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A Relevance-Theoretic
Approach to Decision-
Making in Subtitling
Łukasz Bogucki
A Relevance-Theoretic Approach
to Decision-Making in Subtitling
Łukasz Bogucki
A Relevance-Theoretic
Approach
to Decision-Making
in Subtitling
Łukasz Bogucki
Institute of English Studies
University of Łódź
Lodz, Łódzkie, Poland
ISBN 978-3-030-51802-8 ISBN 978-3-030-51803-5 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51803-5
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc.
in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such
names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for
general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and informa-
tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither
the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with
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Cover illustration: © John Rawsterne/patternhead.com
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Contents
1 Introduction 1
References 6
2 Relevance in Secondary Communication 9

1 The Importance of Being Relevant 9
2 Understanding Relevance Theory 11
3 Translation and Relevance 13
4 Assessing Translation Quality 15
5 Relevance Theory as the Translation Theory 17
References 18
3 The Nature of Subtitling 21

1 From Intertitles to Machine Translation
and Beyond—Rendering Film in Writing 21
2 Intersemiotic Translation in Context 24
3 Norms, Guidelines and Standards 26
4 Processing Effort 30
References 31
4 Towards a Relevance-Theoretic Model

of Decision-Making in Subtitling 35
1 Introduction—The Original Model 35
2 Assessment—Towards a New Model 37
v
vi CONTENTS
3 Relevant Subtitling 38
4 Contextualisation of Film 41
5 Relevance, Film Translation and Processing Effort 45
6 The New Model 47
References 49
5 Application of the Model 53

1 Introductory Remarks 53
2 The Visual and the Verbal 57
3 Culture-Specificity 60
4 Wordplay 64
5 Intertextuality 68
6 Inflectionality 72
7 Multilinguality 77
8 Paratextual Consistency 79
9 Language Variety 80
10 Forms of Address 83
11 Condensation 85
12 Anachronisms 86
13 Redundancy 87
14 Technical Inaccuracy 89
15 Irrelevance 89
References 90
6 Conclusion 93
References 96
Bibliography 99
Index 111
List of Figures
Fig. 1 A model of constraints on subtitling (Bogucki 2004: 86) 36

Fig. 2 The proposed model of relevance-driven decision-making in
subtitling 48
vii
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Abstract This introductory section discusses the current state of research

on audiovisual translation both within and outside the framework of trans-
lation studies. Earlier approaches to Relevance Theory in translation are
briefly mentioned. Finally, research assumptions and hypotheses are laid
out.
Keywords Audiovisual translation (AVT) · Relevance theory ·

Decision-making
If one takes any publication on audiovisual translation (AVT) written in

the early twenty-first century (e.g. Díaz-Cintas 2001), its introduction
will almost inevitably highlight the dynamic nature and rapid development
of AVT. However, recent works seem to take this dynamism for granted
(cf. e.g. Bogucki and Deckert 2020). This does not mean that the devel-
opment of AVT has ceased, though—on the contrary; these days, it is
seen as an inevitable concomitant to research in this area. The four driving
forces behind the constant advances in AVT practice (and, by extension,
research) can be summed up by the interrogative pronouns—how, what,
why and for whom.
© The Author(s) 2020 1

Ł. Bogucki, A Relevance-Theoretic Approach
to Decision-Making in Subtitling,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51803-5_1
2 Ł. BOGUCKI
Firstly, the omnipresent technological headway directly impacts the

creation of different language versions of audiovisual products. New tech-
niques appear (such as interlingual live subtitling, cf. Romero-Fresco
and Pöchhacker 2017), while established ones, like cinema subtitling,
become far more machine-assisted and, consequently, far less human-
made. Machine translation is par for the course and software packages
grow ever more sophisticated. Research into AVT deploys experimental
methods, e.g. electroencephalography and psychophysiological measures
such as galvanic skin response and heart rate (Orero et al. 2018: 114;
see also Matamala et al. 2020), while previously novel methodological
approaches, such as the use of eye tracking, become common and widely
deployed. AVT research is escaping the confines of (linguistic) translation
studies,1 paving the way for a new (inter)discipline (cf. Bogucki 2019).
Secondly, the audiovisual products of today tend to carry more
information (verbal or otherwise), become increasingly interactive (e.g.
Netflix’s Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, in which the audience can decide
how the plot develops) and interconnected (sequels, prequels, remakes,
reboots, spinoffs, even interquels or midquels). This takes the practice of
AVT to a whole new level. On the one hand, software development almost
makes the traditional technical (space and time) constraints on subtitling
(see e.g. Bogucki 2004) obsolete. On the other hand, the subtitler must
be ready to cope with a much higher pace of action and shorter scenes
(see Chapter 3), as well as information overload (increased use of text on
screen); this may increase the audience’s cognitive effort (cf. Chapter 4,
Sect. 5). Intertextual relations between episodes within a series, a related
series, a feature film that the series is based on (e.g. Fargo the movie vs.
Fargo the series or Bates Motel vs. Psycho), or film adaptations of literature
call for consistency in translation. If a movie and its trailer are translated
by two different translators without recourse to one another, the clash in
style and lexis can immediately be noticed (cf. Chapter 5, Sect. 8). All
of the above, combined with the emergence of new genres and refine-
ment of familiar ones, calls for extensive research into the nature of the
audiovisual text.
1 Throughout this work, “translation studies” refers to the academic interdiscipline

dealing with translation, while “Descriptive Translation Studies” (capitalised) refers to
a particular approach within translation studies (see Chapter 3).
1 INTRODUCTION 3
Thirdly, assuming that media accessibility is seen as a subset of AVT

(see Greco 2018 for a discussion), audiovisual products are not only trans-
lated interlingually, that is to say in order to provide different language
versions for wider dissemination, but also intralingually, whether for the
sake of social inclusion to cope with sensory impairment, or for legal
reasons (accessibility in the EU is regulated by the Audiovisual Media
Services Directive2 ). Digital TV gives audiences the power to make
choices with the help of a remote controller, so more AVT modalities
can be used for the same programme.
The fourth driving force behind the development of AVT is the target
audience. Audiences with various degrees of disabilities such as sight or
hearing loss require completely different approaches depending on the
presence, type and degree of disability. The former two are not the subject
of the present book, but the audience profile in the case of interlin-
gual AVT is undergoing constant changes, as evidenced by reception
studies (Bogucki and Deckert 2018). In the past, the audience tended
to consume audiovisual entertainment in a cinema or at home in front of
a TV set. While the two media are still in operation, their structure has
changed due to the digital revolution and they are inevitably pushed to
the background by a far more expedient, versatile and flexible medium—
online streaming. Today, audiovisual content can be accessed not only
via computer screens, but also smartphones, which opens the market
wide, but may result in previously irrelevant technical constraints (e.g.
the visibility of subtitles on a four-inch screen). English has been a lingua
franca for decades, if not centuries, but globalisation and schooling have
elevated it to a level where young people (the default audience for online
streaming) take it for granted. Subtitlers are now discouraged from trans-
lating out of English in cases where translation is not a prerequisite for
comprehension. For instance, in a scene where a car pulls up, bearing
flashing lights and the inscription SHERIFF or POLICE on the door,
translating the inscription is redundant; the audience will understand the
communicative intention (law enforcement has arrived) and the lack of a
subtitle will help them concentrate on other elements of the polysemiotic
audiovisual message.
This short monograph aims to investigate the process of decision-
making in subtitling. For the sake of research homogeneity, it omits
2 https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/audiovisual-media-services-directive-
avmsd, accessed on February 24, 2020.
4 Ł. BOGUCKI
discussion of other modalities of AVT, concentrating on the one which

may have the most potential to become the default mode of interlingual
film translation, at the same time providing the optimal surroundings to
illustrate the research hypothesis. The corpus of examples is made up of
Polish subtitles to feature films, entertainment series, documentaries and
other audiovisual material available on the streaming platform Netflix.
The technical, linguistic and translational constraints at work in subti-
tling result in a curtailed target text. The restrictions on the form and
content also stem from the additive nature of subtitling; the target audi-
ence receive the complete filmic message plus added text, which increases
their cognitive effort, therefore optimum subtitles are ones which are
inconspicuous and easy to process. On the other hand, subtitles must
render not just the dialogue in isolation, but its content in conjunc-
tion with the information load of the three other semiotic channels, viz.
picture, soundtrack and text on the screen.
The study of constraints on the process of decision-making in inter-
lingual subtitling is done within the cognitive framework of Relevance
Theory (RT, Sperber and Wilson 1986). While there is currently no
shortage of academic publications on subtitling in English and other
languages,3 the linguistic and translational scope of this work combines
the best of both worlds. Relevance Theory continues to be an influential
approach to communication, but its application to secondary communica-
tion (=translation) is surprisingly wanting or outright rejected (cf. Sapire
1996). For instance, translation is conspicuous by its absence from an
influential volume published towards the end of the twentieth century and
titled Current Issues in Relevance Theory (Rouchota and Jucker 1998).
Far more criticism has been levelled at the application of RT to trans-
lation by E. A. Gutt than at RT itself: “[s]ince the publication of his
landmark book, Translation and relevance: cognition and context (1991),
Gutt has become one of the most controversial and most misunder-
stood modern translation theorists” (Smith 2002: 107). Not only does
the current work attempt to bridge the divide between translation theory
and practice, but also to fill in another glaring gap. Research on subti-
tling is veering towards experimental studies (eye tracking), while seminal
linguistic approaches (e.g. Skopos theory, Vermeer 1978) are becoming
3 According to the online bibliography of interpreting and translation, as of February

24, 2020, there were 1680 publications on subtitling (https://aplicacionesua.cpd.ua.es/
tra_int/usu/buscar.asp?idioma=en).
1 INTRODUCTION 5
outdated or even obliterated; thus, there is need for a fresh look at subti-
tling from a language perspective. The present work revisits a seminal
approach, giving it a new lease of life and positioning it on the current
scene of AVT. This is in stark contrast to other linguistic approaches to
subtitling, which may no longer be relevant due to the dramatic changes
to the practice of AVT in recent years.
There seem to be two reasons for the limited popularity of linguistic
approaches to translation of late. Firstly, translation is increasingly
machine-dependent and intersemiotic, therefore, translation research
draws from disciplines other than traditional linguistics, exploring topics
such as neural networks and visual communication. Secondly, translation
studies as an independent academic discipline is emerging, though its
road to independence has been a long and winding one (cf. e.g. Bogucki
2017). The new discipline is developing its own research methods, not
necessarily identical with those used in linguistics. Moreover, practitioners
often find theories hermetic, impractical or simply unfamiliar. It is argued
here that the application of Relevance Theory to subtitling does not
suffer from the shortcomings listed above. RT is an approach that is
just as rooted in linguistics as it is rooted in pragmatics and communi-
cation studies. Its assumptions are universal. Research done within the
framework of RT can deploy a range of methods, including experimental
ones. Most importantly, the basic premise of Relevance Theory requires
no theoretical background as such and can be approached from a purely
practical perspective.
The present work aims at characterising and exemplifying the process
of decision-making in subtitling for online streaming. The research
hypothesis is that subtitlers make decisions in line with the principle(s)
of relevance. At the risk of oversimplification, subtitling is about deciding
how to make the target audience enjoy a translated movie as much as the
source audience enjoyed the original. This goal can only be accomplished
if the processing effort of subtitle consumption is brought to a minimum.
However, this is not a simple linear proportion of less information and
fewer words equalling less cognitive effort and, therefore, better subti-
tling. Insufficient information in subtitles leaves the audience puzzled as
to what the given scene means and, therefore, puts them to increased
cognitive effort. This was recognised by Irena Kovačič in the first work
on the application to RT to subtitling: “[o]n the one hand, the target
audience is spared the effort of processing the missing part, but, on the
other hand, they may find it more difficult to process the remaining part”
6 Ł. BOGUCKI
(Kovačič 1993: 250). Thus, the key to demarcating the fine line between
excessive and inadequate information is the focus of the present volume,
viz. relevance.
References
Bogucki, Łukasz. 2004. A Relevance Framework for Constraints on Cinema
Subtitling. Łódź: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego.
Bogucki, Łukasz. 2017. The Terminological Conundrum of Translation Studies.
Toward a Polish Dictionary of Translation Terms. Zagadnienia Rodzajów
Literackich (The Problems of Literary Genres) 60 (3): 27–36.
Bogucki, Łukasz. 2019. Areas and Methods of Audiovisual Translation Research,
3rd ed. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
Bogucki, Łukasz, and Mikołaj Deckert. 2018. Badanie preferencji dotycz˛acych
przekładu audiowizualnego wśród polskich widzów. In Mi˛edzy tekstem a
kultura.˛ Z zagadnień przekładoznawstwa, ed. Piotr Chruszczewski and Alek-
sandra Knapik, 252–267. AE Academic Publishing.
Bogucki, Łukasz, and Mikołaj Deckert (eds.). 2020. The Palgrave Handbook of
Audiovisual Translation and Media Accessibility. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Díaz-Cintas, Jorge. 2001. La traducción audiovisual. El subtitulado. Salamanca:
Almar.
Greco, Gian-Maria. 2018. The Nature of Accessibility Studies. Journal of
Audiovisual Translation 1: 205–232.
Gutt, Ernst-August. 1991. Translation and Relevance: Cognition and Context.
Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Kovačič, Irena. 1993. Relevance as a Factor in Subtitling Reduction. In Teaching
Translation and Interpretation 2: Insights, Aims, Visions, ed. Cay Dollerup and
Anne Lindegaard, 245–251. John Benjamins: Amsterdam and Philadelphia.
Matamala, Anna, Olga Soler-Vilageliu, Gonzalo Iturregui-Gallardo, Anna
Jankowska, Jorge-Luis Méndez-Ulrich, and Anna Serrano Ratera. 2020. Elec-
trodermal Activity as a Measure of Emotions in Media Accessibility Research:
Methodological Considerations. The Journal of Specialised Translation 33:
129–151.
Orero, Pilar, Stephen Doherty, Jan-Louis Kruger, Anna Matamala, Jan Pedersen,
Elisa Perego, Pablo Romero-Fresco, Sara Rovira-Esteva, Olga Soler-Vilageliu,
and Agnieszka Szarkowska. 2018. Conducting Experimental Research in
Audiovisual Translation (AVT): A Position Paper. The Journal of Specialised
Translation 30: 105–126.
Romero-Fresco, Pablo, and Franz Pöchhacker. 2017. Quality Assessment in
Interlingual Live Subtitling: The NTR Model. Linguistica Antverpiensia, New
Series: Themes in Translation Studies 16: 149–167.
1 INTRODUCTION 7
Rouchota, Villy, and Andreas H. Jucker (eds.). 1998. Current Issues in Relevance
Theory. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Sapire, Johanna Elizabeth. 1996. Gutt’s Relevance-Theoretic Account of Transla-
tion: An Account of ‘Translation’ or, Non-Translation? South African Journal
of Linguistics 14 (1): 1–7.
Smith, Kevin. 2002. Translation as Secondary Communication. The Relevance
Theory Perspective of Ernst-August Gutt. Acta Theologica Supplementum 2:
107–117.
Sperber, Dan, and Deirdre Wilson. 1986. Relevance: Communication and
Cognition. Oxford: Blackwell.
Vermeer, Hans Josef. 1978. Ein Rahmen für eine allgemeine Translationstheorie.
Lebende Sprachen 23 (3): 99–102.
CHAPTER 2
Relevance in Secondary Communication
Abstract This chapter sets out the foundations of Sperber and Wilson’s
influential theory and its role in understanding communication from a
linguistic perspective. Furthermore, it provides a critical study of recent
approaches to Relevance Theory from a linguistic and communicative
angle. Finally, it makes a few general observations on pertinent issues in
translation studies and goes on to embark on RT’s potential in under-
standing secondary communication (translation). An assessment of the
bold claim made by some theoreticians (e.g. E. A. Gutt) that Relevance
Theory can act in lieu of translation theory is also made.
Keywords Relevance theory · Secondary communication · Translation

theory
1 The Importance of Being Relevant

Before we embark on a scrutiny of Relevance Theory (RT) as a cogni-
tive approach to linguistic communication, let us focus on the concept
of relevance (in language) itself. Arguably the simplest accurate defini-
tion of relevance is “a trade-off between effort and effects” (Allott 2013:
57). Relevant communication is that which permits the achievement of
intended effects without expending unnecessary effort. In other words,

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51803-5_2
10 Ł. BOGUCKI
“an input [to a cognitive system] is more relevant the more cognitive
effects it yields, and less relevant the more mental effort it takes to
process” (Allott 2013: 59). As a result of constant selection pressures,
the human cognitive system has developed a variety of dedicated (innate
or acquired) mental mechanisms or biases which tend to allocate atten-
tion to inputs with the greatest expected relevance, and process them in
the most relevance-enhancing way (Wilson 2009: 394). This observation,
which is also the main tenet of RT, is indeed one that has driven not
just human communication, but human activity in general: to achieve the
optimal result while investing minimal effort. Translation studies scholars
are familiar with another seminal approach that comes down to the same
logic and at the same time could be seen as groundwork for the applica-
tion of RT to translation. As early as 1967, when translation studies was in
its infancy, the Czech translation theoretician Jiří Levý famously remarked
that “actual translation work […] is pragmatic; the translator resolves
for that one of the possible solutions which promises a maximum of
effect with a minimum of effort” (Levý 1967/2000: 156). The Minimax
strategy, as he called this principle, would certainly benefit from being
tried and tested by introspective cognitive research, for instance Think
Aloud Protocols, but as a tenet it remains valid to this day, although the
“actual translation work” of today differs considerably from that practised
half a century ago (note for instance Pedersen’s application of Minimax
to subtitling [2011: 78]). Incidentally, Levý’s influential paper discusses
translation as a decision-making process, a series of steps whereby the
translator chooses from among available alternatives, guided by instruc-
tions (comparable to what Toury [1995] later referred to as norms), with
each choice pre-determining subsequent decisions. Three decades later,
Wilss (1994: 131) saw decision-making in terms of interactions between
the various elements of the translator’s cognitive system, viz. linguistic,
referential, socio-cultural and situational knowledge bases. This shift from
a normative to a cognitive perspective on decision-making in translation
is symptomatic of the developments in disciplines related to translation
studies, mainly linguistics.
The locus classicus for anyone intending to read on Relevance Theory
is undoubtedly Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson’s seminal monograph
(Sperber and Wilson 1986), but the concept of relevance in linguistic
pragmatics was neither originated nor exhausted, certainly, there and
then. It is widely accepted that Relevance Theory grew out of the philoso-
pher Herbert Paul Grice’s influential contribution to linguistics, the
2 RELEVANCE IN SECONDARY COMMUNICATION 11
Cooperative Principle (Grice 1975). One of the four elements (maxims)

of the Cooperative Principle, the Maxim of Relevance (also known as
the Maxim of Relation), is ostensibly a case of ignotum per ignotum;
the maxim simply sounds “be relevant”. However, Grice does provide
an explanation: “I expect a partner’s contribution to be appropriate to
immediate needs at each stage of the transaction” (Grice 1975: 47). In
his later work, Grice had this to say about the extremely succinct wording
of the maxim: “Though the maxim itself is terse, its formulation conceals
a number of problems that exercise me a good deal: questions about what
different kinds and focuses of relevance there may be, how these shift in
the course of a talk exchange, how to allow for the fact that subjects of
conversations are legitimately changed, and so on. I find the treatment
of such questions exceedingly difficult, and I hope to revert to them
in later work” (Grice 1989: 27). His wish was certainly granted, albeit
not so much by himself, but by a number of followers—neo-Gricean
(e.g. Levinson 2000; Horn 2005) and post-Gricean, in particular rele-
vance theorists. Essentially, RT rejects the Cooperative Principle, focusing
instead on the principle of relevance (Sperber and Wilson 1986), later
postulated as two hypotheses: the cognitive principle (“human cognition
tends to be geared to the maximisation of relevance”), and the narrower,
communicative principle (“every act of ostensive communication commu-
nicates a presumption of its own optimal relevance”) (Sperber and Wilson
1995: 158; see also Van Der Henst and Sperber 2004). The principle(s)
will serve us as a viable starting point to introduce Relevance Theory.
2 Understanding Relevance Theory

With respect to the principle(s) quoted above, the founders of Relevance
Theory are very clear about their status: “[c]ommunicators and audience
need no more know the principle of relevance to communicate than they
need to know the principles of genetics to reproduce. Communicators do
not ‘follow’ the principle of relevance; and they could not violate it even
if they wanted to. The principle of relevance applies without exception”
(Sperber and Wilson 1995: 162). This is a pertinent observation from
the viewpoint of the present work. In the later sections, it is demonstrated
how audiovisual translators follow the general principle of relevance not as
scholars familiar with Relevance Theory, but as practitioners who merely
use their expertise and common sense to deliver solutions that naturally
follow the logic of relevance. The practicality of Relevance Theory is its
12 Ł. BOGUCKI
main asset. Its popularity and universality undoubtedly lie in the simplicity
and naturalness of its core logic. Stripped of its linguistic jargon and maxi-
mally simplified, at the cellular level, Relevance Theory postulates that
we only do what is necessary or be rewarded whenever doing more than
necessary, achieving as much as possible at the lowest cost possible. It asks
and answers relevant questions (pun not intended) concerning human
communication and the interpretation thereof.
While the statement that the principle of relevance applies without
exception and cannot, by definition, be violated is very clear, a disclaimer
must be made at this point. Grice’s Cooperative Principle has been found
to be occasionally flouted in communication (cf. Ayasreh and Razali
2018; Brumark 2006). By a similar logic, the principle of relevance,
though universally applicable, may in certain situations be bent or flouted,
whereby the processing effort is increased, yet the extra benefits that
usually accompany the increase are not observable. Some examples of such
situations in subtitling are presented in Sect. 15 of Chapter 5.
Relevance Theory sits at the crossroads of linguistics, communication
studies, pragmatics and—as will be demonstrated in this work—transla-
tion studies, having had a significant influence on all these disciplines. In
his overview of the current status of RT thirty years after its conception,
Padilla Cruz notes that: “[r]elevance theorists’ continuous challenging
of often-taken-for-granted assumptions, claims, generalisations, and even
whole models, has also brought fresher air to those disciplines. Indeed,
they have analysed in depth a wide variety of linguistic and communica-
tive phenomena from a different perspective and with a new theoretical
apparatus, which has shed much light onto underexplored or overlooked
issues” (Padilla Cruz 2016: 1).
RT focuses on a particular type of human activity and the stimuli gener-
ated as a result thereof, viz. communication and utterances. These are
analysed from the point of view of: (i) the positive cognitive effects (the
improvements to the mental representation of the world around us) and
(ii) the (processing of) cognitive effort required to comprehend informa-
tion. Thus, optimal relevance takes place if: (i) an utterance is relevant
enough for the receiver to invest the necessary amount of processing
effort and (ii) it will result in positive cognitive effects, in line with the
receiver’s processing ability (Sperber and Wilson 1995: 270). To simplify,
an exchange of information can be likened to a contract, whereby the
receiver goes to the trouble of processing the speaker’s communicative
stimulus (message), hoping in return for a reward in the form of positive
cognitive effects; vice versa, the speaker will intend to produce commu-
nicative stimuli that will provide these effects at the lowest possible cost,
that is to say, with no unnecessary processing effort (cf. Wilson and
Sperber 2002). Gutt (1989: 76) refers to relevance as “a cost-benefit rela-
tion”. This contract hinges on its subject (the communicative exchange)
having two important qualities, viz. ostensive and inferential. The former
indicates the speaker’s purposefulness in getting the receiver’s atten-
tion, the latter refers to the receiver having to decipher the speaker’s
meaning. Sperber and Wilson explain that “[u]tterance comprehension
is seen as essentially an exercise in mind-reading, and the challenge for
relevance theorists attempting to build a psychologically plausible, empir-
ically testable pragmatic theory is precisely to explain how the closed
formal system of language provides effective pieces of evidence which,
combined with contextual information, enable successful comprehension
to take place” (Sperber and Wilson 1986: 122).
Relevance Theory posits that the speaker, engaging in intentional
communication with the receiver, is motivated by two intentions, viz.
informative and communicative. Thus communication hinges on the
speaker making manifest his or her assumptions and the audience recog-
nising the speaker’s informative intention. Sperber and Wilson explain
that “a fact is manifest to an individual at a given time if and only if
he is capable at that time of representing it mentally and accepting its
representation as true or probably true” (Sperber and Wilson 1986: 39).
The facts manifest to an individual constitute their cognitive environment
(ibidem). Manifestness is a very versatile concept that eschews the draw-
backs of notions like common or mutual knowledge (Padilla Cruz 2016).
A mutual cognitive environment of similar mental representations helps
the speaker and the receiver communicate successfully.
3 Translation and Relevance

Just as Relevance Theory challenged a number of hitherto accepted theo-
ries of human communication, its application to translation (Gutt 1991
and elsewhere) undermined a number of assumptions made in translation
theory (see also Sect. 5 below). Early linguistic approaches to translation
followed in the footsteps of the code model of communication, arguing
that translation was about encoding, rendering and decoding (compare
the model of the translation process based on the Chomskyan concept of
deep structure, Nida 1964). As explained above, for Sperber and Wilson
14 Ł. BOGUCKI
communication is ostensive and inferential. Similarly, the traditional vision

of translation was to consider the relation between the source and target
text to be based on equivalence, for many years a central concept in early
translation studies (Jakobson 1959; Nida and Taber 1969; Koller 1995).
Achieving equivalence was seen as the goal of translation. The shift from
linguistic to literary approaches to translation, in particular Descriptive
Translation Studies, meant taking equivalence for granted rather than
seeking it, as it was seen as an inherent feature of all translations (Toury
1980), very much as relevance is an inherent feature of communication
for Sperber and Wilson. The application of Relevance Theory to trans-
lation, a prominent manifestation of the pragmatic turn in translation
studies, meant a redefinition of the relation between the original and the
target text, as Gutt’s approach considers it to be based on interpretive
resemblance rather than equivalence. To a certain degree, the difference
is merely terminological. Gutt (ibidem) sees translation as interpretive
use of language, while Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk (2014), for example,
refers to equivalence as resemblance. However, there is more to inter-
pretive resemblance than translational equivalence, both in practical and
theoretical terms. Translation novices tend to understand equivalence as
semantic sameness, rarely departing from the meaning and form of the
original; while this is generally encouraged in specialised translation, it
may lead to unacceptable translational solutions elsewhere, for instance
in subtitling. From a theoretical standpoint, translation as a search for
interpretive resemblance involves identifying the implicatures and explica-
tures of the source text and replacing them in the target text to account
for differences in the source and target recipients’ respective cognitive
environments. It constitutes a substantial departure from the philosoph-
ical approach to translation as rule-governed behaviour (Feleppa 1982).
The guiding principle is always relevance, a notion more complex and
abstract than explicit translation laws or norms. As Dicerto (2018: 55)
observes, “Gutt’s theory may be somewhat intimidating for translators
who, following this approach, would not be able to rely on a precise
hierarchy of textual factors helping them in their choices”.
Additionally, despite the numerous levels of equivalence, including
pragmatic (Baker 1992), it remains confined to verbal features of texts
and, thus, inapplicable to multimodal messages, including audiovisual
texts. Interpretive resemblance, however, may be applied to multimodal
texts, as evidenced by Dicerto (2018). Non-verbal communication also
works on an ostensive-inferential basis.
Seeking optimal relevance in translation can be understood as using

“different strategies to try to recreate the cognitive effects intended by
the source communicator with the lowest possible processing effort on
the part of the target addressee” (Díaz-Pérez 2014: 108). This approach
is not unrelated to Eugene Nida’s seminal principle of equivalent effect,
which holds that “[t]he message of the original text is so transported into
the receptor language that the response of the receptor is essentially like
that of the original receptors” (Nida and Taber 1969: 200). The principle
defines dynamic equivalence and remains the cornerstone of the thorny
notion of translation quality assessment (TQA), which is discussed below
for the sake of a more thorough understanding of relevance in translation.
4 Assessing Translation Quality

TQA is, in fact, a complex concept that defies description in terms of
simple, decontextualised taxonomies of criteria. The layman’s perspective
on TQA, concomitant with the translation trainee’s strategy of survival
in the translation classroom (above all, translation needs to be faithful),
was ridiculed in the old adage about a woman, attributed to the Russian
poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, which comes down to the inevitable choice
between faithful and beautiful. Relevance Theory attempts to explain
what faithful means in the communicative sense: “the speaker guaran-
tees that her utterance is a faithful enough representation of the original:
that is, resembles it closely enough in relevant aspects” (Wilson and
Sperber 1988: 137). This goes to show that faithfulness in commu-
nication is not a binary notion (faithful or unfaithful), but a gradable
one (more faithful or less faithful, depending on relevance). Similarly,
in assessing translation quality, faithfulness is hardly an absolute; its
presence, degree and judiciousness are always contextualised. In what
is widely considered the most comprehensive work on TQA, House
(1977) distinguishes between subjective/anecdotal, response-oriented,
text-based and functional-pragmatic approaches. The use of related terms
in the model (translation criticism of literary translations, translation
evaluation in didactics, or translation quality assurance in industrial and
corporate contexts) suggests that, understandably, assessing translations
varies depending on what gets translated. Skopos theory (Vermeer 1978)
essentially postulates that the translation process (and by extension criteria
for quality assessment) is determined by the translation brief, which spec-
ifies why the source text gets translated in the first place. When applied to
16 Ł. BOGUCKI
translation studies, the sociolinguistic concept of audience design focuses

on who the translation is done for (Mason 2000). In the practice of
translating, translators bear in mind these pronouns (what, how, why,
who for and—too often most importantly—when for; compare the first
paragraph of Chapter 1). The assumption underlying the application of
Relevance Theory to translation is that, depending on the characteris-
tics of the particular translation commission and the applicable criteria for
evaluation, translators decide on the relevant global strategy or approach
to the assignment and the particular techniques to solve individual prob-
lems involving cultural or linguistic untranslatability, rendering language
variety, humour, terminology, etc. In written translation, the optimal
approach is generally to strike a viable balance between form and content,
the former arguably more relevant in the translation of literature, the
latter in specialised translation. Otherwise, relevance in translation and
related activities may (and does) vary. For instance, E. A. Gutt has this to
say about interpreting: “since the stream of speech flows on, the audi-
ence cannot be expected to sit and ponder difficult renderings. […]
Accordingly, the translator will often settle for renderings that resemble
the original less closely but get across easily what he considers to be
adequately relevant aspects of the original” (Gutt 2000: 390). Inter-
preting is essentially about helping two parties who don’t share a linguistic
code to communicate. Accuracy matters in detail (e.g. figures in financial
negotiations), but not necessarily in the wording. By the same token,
audiovisual translation is not about faithfully rendering the dialogue
in isolation. Firstly, the target audience can access visually transmitted
information just as freely as the source-language audience, unless they
are visually impaired; secondly, audiovisual translation constraints often
prohibit a verbatim rendition of verbally transmitted information. As a
result, relevant decisions in audiovisual translation are a function of what
needs to be rendered (and what is therefore not redundant) and what
may be rendered under the constrained circumstances.
Gutt (1990) makes a significant distinction, which helps appreciate
the importance of faithfulness in assessing translation quality. Namely,
he distinguishes between direct and indirect translation. The dichotomy
harks back to formal vs. dynamic equivalence (Nida and Taber 1969).
Direct translation conveys the idea that translation should convey the
same meaning as the original, so it “purports to interpretively resemble
the original completely” (Gutt 1990: 154), whereas indirect translation
allows more flexibility on the part of the translator and implies looser
degrees of resemblance. The key notion, predictably, is relevance, as the

resemblance between the original and its (indirect) translation concerns
only the most relevant elements. Gutt adds that “[t]he idea that the
meaning of the original can be communicated to any receptor audience,
no matter how different their background, is […] a misconception based
on mistaken assumptions about communication” (ibidem: 135).
The notion of target audience’s cognitive effort (compare Sect. 2
above) is crucial in the application of RT to translation. Gutt (2000: 377)
says that translation should be expressed “in such a manner that it yields
the intended interpretation without putting the audience to unnecessary
effort”. This simple criterion for TQA will be used to comment on the
examples of subtitling in Chapter 5.
5 Relevance Theory as the Translation Theory

The definite article in the title of this section is deliberate. The bold
claim that “there is no need for a distinct general theory of translation”
(Gutt 1989: 75) suggests that Relevance Theory suffices to fully explain
the nature of translation and account for all its complexities through
the versatile notion of relevance. This assumption earned Gutt as many
followers as it did critics (see Chapter 1 above). Controversial as it was
at its time, though, the fact that it was made over thirty years ago is
paramount to its appraisal. The development of translation studies and
translation practice cannot possibly be equated with the evolution of Rele-
vance Theory. In the 1980s, translation theory was past its linguistic and
pragmatic turn and experiencing the cultural turn of Descriptive Transla-
tion Studies (Snell-Hornby 2006: 47). It was yet to undergo its other
turns: interdisciplinary, multimodal, postcolonial, gender-based, empir-
ical, globalisation, technological, psycholinguistic and—most importantly
from the perspective of the present volume—audiovisual (cf. Chapter 6
below). The practice of translating thirty years ago differed from today’s
even with respect to the less technologically bound translational activities,
such as literary translation or consecutive interpreting. Therefore, while it
was highly debatable whether Relevance Theory could act in lieu of trans-
lation theory in the 1980s, it would be preposterous to claim the same in
the 2020s. My five-year work on a dictionary of translation studies termi-
nology (Bogucki et al. 2019) has clearly shown to me the extent of today’s
translation studies and the virtual impossibility of successfully enclosing it
18 Ł. BOGUCKI
within a single coherent set of metalinguistic concepts, let alone a theo-

retical paradigm. Thus, despite worthy attempts (e.g. Blumczyński 2016),
it would seem a fallacy to claim both the necessity and the feasibility of
the translation theory, understood as an all-encompassing methodolog-
ical and conceptual construct capable of accounting for all translational
phenomena. By extension, Relevance Theory is not it. What it is, however,
is a versatile approach, perfectly suitable as a translation theory and
particularly useful to practitioners due to its simple and convincing logic.
Reiterating the detailed assumptions of Relevance Theory was not the
aim of this section; neither was a thorough study of translation theory.
Both would be unfeasible, given the constraints of the present work.
Readers wishing to fully acquaint themselves with RT are advised to
consult the highly useful online bibliography meticulously managed by
Francisco Yus.1 It is hoped, however, that this brief glance at the “com-
plexity in simplicity” that RT offers can shed some light on its usefulness
in explaining subtitling practice. Before we embark on that, though, the
audiovisual translation modality in question merits explanation.
References
Allott, Nicholas. 2013. Relevance Theory. In Perspectives on Linguistic Prag-
matics, ed. Alessandro Capone, Franco Lo Piparo, and Marco Carapezza,
57–98. Heidelberg: Springer.
Ayasreh, Amer, and Razlina Razali. 2018. The Flouting of Grice’s Conversational
Maxim: Examples from Bashar Al-Assad’s Interview during the Arab Spring.
IOSR Journal of Humanities and Social Science 23 (5): 43–47.
Baker, Mona. 1992. In Other Words. A Coursebook on Translation. London:
Routledge.
Blumczyński, Piotr. 2016. Ubiquitous Translation. New York and London:
Routledge.
Bogucki, Łukasz, Joanna Dybiec-Gajer, Maria Piotrowska, and Teresa
Tomaszkiewicz. 2019. Słownik polskiej terminologii przekładoznawczej.
Kraków: Ksi˛egarnia Akademicka.
Brumark, Åsa. 2006. Non-Observance of Gricean Maxims in Family Dinner
Table Conversation. Journal of Pragmatics 38 (8): 1206–1238.
Díaz-Pérez, Francisco Javier. 2014. Relevance Theory and Translation: Trans-
lating Puns in Spanish Film Titles into English. Journal of Pragmatics 70:
108–129.
1 https://personal.ua.es/francisco.yus/rt2.html, accessed on February 21, 2020.

Dicerto, Sara. 2018. Multimodal Pragmatics and Translation. A New Model for
Source Text Analysis. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
Feleppa, Robert. 1982. Translation as Rule-Governed Behaviour. Philosophy of
the Social Sciences 12: 1–32.
Grice, Herbert Paul. 1975. Logic and Conversation. In Syntax and Semantics 3:
Speech Acts, ed. Peter Cole and Jerry L. Morgan, 41–58. New York: Academic
Press.
Grice, Herbert Paul. 1989. Studies in the Way of Words. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Gutt, Ernst-August. 1989. Translation and Relevance. UCL Working Papers in
Linguistics 1, 75–94.
Gutt, Ernst-August. 1990. A Theoretical Account of Translation—Without a
Translation Theory. Target 2: 135–164.
Gutt, Ernst-August. 1991. Translation and Relevance: Cognition and Context.
Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Gutt, Ernst-August. 2000. Translation as Interlingual Interpretive Use of
Language. In The Translation Studies Reader, ed. Lawrence Venuti, 376–396.
London and New York: Routledge.
Horn, Laurence. 2005. Current Issues in Neo-Gricean Pragmatics. Intercultural
Pragmatics 2 (2): 191–204.
House, Juliane. 1977. A Model for Translation Quality Assessment. Tübingen:
Narr. Verlag.
Jakobson, Roman. 1959. On Linguistic Aspects of Translation. In On Trans-
lation, ed. Reuben Arthur Brower, 232–239. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Koller, Werner. 1995. The Concept of Equivalence and the Object of Translation
Studies. Target 7 (2): 191–222.
Levinson, Stephen. 2000. Presumptive Meanings. The Theory of Generalized
Conversational Implicature. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Levý, Jiri. 1967. Translation as a Decision Process. In [n. a.] To Honor Roman
Jakobson: Essays on the Occasion of His 70. Birthday, 11. October 1966, 1171–
1182. The Hague and Paris: Mouton, reprinted in Lawrence Venuti (ed.).
2000. The Translation Studies Reader, 148–159. London and New York:
Routledge.
Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, Barbara. 2014. Equivalence. In Ways to Translation,
ed. Łukasz Bogucki, Stanisław Goźdź-Roszkowski, and Piotr Stalmaszczyk,
11–54. Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego: Łódź.
Mason, Ian. 2000. Audience Design in Translating. The Translator 6 (1): 1–22.
Nida, Eugene. 1964. Toward a Science of Translating. Leiden: Brill.
Nida, Eugene, and Charles Taber. 1969. The Theory and Practice of Translation.
Leiden: Brill.
20 Ł. BOGUCKI
Padilla Cruz, Manuel. 2016. Introduction. Three Decades of Relevance Theory.

In Relevance Theory. Recent Developments, Current Challenges and Future
Directions, ed. Manuel Padilla Cruz, 1–29. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Pedersen, Jan. 2011. Subtitling Norms for Television: An Exploration Focussing
on Extralinguistic Cultural References. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Snell-Hornby, Mary. 2006. The Turns of Translation Studies: New Paradigms or
Shifting Viewpoints? Benjamins Translation Library Vol. 66. Amsterdam and
Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Sperber, Dan, and Deirdre Wilson. 1986. Relevance: Communication and
Cognition. Oxford: Blackwell.
Sperber, Dan, and Deirdre Wilson. 1995. Relevance. Communication and Cogni-
tion, 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell (The 2nd edition of Sperber and Wilson’s
locus classicus is listed as a separate bibliographical entry due to the significant
differences between the two editions, in particular regarding the formulation
of the principle(s) of relevance.).
Toury, Gideon. 1980. In Search of a Theory of Translation. Tel Aviv: The Porter
Institute for Poetics and Semiotics.
Toury, Gideon. 1995. Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond. Amsterdam
and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Van Der Henst, Jean-Baptiste, and Dan Sperber. 2004. Testing the Cognitive
and Communicative Principles of Relevance. In Experimental Pragmatics, ed.
Ira Noveck and Dan Sperber, 141–171. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Vermeer, Hans Josef. 1978. Ein Rahmen für eine allgemeine Translationstheorie.
Lebende Sprachen 23 (3): 99–102.
Wilson, Deirdre. 2009. Relevance Theory. In The Pragmatics Encyclopedia, ed.
Louise Cummings, 393–399. London: Routledge.
Wilson, Deirdre, and Dan Sperber. 1988. Representation and Relevance. In
Mental Representations: The Interface Between Language and Reality, ed.
Ruth M. Kempson, 133–153. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wilson, Deirdre, and Dan Sperber. 2002. Relevance Theory. UCL Working
Papers in Linguistics 14, 249–287.
Wilss, Wolfram. 1994. A Framework for Decision-Making in Translation. Target
6 (2): 131–150.
CHAPTER 3
The Nature of Subtitling
Abstract This part positions subtitling on the broader scale of audiovi-

sual translation. The latter has had a prominent place in translation studies
for approximately three decades and continues to develop at a breakneck
pace, fuelled by technological advances. Current norms and guidelines
on subtitling will be discussed, along with state-of-the-art research, in
particular reception studies.
Keywords Subtitling · Norms · Guidelines · Reception studies
1 From Intertitles to Machine Translation

and Beyond---Rendering Film in Writing
Well known to most viewers worldwide, subtitling can be defined as “a
translation practice that consists of rendering in writing, usually at the
bottom of the screen, the translation into a target language of the original
dialogue exchanges uttered by different speakers, as well as all other verbal
information that appears written on screen (letters, banners, inserts) or
is transmitted aurally in the soundtrack (song lyrics, voices off)” (Díaz-
Cintas 2020). Uncontroversial as this definition may be, it does not take
into account certain prominent characteristics of subtitling, such as its

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51803-5_3
22 Ł. BOGUCKI
constraining nature and contextual dependence on visually transmitted

information; these features will be expounded on below.
Subtitling is one of the three main modalities of interlingual audiovi-
sual translation (AVT), the others being dubbing and voice-over. Tech-
nically, it is versatile enough to be used in the cinema, on television,
for durable media such as DVDs and BluRays, as well as online, for
video-on-demand (VoD) and over-the-top (OTT) content.1 The most
apparent feature distinguishing subtitling from the other two modalities
is the shift in mode from spoken to written (see Chapter 4 below); this
characteristic is key from the point of view of Relevance Theory, as it
greatly influences the viewers’ processing effort (see Sect. 4 below). The
decision as to which modality will be in use for a particular audiovisual
text is motivated by a number of factors, the prominence of which has
shifted over time. The audiovisual Europe has traditionally been divided
into dubbing countries (e.g. France and Germany), subtitling countries
(e.g. Sweden and Greece) and voice-over ones (e.g. Poland and Russia).
The reasons for this delineation may be demographical (“large countries
dub and small countries subtitle”, Fawcett 1996: 84), economic (dubbing
is far more expensive than subtitling), political (censorship is possible in
dubbing, as the original dialogue is never heard, but much less so in
subtitling), historical (for example, voice-over originated in the Soviet
Union and subsequently spread all over the Soviet bloc) or educational
(subtitling requires literacy and is thus not the optimal choice in under-
educated regions or for very young audiences). Age-related preferences
are not only institutionalised (a particular programme is only available
in dubbing, because it is intended for small children), but also person-
alised; as evidenced by surveys, certain age groups will favour certain
AVT modalities, though they also have access to others. For instance, the
Media Consulting Group (2011: 10) discovered that “the younger the
respondents (aged 12–18 and 18–25) and the more languages they speak,
the more pronounced is their preference for subtitling over dubbing”.
Digital television and VoD services have provided viewers with a powerful
tool hidden within the remote (or the interface of a web browser, in the
case of OTT distribution), namely the ability to choose the audio track
at the touch of a button. This has influenced not only the AVT market
and reception studies done by AVT scholars, but also the internal policies
1 The technical distinction between VoD and OTT delivery is not pertinent to the
discussion in hand, therefore, both are mostly used interchangeably.
3 THE NATURE OF SUBTITLING 23
of VoD giants. Nguyen (2018) describes an experiment carried out by

Netflix, whereby viewers were interviewed to reveal their film translation
preferences with respect to foreign shows translated into English. When
Netflix abode by popular demand and provided English subtitles to the
French show Marseille, along with the dubbed version already available,
they discovered that the viewers who watched the dubbed stream were
more likely to finish the show than the ones who used the subtitles; this
made the company set the dubbed version by default, with subtitles as an
option. Incidentally, unlike traditional television, VoD makes it possible
to obtain data on the consumption of the particular AVT modality, which
is useful both for the content providers and AVT researchers.
In contrast with intralingual captioning, a modality which provides
subtitles for the deaf and the hard-of-hearing as a form of media accessi-
bility, interlingual subtitling has been around for almost a century and
continues to undergo significant changes in terms of its method of
production and delivery, including constraints and target audience expec-
tations, but also skopos. For instance, a relatively recent practice that
remains grossly under-researched is so-called reverse subtitling (L1 to
L2, instead of the usual L2 to L1 translation); this type of subtitling
serves primarily to foster second language acquisition and learning (Ragni
2020). Developed as a natural successor of intertitles in silent cinema,
subtitles started out as the manual projection of slides with printed text
(the optical method), then they were stamped mechanically and thermally,
etched chemically and finally cut by laser (Ivarsson 2004). Incidentally,
though intertitles are not the focus of the present work, their use was very
much in line with the basic assumption of Relevance Theory; appearing
far less frequently than today’s subtitles, they could only contain what
the filmmaker deemed indispensable for understanding the plot. In the
digital world, subtitling is done with software, from simple freeware
programmes for fansubbers, to costly, sophisticated multitool packages for
professionals. This book does not aim at comparing and contrasting the
particular subtitling tools, assessing their performance, or explaining how
they work. That being said, an understanding of the technical aspect of
modern subtitling, in particular the man-machine relationship, is impor-
tant from the point of view of the present work. Today all translation is
machine-assisted; it’s merely a matter of degree. At the lowest level of
automatisation, the human translator takes full responsibility for the deci-
sions and hence the quality, delivering a digital product with the help of
word processing software. The middle (and most common) ground is the
24 Ł. BOGUCKI
use of various tools, in particular terminological databases and translation

memory, to deliver more consistent and accurate target texts consider-
ably faster than without such facilities. The highest degree is full machine
translation, traditionally pre-edited and post-edited by human transla-
tors as a quality assurance measure, recently less so, thanks to impressive
advances in deep learning. Subtitling may be different in terms of actual
execution, but at the conceptual level of man vs. machine it has a lot
in common with specialised translation, for instance. Machine translation
has been used in both amateur and professional subtitling for some years
now (Bywood et al. 2017).
Today, it is undisputed that subtitling and technology have what Jorge
Díaz-Cintas aptly called an “umbilical relationship” (Díaz-Cintas 2018:
128). Technological advances have affected not only subtitle production
methods, but also their positioning and, indirectly, their content. Once
electronic timecode for cueing subtitles was introduced in the late twen-
tieth century, manual positioning was no longer necessary. This led to
more precise cueing and, by extension, higher reading speeds (Pedersen
2018: 85). Szarkowska (2016) conducted a large-scale survey on subtitle
presentation and discovered that reading speeds vary from 9 to 17 charac-
ters per second, depending on country and medium, for instance 9–10 cps
in Norway (but 17 cps for Netflix) as opposed to 15–17 cps in Poland.
This is a significant difference, as in practice the spectrum means that
viewers may devote most of their screen gazing time to reading subti-
tles or, conversely, focus largely on the picture, merely glancing over the
subtitles. The survey showed that a maximum presentation time, typically
imposed by the subtitling software, is required to provide viewers with
ample time to comfortably read the subtitles and follow the film.
2 Intersemiotic Translation in Context

Among the earliest taxonomies of translation still in use today is the
one by Roman Jakobson (1959), who distinguished between intralingual,
interlingual and intersemiotic translation. AVT, let alone media acces-
sibility, was non-existent at the time (though obviously films did get
translated as such), but the triad is often linked to the type of translation
under scrutiny here, as AVT may be all three: intralingual, interlingual
and intersemiotic. In particular, the last is mentioned most frequently in
theoretical discussions as a feature of AVT. Also known as transmutation,
intersemiotic translation was defined as “an interpretation of verbal signs
by means of signs of nonverbal sign systems” (Jakobson 1959: 233). As a

matter of fact, AVT is not transmutation, but more frequently the reverse,
an interpretation of the non-verbal by means of the verbal.
A pertinent characteristic of any audiovisual text is its multisemi-
otic nature, as evidenced by the very adjective “audiovisual”. Viewers’
comprehension of an audiovisual message is an aggregate total of the
information load conveyed both verbally and non-verbally, through the
audio and video channel. This inevitably places AVT research within
the framework of a paradigm that may not be addressed explicitly in
the present work, but which nonetheless remains at the cornerstone of
any discussion apposite to AVT, namely multimodality. As explained by
Jewitt, the core assumption of multimodality is that “meanings are made,
distributed, received, interpreted and remade in interpretation through
many representational and communicative modes – not just through
language – whether as speech or as writing” (Jewitt 2009: 14). Conse-
quent to this, “any translation of film material should pay heed to the
other semiotic modalities interacting with the verbal” (Taylor 2003: 194).
Subtitling is notable for its contextual embeddedness. While the notion
of context is pertinent to any translation, most target texts are inde-
pendent per se. A Hungarian version of a Vladimir Nabokov novel can
be enjoyed on its own; similarly, a Swedish translation of the instruc-
tion manual for a British-made home appliance is quite self-sufficient.
Conversely, Hungarian or Swedish subtitles for a foreign movie exist
in the contextual immediacy of the original dialogue and visually trans-
mitted information and do not function (nor are they meant to function)
without the latter. Whereas in the case of literary or specialised translation,
quality assessment is usually a predetermined and deliberate exercise for
translation students, teachers, researchers or validators, subtitling quality
assessment may well be an inadvertent reflex for any viewer conver-
sant with the language of the movie. As a result, scenarios like the one
described by Nornes (1999: 17) are all too frequent: “all of us have, at
one time or another, left a movie theater wanting to kill the translator.
Our motive: the movie’s murder by ‘incompetent’ subtitle”. According to
a survey,2 over 80% of modern movies feature English as the main or the
only language. As most viewers in developed countries speak the language
to some extent, subtitling English-language films into other tongues is
2 https://stephenfollows.com/languages-most-commonly-used-in-movies/, accessed on
December 30, 2019.
26 Ł. BOGUCKI
almost certain to result in instant and constant comparison of the original

and the translation. This influences the reception of subtitling (and conse-
quently subtitling practice) in more ways than one. Díaz-Cintas (2020)
explains that subtitlers tend to preserve internationalisms and other words
that are similar in both languages, as well as following the syntactic
structure of the source text wherever possible. This incessant (though
possibly subconscious) comparison of the target and source texts may also
affect the overall cognitive effort expended while watching a movie with
subtitles.
On the one hand, visually transmitted information can act as a subti-
tling constraint (see Bogucki 2019: 72–76 for an illustration of humour
translation based on wordplay and visually salient items); on the other
hand, it provides comprehension clues, which allow the audiovisual trans-
lator to reduce the subtitles. Like any translation, the process of AVT
involves constant decision-making; in the case of subtitling, the deci-
sions amount to determining which communicative clues are redundant
(i.e. negligible in the broader visual context) and which are necessary for
comprehension—in other words, relevant.
3 Norms, Guidelines and Standards

Working on the ostensibly undisputed assumption that subtitling is trans-
lation (more on this in Chapter 4), like nearly all translation, it is done
according to norms, “the social reality of correctness notions” (Bartsch
1987: 12). Translational norms may be set by the industry (such as the
ISO 17,100 standard for providing translation services) or by academia
(Chesterman 1997; Hermans 1999; Schäffner 1999; Toury 1995 and
elsewhere). To quote arguably the best known definition of translation
norms, they are “performance instructions appropriate for and applicable
to particular situations, specifying what is proscribed and forbidden as
well as what is tolerated and permitted in a certain behavioural dimen-
sion” (Toury 1995: 55). Of note in Toury’s definition is the reference
to “particular situations” and “a certain behavioural dimension”—in
other words, positioning norms in a situational context instead of an
artificial vacuum. It is important to stress that norms, a subtype of
translational constraints, are meant to guide the translator through the
decision-making process, a key activity from the perspective of the present
volume.
The first item in Toury’s classification is the initial norm, which deter-
mines whether a translation is adequate (i.e. adheres to source norms)
or acceptable (i.e. adheres to target norms). The distinction is notorious
for its pessimistic tenor, as it implies that translation cannot be adequate
and acceptable at the same time. As subtitling “often presents itself as an
ultimately target-oriented translation method” (Gottlieb 2009: 25), the
dominant criterion for subtitling quality assessment seems to be accept-
ability rather than accuracy (however, compare Pedersen’s take on the
dichotomy of source vs. target norms below).
The other seminal approach (Chesterman 1997) distinguishes between
expectancy and professional norms. The former, “established by the
expectations of readers of a translation” (Chesterman 1997: 64), are
essentially target audience expectations, discussed in Chapter 4 below
in reference to Bogucki (2004). The latter are subdivided into the
ethical norm of accountability (professional integrity standards), the social
norm of communication (which dictates that the translator should ensure
maximum communication between the parties), and the linguistic norm
of relation (which observes the relation between the original and the
target text). Of these, the communication norm in particular appears
pertinent from the standpoint of Relevance Theory and by extension the
present discussion.
As regards academic research on subtitle norms set within linguistic
paradigms, Sokoli (2009) and Mubenga (2010) explored the application
of Halliday’s systemic theory to a study of norms in subtitling. With
respect to industry applications, “norms have gone from being national
and mainly developed by public service broadcasters, to becoming
international and determined by market forces” (Pedersen 2018: 86).
Industry-level standardisation work seems to concentrate efforts on acces-
sibility; in a study of standards for audio description and other methods
of accessibility, Matamala and Orero (2018: 142) say that “there is no
EU standard for [interlingual] subtitling”.
At the end of the twentieth century, a notable attempt to systematise
subtitling standards (Karamitroglou 1998) set out “to describe the various
subtitling conventions being followed throughout Europe”. As it turned
out, a pan-European set of guidelines was impractical due to numerous
idiosyncratic differences in good practice between subtitling countries;
instead, standards for particular regions developed, for instance Spain
28 Ł. BOGUCKI
(Díaz-Cintas 2003) and Norway.3 Twenty years after Karamitroglou’s

proposal, subtitling conventions seem to have lost their geographical
import altogether, instead of evolving into codes of good practice, norms,
regulations and guidelines set by film studios and streaming services or
even embedded in subtitling software. Many professionals work with
templates (Nikolić 2015), whose rationale is similar of that of translation
memory tools—they limit the translator’s freedom, but ensure accuracy
and consistency. Georgakopoulou (2019: 137) even referred to them as
“one of the greatest innovations in the subtitling industry at the turn of
the century”. In this context, the title of Jan Ivarsson’s influential text-
book on subtitling from 1992 (“A Handbook of an Art”) may no longer
be accurate, as almost three decades later the AVT modality is perhaps
closer to science than art. However, reliance on partial automatisation
(see also Sect. 1 above) does not mean that subtitling has obliterated its
human dimension. Perdikaki and Georgiou (2020) conducted a survey
among 170 subtitlers to discover that they do react emotionally to sensi-
tive audiovisual material, dealing with emotive topics such as abuse, war,
torture, death, etc.
According to Pedersen (2020), five major leaps in the development of
norms for AVT have shaped the practice of AVT, in particular subtitling.
These milestones are: the introduction of sound films, television, personal
computers, deregulation of the TV market, and, finally, streaming. While
cinema and TV have not lost much of their original appeal, this is the age
of VoD and, with 167 million subscribers worldwide as of January 2020,4
Netflix is certainly the market leader. What it means for the present work
is that the analysis of Netflix subtitles is apposite to discussing the current
developments in AVT from a normative standpoint. As Pedersen (ibid.)
explains, “[w]hereas the old norms, which were based on public service
broadcasting, developed in the target cultures, the new norms develop in
the source culture”. Netflix norms, just like the guidelines provided by
other streaming services, are prescriptive and internationalised. They are
based on universal templates and are being localised as subtitlers request
that they be revised according to local conventions (Pedersen 2018).
3 https://www.sprakradet.no/globalassets/sprakhjelp/skriverad/retningslinjer-for-god-
teksting.pdf, accessed on December 30, 2019.
4 https://www.businessinsider.com/netflix-market-share-of-global-streaming-subscr
ibers-dropping-ampere-2020-1?IR=T, accessed on March 10, 2020.
With respect to unofficial guidelines for good practice and tricks of the
trade, subtitles aim to be “invisible” (Bannon 2010); Henri Béhar (2004:
85) famously said that “[s]ubtitling is a form of cultural ventriloquism,
and the focus must remain on the puppet, not the puppeteer. Our task as
subtitlers is to create subliminal subtitles, so in sync with the mood and
rhythm of the movie that the audience isn’t even aware it is reading”. In a
very interesting study of rendering humour in Finnish subtitles, Jaskanen
(1999) described how Finnish audiences reacted to a joke in a subtitle
not just after having read the subtitle, but only after the corresponding
utterance on screen has been completed: “(…) the TL audience feel they
don’t have a ‘licence’ to laugh before the SL audience do” (Jaskanen
1999: 46). However, more recently, eye tracking studies have provided
ample evidence of the actual visibility of subtitles. On balance, subtitlers
“[strive] to capture the essence of what is said while making sure that no
information of crucial diegetic value is erased” (Díaz-Cintas 2020).
The traditional rule that a subtitle must not exceed two lines continues
to be the preferred practice, but its normative value is largely hampered
by modern trends like cybersubtitling (Díaz-Cintas 2018), where three-
and four-liners are par for the course, and dynamic placement of subtitles
(Fox 2016). Moreover, Li (2016) reports on the increasing popularity
of bilingual subtitles in some parts of the world; these naturally take up
additional space and, even though a viewer would typically concentrate
more—or even exclusively—on one of the two languages used, impinge
on the cognitive effort expended (see also Liao et al. 2020). Subtitle
length can directly affect processing and cognitive effort. In a recent study
deploying methodological triangulation, Szarkowska and Gerber-Morón
(2019) have confirmed that two-line subtitles are generally preferred over
three-line ones and result in less cognitive effort, though comprehension
is practically the same in both cases.
Discussing cognitive effort and subtitling norms, by way of conclu-
sion, we have arrived at two adjectives that characterise the AVT modality
in question: additive and constrained. These characteristics create viable
ground for research within the framework of Relevance Theory. More-
over, they are intertwined, as the additive nature of subtitling is in fact a
subtitling constraint per se. Filmic messages are increasingly complex. Salt
(2009) conducted a meticulous statistical analysis of changes in film shot
duration over the 100 years of cinema, to discover that it has declined
from an average of 12 seconds to approximately 2.5 seconds today.
Movie audiences absorb considerable amounts of information delivered
30 Ł. BOGUCKI
via the four semiotic channels of the filmic message, viz. picture, text
on screen, soundtrack and dialogue. The foreign viewer gets subtitles
as an added value, but it comes at a cost. Eye tracking studies (Perego
2012) reveal how viewers process subtitles on top of the already complex
whole of the four semiotic channels of the original (image, writing,
sound, and speech). For instance, increased processing effort results in
intensified visual activity. Shot changes across subtitles for off-screen char-
acters tend to result in increased re-reading of the subtitles. Conversely,
using high-frequency lexemes or repeated words leads to a decrease in
subtitle reading times (Perego and Ghia 2011: 181). Therefore, for the
purposes of the present discussion, subtitling may be redefined as written
translation of film dialogue and other verbally expressed information,
positioned within the visual context of the audiovisual text, done with the
help of software and templates according to external norms and internal
guidelines, aiming at maximal information transfer and, simultaneously,
minimal processing effort on the part of the target audience. The concept
of processing effort will be the focus of the final section in this chapter.
4 Processing Effort
The notion of processing effort is paramount from the perspective
of Relevance Theory, which—as indicated in Chapter 2—argues that
communication is basically about the balance between the said processing
effort and the payoff. In the case of subtitling, “[i]t is the balance between
the effort required by the viewer to process an item, and its relevance for
the understanding of the film narrative that determines whether or not it
is to be included in the translation” (Díaz-Cintas and Remael 2007: 147).
As a result of information overload, subtitles put audiences to increased
cognitive effort and therefore it is recommended that they be “inconspic-
uous” (Ivarsson and Carroll 1998: 75). After all, a typical filmic message,
regardless of the genre, is meant for entertainment, and overly complex
subtitles should not detract from it. Early academic accounts of subtitling
recognised the curtailed nature of this modality, labelling it “constrained
translation” (Titford 1982) and a “necessary evil” (“un mal nécessaire”,
Marleau 1982). By contrast, Koolstra et al. (2002) discovered that a subti-
tled film puts the audience to greater cognitive effort than the same
film in a dubbed version. The high degree of cognitive effort involved
in processing subtitles as opposed to dubbing and voice-over was also
confirmed through a reception study by Bogucki and Deckert (2018).
The additive nature of subtitling does not refer merely to informa-

tion overload compared to the original filmic message. Subtitles, being
what they are (letters superimposed on the image), occupy part of the
screen, thereby contaminating the visual channel. Occasionally, relevant
visual clues may be obscured by the subtitle; alternatively, in order for the
subtitle not to obscure the image or to be sufficiently visible in the case
of low contrast background, it may be displayed at the top of the screen.
All of the above result in increased effort in processing the entire filmic
message (Bogucki 2019). Cornu and O’Sullivan (2016) report how the
creators of the Austrian Film Museum in the 1960s were unwilling to
screen subtitled prints for aesthetic reasons, since the titles were believed
to distract from the image.
In this work, the processing effort expended while reading subtitles
is not measured experimentally or researched introspectively. Instead,
its existence, relative value, and importance are presupposed. Further
research is necessary for a more comprehensive understanding of how
audiences process subtitles. The limitations of the format in which the
present volume is distributed only allow for the presentation of instances
of subtitling which adhere to or flout the principle of relevance and
thereby limit or increase the audience’s cognitive effort. This method-
ology should be seen as a choice, not a shortcoming. The corpus of
approximately 70 examples taken from 36 movies aired on Netflix is
hoped to be quite representative in portraying relevance-conditioned
decision-making in subtitling, despite the analyses being of an inevitably
subjective nature. However, before the corpus is presented, it is necessary
to juxtapose the foci of the two preceding chapters in order to develop a
processual model of relevance as a factor in subtitling.
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CHAPTER 4
Towards a Relevance-Theoretic Model

of Decision-Making in Subtitling
Abstract This chapter consolidates the findings of the previous two with
a view to constructing a model of the process of subtitling. The model
will place less emphasis on technological aspects (use of software, posi-
tioning/cueing, etc.), and more on linguistic and translational decisions
conditioned by the principles of relevance and the optimalisation of cogni-
tive effort. In line with Relevance Theory, greater cognitive effort should
be offset by extra benefits, therefore the audience should only be put to
excessive processing effort if there is additional information value, e.g.
linguistic humour based on wordplay. Recourse is made to a much earlier
work on a similar topic (Bogucki 2004).
Keywords Subtitling process · Cognitive effort · Context
1 Introduction---The Original Model

In an earlier work on the application of Relevance Theory to subti-
tling (Bogucki 2004), I proposed the following model of constraints on
subtitling (Fig. 1), whereby the audiovisual translation (AVT) modality
under scrutiny is supported on three pillars representing three types of
constraints. The first one, the constraint of relevance, is in essence a
meta-constraint, in that it conditions all translational actions. The second

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51803-5_4
36 Ł. BOGUCKI
Fig. 1 A model of constraints on subtitling (Bogucki 2004: 86)
pillar refers to translational constraints in the parlance of Descriptive

Translation Studies (DTS) (Hermans 1999; Toury 1995)—norms and
conventions filtered by target audience expectations, as well as individual
idiosyncrasies. Thirdly, technical constraints are at work, in particular
spatial limitations on subtitling. The triangle represents the interrelations
between the three types of constraints, all of them filtering the audiovisual
translator’s choices to result in a product that is relevant, acceptable, and
technically appropriate.
While the general assumption underlying the model continues to be
valid with respect to the role of relevance in secondary communication
for media purposes, in the present work, a complete overhaul is proposed.
Thus, the current volume is not intended as a rehash of the original
model, but as a completely fresh proposal, merely acknowledging the
existence of the approach from 16 years ago and its relative significance
for AVT studies at the time. The original model (Bogucki 2004) was
conceived before VoD revolutionised entertainment, and has thus lost
much of its pertinence due to dramatic changes in the practice of subti-
tling. For instance, it omits to mention guidelines on subtitling and codes
of good practice issued by the industry, because at the time subtitling
standards were considerably different from today’s norm (cf. the discus-
sion on norms and guidelines in Chapter 3). As will be made apparent
in Sect. 6 of the present chapter, the graphical representation of the
proposed model has very little in common with that of the 2004 one.
Therefore, to reiterate, the original model only serves as an introduction
to the current one.
4 TOWARDS A RELEVANCE-THEORETIC MODEL … 37
2 Assessment---Towards a New Model

In order to examine the status of the three pillars of the original model
in today’s academic and professional reality, and decide whether they can
be applicable to the revised model, let us scrutinise their import one by
one. As the significance of relevance (the first pillar of the 2004 model) is
already highlighted in the title of the present work, let us leave it till last,
focusing first on technical limitations and target audience expectations.
Technological advances have inevitably altered technical limitations on,
and target audience expectations of, subtitling. As indicated in Chapter 3,
from a production perspective, subtitle length can now vary to a greater
extent than in pre-streaming days, though in terms of reception shorter
subtitles continue to be preferred. Subtitling software takes care of a
number of other technicalities, such as cueing, which have ceased to be
a concern to audiovisual translators. It can, therefore, be concluded that
technology has made the production of subtitling far easier than before,
but increasing information overload in filmic messages may adversely
affect the consumption of subtitles. Let us, therefore, look at the other
variable, viz. target audience expectations.
The middle pillar in the original model referred to translational
constraints as seen within the framework of DTS, in particular the norma-
tive approaches of Toury (1995) and Chesterman (1997); they differ from
technical limitations as, despite the derogatory name, they are beneficial
to the process of (audiovisual) translation in that they help the translator
choose from among the paradigm of possible equivalents. The assump-
tion that all translation, including audiovisual, is done for an audience has
not lost its inherent validity in that (human) translations are never done in
a vacuum, outside a situational context which includes the characteristics
of the intended recipient. However, in the age of collaborative transla-
tion, the concept of “target audience” may need revision. The traditional
pragmatic dichotomy of “us and them”, as in the translator and their read-
ership, has lost much of its import. Today, the translator is very much
(part of) the audience. Deregulation of the profession, resurgence of
non-professional translation, proliferation and wider availability of transla-
tion software, crowdsourcing, emergence of prosumers in translation and
otherwise, advances in translator training—all these developments have
contributed greatly to creating a new translation reality, whereby the line
between the creator and the recipient is very thin indeed. This observation
is valid across most translation types, but particularly in AVT. Therefore,
38 Ł. BOGUCKI
it makes much less sense today to speak of target language expectations

influencing the audiovisual translator’s decision the way it did twenty or so
years ago, when the market was much more hermetic and self-contained.
Admittedly, the DTS paradigm was established in answer to vexing ques-
tions about the nature of literary translation, therefore its applicability to
other translation types may be seen as limited. However, the concepts
of norm, convention, constraint and expectation, used liberally in DTS,
are not confined to this paradigm and are versatile enough to explain a
number of phenomena pertaining to a range of translation types, notably
audiovisual.
The first pillar (relevance), remains the key foundation of both the
original model and the present work; given the decreasing significance of
technical limitations and the somewhat altered character of target audi-
ence expectations, its role grows ever more prominent. While recognising
the status of relevance as a meta-constraint, the original model (Bogucki
2004) attempted, somewhat unsuccessfully, to fit it within the frame-
work of the two other pillars, the audience’s expectations on the one
hand and the spatial and temporal limitations on the other. As explained
above, both seem to have diminished in importance or modified due to
the changing practice of subtitling. Therefore, in the present approach,
the importance of relevance (however tautological it may sound) grows
further, making it a benchmark for assessing the (accuracy and) accept-
ability of subtitling. In order for the benchmark to be operationable,
however, one needs to ascertain whether the notion of relevance yields
itself to a concrete, measurable description.
3 Relevant Subtitling
However, before we proceed with discussing relevance, let us return to
the AVT modality in question. As established in Chapter 3, subtitling is
constrained by its nature. Experimental (e.g. eye tracking) research on
subtitling has demonstrated that nearly any subtitle superimposed on the
original audiovisual text detracts from the appreciation of the polysemi-
otic message and increases the audience’s cognitive effort (cf. Kruger
et al. 2013; Kruger et al. 2015). In order to minimise this unwanted
effect on the viewer, subtitles aim at being inconspicuous and unobtru-
sive. While the maximum number of characters per line continues to be
a requirement in most cases, despite technological advances in subtitling
software, a shorter subtitle is not always easier to process than a longer
4 TOWARDS A RELEVANCE-THEORETIC MODEL … 39
one. Conversely, a succinct subtitle that is in stark contrast to a lengthy

dialogue in a language with complex politeness patterns (e.g. Japanese),
may result in increased cognitive effort, leaving the audience puzzled as
to why a polite excuse is rendered as an abrupt “No”. Additionally, an
extremely condensed subtitle simply fails to do its job, that is to say, to
convey information and achieve equivalence, as any translation aims to.
Incomplete information transfer naturally results in increased cognitive
effort.
In view of the above, since verbal curtailment and lexical economy do
not seem to be a universal recipe for optimum subtitling, the concept
of relevance should be considered as a viable alternative. As long as
the subtitler correctly determines what is relevant in each case and
the decision-making process proceeds according to the principle(s) of
relevance, optimalisation of the cognitive effort is likely.
Two questions arise at this point: a heuristic one and an axiological
one. Firstly, what is the applicability of a cognitive-pragmatic theory of
linguistic communication to the actual practice of AVT? Secondly, how
does one gauge the “correctness” or acceptability of a “relevant” solution;
in other words, to return to the problem posed at the end of Sect. 2
above, is relevance measurable?
Soon after Gutt’s (1991) seminal application of Relevance Theory to
translation, two scholars—Kovačič (1993) and Fawcett (1996)—recog-
nised the potential of RT in researching film translation. The former
focused on reduction as a subtitling strategy and emphasised the role of
relevance in teaching subtitling as a decision-making process. The latter
commented on RT that “[t]his recent introduction to the field of trans-
lation studies very clearly applies to the phenomenon of film translation”
(Fawcett 1996: 79). It is significant, because, at the time, AVT studies
was in its infancy at best or non-existent at worst. Fawcett goes on to
explain that “what appears in a translated film will follow the principle of
what the translator deems to be relevant in the complex of symbols with
which he or she is dealing at any given moment. Within the translation
of one and the same film, however, what is relevant will be in constant
flux, subjected to the vagaries of constantly changing constraints, and
controlled by the assumptions of the system of film translation prevalent
in a given community” (Fawcett 1996: 80).
However, a potential problem with the application of Relevance
Theory to subtitling lies at the very core of RT as a post-Gricean approach
to the pragmatics of communication. The starting point of RT is that
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Anhang.
Tabelle zur annähernden Bestimmung der im

Wasser lebenden Kerflarven[LVIII].
1. (8)[LIX] Mit Flügelansätzen[LX] 2.
2. (3) Mit gegliedertem Rüssel
Schnabelkerfe[LXI] oder Rhynchoten (Fig. 10, 25–28).
3. (2) Mit beissenden Mundteilen (Orthoptera
amphibiotica) 4.
4. (5) Unterlippe zum Fangorgan ausgebildet, weit
vorstreckbar (Fig. 9, 19). Mit drei blattförmigen
Kiemen[LXII] am Ende oder mit Darmkiemen
Odonaten (Fig. 9, 19–22).
5. (4) Unterlippe gewöhnlich, tief geteilt 6.
6. (7) Mit Kiemen nur an den Seiten des Hinterleibes.
Meist drei lange Endanhänge.
Ephemeriden (Fig. 9, 23).
7. (6) Ohne Kiemen an den Seiten des Hinterleibes, oft
mit solchen an der Brust. Meist zwei
Endanhänge.
Perliden (Fig. 10, 24).
8. (1) Ohne Flügelansätze. Larven, deren Brust- und
Hinterleibsringe meist recht gleichartig und
deren Tarsen nie gegliedert sind 9.
9. (10) Ohne g e g l i e d e r t e Beine an den drei Brustringen,
bisweilen mit fussartigen, ungegliederten
Fortsätzen, die zahlreiche Chitinhaken tragen
Dipteren (Fig. 7, 9–14).
10. (9) Mit gegliederten Beinen an den drei Brustringen 11.
11. (12) Mit je einem kräftigen Chitinhaken an zwei kürzeren
oder längeren Afterbeinen am Hinterleibsende.
Fühler meist fehlend, selten vorhanden und
dann zweigliedrig, winzig. Mit oder ohne
fadenförmige mehrreihige Kiemen. Mit oder
ohne Gehäuse
Phryganiden (Fig. 8, 15).
12. (11) Ohne derartige Chitinhaken an besonderen
Afterbeinen; mit Fühlern 13.
13. (14) Raupen; mit fünf Paar Afterbeinen am dritten bis
sechsten und letzten Hinterleibsringe.
Afterbeine mit Hakenkränzen
Wasserzünsler (Paraponyx, Hydrocampa, Cataclysta, Acentropus).
14. (13) Fast immer ohne Afterbeine[LXIII], oder doch nie mit
Afterbeinen in obiger Anordnung 15.
15. (18) Mit fadenförmigen Kiemen, ohne thätige
Luftlöcher[LXIV] 16.
16. (17) Ohne Chitinhaken am Körperende; Kiemen
gegliedert, am Hinterleib
Sialis, Sisyra.
17. (16) Mit vier Chitinhaken am Körperende; Kiemen
ungegliedert, am Hinterleib
Gyriniden (Fig. 5, 1).
18. (15) Ohne fadenförmige Kiemen; mit zwei thätigen
Luftlöchern am Körperende 19.
19. (20) Fühler länger als der halbe Körper; Körper platt
Cyphon.
20. (19) Fühler kürzer als der halbe Körper; Körper mehr
oder minder walzenförmig 21.
21. (22) Vorletzter (eigentlich drittletzter) Hinterleibsring mit
zwei langen sichelförmigen Chitinhaken. Körper
weichhäutig, bleich
Donaciden.
22. (21) Ohne solche Chitinhaken; Körper nicht bleich 23.
23. (24) Oberkiefer sichelförmig, ohne Zähne auf der
Innenseite; Beine mit gesonderter Kralle, also
sechsteilig. Fast immer zwei Krallen
Dytisciden (Fig. 5, 2–4).
24. (23) Oberkiefer mit deutlichen Zähnen oder doch
Höckern auf der Innenseite. Tarsus und Kralle
nicht gesondert, Beine also fünfgliedrig. Nie
zwei Krallen
Hydrophiliden (Fig. 6, 6 und 7).
[LVIII] Die weitere Unterscheidung der unten folgenden Gruppen

siehe teilweise im Text.
[LIX] Die eingeklammerten Zahlen weisen auf den Gegensatz hin.
[LX] Die jüngsten Larven sind zwar ohne Flügelansätze, aber
durch ihre sonstige Ähnlichkeit mit den u n g l e i c h häufigeren
älteren Larven, die solche Ansätze haben, leicht kenntlich.
Übrigens lassen sich die Larven der vier ersten Gruppen auch
abgesehen von den Flügelansätzen durch die oben
gekennzeichneten Merkmale der Mundbildung, der Kiemen und
Endanhänge von den folgenden Larvengruppen unschwer
unterscheiden. Zu Hilfe kann man noch nehmen, dass die Larven
dieser vier Gruppen alle Netzaugen und grosse, wohl entwickelte
Beine mit fast immer (oder immer?) teilweise gegliederten Tarsen
haben und dass Brust- und Hinterleibsringe meist deutlich in ihrer
Bildung von einander unterschieden sind.
[LXI] Die Gattungen sind unschwer durch die Ähnlichkeit mit den
erwachsenen Tieren zu bestimmen.
[LXII] Kiemen steht in der Tabelle der Kürze wegen statt
Tracheenkiemen.
[LXIII] Meines Wissens kommen nur bei Philhydrus testaceus
Afterbeine vor und zwar stehen sie am dritten bis siebenten
Hinterleibsring.
[LXIV] Hierher gehören eigentlich auch wegen ihrer Kiemen
Berosus (Hydrophilide), Cnemidotus und Pelobius (Dytisciden).
Von den Gyriniden, Sialis und Sisyra unterscheidet sich
Cnemidotus dadurch, dass auch an den Brustringen Kiemen
stehen, Pelobius durch bluterfüllte echte Kiemen an der
Unterseite der Brust und Berosus durch die besondere
Oberkiefer- und Beinbildung (S. 24) der Hydrophiliden.
Litteratur.
[1] Zum Bestimmen der im Wasser lebenden Käfer wie der Käfer
überhaupt ist zu empfehlen der betreffende Band der „Fauna
austriaca“, nämlich Redtenbacher: „Die Käfer“. Wien 1858. Die
Litteratur über die Käferlarven und Käferpuppen ist übersichtlich
zusammengestellt in M. Rupertsberger, „Biologie der Käfer
Europas“. Linz 1880. Für unsern Zweck sind fraglos am
wichtigsten die Arbeiten Schiödtes, welche in der Naturhistorik.
Tidsskrift von Kröyer, Kopenhagen, erschienen sind und zwar in
den Jahrg. 1862, 1864, 1867, 1872. Der Text ist teilweise dänisch,
teilweise lateinisch; die wichtigste Auskunft geben übrigens schon
die vorzüglichen Abbildungen. Nicht unterlassen möchte ich,
gleich hier auf die unser ganzes Gebiet behandelnden älteren
Werke von Rösel v. Rosenhof, Réaumur und De Geer
hinzuweisen.
Rösel, „Monatlich herausgegebene Insektenbelustigungen“. 1746
bis 1761.
de Réaumur, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire des Insectes. Paris
1734–42.
de Geer, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire des Insectes.
Stockholm 1752–78. (Deutsch von Götze. Nürnberg 1778–83.)
[2] Eine umfassende Zusammenstellung der Litteratur über die
Metamorphose der Dipteren giebt Fr. Brauer, „Die Zweiflügler des
kaiserlichen Museums zu Wien“ (Denkschr. d. k. k. Akad. d. Wiss.
Bd. 47. Wien 1883). Dort sind auch die Larven systematisch
gruppiert und kurz geschildert. Für die eucephalen Larven ist
wegen seiner vortrefflichen Abbildungen besonders zu empfehlen:
Fr. Meinert, „Eucephale Myggelarver“ (Vidensk. Selsk. 6 Räkke
naturvidensk. og math. Ath. III 3). Kopenhagen 1886.
[3] Abbildungen der Wasserraupen finden sich in v. Praun,
„Abbild. u. Beschreib. europäischer Schmetterlingsraupen“.
Herausgegeben von E. Hoffmann, 1874. Vergl. auch Sorhagen,
„Kleinschmetterlinge der Mark“.
[4] Für Phryganiden, Ephemeriden und Perliden sind mit Vorteil zu
benutzen die Werke von F. J. Pictet, 1) Recherches pour servir à
l’histoire et à l’anatomie des Phryganides. Genf-Paris 1834. 2)
Histoire naturelle des insectes neuroptères. Genf-Paris 1841–
1843.
Ferner ist für beide Ordnungen zu empfehlen: Fr. Brauer,
Neuroptera austriaca. Wien 1857. Eine Anzahl Beschreibungen
und Muster für genaue Beschreibung der Larven und Puppen der
Phryganiden findet man in: Klapalek, „Metamorphose der
Trichopteren“. Prag 1888.
Für die Bestimmung der entwickelten Insekten ist besonders zu
nennen: Mc. Lachlan, A monograph revision and synopsis of the
Trichoptera of the European Fauna. London 1874–80.
[5] Die Ephemeriden nebst ihren Larven sind sehr eingehend
behandelt in: Eaton, A revisional monograph of recent
Ephemeridae. (Transact. of the Linnean Society.) London.
Zoology. N. S. 3. 1888. Das Werk enthält zahlreiche Tafeln über
die Larven.
[6] Zur Bestimmung der Gattungen der Wasserwanzen dürften die
allgemeinen systematischen Handbücher ausreichen, z. B. das
von Ludwig-Leunis. Zur Unterscheidung der Arten sind die
Arbeiten von Fieber, besonders „Hemiptera europaea“, zu
empfehlen.
Die Mollusken des Süsswassers.
Von S. Clessin in Ochsenfurt.
Unsere Gewässer, von der kleinsten Pfütze bis zu den grössten

Seen und von der spärlichsten Quelle bis zu den wasserreichsten
Flüssen, werden von Mollusken verschiedener Gattungen bewohnt.
Aber obwohl die in den Gewässern vorkommenden Arten meist in
reicher Individuenzahl auftreten, fallen sie dennoch dem nicht
geübten Beobachter nicht so leicht ins Auge und es bedarf selbst der
gewandte Sammler in der Regel besonderer Instrumente, um
lebende Mollusken in grösserer Anzahl zu fangen. Leere Gehäuse
werden dagegen oft in reicher Menge an gewissen Lokalitäten
angeschwemmt gefunden.
Die Mollusken spielen im Haushalte der Natur eine wichtige
Rolle, indem sie faulende Pflanzenstoffe, welche in den Gewässern
sich ansammeln, verzehren und dadurch die Wasser rein erhalten.
Die Mehrzahl der Arten werden ihrer geringen Grösse und
verborgenen Lebensweise wegen leicht übersehen, doch
beherbergen unsere Gewässer auch grosse, recht ansehnliche
Arten, namentlich aus der Klasse der Muscheltiere, die bezüglich
ihrer Entwickelungsgeschichte noch besonderes Interesse bieten.
Einteilung der Mollusken.

Die im Wasser lebenden Conchylien gehören zwei sehr
verschiedenen Klassen an. Die eine besteht aus Tieren, welche
einen Kopf mit Fühlern und Augen haben, die gewöhnlich an der
Basis der Fühler sitzen, im übrigen aber jenen der Landschnecken,
der Klasse der Gasteropoden oder Bauchfüssler ähnlich sind. Sie
haben mit wenig Ausnahmen (Genus Ancylus Geoff. und Velletia
Gray[LXV]) eine gewundene Schale, und ist das Gehäuse zuweilen
mit einem Deckel verschlossen. Die zweite Klasse die Muscheltiere,
Bivalven oder Zweischaler, haben keinen Kopf und keine Augen; das
Tier besteht nur aus einem sackartigen Körper, dessen unterer,
ausdehnbarer Teil als „Fuss“ die Bewegung vermittelt. Den Körper
umhüllen auf jeder Seite zwei buchblattartig am Rücken angeheftete
Kiemen und wird das ganze Tier von einem Mantel umschlossen,
dessen Ränder entweder ganz frei bleiben, oder teilweise
zusammengewachsen sind; im letztern Falle hat der Mantel einen
Schlitz am Vorderteile des Tieres zum Durchgange des Fusses und
eine Öffnung für die Anal- und Atemröhre. Die Schalen der Bivalven
sind nicht gewunden, sondern bestehen aus zwei gleichgrossen
Klappen, die durch ein elastisches Band, das Ligament, verbunden
sind und sich nur wenig öffnen können. Das Tier ist an den
gegenüberstehenden Enden durch zwei sehr starke Muskeln (die
Schliessmuskeln), welche zugleich das Öffnen der Schalen regeln,
und durch einen kleinen Wirbelhaftmuskel an die Schale angeheftet
sind.
[LXV] Bezüglich der Arten und Genera verweise ich auf meine
Werke: „Deutsche Excursions-Mollusken-Fauna“. 2. Aufl.
Nürnberg 1884, Bauer & Raspe, und „Molluskenfauna von
Österreich-Ungarn und der Schweiz“. Nürnberg 1890, Bauer &
Raspe.
Die meisten Süsswassermuscheln sind freibeweglich; nur eine

Art unserer heimischen Arten heftet sich durch einen Byssus (einen
Büschel spröder Haare) an anderen Gegenständen an (Dreissena
polymorpha Pallas Fig. 11).
Fig. 11.
Dreissena polymorpha.
Fig. 12.
Ancylus
fluviatilis mit
Tier.
Fig. 13.
Valvata
piscinalis mit
Tier.
Die Genera der nicht gedeckelten Süsswasserschnecken sind
durchweg Lungenatmer. Sie haben sehr verschiedene Formen,
indem der Modus des Aufwindens der Umgänge sehr mannigfaltig
ist. Die meisten Arten haben eine rechtsgewundene Schale, nur die
Genera Amphipeplea, Physa und Aplexa winden ihre Umgänge nach
links. Ferner besitzen die Genera Limnaea, Physa, Aplexa,
Amphipeplea ein mehr oder weniger erhöhtes Gewinde, nur Genus
Planorbis rollt seine Umgänge in platter Form auf, für welche der
Name „Tellerschnecke“ sehr bezeichnend ist. Die Genera Ancylus
(Fig. 12) und Velletia haben eine napfförmige Schale, von denen
diejenige des ersteren Genus einer Jakobinermütze sehr ähnlich ist;
bei beiden beschränkt sich die Windung des Gehäuses auf eine
geringe Neigung des Wirbels nach rechts oder links. Die meisten
Arten haben eine rauhe Schale, an welcher die Zuwachsstreifen
deutlich erkennbar sind. Nur Genus Physa und Aplexa haben glatte,
glänzende Gehäuse.
Die Deckelschnecken, mit Ausnahme des Gen. Vivipara,
bestehen aus kleinen Arten. Alle sind mit Kiemen zur Wasseratmung
ausgerüstet. Gewöhnlich bleiben die Kiemen in der Kiemenhöhle
verborgen, nur Genus Valvata (Fig. 13) besitzt die Fähigkeit, die
federförmige Kieme auszustülpen und frei hervortreten zu lassen.
Das Gewinde ist bei diesen Schnecken ein kreiselförmiges (Gen.
Vivipara und Valvata) oder ein mehr oder weniger getürmtes, nur
Gen. Neritina und Lithoglyphus haben ein kurzes, wenig
hervortretendes Gewinde und eine starke Schale und weite
Mündung; die Oberfläche der Arten des Gen. Neritina ist mit
hübschen netzartigen Zeichnungen bedeckt.
Die frei beweglichen Muscheln gehören zwei Familien an. Die
grossen Arten gehören in die Familie der Najaden. Diese haben
offenen Mantel, zwei gleichgrosse Kiemen und an der Mundöffnung
jederseits zwei Mundlappen; der Mantel ist an seinem Rande am
Hinterteile mit einem Kranze dunkelgefärbter Papillen besetzt. Die
Kiemen dienen zugleich als Brutbehälter, haben gitterförmige
Abteilungen, die, wenn Brut vorhanden, mit einer ungeheuren
Anzahl von Embryonen besetzt sind.
Die kleineren Zweischaler der Familie Cycladidae haben
geschlossenen Mantel, und je eine Anal- und Atemröhre, welche
mehr oder weniger über den Mantelrand hervortritt.
Wohnorte und Gewohnheiten.

Die ungedeckelten Wasserschnecken der Familie der
Limnaeiden halten sich den grössten Teil des Tages auf dem Grunde
der Gewässer im Schlamme auf, und ziehen die meisten Arten
stehende Gewässer vor; nur wenige Spezies finden sich in
fliessenden Wassern, für welche sie wegen ihrer dünnen,
zerbrechlichen Schale wenig geeignet sind. In fliessenden Wassern
kommt in der Regel nur Limnaea peregra vor. — Die übrigen
Limnaea-Arten, die Spezies der Gen. Physa, Aplexa, Amphipeplea
und Planorbis bewohnen nur stehende Gewässer.
Fig. 14.
Aplexa
hypnorum.
Fig. 15.
Vivipara vera Fr.
Die Limnaeen (Limnaea stagnalis, auricularia, ovata, palustris)
steigen bei heiterem, warmem Wetter an Wasserpflanzen an die
Oberfläche des Wassers und kriechen, die Fusssohle nach oben
gerichtet, das Gehäuse untergetaucht, ebenso sicher dahin, als
wenn sie an einem festen Gegenstande kröchen. Wahrscheinlich
saugt sich die Sohle an der auf dem Wasser aufstehenden Luftsäule
an, da die Tiere sich jederzeit plötzlich zu Boden fallen lassen
können. — Das Aufsteigen der Limnaeen an die Oberfläche wird mit
dem Bedürfnisse der Tiere, Luft zu atmen, in Verbindung gebracht,
da die Limnaeiden mit Lungen ausgerüstet sind, während die mit
Kiemen versehenen Deckelschnecken nie an die Oberfläche
kommen. Die Limnaeen haben jedoch dieses Bedürfnis nur bei
heiterem Wetter und bei erhöhter Temperatur des Wassers ihrer
Wohnorte.
Eine Aplexa-Art (Apl. hypnorum Fig. 14) besitzt sogar die
Fähigkeit, plötzlich vom Grunde des Wassers an die Oberfläche
aufzutauchen, von wo sie sich nach einigen Sekunden ebenso
schnell wieder zu Boden fallen lassen kann.
Die gedeckelten Wasserschnecken der Genera Vivipara (Fig.
15), Bythinia und Valvata leben im Schlamme der Gewässer, und
zwar meist in stehenden, höchstens in sehr langsam fliessenden
Wassern. — Die Arten der Genera Neritina und jene der Familie der
Melaniiden leben nur in bewegtem Wasser, in welchem sie sogar
stark flutende Stellen bevorzugen, für welche die Neritinen durch ihr
kaum hervortretendes Gewinde und ihre weite Mundöffnung
vorzugsweise geeignet erscheinen, weil sie den Fluten wenig Fläche
darbieten. — Die Bythinellen (Fig. 16) finden sich nur in Quellen an
Steinen sitzend; die Vitrella-Arten kommen ausschliesslich in
Höhlengewässern vor. — Velletia lacustris lebt in stehendem,
Ancylus fluviatilis und verwandte Arten nur in fliessendem Wasser.
Doch findet sich erstere zuweilen auch in Bächen, während Ancylus-
Arten auch in Seen vorkommen.
Die Muscheln stecken am Grunde der Gewässer im
Schlamme, in dem sie fast völlig eingebettet sind, so
dass nur das hintere Ende frei ins Wasser hervorragt.
Sie saugen das Wasser durch die Mundöffnung am
vordern Ende der Muschel ein, lassen dasselbe durch
den Körper zirkulieren und stossen es durch die
Atemöffnung am hintern Ende wieder aus. Wenn man
eine Muschel rasch aus dem Wasser nimmt, schliesst
sie ihre Schalen und das Wasser spritzt dann, oft in
ziemlich lebhafter Weise, durch die Atemöffnung aus. Fig. 16.
Bythinella
Beim Einblick in helles nicht tiefes Wasser kann man austriaca Frf.
die im Schlamme steckenden Muscheltiere leicht
bemerken. Man gewahrt jedoch nur die mit Cirren am
hintern Mantelrande besetzte Atem- und Analöffnung. Schiebt man
vorsichtig ein Rütchen in diese Öffnung, so schliesst das Tier die
Schalen, und die Spitze des Rütchens wird mit eingeklemmt. Mit
dem Rütchen lässt sich dann die Muschel aus dem Schlamme
ziehen, wenn man dieselbe fangen will.
Die Muscheln (s. Fig. 17) heften sich in fliessendem Wasser mit
dem ausgestreckten Fusse in den unter der Schlammschicht
befindlichen festen Boden. Ihre Bewegungsfähigkeit ist eine sehr
geringe, und ihr ruckweise erfolgender Marsch erstreckt sich nur auf
1–2 m Länge. Derselbe wird durch Ausstrecken und Einziehen des
Fusses bewerkstelligt; bei letzterer Operation wird die Muschel
nachgeschleift, wobei sie im Schlamme eine Furche zurücklässt, an
welcher man die Länge und Richtung des Marsches erkennen kann.
Die kleineren Muscheln der Familie der Cycladen leben ebenfalls frei
beweglich im Schlamme. Nur eine Art unserer
Süsswassermuscheln, Dreissena polymorpha, heftet sich durch
einen Byssus an andere im Wasser liegende feste Gegenstände an,
und wechselt dann ihren Standort nicht mehr bis zu ihrem Tode. Die
Muscheln sitzen oft in ganzen Klumpen zusammen und verstopfen
beispielsweise leicht Wasserleitungsröhren, wenn sie in selbe
gelangen. — Das Festsitzen dieser durch ihre dreieckige Form
auffallenden Muschel ist die Veranlassung zur Verschleppung in die
nord- und westeuropäischen Gewässer geworden: Ursprünglich in
den Flüssen heimisch, welche ins Schwarze Meer münden, wurde
sie durch Schiffe, an deren Planken sie sich angehängt hatte, an die
Küsten der Ost- und Nordsee, sowie des Atlantischen Meeres
verschleppt, und gelangte von hier wieder durch Flussschiffe in alle
grösseren ins Meer mündenden Flüsse, von welchen sie in deren
Nebenflüsse vordrang. Durch den Donau-Main-Kanal war es ihr
sogar möglich, die Wasserscheide zwischen Rhein und Donau zu
überschreiten und in die obere Donau zu gelangen, wo ich im Jahre
1868 das erste Exemplar fand. Einige Jahre später wurde sie bei
Deggendorf beobachtet und so wird sie nun sicher die Donau
abwärts wandern, bis sie wieder das Schwarze Meer, ihren
Ausgangspunkt, erreicht hat.
Fig. 17.
Anodonta mutabilis v. cellensis Chem.
Entwickelung und Alter der Mollusken.

Die meisten Wasserschnecken sind Zwitter; wenigstens die nicht
gedeckelten Arten, also insbesondere die Limnaea- (Fig. 18),
Planorbis-, Physa-, Ancylus-, Velletia- und Amphipeplea-Arten. Bei
Limnaea peregra habe ich mehrfach beobachtet, dass ganze Ketten,
6–8 Individuen, bei der Begattung zusammenhingen. — Bei den
Deckelschnecken, wenigstens bei Vivipara, lassen sich männliche
und weibliche Formen unterscheiden, ebenso nach H a z a y [LXVI] bei
den Muscheln der Familie der Najaden. Ich halte dies jedoch noch
immer für sehr zweifelhaft, bis weitere verlässliche Beobachter und
Anatomen dieses Verhältnis bestätigt haben.
[LXVI] „Mollusken-Fauna von Budapest“. Kassel 1881, Theodor

Fischer.
Die Wasserschnecken legen Eier; nur bei den Vivipara-Arten

entwickeln sich die jungen Individuen schon im Muttertiere, so dass
sie bereits mit einem etwa aus zwei Umgängen bestehenden
Gehäuse ausgestossen werden. Auch die Arten der Familie
Cycladidea stossen ihre Jungen schon als fertige Muscheln aus.
Die Schnecken und Muscheln sind schon fortpflanzungsfähig
lange bevor sie ausgewachsen sind. Die im Mai ausgekrochenen
Jungen der Limnaea- und Planorbis-Arten begatten sich noch im
selben Herbste, obwohl sie ein Alter von 3–4 Jahren erreichen.
Fig. 18.
Lim.
palustris v.
corvus.
Die Eier werden in Schnüren oder in Paketen an Steinen,
Wasserpflanzen oder häufig sogar auf die Gehäuse anderer
Individuen derselben Art abgesetzt, so z. B. bei Limnaea ampla.
H a z a y hat auf den Gehäusen dieser Art 8–12 Eierschnüre
gefunden, so dass das Tier nur mühsam sich fortbewegen konnte. —
Limnaea auricularia setzt 20–25 mm lange, 7–8 mm breite
raupenförmige Eierschnüre ab, welche 80–150 Eier enthalten, die
kugelrund sind und 1 mm Durchmesser haben. Der Eidotter ist
weisslichgelb und wird während der Furchung hellweiss. — Limnaea
stagnalis-variegata Hazay setzt eine Eierschnur von 45–55 mm
Länge ab, die 110–180 Eier enthält; die Eierchen sind länglich-oval
und 1½–2 mm gross. Der Dotter ist strohgelb, das Eiweiss
wasserhell; Aplexa hypnorum legt den Laich in ganz flachen
rundlichen Scheiben von 4–7 mm Durchmesser und ⅔ mm Dicke,
mit den Enden gegeneinandergeheftet, ab. Die Zahl der Eier
wechselt zwischen 20–50. — Planorbis corneus legt ebenfalls eine
25 bis 30 mm lange, 5 mm breite, glatte, an den Enden
zusammengeheftete Eierschnur ab. Zahl der Eier 45–70.
Die Entwickelung des Embryo beansprucht bei Gen. Limnaea
gewöhnlich 20, bei Planorbis und Physa nur 15, bei Bythinia 25
Tage. Je nach der Temperatur des Wassers wird der
Entwickelungsprozess beschleunigt und verzögert. H a z a y hat
beobachtet, dass bei Laich der Limnaea palustris var. Clessiniana
die Embryonen sich schon in 12 Tagen entwickelten.
Die jungen Tiere wachsen ziemlich rasch und erlangen vier bis
sieben Umgänge schon im ersten Jahre, jenachdem sie mehr oder
weniger frühzeitig im Jahre als Laich abgesetzt wurden. Das grösste
Wachstum entfällt auf das erste und zweite Jahr und nimmt dasselbe
dann von Jahr zu Jahr ab. Im Herbst und Winter erfolgt nicht das
geringste Wachstum. Während der letzten Wachstumsmonate wird
der letzte frische Anbau des Gehäuses verdickt und die Mündung
verstärkt.
Die Lebensdauer der Limnäen erstreckt sich im höchsten Falle
auf 4–5 Jahre; nur wenige erreichen jedoch dieses Alter. Die Jahre,
welche die Mollusken zum Ausbau ihres Gehäuses brauchen, lassen
sich an den Jahresabsätzen deutlich erkennen, da diese Tiere gleich
den Insekten, Lurchen etc. einen Winterschlaf halten. Schon im
Hochsommer wächst das Gehäuse, dessen Weiterbau im Frühjahr
sofort nach dem Erwachen aus dem Winterschlafe, meist im Monat
April, beginnt, nicht mehr weiter; die Zeit bis zum Eintritt der
Winterruhe wird dazu benutzt, die Mündung des Gehäuses durch
Ablage einer Schmelzschicht zu verstärken, damit dieselbe beim
Einbohren in den Schlamm nicht beschädigt wird. Die Jahresabsätze
sind daher an den Gehäusen, durch die meist nach aussen
durchscheinenden Verstärkungsschichten, leicht zu erkennen, und
lassen sich aus der Zahl dieser Absätze die Jahre, die das Tier bis
zur Vollendung des Gehäuses braucht, ablesen. Die Limnäen
weisen zwei bis drei solcher Absätze, unter Umständen sogar deren
vier, auf. Limnaea peregra hat in der Regel nur drei; ich habe jedoch
auch aus höheren Lagen im Gebirge stammende Gehäuse dieser
Art mit vier Jahresabsätzen gefunden, so dass anzunehmen wäre,
dass die kürzere Sommerperiode höher gelegener Lokalitäten die
Lebensdauer verlängert. — Limnaea auricularia und ovata sterben
meistens schon im zweiten Jahre ab, Limnaea palustris (Fig. 18)
gewöhnlich im dritten. Planorbis corneus, marginatus und carinatus
vollenden ihre Gehäuse im dritten und leben selten länger als 3–3½
Jahre; Planorbis albus, spirorbis und alle kleineren Arten dieses
Genus sterben in der Regel schon im zweiten Jahre. Amphipeplea
glutinosa lebt nur ein Jahr.
Unter allen Wasserschnecken werden die Limnäen am meisten
von Schmarotzertieren gequält, so dass die allermeisten derselben
meist schon, bevor die Schale ausgewachsen ist, zu Grunde gehen.
H a z a y sagt hierüber folgendes: Keine einzige der Limnäen, welche
das dritte und vierte Lebensjahr erreicht hat, bleibt von denselben
verschont; in diesem Alter fallen alle denselben, wie einer allgemein
herrschenden Alterskrankheit, zum Opfer. Im zweiten Lebensjahre
bereits finden sich einzelne Sporocisten an dem Darm und der Leber
als längliche gelbe Schläuche vor, im dritten Lebensjahre sind dies
schon massenhafte Schlauchbündel, welche alle inneren Organe
bedecken, die ganze Leber erfüllen, langsam Herz und Lungenwand
durchsetzen, so dass endlich das Tier absterben muss. Dieser
Zustand der Tiere macht sich durch auffallende Trägheit und durch
eine starke gelbe Färbung bemerkbar. Zieht man solche Tiere aus
dem Gehäuse, so erscheint unter der Haut das ganze Innere des
Körpers als gelbe Masse, alle Organe sind von Sporocistenbündeln
belegt und von der Leber ist keine Spur mehr vorhanden.
Die Vivipara-Arten setzen keinen Laich ab; die Eier entwickeln
sich im Muttertiere bis zu Gehäusen von 11 mm Länge und 7 mm
Breite, welche etwa 3½ Umgänge zählen (Vivipara hungarica Hazay,
l. c. p. 91). Die Schalen solch junger Tiere haben eine dichte
Spiralstreifung und sind die Streifen mit an einander gereihten
rundlichen Wärzchen besetzt, von denen manche kurze Borsten
tragen. H a z a y fand im Uterus des Weibchens der genannten Art
sechsundvierzig schon mit Schale und Binde versehene junge
Tierchen und sehr viele Eier in allen Stadien der Entwickelung. —
Nach demselben Autor sind die Tiere getrennten Geschlechtes und
lassen sich die Geschlechter an der Form der Schale gut
unterscheiden. — Die Schalen ausgewachsener Tiere erreichen
sieben Umgänge und erlangen dieselben ein Alter von 8–10 Jahren.
Die Arten der Familien Valvatidae und Hydrobiidae setzen Laich
ab. Sie erreichen ein Alter von 2–3 Jahren. Neritina- und
Lithoglyphus-Arten können nach H a z a y ein Alter von 5 Jahren
erreichen.
Die Muscheln der Familie der Najaden sind wahrscheinlich
Zwitter, obwohl mehrere Autoren männliche und weibliche Formen
an den Muscheln (vorzugsweise an der mehr aufgeblasenen Form
der Schalen) unterscheiden wollen. Da nämlich die Kiemen als
Brutbehälter für die Eier dienen und strotzend mit denselben gefüllt
werden, wird die Muschel sehr aufgetrieben, während jene
Muscheln, die keine Eier in die Kiemen bringen und aus irgend
welchem Grunde vielleicht nicht fortpflanzungsfähig sind, wenig
aufgeblasene Schalen behalten. — Die Anodonta- und Unio-Arten
produzieren ganz enorme Massen von Eiern, die aus den Ovarien in
die Kiemen gelangen und hier die ersten Stadien ihrer Entwickelung
durchmachen. Bei Anodonta anatina wurden 120000, bei An. cygnea
sogar 400000 Eier gezählt. Die Einlagerung solch grosser Massen
von Eiern kann nicht auf einmal erfolgen. Dieselben werden
allmählich, je nach ihrer Entwickelung, eingeführt und zwar füllen
sich die mittleren Fächer der Kiemen zuerst, denen dann die gegen
die Enden der Muschel zu gelegenen folgen. — In den Kiemen
entwickeln sich die Eier zu Larven, wozu sie nach H a z a y je nach
den Temperaturverhältnissen 2–3 Monate brauchen. — Die Eihülle
wird erst gesprengt, wenn sich die eigentümlich gestaltete
Larvenschale vollkommen ausgebildet hat. Dieselbe ist von
dreieckiger Form und besitzt in der Mitte der Bauchseite einen
kleinen Höcker (Fig. 19). Ist die Eihülle entfernt, so bilden sich an
den Larven Byssusfäden, mit denen sich die in einem Kiemenfache
befindlichen Individuen derart verwickeln, dass sie wie
aneinandergeheftet erscheinen. Die zusammenhängenden
Larvenklumpen werden vom Muttertiere ausgestossen, und fallen in
den Gewässern zu Boden, wo die Byssusfäden der Larven im
Wasser flottieren. Die Byssusfäden verfangen sich an langsam über
dem Schlamme schwimmenden Fischen, hängen sich an dieselben
an, bilden an den Fischen kleine Cysten, in welchen sie sich so
lange aufhalten, bis die junge Muschel soweit ausgereift ist, dass sie
nun ohne Schutz, allein ihre weitere Entwickelung finden kann.
H a z a y hat an folgenden Fischarten die Cysten von Najaden
gefunden: Perca fluviatilis L., Acerina cernua L., Acerina Schraetzer
L., Cottus gobio L., Squalius cephalus L., Leuciscus virgo Heck.,
Rhodeus amarus Blain., Tinca vulgaris Cuv., Carassius vulgaris Nils.
und Cyprinus carpio L. — Die Zeit, während welcher sie als
Schmarotzer an Fischen leben, beträgt nach B r a u n 70–73 Tage.
Fig. 19.
Junge Muschel
von Anodonta
zur Zeit, wenn
dieselbe aus
den Kiemen
ausgestossen
wird.
(Vergrössert.)
Fig. 20.
Junge
Muschel von
Unio batavus
im ersten
Lebensjahre.
Es ist sehr wahrscheinlich, dass die Existenz der Muscheln durch
das Vorhandensein von Fischen bedingt ist, da sich in stehenden
Wassern, welche keine Fische beherbergen, sich auch keine
Najaden finden. — Bei diesem Verhältnisse der beiden so
verschiedenen Tierklassen ist es gewiss gerechtfertigt, dass auch
die grossen Muscheln den Fischen einen Gegendienst erweisen. Es
finden sich nämlich in denselben in der innern Kieme
F i s c h e m b r y o n e n vor, die hier ihre Entwickelung erfahren. H a z a y
fand Mitte April bei kiementrächtigen Anodonten (bei fast jedem
zweiten der untersuchten Tiere) in den inneren Kiemen 4–8, ebenso
bei Unio pictorum 5–16 Fischembryonen, die möglicherweise von
den Muschellarven sich genährt haben. Bei der grossen Anzahl der
Eier, welche die Fische absetzen, ist es wahrscheinlich, dass diese
Fischembryonen nur durch einen glücklichen Zufall zwischen die
Kiemen der Muscheln geraten. Es ist leider noch nicht festgestellt,
ob gewisse Fischarten nur auf diesem Wege ihre Embryonen-
Stadien durchzumachen haben. H a z a y hat ferner beobachtet, dass
die Fische sich in den Muscheln bis zu voller Ausbildung aufhalten,
und dass die jungen Fischchen ausserhalb der Muschel sich ganz
nahe der Atemöffnung der Muschel halten und durch dieselbe in die
Muschel hineinschlüpften.
Die Fortpflanzungsfähigkeit tritt bei Genus Unio im dritten, bei
Genus Anodonta im dritten oder vierten Lebensjahre ein.
Die Muscheln erreichen ein verhältnismässig hohes Alter,
welches sich auf zehn bis zwölf Jahre erstrecken kann, was sich aus
der Zahl der Jahresabsätze leicht erkennen lässt. Die ersten
Jahresabsätze sind durch breite Zwischenräume getrennt, die mit
fortschreitendem Alter immer schmäler werden, und ist bei Muscheln
höheren Alters der Rand der Schalen ein häutiger, während jüngere
Muscheln (Fig. 20) scharfe Ränder haben. Häufig verändern
dieselben mit zunehmendem Alter ihre Formen derart, dass sie mit
der jugendlichen Gestalt nur noch wenig Ähnlichkeit haben.
Die Muscheln, insbesondere die Arten des Genus Anodonta,
werden häufig von einer Milbenart geplagt, die auf den Mantelhäuten
des Tieres lebt und sich vom Blute der Muschel nährt. Diese Milbe,
Limnocharis Anodontae Pfr., kriecht, sich langsam fortschleppend,
auf den schlüpfrigen Häuten des Muscheltieres herum, an welchen
sie sich mittels der Krallen an den Füssen und den Spitzen der
Palpen festhält. Die Eier befestigt sie an der Mantelhaut und zwar
gewöhnlich dem Hinterteil näher. C . P f e i f f e r fand in einer Muschel
30–50 solcher Tiere. Das Muscheltier wird mager, unfruchtbar und
seine Kiemenblätter sind schlaff und befinden sich in einem der
Verwesung ähnlichen Zustande.
Die Arten der Cycladeen (Gen. Sphaerium, Calyculina und
Pisidium) sind Zwitter und gebären lebendige Junge, die beim
Abstoss aus dem Muttertiere schon eine verhältnismässig
beträchtliche Grösse erreicht haben. Die Zahl der Jungen eines
Tieres ist deshalb auch eine geringe und wird selten 20 übersteigen.

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A Relevance-Theoretic Approach to

Decision-Making in Subtitling 1st ed.

Marketing Management: A Strategic Decision-Making

Escaping from Bad Decisions A Behavioral Decision-

Decision Making in Veterinary Practice Barry Kipperman

Scientific Models and Decision Making 1st Edition Eric

Principles of Classroom Management: A Professional

Analytics Enabled Decision Making Vinod Sharma

Managerial Accounting: Decision Making and Motivating

Corrosion Policy Decision Making: Science, Engineering,

ISBN 978-3-030-51802-8 ISBN 978-3-030-51803-5 (eBook)

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020

Cover illustration: © John Rawsterne/patternhead.com

2 Relevance in Secondary Communication 9

3 The Nature of Subtitling 21

4 Towards a Relevance-Theoretic Model

5 Application of the Model 53

Fig. 1 A model of constraints on subtitling (Bogucki 2004: 86) 36

Abstract This introductory section discusses the current state of research

Keywords Audiovisual translation (AVT) · Relevance theory ·

If one takes any publication on audiovisual translation (AVT) written in

© The Author(s) 2020 1

Firstly, the omnipresent technological headway directly impacts the

1 Throughout this work, “translation studies” refers to the academic interdiscipline

Thirdly, assuming that media accessibility is seen as a subset of AVT

discussion of other modalities of AVT, concentrating on the one which

3 According to the online bibliography of interpreting and translation, as of February

Relevance in Secondary Communication

Keywords Relevance theory · Secondary communication · Translation

1 The Importance of Being Relevant

© The Author(s) 2020 9

Cooperative Principle (Grice 1975). One of the four elements (maxims)

2 Understanding Relevance Theory

3 Translation and Relevance

communication is ostensive and inferential. Similarly, the traditional vision

Seeking optimal relevance in translation can be understood as using

4 Assessing Translation Quality

translation studies, the sociolinguistic concept of audience design focuses

degrees of resemblance. The key notion, predictably, is relevance, as the

5 Relevance Theory as the Translation Theory

within a single coherent set of metalinguistic concepts, let alone a theo-

1 https://personal.ua.es/francisco.yus/rt2.html, accessed on February 21, 2020.

Padilla Cruz, Manuel. 2016. Introduction. Three Decades of Relevance Theory.

The Nature of Subtitling

Abstract This part positions subtitling on the broader scale of audiovi-

Keywords Subtitling · Norms · Guidelines · Reception studies

1 From Intertitles to Machine Translation

© The Author(s) 2020 21

constraining nature and contextual dependence on visually transmitted

of VoD giants. Nguyen (2018) describes an experiment carried out by

use of various tools, in particular terminological databases and translation

2 Intersemiotic Translation in Context

by means of signs of nonverbal sign systems” (Jakobson 1959: 233). As a

almost certain to result in instant and constant comparison of the original

3 Norms, Guidelines and Standards

(Díaz-Cintas 2003) and Norway.3 Twenty years after Karamitroglou’s

The additive nature of subtitling does not refer merely to informa-

Bogucki, Łukasz. 2004. A Relevance Framework for Constraints on Cinema

Jakobson, Roman. 1959. On Linguistic Aspects of Translation. In On Trans-

Towards a Relevance-Theoretic Model

Keywords Subtitling process · Cognitive effort · Context

1 Introduction---The Original Model

© The Author(s) 2020 35