Bearing in mind that most of the films we are continually seeing on our screens were and are produced in the United States, there is an increasing need to translate them into the different languages of the world. Apart from technical problems such as lip synchronisation, there are other factors to be consid- ered such as the use of the language and textual structures deemed appropri- ate to the channel of communication. If the process of translating is not at all simple, the process of translating an audiovisual text is still more complex. The critical invisibility of subtitles is a necessary consequence of the transparency explicitly aimed at by subtitlers.

In the case of a time- bound translation mode like subtitling, too great an obtrusiveness will compromise the ability of the viewer to ‘read’ the audiovisual text and to process the subtitles themselves. If a translation is too visible, it becomes itself an object of scrutiny and its capacity to fulfil the function for which it has been commissioned is diminished.

Anecdotally, we know that this can be the case. The titles should subtly give people the impression that they are understanding the characters speaking, not reading words on the screen’ (quoted in Rosenberg 2007). The subtitler Henri Béhar says that if subtitles ‘aren’t invisible, you fail. The language should enter the ear as the image enters the eye’ (quoted in Nornes 1999: 31). According to Donald Richie ‘any oddity, any term too heightened, as well as any mistake, calls attention to this written dialogue. Both the authenticising subtitles discussed in the previous chapter and conventional post- subtitles depend for their effect on their almost subliminal impact. One of the purposes of writing this book has been to help restore to audiovisual translation the visibility which, like most modes of translation, it actively seeks to avoid.

Combat obscura subtitles