O uso de emojisna LSE para crianças: uma estratégia lúdica para a tradução dos elentos paralinguísticos

Abstract

In the field of Audiovisual Translation (AVT), one of the oldest and most widely used translation modalities is subtitling. Currently, this type of translation has become increasingly necessary, especially due to demands towards accessibility, which led to the birth of Subtitling for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (SDH), considered a modality of the subfield of Accessible Audiovisual Translation (AAVT). SDH not only makes audiovisual content accessible, but it can also be an important tool for learning to read the Portuguese language in a ludic manner, which can be highly beneficial for children. In SDH the dialogues, soundtrack, sound effects, paralinguistic information (tone of voice, rhythm of speech, etc.) and extralinguistic information (gestures, postures, etc.) are translated. The addition of the extra information, however, can lead to an increase in the amount of characters in the subtitle, leading to a direct impact on the required reading speed. This high speed can make children to have an incomplete reading of the subtitle and, consequently, an inadequate understanding of the audiovisual product, especially if these children do not yet have a full command of an oral language. Therefore, the present research aimed to observe whether the use of emojis would be a feasible translation strategy to replace paralinguistic information and, consequently, reduce reading speed by decreasing the number of characters per second (CPS) in SDH for children. Hence, as this is a descriptive research in the form of a commented translation, three versions of SDH subtitles in Portuguese were made for the short film Small Fry, a production in which the characters' voices present a rich diversity of paralinguistic information. The guideline Guia para Produções Audiovisuais Acessíveis (NAVES; MAUCH; ALVES; ARAÚJO, 2016) and research done on Subtitle for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (SDH) for children (ZÁRATE, 2010, 2011, 2014; LORENZO, 2010a, 2010b; TAMAYO, 2015a, 2015b, 2016; TAMAYO, CHAUME, 2017; WÜNSCHE, 2020) were taken as parameters throughout this study. The free subtitle creator and editing program Aegisub, and the subtitle burning softwares HandBrake and VEED.IO were also used for this research. In the first version of the subtitles, the paralinguistic information was translated between square brackets in the conventional way. The second version replaced the information with emojis, without any editing in the text. In the third version, besides the use of emojis, text editing also occured. The results showed that emojis can be a feasible strategy to replace paralinguistic information. They not only reduce the number of characters and, consequently, significantly reduce the CPS of subtitles, but also allow subtitles to be more similar to the audio, as preferred by part of the SDH target audience. Keywords: Accessible Audiovisual Translation (AAVT). Subtitling for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (SDH). Translation for children. Paralinguistic Information. Emojis.