Theoretical Developments in Audiovisual Translation: Insights from Subtitle Processing in Multimodal and Interactive Audiovisual Media

Subtitles, as a product of audiovisual translation, are widely used in audiovisual media and serve as excellent materials for studying text processing in dynamic multimodal contexts. Due to their practical and theoretical relevance, subtitle guidelines and processing have been extensively researched to inform both practical applications and theories in audiovisual information processing. However, this research has predominantly focused on non-interactive audiovisual media, such as films and video clips. In contrast, despite the growing popularity of interactive audiovisual media (e.g. video games), little is known about how subtitles and other text are processed in these contexts. Moreover, interactive audiovisual media impose new requirements on the theoretical framework required to explain audiovisual information processing. This chapter aims to explore how research on subtitling in interactive media can contribute to theoretical advancements on users’ processing of audiovisual translation products. The insights gained from this chapter deepen our theoretical understanding of text processing in interactive audiovisual media, which has the potential to improve user experiences, learning outcomes, and training performance in interactive audiovisual media used for entertainment and instruction.