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Article published In:
Indirect Translation and Sustainable Development
Edited by Jan Buts, Hanna Pięta, Laura Ivaska and James Hadley
[Translation Spaces 12:2] 2023
► pp. 285–304
Regular Article

The emotional value of Polish and English subtitles

Survey research

ORCID logo | Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland,
ORCID logo | Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland,
Although research on the role of emotion in audiovisual translation and audio description has gained some ground in recent years, the emotional reception of subtitles as an AVT mode has been under researched. To address this empirical gap, this paper presents the results of a study on the emotional rating of English and Polish subtitles to a selection of animated films. Expressions from Polish and English subtitled versions of the same films were collected, and 100 participants (native speakers of Polish and English) were asked to rate them in terms of emotional valence and arousal evoked. While the main effect of utterance type (negatively valenced, neutral, positively valenced) was observed, there was no effect of language, suggesting that the subtitle excerpts elicited similar responses in both languages.
Keywords: audiovisual translation, subtitles, emotions, emotion in language, emotion in translation, emotional rating
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Emotion in language
  • 3.Emotion in translation and interpreting
  • 4.Emotion in audiovisual translation and audio description
  • 5.Aims and research questions
  • 6.Method
    • 6.1Respondents
    • 6.2Survey
    • 6.3Affective norms
  • 7.Results
    • 7.1Survey
    • 7.2Affective norms
  • 8.Discussion
  • 9.Limitations of the study
  • 10.Conclusion
  • References
Published online: 17 August 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ts.23001.sta
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