Skip to content
Posted by ias ucl First Page

The First Page: Practices, Education and Technology in Audiovisual Translation

View of the sky through a structure of black letters that are all connected with each other. A sculpture by Jaume Plensa viewed from the inside.

THE FIRST PAGE

Practices, Education and Technology in Audiovisual Translation

by Alejandro Bolaños-García-Escribano

7 October 2024

The First Page presents the first page of books that are launched as part of the IAS Book Launch Programme. On 14 October 2024, Alejandro Bolaños-García-Escribano will launch his first book, which explores the intersections of education and technology in audiovisual translation. Scholarship on the subject has traditionally focused on subtitling and revoicing practices but has grown to encompass a wider range of practices and interests. Bolaños-García-Escribano unpacks the evolution of professional ecosystems whilst looking ahead to the future of the translation industry and higher education.

Preface

Fellow translation scholars will likely agree with me that new technologies have altered how (audiovisual) translations are being carried out nowadays. We now have a greater variety of tools at our disposal – from translation memories to machine translation systems and novel generative artificial intelligence tools. Higher education has consequently undergone radical changes in the face of technological advancement. Not only have we rethought how lessons and assessments are conducted, but we have also revisited our very understanding of practices and education and their interaction with technology. Digital technologies have enhanced and democratised remote work and learning practices, but embracing change requires that we deeply reflect upon the impact they have on what, how and why we teach media localisation.

This book thus sets out to take stock of the latest developments in audiovisual translation practices with an emphasis on education and technology. This book originally stems from the research I conducted at University College London (UCL) between late 2015 and late 2020, which is publicly available on UCL Library’s online repository. It involved a preliminary online survey as well as several face-to-face user-focused experiments, including a pilot study and subsequent action research cycles on the use of cloud subtitling for teaching and learning purposes. In the midst of what has been named the cloud turn, the use of web-based ecosystems is increasingly prominent in the industry today, and in this research, I set out to seek a better understanding of their usefulness. I did not intend to provide answers as to whether the latest technologies, namely cloud-based media localisation editors, were more suitable for the learning and teaching of audiovisual translation practices than legacy desktop-based programs. However, the results obtained from the many experiments that took place across several British and European universities between 2017 and 2019, which involved over 300 participants, validated some of my assumptions such as the effectiveness of cloud ecosystems and their agility.

ALEJANDRO BOLAÑOS GARCÍA-ESCRIBANO is Associate Professor in Audiovisual Translation at UCL.

The book launch will take place on 14 October 2024 at the Institute of Advanced Studies. More information.

Lead Image: Nathaniel Shuman via Unsplash.

Categories

First Page

Tags

,