Reception Studies and Audiovisual Translation - (Part II. Methodology in Reception Studies and Audiovisual Transla

Multi-method research 71
2. Exploring interpretations and attitudes

with questionnaires and interviews
A large proportion of context-oriented reception studies have been based on ques-

tionnaires or interviews. Of the two methods, questionnaire has been considerably
more common, and some studies have used both. In this section, we will first dis-
cuss some examples of reaction-level studies where questionnaires and interviews
have been used to explore viewers’ interpretations of translated programmes. Then,
we will look at some studies of repercussion that have employed the same methods
to investigate broader questions.
2.1 Reaction: Thematic studies on interpreting and understanding
Studies that explore viewers’ understanding of translated programmes often con-

centrate on a specific theme, attempting to find out how viewers understand and
interpret this aspect of the programme. In these studies, the translation cannot be
approached independently of the programme context: viewers’ understanding and
interpretation are based on the entire programme, of which the translation is only
one component. Therefore, these studies can be said to explore translations in their
immediate audiovisual context. Some studies focus on brief programme excerpts
and a detailed aspect of the programme, while others approach a programme in full
and seek answers to questions concerning overall comprehension. Furthermore,
it is possible to execute the study either online, with an electronic questionnaire
and video clips, or in person. What is central is the creation of a viewing situation
Copyright © 2018. John Benjamins Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
which allows the test participants to watch the translated programme in a normal,
authentic way, and to construct whatever interpretations arise naturally from the
viewing situation.
Studies of reaction offer evidence of the variety of interpretations that viewers
can make, thus emphasising the individual nature of reception, but also indicating
areas where it is possible to find similarities in views and interpretations. For ex-
ample, in Louisa Desilla’s (2014) study on the comprehension of culture-specific
implicit meanings in films, Greek viewers of the subtitled film Bridget Jones: The
Edge of Reason offered a variety of interpretations for a reference in the film that
was intended to evoke Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. One viewer said the scene
reminded her of the “Milk Tray Man,” another mentioned the film 9 ½ Weeks, a
third one said the scene reminded her “of Sakis Rouvas in a music video,” and a
fourth one did not recall anything specific, just “[c]lassic American crap, basically”
(Desilla 2014: 208). However, as Desilla (2014: 209) points out, most of the view-
ers arrived at a fairly accurate interpretation of the connotations of the reference
Di, G. E., & Gambier, Y. (Eds.). (2018). Reception studies and audiovisual translation. John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Created from upc-ebooks on 2023-05-11 16:15:52.
72 Tiina Tuominen
and were able to follow the translated film without excessive confusion. In other
words, the research uncovered a broad range of immediate reactions which show
how challenging it can be to interpret a reference specific to the source culture, but
it also pointed to a uniformity of ultimate interpretations of the scene, suggesting
that the reception experience was similar enough to contribute to a shared under-
standing of the film. This example shows why it is interesting and relevant to view
reception in its context and as a social phenomenon: interpretations are built on
past experiences, negotiated throughout the viewing process, and potentially used
to make sense of reception as a shared experience.
Many reaction studies have focused on two themes: humour and cultural ref-
erences (e.g., Antonini 2005, 2007, 2009, Chiaro 2007, Desilla 2014, Fuentes 2003,
Schauffler 2012). These two themes are interesting from the perspective of reception
research, because they are often dependent on viewers’ subjective interpretations
of what is funny and how it is possible to understand references to a foreign cul-
ture. The translation may rely on many strategies to deliver humorous or cultur-
ally specific content, and different strategies can be received differently by viewers.
Consequently, these two themes are a rich area of open questions concerning re-
ception. How easy is it to inspire laughter with a translation, or how effectively can
a translation evoke meanings implicit in references related to the source culture?
In the area of humour research in audiovisual translation, one of the foremost
researchers is Delia Chiaro. Chiaro (2006) poses two fundamentally important
questions: “Do culturally different audiences laugh in the same places? And if they
do not, how far will this depend upon culture-specific presuppositions and how
far on the quality of translation?” Both questions are crucial in research design and
analysis. It is naturally interesting for translation studies to explore the differences
between audiences from different cultures, but it is equally relevant to understand

what role the translation specifically plays in the viewers’ experience.
The fundamental purpose of studies on humour reception, then, is to examine
whether viewers of translated programmes find the material as funny as viewers of
the source-language programme. Therefore, the questionnaire methods developed
for this purpose must contain some way for the respondents to express their hu-
mour response. One example of this kind of questionnaire design is Chiaro’s (2007)
study comparing audience responses to comedy in Italy and the United Kingdom.
For the study, Chiaro (2007: 142) selected video clips of popular English-language
comedies that had been dubbed into Italian and contained what she calls “ver-
bally expressed humour” (VEH), as well as examples of both English-language
and Italian-language comedy where the humour is nonverbal. Then, two groups
of 22 British respondents and 34 Italian respondents were asked to view the clips
and assess their general humour response on a seven-point scale ranging from “it
irritated me” to “it made me split my sides laughing,” and their responses to the clips
containing VEH on a ten-point numeric scale (Chiaro 2007: 142–144). In addition,

the questionnaire contained a section on the respondents’ background information
including age, gender and educational background, and self-evaluation of their
sense of humour and current mood (Chiaro 2007: 142). Thus, Chiaro evaluated
humour responses against personal factors that may have influenced them, and
compared the humour responses of the Italian and British respondents in order to
discover how well humour travels from one culture to another.
As was mentioned above, one influencing factor in humour response can be
the quality of the translation. It is not surprising that audience reactions can be de-
pendent on how successfully the humour has been transmitted in the translation. A
number of audience studies have suggested that there may be links between humour
response and the quality of the translation (e.g., Antonini 2005, Fuentes 2003). One
example of this is a study by Svea Schauffler (2012), which explored viewers’ ability
to interpret subtitled humorous wordplay and the effect of different translation
strategies to humour response. Schauffler (2012: 183) compared the reception of
two kinds of subtitles: subtitles that were translated quite literally, and subtitles that
aimed for equivalent effect with the source text. One group of German-speaking
participants viewed the literal subtitles, another German-speaking group viewed
the equivalent-effect subtitles, and a control group of native English speakers eval-
uated the original English-language version of the film. There were 30 participants
in the control group, 29 in one of the German test groups and 30 in the other
(Schauffler 2012: 149–150). Each group viewed one version of the film from be-
ginning to end and then filled a questionnaire. Schauffler (2012: 147) designed a
humour reception score by which she quantified the questionnaire responses to
signify the strength of each respondent’s humour response. The scores revealed that
the group viewing the film with subtitles aiming for equivalent effect had reactions
that were similar to the control group, while the group that viewed the film with
literally translated subtitles had a considerably weaker reaction to the humour than
the other two groups (Schauffler 2012: 162). This finding reinforces the view that
translation quality does indeed matter, and it is a key consideration in research
design to choose a suitable kind of translation for the purposes of a study.
Both Chiaro and Schauffler used quantitative scales to measure humour re-
sponse. In other words, they attempted to boil down viewers’ reactions to a numeric
response, which forces the test participants to self-evaluate the strength of their
feelings. This can be challenging for a test participant, but in both studies, the task
was supported by verbal descriptors rather than simply a numeric scale which may
have felt more abstract. The test participants were therefore able to think of their
responses in relation to descriptors such as “it irritated me” (Chiaro 2007: 143) or
“very funny – I laughed several times” (Schauffler 2012: 146), and the researcher
then converted these to numeric values which provided quantifiable material for
74 Tiina Tuominen
analysis. In this way, a holistic issue such as humour response can lend itself to
quantitative analysis.
Whereas humour responses can be quantified numerically, a theme which is
more difficult to convert into quantitative values is the cultural dimension of trans-
lated audiovisual materials. The central question here is how concepts specific to
the source culture are understood by the target-language audience. These concepts
always present a challenge for translators and can inspire a wide range of interpreta-
tions in the target audience. The potential for a variety of translations and a variety
of interpretations introduces uncertainty into the translation process and makes
cultural elements an interesting topic for reception research.
One extensive example of a study on the reception of culture-specific elements
has been conducted by Rachele Antonini (2007, 2009), who discusses Italian tel-
evision viewers’ understanding of cultural references in dubbed programmes. In
her study, as many as 253 respondents viewed dubbed video clips and completed
an online questionnaire that appeared as a pop-under window on a popular Italian
website. The questions charted respondents’ appreciation and understanding of the
video clips by asking them first to measure their appreciation of the clip on a scale of
0 to 10 and then to explain what happened in the clip. (Antonini, 2007: 157–158). In
other words, a quantitative element of appreciation, similar to the self-assessments
in the humour studies described above, was complemented by a verbal description
of the test participant’s understanding of the clip. Antonini (2007: 165) concludes
from the survey that when viewers are asked to evaluate their own understanding,
they are prone to declare they have understood the reference, but they might nev-
ertheless be unable to answer substantive questions about it. From the perspective
of research design, these findings serve as a reminder of the fact that respond-
ents’ self-evaluations can be unreliable. Therefore, it is relevant to ask for both

self-evaluation and an interpretation of the scene, to reveal both subjective feelings
and the actual understanding of the clip.
Another approach to combining qualitative and quantitative methods to study
the reception of cultural references is Louisa Desilla’s (2014) study, which was men-
tioned above. Desilla investigated how Greek viewers understand culture-specific
implicatures, such as allusions, present in British films subtitled in Greek. Desilla
(2014: 196) compared the ability of Greek and British viewers to describe their
interpretations of certain culture-specific implicatures in the films Bridget Jones’s
Diary and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. In Desilla’s (2014: 200–202) exper-
iments, British and Greek test participants viewed the two films and completed
a questionnaire which asked for their interpretations of sections of the films. A
group of nine native speakers of British English and a group of nine native speakers
of Greek viewed the two films in different sessions, the English-language group
without subtitles and the Greek-language group with Greek subtitles. During the
viewing, the film was paused occasionally, and the participants were asked to an-
swer open questions about the preceding part of the film (Desilla 2014: 200–202).
Desilla then evaluated the participants’ understanding of culture-specific implica-
tures on a five-point scale, and conducted a qualitative analysis of the responses
(Desilla 2014: 202). Desilla’s study design again shows the significance of asking
open-ended questions and allowing respondents to explain their interpretations in
their own words. Open questions reveal the richness of interpretations and individ-
ual, contextualised views which fully illustrate how the interpretations of source-
and target-culture viewers – and of individual viewers within each group – differ
from each other.
While studies of humour reception can attempt to systematize humour re-
sponses into numeric analyses, the reception of cultural aspects appears to require
a more qualitative approach which allows viewers to explain their interpretations
and show how the responses to a translated version may differ from responses in
the source culture. Studies on both themes demonstrate how interpretations arise
from the viewing context where both the viewers’ own background and various
aspects of the programme and translation influence reception. Neither humour
nor cultural references are qualities of the translated text alone.
2.2 Reaction: Studies on overall understanding and interpretation
In addition to the thematic studies, there are studies of reaction which investigate
viewers’ understanding or interpretations of the translated programme as a whole.
In this case, the purpose of the research tends to be to discover how well view-
ers are able to follow the programme, what they remember afterwards, and what
kinds of reactions the viewing evokes. These reactions are unavoidably linked to
the translation and tell something of how well the translation is able to support the
viewing process. One example of a study exploring the understanding and cognitive
processing of subtitled material in comparison to unsubtitled material is a study by
Dominique Bairstow (2011: 212), where the same English-language film excerpt
was shown to two groups of French speakers who spoke no English, and to two
groups of native English speakers who spoke some French, each group consisting
of eight individuals. One English-language group and one French-language group
watched the excerpt without subtitles while the other two groups watched it with
subtitles, and their comprehension of the excerpt was tested with a questionnaire.
The purpose of the study was to see how the presence of subtitles would affect
the viewers’ engagement with the programme: how significantly subtitles support
understanding for those who do not know the source language, whether subtitles
support understanding for those who do know the source language, or whether
subtitles may be a distraction, particularly to those viewers who do not need them.
76 Tiina Tuominen
It is a somewhat artificial situation to test how well viewers comprehend un-

subtitled material in a language they do not understand, but what is interesting
is the comparison between the two French-speaking groups, and the differences
in comprehension scores which can be attributed to subtitles. Similarly, although
English speakers would not necessarily view an English-language programme with
French subtitles, a comparison of the comprehension scores can tell us something
about the cognitive effects of the presence of subtitles, of their potential distracting
effect and of whether reading subtitles, even in a foreign language, is unavoidable as
a part of the viewing experience. Thus, Bairstow’s study is an example of how ques-
tions about the contents of the programme can be used to evaluate how subtitles are
being used and how effective they are in conveying the contents of the programme.
Of course, the facts and plot of a programme are not the only relevant aspect
of a viewing experience. Viewing audiovisual materials can also be an emotional
and affective event, and that is the topic of Carlos de Pablos-Ortega’s (2015) study
on how viewers perceive the characters in a film when they watch it either with
or without subtitles. The study consisted of three groups of participants: one hun-
dred British persons, fifty North Americans and fifty Spanish persons, all of whom
viewed a six-minute clip from Pedro Almódovar’s film La flor de mi secreto (de
Pablos-Ortega 2015: 192–193). For the first part of the questionnaire, the partic-
ipants were asked to choose from a list of sixteen adjectives the ones they felt
described each of the three characters seen in the clip, and they could also add in
their own adjectives. For this part of the study, all participants were allowed to see
the clip twice, both times with English subtitles but without sound. In the second
part of the questionnaire, the task remained the same but the clip was shown to all
participants with subtitles and sound. In addition, the participants were asked to
rate the likelihood of the scene taking place in Spain, the UK, or USA or Canada
(de Pablos-Ortega 2015: 194). The study thus attempted to find out how viewers
from different backgrounds formulate their impressions of a character in a film on
the basis of subtitles, and how the interplay of sound and subtitles may influence
their interpretations.
As we can see from this study design, a simple approach where the focus is on
something easily manageable like asking participants to select adjectives from a
list, can provide illuminating information on the processing of subtitled material.
However, one weakness of the approach may be that it is impossible to know how
the repeated viewing of the same clip influences interpretations. Therefore, we can-
not know for certain whether changes in responses in the second experiment were
truly due to the addition of the soundtrack, or whether they may have, at least in
part, been the result of developing interpretations due to repeated viewings of the
same content. Nevertheless, this test design foregrounds the significance of the
entire audiovisual context and provides one possible approach, on the one hand,
to exploring how sound and subtitles may interact, and on the other hand, to un-
derstanding emotional reactions to translated programmes. The understanding
and processing of both factual content and emotional reactions is affected by the
presence of the translation, but also by the rest of the programme, and changes in
any aspect of it may change reception.
2.3 Repercussion: Attitudes and expectations
The category of repercussion includes studies that take a broader view of reception
than studies of reaction. These studies explore attitudes and approaches towards
translated audiovisual products rather than detailed interpretations. The benefit
of these studies is that they provide context for studies more oriented towards the
audiovisual content, and an understanding of the role of audiovisual translations
in society, media and culture: how much viewers appreciate and trust audiovisual
translations, how often they consume translated audiovisual products, what prob-
lems they perceive there to be in audiovisual translations. This bigger picture will
allow us to construct a more informed understanding of the role of audiovisual
translations in their viewing contexts. For example, if we find out that Spanish
viewers tend to have a negative attitude towards subtitles, and if another study
reveals difficulties in interpreting subtitled materials, we might consider how these
two findings explain and complement each other.
Studies of repercussion are often on a larger scale than studies of reaction. They
typically consist of quantitative surveys, such as Maria José Alves Veiga’s (2006)
questionnaire and Brigitte Widler’s (2004) interview study, both of which explore
viewers’ attitudes towards subtitles and subtitled films, Alves Veiga among second-
ary school students in Portugal, Widler among cinemagoers in Austria. In Alves
Veiga’s (2006: 161; 163–166) study, 293 respondents answered 25 questions on their
personal background, on their reading habits, on attitudes towards audiovisual
media, and on subtitles. In Brigitte Widler’s (2004: 98–100) study, 100 Austrian
cinemagoers were interviewed in the cinema as they were on their way to watch a
subtitled film. The questions revolved around their opinions on subtitle quality and
their reasons for choosing a subtitled rather than dubbed film. The two studies thus
provide a general picture of viewers’ attitudes towards subtitles in their respective
local contexts. This picture is based on respondents’ subjective statements which are
not connected to a specific viewing experience, and the responses are therefore on
a rather general level. As such, the studies provide a foundation for understanding
audiences’ attitudes, but they do not necessarily alone explain how viewers relate
to subtitled programmes and make sense of them. Therefore, it is often beneficial
78 Tiina Tuominen
to see such surveys combined with other approaches that allow this contextual data
to inform research on more detailed aspects of reception.
That kind of combination is present in Elena Di Giovanni’s (2016) study on film
audiences at Italian film festivals. In the study, audiences at two festivals responded
to questionnaires which investigated their attitudes towards subtitling as a trans-
lation method and opinions on subtitle quality (Di Giovanni 2016: 62). The first
study received 66 responses and the second one 80, both divided into two groups:
the general public and representatives of the film industry (Di Giovanni 2016: 62;
69). In addition to the two questionnaires, Di Giovanni’s (2016: 73) study included
a further component which focused on an individual detail of subtitle quality: sub-
title segmentation. In this part of the study, 56 viewers were shown two subtitled
video clips, one of which was appropriately segmented while the other one was not,
and the viewers’ experience and comprehension was tested in a questionnaire (Di
Giovanni 2016: 74–75). This final part of the study takes a contextualising survey of
attitudes and opinions towards a more detailed investigation of a concrete question
regarding reception, and the two approaches support and inform each other. In this
case, the surveys indicated an area of subtitle quality that appears to be relevant to
viewers, and the more detailed test revealed how this quality issue affects recep-
tion. Thus, Di Giovanni’s study is an example of the benefits of larger-scale and
multi-method studies which use a variety of research approaches to investigate both
the macro and micro level of reception and to search for a more comprehensive
understanding of reception.
Similarly, in another study, Di Giovanni (2012: 180) used a questionnaire to
explore both an attitude question of whether Italian viewers prefer to watch televi-
sion documentaries with subtitles or a voice-over translation, and a comprehension
question investigating which method of translation is more effective in commu-

nicating the contents of the documentary. This study thus again complemented
information on subjective opinions and attitudes with evidence of the viewers’
understanding of translated material. In the study, Di Giovanni (2012: 188–189)
discovered a preference for voice-over, although she does point out that younger
survey participants were more accepting of subtitled programmes, and they were
able to elicit information from subtitles somewhat better than older viewers.
Consequently, this study also demonstrates that many variables, including age,
can influence reception and lead to differences between audience segments, and
are therefore a crucial consideration in reception studies.
2.4 The contributions and challenges of questionnaires in reception research
The above examples of studies using questionnaires as the predominant data col-
lection method shed light on important questions concerning reception in its
real-life contexts, building an understanding of how viewers interpret translated
programmes, what they understand and do not understand, but also how they relate
to translated programmes and whether they have positive or negative attitudes to-
wards them. However, despite careful research designs, these studies are not broadly
generalizable: the interpretations of Italian audiences tell little of the interpretations
of German or Brazilian audiences, and reactions to Hollywood blockbusters might
be different from reactions to independent arthouse films. Therefore, we cannot
take these studies as indicative of reception overall. Rather, the studies can attempt
to provide somewhat reliable information on the population which they explore,
such as a nationality, or an age group, and even on that scale, we must be cautious
about accepting an individual study, often with a limited number of participants,
as broadly representative.
One reason for the context-bound nature of these studies is the vast number of
variables which have potential to influence reception. Factors such as the respond-
ents’ age, education, gender, language skills, viewing habits and many others can
influence their understanding and attitudes. Some studies are designed specifically
to test reception with regard to some variable. In Bairstow’s (2011) study, for exam-
ple, the participants’ language skills were the independent variable, or the variable
whose effect on comprehension was being tested, while the comprehension of the
programme was the dependent variable which was influenced by the test partic-
ipants’ language skills (Woodrow 2014: xiv–xv). Similarly, Di Giovanni’s (2012)
study revealed the influence of age on opinions and on the ability to understand
the translation. Such research designs are a useful way of exploring which varia-
bles influence reception and how, and of attempting to discover factors which are
particularly influential in the reception experience.
However, when exploring reception in authentic contexts, it can be difficult to
account for all potentially consequential variables. For example, if testing the effects
of educational background on the interpretation of cultural references, the age or
gender of the participants may also be a factor. Even rigorous research designs
can contain uncertainties arising from the subjectivity and individuality of the
reception experience. For example, a slower reader may have a different attitude
towards subtitles than a faster one, or a respondent who is tired may be less inclined
to recognise humour or culture-specific references than a well-rested respondent.
In other words, when looking at a complex process such as interpreting translated
audiovisual products, it is impossible to control all potential variables. In a large
sample, individual variation may be less noticeable, but in a group of eight or ten

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Multi-method research 71

2. Exploring interpretations and attitudes

A large proportion of context-oriented reception studies have been based on ques-

2.1 Reaction: Thematic studies on interpreting and understanding

Studies that explore viewers’ understanding of translated programmes often con-

between audiences from different cultures, but it is equally relevant to understand

containing VEH on a ten-point numeric scale (Chiaro 2007: 142–144). In addition,

ents’ self-evaluations can be unreliable. Therefore, it is relevant to ask for both

2.2 Reaction: Studies on overall understanding and interpretation

It is a somewhat artificial situation to test how well viewers comprehend un-

2.3 Repercussion: Attitudes and expectations

question investigating which method of translation is more effective in commu-

2.4 The contributions and challenges of questionnaires in reception research

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