Audiovisual translation as a cross-curricular learning strategy in a BA translation program

Abstract

Audiovisual translation (AVT), specifically subtitling, has acquired relevance over the years; hence, it was necessary to include it in practical and theoretical courses of our program. Thus, some course syllabuses were redesigned to include AVT in the context of a teaching innovation project (PID2018) carried out by the authors of this article. In the first stage of the program, the new contents were included in courses related to translation theory; subsequently, in the ones dealing with technology applied to translation and a number of practical courses as well. From 2020 on, the students of our translation program learn about subtitling, both at the theoretical and the practical level.

Moreover, and based on what we learned from experts such as Bruti (2016), Díaz-Cintas (2008), Lertola (2015), Talaván (2013), Zabalbeascoa (2012), among others, we considered that using subtitling in other courses of the program could be beneficial for the development of other competences related to translator training—besides the instrumental-professional competence—, such as the linguistic-communicative, sociocultural-extralinguistic, and research competences. Hence, a series of teaching/learning activities have been designed and implemented for courses of English, linguistics, and research in translation and terminology.

We conclude that the range of activities related to the professional practice of AVT has been a great contribution to the development of competences and the acquisition of knowledge through varied activities such as text and discourse analysis in multimodal texts, contrastive analysis of translation strategies, tutorial production aimed at different contexts and needs, besides a better based reflection on the relevance of sociolinguistic and cultural factors within the process of translation.