Emotional Responses to Aesthetically Integrated and Standard Subtitles in a Fantasy-Thriller Audiovisual Context

Leveridge, Francesca; Mével, Pierre-Alexis; Tsikandilakis, Myron

Abstract

Situated at the intersection of Psychology, Film Studies, Accessibility Studies and Translation Studies, this article investigates the emotional correlates of two types of subtitles (standard and aesthetically integrated) on audiences in the context of fear-eliciting clips with Russian fantasy thriller Night Watch (Bekmambetov, 2004). Our experiment employed a methodology combining skin conductance (SCR), heart-rate responses (HR) and self-reports (questionnaires) to account for the complex interplay between experiential, cognitive, behavioural and physiological elements that make up emotional responses. We examined the psychophysiological and self-report responses to two subtitling delivery effects – standard subtitles and aesthetically integrated subtitles – focussing specifically on fear. We used significance-testing and Bayesian analyses to compare the two subtitling deliveries. For both analyses, we found that the presentation of aesthetically integrated subtitles led to higher positively rated psychophysiological arousal and quality of viewing experience ratings compared to standard subtitles. This novel finding suggests that aesthetically integrated subtitles could play an important role in the development of new ways to provide audiovisual translation.

Citation

Leveridge, F., Mével, P.-A., & Tsikandilakis, M. (2024). Emotional Responses to Aesthetically Integrated and Standard Subtitles in a Fantasy-Thriller Audiovisual Context. Journal of Audiovisual Translation, 7(1), 1-32. https://doi.org/10.47476/jat.v7i1.2024.266

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Feb 3, 2024
• Online Publication Date: Jun 17, 2024
• Publication Date: Apr 26, 2024
• Deposit Date: Feb 15, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 15, 2024
• Journal: Journal of Audiovisual Translation
• Print ISSN: 2617-9148
• Electronic ISSN: 2617-9148
• Publisher: European Association for Studies in Screen Translation
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 7
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 1-32
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.47476/jat.v7i1.2024.266
• Keywords: subtitles; fantasy-thriller; psychophysiology; emotion; skin conductance; heart rate
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/31447153
• Publisher URL: https://jatjournal.org/index.php/jat/article/view/266