Television subtitles and literacy: where do we go from here?

Abstract

Subtitling is a valuable tool for improving literacy and aiding language learning, but what happens when people are unable to read the subtitles? In a recent study on the reading of second language subtitles, participants were shown a subtitled short film while their eye movements were recorded by an SMI iViewX Hi-Speed eye tracker. It was found that Sesotho mother tongue speakers did not possess the necessary reading skills to read either first language (L1) Sesotho or second language (L2) English subtitles efficiently in terms of reading speed and comprehension – participants spent a disproportionate amount of time reading the L2 English subtitles (74%) and even more time reading the L1 Sesotho subtitles (83%). Even then, participants were unable to finish reading the L1 Sesotho subtitles – an average of 3.43 (SD =2.21) words were not read in each of the Sesotho subtitles. In an effort to answer the questions as to how effective subtitling is in South Africa and to what extent literacy is a barrier in the communication of information, this paper offers detailed findings on the reading of L1 and L2 subtitles in a multilingual environment and explores optimal subtitle presentation for the South African viewing public.

Keywords:

• English second language (L2)
• Sesotho first language (L1)
• literacy
• reading speed
• subtitling
• eye tracking

Acknowledgements

This paper is based on the findings of a PhD. study completed at the North-West University, Vanderbijlpark, South Africa, in 2011. The PhD. study, entitled ‘Reading second language subtitles: A case study of South African viewers reading in their native language and L2-English’, was completed under supervision of Prof AJ van Rooy and Prof JL Kruger. Permission was obtained from Cavilam to use and publish the animated short film, Tadeus, as part of this study.

Notes

1. It should be noted that, although home language as medium of instruction does not go beyond third grade level for African language speakers, the home language is still taken as a subject up to Grade 12. The content of this curriculum does not fall within the scope of the current paper, but some concerns should be mentioned here. It has been found that, for their final examination, students' marks for their home language subjects ‘seem relatively high, compared to the overall matrix average’ (Van Rooy & Coetzee-Van Rooy, forthcoming). The results seem inflated, and therefore bring into question the reliability thereof as indicators of literacy in the home language; students do well in the home language as a subject in Grade 12 but it is not clear that what they learn support academic literacy development and it is not clear that the assessment standards for the home languages are similar to that of the other subjects. Further concerns about the home language curricula are addressed in Van der Walt (2010).

2. Sesotho (also known as Southern Sotho) is a member of the Bantu language family. It is an agglutinative language, meaning that ‘it builds words by joining together various roots, prefixes, suffixes and other elements’ (Transparent Language Inc. 2013). According to Transparent Language Inc. (2013): ‘The grammar of the Sotho language is complex and fascinating. For example, it also employs a system of noun classes, each marked with its own prefix. Furthermore, most other words in a sentence, such as adjectives, verbs and pronouns, must use special concords (similar to prefixes) that agree with the noun to which they refer. This feature often results in sentences with an alliterative sound pattern’. In addition, Sesotho is a tonal language, with various high and low tones not only key for correct pronunciation, but also for grammatical distinction.

3. It is not clear by whom the original subtitles were created, but the subtitles were found to be of a good standard: a maximum number of two lines was used; the subtitles were presented as white text with a black border; none of the subtitles contained more than 37 characters per line; two-line subtitles never remained on-screen for more than six seconds; and one-line subtitles remained on-screen with enough time for reading (they did not remain on-screen for too long, causing rereading, nor did they flash because they were not on for long enough). The English subtitles were verified against the French dialogue by a French mother tongue-speaking subtitler to ensure accuracy.

4. The detailed discussion of the questionnaire and the statistical relevance of the participants' responses do not fall within the scope of the current paper. Only participants' educational background will be discussed. Further information regarding the questionnaire is provided in the doctoral thesis on which this paper is based, and can be requested from the author.

5. The values for proportional reading time were, in all instances, calculated by considering dwell time (the total amount of time spent in the subtitled area) as a percentage of the total visible time (the total amount of time the subtitles are visible on the screen) of the one-line and two-line subtitles per language group.

6. The term ‘imposed reading speed’, as used here, refers to the reading speed at which participants are ‘forced’ to read the subtitles – subtitled text is presented at a specific rate (speed) of x words per minute and the viewer(s) are then expected to read the subtitles within the available time and at the set rate. The imposed reading speed does not necessarily coincide with the reading speed at which the viewer(s) actually read the subtitled text – they might read faster or slower, depending on their level of literacy. The average word lengths for English (4.7 characters) and Sesotho (3.9 characters) are based on corpus analyses of the BNC (British National Corpus) and the PSC (Pretoria Sotho Corpus) (cf. Prinsloo and De Schryver 2005).