BBC 6分钟英语 字幕艺术

English from BBC, learning English. Hello.

This is 6 min English from BBC, learning English.

I'm Neil, and I'm Beth. If your death or hard of hearing, watching television would be impossible without subtitles, the words of dialogue added at the bottom of the screen explaining what the characters are saying.

Subtitled captions aren't only for dialogue.

In the most dramatic, action packed scenes of a movie, there might be no one speaking, but there are plenty of sounds, a scream, a thrilling car chase, and all these sounds need to be described as well.

In this program, we'll be meeting Carly Vitovska, a subtitler who works on the Stranger Things Show, to find out more.

And of course, we'll be learning some useful new vocabulary as well.

But 1st, I have a question for you, neil.

Movie subtitles are written ahead of time, but subtitling for live TV has to be done in the moment as the person is speaking.

This can lead to mistakes, sometimes very funny ones, including a subtitle which appeared in an interview for the BBC 06:00 news in 2019.

But what did the subtitle say?

Was it A We can't allow Spiderman to become Prime Minister.

B We can't allow Superman to become Prime minister.

Or C We can't allow Batman to become Prime minister.

Hmm. I guess the subtitling mistake involved Spiderman.

I'll reveal the answer later in the program.

Of course, it's not just deaf audiences that subtitles help.

The translated subtitles of foreign films are great for learning languages, letting you read a word and hear how it's pronounced at the same time.

And because subtitles describe everything from monster squelches to bombs exploding, it's a great way to learn new adjectives.

Here's subtitler Carlyvitovska explaining to BBC radio for program Word of Mouth, how her choice of adjective creates emotion for the viewer.

It depends on the genre, depends on the shores.

And so if you have a very upbeat, sort of period peace, where the music is very jaunty, like, you reduce the word jaunty to describe the music.

It just, it's creating an idea of what assignment is like, and using a very, very descriptive word in order to do so.

Carly bases her descriptions on the films genre, a style of film, music or book, with its own particular set of features.

The sound effects needed for a thriller, like stranger things creaking stairs and sudden screams, are very different from the sounds used in historical period dramas, which are more upbeat, lighthearted and cheerful.

This influence is the adjective Carly chooses to describe a sound, e.g.

upbeat music might be described as jaunty, full of energy and confidence.

Subtitles started out as an accessibility feature for death audiences and to translate foreign language films into English.

But since the growth of online streaming services like Netflix, subtitling has become something of an art.

Carly belongs to a team of subtitles who try to make their descriptions as close as possible to the sounds they hear.

Here, she tells BBC Radio force word of mouth about a time her team found exactly the right word I loved, um gobsmacked, silence, because you were able to tell that people were like, almost on the verge of a gasp, or on the verge of, like, A-A shock.

And that was the atmosphere, but there wasn't actually a sound.

So when when my colleague came up with that one, I-I definitely wanted to give him a virtual high five.

In this scene, the surprise characters were about to gasp, taking a short, quick breath of air.

There was no speech or sound in the scene, but carley's team found the perfect adjective to describe the silence gob smacked, which is slang for being so surprised you can't speak.

This was definitely one description that deserved a high five, lifting up your hand to clap hands with someone else as a greeting, or to say, well done.

In fact, the phrase gob smacked silence was so good it went viral and started being used in all kinds of situations.

Maybe gob smacked was how the viewers of that TV news program felt.

You know the mistaken subtitle you ask me about in your question?

I guess the incorrect subtitle was, we can't allow Spiderman to become Prime Minister.

Which was the wrong answer, I'm afraid.

In fact, the interview, he said, we can't allow that man to become Prime

Minister. Speaking about Boris Johnson. But the misheard subtitle appeared as Batman.

OK, let's recap the vocabulary we've learned from this program on subtitles, starting with genre style of film, music or book, with its own particular set of characteristics.

Something which is upbeats is cheerful, hopeful and light hearted.

The adjective jaunty means full of energy and confidence.

If you gasp, you take in a short, quick breath of air in surprise or in pain.

You can use the slang expression, gobsmacked when someone is so surprised they can't speak.

And finally, if you give someone a high five, you hold up your hand above your head, clapping hands with somebody else as a greeting or to say, well done.

Once again. Our 6 min are up.

Bye for now. Bye. Um.

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