‘Control the Stream of Sounds’: A Pilot Study on Intersemiotic Translation of Sound Effects and Music for Subtitling for the D/Deaf and Hard of Hearing in German, Spanish, and English in VOD Platforms

This study aims to address the need for standardization in intersemiotic subtitling of sound effects and music in audiovisual products through the revision of standards and guidelines in subtitling for the D/deaf and hard of hearing (SDH) and the analysis of a corpus consisting of SDH from German, Spanish, and English Netflix series. The results, examined using the classification identified by Martínez-Martínez in El subtitulado para sordos: Estudio de corpus sobre tipología de estrategias de traducción (2015), reveal differences in the three languages analyzed in terms of the most used intersemiotic translation strategy, as well as a lack of consistency in the translation of the same sounds in different subtitles. This article underlines the importance of establishing quality guidelines to ensure access to leisure for people with hearing impairments (Martínez-Martínez in Lo audiovisual bajo el foco del siglo, 2021, p. 353) and establishes a starting point in an interdisciplinary approach to subtitling sound effects and music.