As metaphors are fascinating linguistic and cultural phenomena, and as they have a great potential to cause translation problems, it is no wonder that a great deal has been written about them, both in metaphor studies and in translation studies. They are severely under-researched from the perspective of audiovisual translation, however. This is surprising, considering the added layers of complexity caused by the multimodality of audiovisual texts, and the special conditions and constraints of dubbing and subtitling. This monograph seeks to remedy this, as it investigates how metaphors are handled in three different genres of televisual light entertainment. If a metaphor is verbalized in the dialogue while being visualized on screen, and if that metaphor is not normally used in the target language, the task of the audiovisual translator becomes very challenging indeed. The research shows that audiovisual translators go to great lengths of creativity and complexity to do metaphors justice and maintain harmony with sound and image.

Even though our media screens have become smaller, they contain vastly more audiovisual content, and translations thereof, than was the case only a few decades ago. This chapter gives a historical overview of the development of film and TV, and shows how audiovisual translation has developed alongside with this content. The second part of the chapter presents the various forms of audiovisual translation that are available these days, both of the preproduction kind (like remakes and TV formats) and postproduction kinds (like dubbing, subtitling and voice-over), as well as various forms of media accessibility (like audio description and subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing) for people with disabilities. For each presented mode of audiovisual translation and media accessibility, areas of research are also presented. All this is illustrated with examples from the popular Disney Christmas programme “From All of Us to All of You”.

Machine translation is now making serious inroads into the field of interlingual subtitling. This has been made possible by the use of template files and higher reading speeds. As we move into this new phase in the development of the subtitling process, the phase of machine-translated and postedited subtitles, it is highly pertinent to look at marks that this new process leaves on the subtitled product, i.e., the subtitles themselves. We conducted a diachronic study of subtitles before and after machine translation was part of the process. We did this by comparing a corpus of Swedish subtitles of Anglophone TV programmes produced after machine translation was introduced to a corpus of subtitles from before that period. We also took data from studies of earlier processes into account. When assessed using existing guidelines and the FAR model, the post-edited subtitles produced in the 2020s were found to be faster, more oral, less cohesive, less complete and with less meticulous punctation and line-breaks than those produced in the 2010s. They were also of significantly lower quality in all areas investigated. Based on these results, we suggest that more research and development is needed to raise quality levels, and to make professional subtitlers augmented translators.

The discussion addresses a host of issues pertaining to various intersections between creativity and translation. Embracing the inevitable vagueness of the concepts, the speakers outline several clusters of topics, including the unpredictability of translation success (Susan Bassnett), critique of instrumentalism in translation (Lawrence Venuti) and the definition of the notion of creative subtitles (Jan Pedersen). The speakers also take positions on such complex and sometimes inherently contradictory issues as functional approaches to translation, source and target text, translation process, the pros and cons of new technologies in current translation practice and the lack of a true transdisciplinary dialogue felt in today’ s translation studies. The last point hints at a problem the discipline has been facing for a while: although the field has (for the most part) been incorporating inspiration from other research areas, disciplines for which translation is crucial (as a means of acquiring research corpora, disseminating results, etc.) still tend to overlook the translational character of their work. “Translation and creativity in the 21st century” springs from a roundtable that took place at Translation, Interpreting and Culture 2: Rehumanising Translation Studies (TIC 2) conference held on 22–24 September 2021 in Banská Bystrica, Slovakia. TIC 2 was the second in the series of translation and interpreting studies conferences organized by scholars and professionals affiliated with several Slovak and European institutions. The 2021 organizational team was managed by Associate Professor Martin Djovčoš (Matej Bel University).