Documentary discourse, text typology analysis and orality in subtitling. Visions of the future: a case study.

Subtitling a scientific documentary presents the subtitler with a variety of challenges. The following paper seeks to explore the theoretical approaches related to documentary discourse, text typology analysis and orality and investigates the processes followed in order to produce the Italian subtitled version of the BBC4 documentary, Visions of the Future. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the main features of interlingual subtitling and the state of the art of this mode of transfer in Italy with the aim of establishing a framework of reference for the translation process. It also aims to describe the linguistic and technical aspects that characterise the spotting and subtitling stages of the project which are explored through the use of a set of examples taken from the subtitled version, together with the strategies selected and the solutions adopted, which are based on the theoretical approaches of eminent researchers in the field of audiovisual translation.