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Abstract
In South Africa subtitles are predominantly received as second language (L2) text. This poses questions as to how people perceive these subtitles, and if and how their reading of L2 subtitles differs from their reading of L1 subtitles. This study examined the effectiveness of English L2 subtitles by presenting native speakers of Afrikaans with subtitles displayed in Afrikaans and L2 English while recording their eye movements, and comparing the data to that of English L1 speakers reading English subtitles. The initial hypothesis was that there would be a difference in L1 and L2 subtitle reading in terms of processing. Statistically significant differences were found for dwell time, fixation time and fixation count. Other possible influencing factors were considered, but none had a statistically significant effect on the results; one group processed the English L2 subtitles with more difficulty. Afrikaans L1 speakers have a high level of proficiency in Afrikaans and English to the extent that they are near or fully bilingual. If this unique group of viewers experienced difficulty reading English L2 subtitles, the implications of English L2-only subtitles are even greater for other language groups in South Africa who do not share similar levels of English proficiency.
Acknowledgements
This article 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. Coetzee-Van Rooy (Citation2010, p. 3) states the following regarding the users of English: ‘One of the most striking features of the spread of English noted by linguists is the awareness that users of English as an additional language outnumber users of English as a home language’.
2. In this context, ‘adult’ refers to persons at or above the age of 15.
3. Posel (Citation2011, p. 39) states that the estimated adult literacy rates in South Africa are deemed as ‘highly problematic’, mainly due to disparity in the measures by which these estimates are calculated and whether these estimates can be deemed accurate reflections of national literacy.
4. This was found for both interlingual and intralingual subtitles.
5. ‘M’ is used here to indicate the mean value of the percentages and fixation durations that were found. Furthermore, although not explicitly discussed in the findings, it is noted that more fixations made in a subtitle resulted in more time spent in the subtitle (d'Ydewalle & De Bruycker, Citation2007, p. 202).
6. It should be noted here that one-line and two-line subtitles are not seen as different types of subtitles. The distinction is made purely based on the fact that differences in reading have been observed and proven empirically. Although there are still questions about the actual reasons for these differences, the specific data recorded by d'Ydewalle et al. (Citation1991) is mentioned here because, as a set of concrete findings, it could be used as a measure of comparison for the data gathered in the current study.
7. It should be noted that this study focused on the use of interlingual subtitling in the entertainment industry and that the implications of the findings are also discussed within this context.
8. The group names will be explained in the following section because it relates directly to the experimental material viewed by the participants.
9. 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 6 seconds; and one-line subtitles remained on-screen with enough time for reading (they did not remain on-screen for too long, causing re-reading, 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.
10. Although the six-second rule serves as a guideline, it cannot be enforced with exact precision: the presentation time and reading speed of the respective subtitles depends on the number of words and characters within the respective subtitles, which all need to be timed proportionally.
11. Reading speed for subtitles can be measured and discussed in terms of either words per minute (wpm) or characters per second (cps). For this study words per minute were used because: it coincides with the reading speed measured for static text reading which was used as a comparative measure; the average number of characters per word for the Afrikaans and English subtitles were almost the same; and based on average character count it was found that the average number of words in the respective Afrikaans and English subtitles were very similar (8.1 words for Afrikaans, 7.8 words for English).
12. Statistica is a professional statistical analysis software package which offers ‘a comprehensive array of data analysis, data management, data visualization, and data mining procedures’ (Statsoft.com, Citation2011a).
13. According to the StatSoft Electronic Statistics Textbook (Statsoft.com, Citation2011b), the purpose of analysis of variance (ANOVA) is ‘to test for significant differences between means by comparing (i.e., analyzing) variances. More specifically, by partitioning the total variation into different sources (associated with the different effects in the design), we are able to compare the variance due to the between-groups (or treatments) variability with that due to the within-group (treatment) variability’.
14. The Hi-Speed eye tracker used for the current study is a 500 Hz monocular system and therefore does not allow for binocular eye tracking; even though participants view the presented stimulus material with both eyes, one can choose to track either the left or the right eye, but not both.
15. BeGaze 2.5 is a component specific to SMI iViewX™ software and is used for behavioural and gaze analysis of eye-tracking data (SMI, Citation2009b, p. 2). It simplifies the analysis of the data by automatically grouping data based on individual experiments and participants. BeGaze 2.5 allows for simultaneous analysis, the use of various stimuli, handling multiple participants, presenting data by means of smart visualizations, optimizing workflow and interaction, defining static and dynamic areas of interest and exporting data tables for statistical analysis (SMI, Citation2009b, pp. 8–11).
16. The number of one-line and two-line subtitles for the respective groups were as follows:
CAA (26 one-line subtitles; 36 two-line subtitles);
CEE (20 one-line subtitles; 38 two-line subtitles);
TEA [English] (10 one-line subtitles; 18 two-line subtitles);
TEA [Afrikaans] (13 one-line subtitles; 20 two-line subtitles);
TAE [Afrikaans] (13 one-line subtitles; 16 two-line subtitles);
TAE [English] (10 one-line subtitles; 20 two-line subtitles).
17. Visible time is a concept used by SMI in their analysis software, BeGaze, and refers to the time the subtitles as areas of interest (AOIs) are visible on the screen.
18. These values were calculated by dividing the number of words in the individual subtitles by the visible time of the respective subtitles and calculating the averages. For these calculations, the average word in Afrikaans was taken to consist of 4.8 characters, while the average English word was taken to consist of 4.7 characters. This was based on corpus analyses of the BNC (British National Corpus) and the ATK (Afrikaanse Taalkommissiekorpus or ‘Afrikaans Language Commission Corpus’). In terms of number of characters per word the actual (average) word length in the subtitles was 5.1 characters per word for both English and Afrikaans, but it was decided to norm the values on the values obtained from the mega corpora of the languages.
19. What is interesting about this finding is that the Dutch participants from Belgium, who are generally thought to read more subtitles on a day-to-day basis, spent more time reading two-line subtitles than the American participants, which raises the question as to whether one can ever ‘get used to’ reading subtitles.