The SubComm infographics are the result of a joint volunteer effort by members of the SubComm community. The idea for the infographics came about at SubComm’s Subtitle Chat event in December 2022. Subtitle Chats are informal online conversations around topics that are of interest to both subtitlers and researchers whose work revolves around subtitling. The topic of the December 2022 chat was “What I wish my friends knew about my work”. During the conversation, one of the participants mentioned that it would be great if we had infographics about subtitling, so that we could make subtitling and the work of subtitlers more easily understandable to a general audience, and to friends who do not necessarily know our work all that well. We liked the idea so much that we decided to turn it into reality, and a little over a year later, we now have four infographics that describe various topics related to subtitles and subtitling. The infographics were designed by a working group consisting of both subtitlers and academics. The working group met in several online workshops, during which we first brainstormed to come up with the topics and visual themes for the infographics and then wrote texts for them. The visual design of the infographics is by graphic designer Hannah O’Connor.
The infographics are divided into two groups: two of them introduce subtitles as a product, and two describe the process of subtitling. The first of the product infographics, “Who Watches Subtitles?”, depicts some purposes for which subtitles are used from the perspective of different user groups of subtitles. The second one, “Different Types of Subtitles”, lists some of the most common types of subtitles and explains each of them briefly. On the process theme, the first infographic, “The Business of Subtitling”, demonstrates how many kinds of tasks a professional subtitler has to perform as part of their job. The second process infographic, “Subtitles: A Balancing Act”, describes the challenging decisions a subtitler faces when creating subtitles.
Photo by kaleb tapp on Unsplash
Each infographic has its own dedicated page here on our website. On those pages, you can find more information on the topic of each infographic and links to further reading related to them. We hope these resources give a realistic glimpse into subtitles and subtitling, especially to those who do not know much about the field. We would love to hear what you think about the infographics. If you have any comments, ideas for future infographics, or concrete examples of how you have found them useful, please email us at projectsubcomm @ gmail.com. Feedback could help us seek funding to keep the infographics project going.
The infographics address a general audience, people who are not involved in subtitling themselves but are interested in learning more about it. However, they may also be suitable for teaching purposes, or as a way to invite conversations about the various challenges of subtitling among colleagues or within translators’ associations. The infographics are freely available on this website so that anyone can share them on social media or elsewhere, wherever they may be useful. We are also open to the idea of having them translated into other languages, so if you are interested in doing that, please get in touch with us to discuss how it could be done. Our main interest is to raise awareness about subtitling and help people have informed conversations, so we are very happy for people to use our infographics for those purposes as widely as possible. The infographics are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International. This license requires that reusers give credit to the creator. It allows reusers to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form and for noncommercial purposes only.
Our infographics project was generously funded by the Finnish Association of Translators and Interpreters SKTL through their Kopiosto grants. We are extremely grateful to SKTL for their support, and we are pleased that we are also able to publish Finnish translations of the infographics to benefit the Finnish audiovisual translators’ community.
The infographics project has been a joint effort involving the founders of SubComm, Hannah Silvester and Tiina Tuominen, and the infographics working group. We would like to thank all the members of the working group, including:
Sevita Caseres
Laura Dunbabin
Rita Menezes
Marielle Steinpatz
It’s been great fun, and very educational, to work on this project with this group of dedicated experts. We’ve had wonderful conversations in our workshops, and everyone has brought invaluable insights into the process.
In addition, we’d like to thank the whole SubComm community and anyone who has chatted with us about the infographics and shared their ideas during the process. We would also like to extend a huge thank you to our graphic designer Hannah O’Connor for her hard work and professionalism throughout the design process.
This project has shown what a community like SubComm can do, and reminded us why we launched SubComm in the first place: researchers and practitioners came together to share their experience and expertise and to create something that we hope will benefit the entire subtitling field. It is in the best interests of us all to help people see why subtitling is such a fascinating activity that requires skilled professionals and fair working conditions. We hope these infographics make it a little bit easier for us all to explain what subtitling is all about and advocate for a sustainable future for subtitling.
View and download the infographics (after 2.30pm GMT+1):
2 | Different Types of Subtitles
