Subtitling for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing as a New Narrative Discourse

Abstract

The present paper constitutes a theoretical reflection within the Project PRA2 of the Department of Translation and Interpreting of the University of Granada (Spain), which tries to integrate the work flow of accessible audiovisual translation. This project is oriented towards creating a technological website platform open to any user, where people, regardless of their functional characteristics, can interact with any audiovisual resources. In the paper we will study the narrative items aspect, voice, mode and time in the subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing (as a new narrative discourse) in order to isolate them and examine if they can be the contents of this new discourse. Our methodology is based on the tagging system of Tracce research group which uses Maxqda software to tag 75 films subtitled for the deaf and hard of hearing. We conclude that the SDHH is a narrative discourse because it achieves the four narrative categories. Therefore, subtitled discourse is also conceived as a translated discourse because it uses translation strategies in order to get its identity as proper discourse.