. These experts will be selected from a pool of researchers with a background in film and media studies, professionals from the fields of filmmaking and broadcasting and representatives of relevant public institutions and private companies.
In this way, the EU-VOS will address a triple need: at a sociocultural level it will determine cultural indicators which facilitate access to audiovisual products in non-hegemonic languages; at a political level it will design and implement measures which promote linguistic diversity at a European level; and at an economic level it will support the opening up of new markets and the creation of new distribution models based on technological innovation.
