1.
Where to break up?
A study on line breaks
in intralingual subtitling.
Agnieszka Szarkowska
Centre for Translation Studies, UCL
Olivia Gerber Morón
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Intermedia 2017
25-26 September 2017
Poznań, Poland

2.
How to segment two-line subtitles?
“
If necessary, sentences should be
broken […] at natural linguistic
breaks so that each subtitle
forms an understandable segment.
OFCOM, Guidelines on the provision
of television access services

3.
How to segment two-line subtitles?
“
Lines should be broken at logical
points. The ideal line-break will be
at a piece of punctuation
like a full stop, comma or dash.
BBC, Online Subtitling Editorial Guidelines V1.1

4.
“
If the break has to be elsewhere in the sentence,
avoid splitting the following parts of speech:
▪ article and noun (the + table; a + book)
▪ preposition and following phrase
(on + the table; in + a way; about + his life)
▪ conjunction and following phrase/clause
(and + those books; but + I went there)
▪ pronoun and verb
(he + is; they + will come; it + comes)
▪ parts of a complex verb
(have + eaten; will + have + been + doing)
BBC, Online Subtitling Editorial Guidelines V1.1

5.
“
Where breaks occur, the split should
be made in a way that makes clear
that there is more to come.
This can be achieved by ending
the first subtitle with a conjunction,
a colon or semi-colon as appropriate,
or even a short run of dots.
OFCOM, Guidelines on the provision
of television access services

6.
Why bother segmenting?
“
Good line-breaks are extremely
important because they make
the process of reading
and understanding far easier.
BBC, Online Subtitling Editorial Guidelines V1.1

7.
Perego et al. 2010
▪ Noun + Adjective
capelli biondi ‘‘blond hair’’
▪ Noun + Prepositional Phrase
colpi di fucile ‘‘shots of a rifle’’
▪ Adjective + Noun
preciso ricordo ‘‘precise memory’’
▪ Determiner + Noun
quel giorno ‘‘that day’’

8.
“
No indication of differences
in processing or performance
related to subtitling segmentation
quality was found.
Subtitle segmentation quality
did not have a significant impact
in our study.
Perego et al. 2010

9.
DO PEOPLE THINK THAT SUBTITLE
SEGMENTATION IS IMPORTANT?

10.
Participants
▪ 88 people
– 69 Hearing
• 22 English
• 21 Polish
• 26 Spanish
– 10 Hard of hearing
– 9 Deaf
▪ Aged 19-74, M=30.7, SD=11.23, median=27

11.
Design
▪ Mixed factorial
▪ Independent between-subject variables
– Language
– Hearing loss
▪ Dependent within-subject variables
– Preference for segmented vs. non-segmented linguistic units
– Time to click
– Eye tracking measures
• dwell time
• fixation count
• mean fixation duration
• revisits

12.
Materials
▪ 30 pairs of screenshots from BBC’s Sherlock
▪ Counterbalanced order of segmented
vs. non-segmented screenshots
▪ Randomised order of presentation

13.
Linguistic units
1. Indefinite article + Noun phrase
2. Definite article + Noun phrase
3. Compound (Noun + Noun)
4. to infinitive
5. Preposition + Noun phrase
6. Possessive
7. Adjective + Noun
8. Conjunction
9. Auxiliary + lexical verb
10. Subject + predicate

14.
0 20 40 60 80 100
Indefinite article + noun
Definite article + noun
To-infinitive
Compound
Auxiliary + lexical verb
Subject and predicate
Preposition + noun phrase
Possessive
Adjective + noun
Conjunction
Percentage of people
Preferences for segmented and non-segmented text
Segmented Non-segmented

15.
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
English Polish Spanish
Definite article by language
segmented non-segmented

16.
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
Hearing Hard of hearing Deaf
Definite article by hearing
segmented non-segmented

17.
Deaf participants
▪ Highest preference for non-segmented subtitles in:
– Indefinite article
– Definite article
– Adjective + Noun
▪ Lowest preference for segmented subtitles in:
– Definite article
– Preposition
– Possessive
– Conjunction

18.
Deafness and function words
▪ Many function words do not exist in sign languages
▪ Difficulties with articles
– overuse the definite article
– avoid the indefinite article
(Channon & Sayers,2007; Wolbers, Dostal, & Bowers, 2012)
▪ Problems with demonstratives, determiners,
and dependent clause markers
(Channon & Sayers, 2007)

19.
0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000 8000 9000
Indefinite article
Definite article
To-infinitive
Compound
Auxiliary + verb
Subject + Predicate
Preposition
Possessive
Adjective + Noun
Conjunction
Time to click
(Hearing people only)
Segmented Non-segmented

20.
0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000 8000 9000 10000
Indefinite article
Definite article
To-infinitive
Compound
Auxiliary + verb
Subject + Predicate
Preposition
Possessive
Adjective + Noun
Conjunction
Time to click
(English hearing, hard of hearing and deaf)
Segmented Non-segmented

21.
0
20
40
60
80
100
semantic and
syntactic phrases
pyramid-shaped rectangle-shaped I don't know
What was most important for you
when deciding which subtitles were better?

22.
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
English Polish Spanish Deaf and
Hard of
hearing
Segmentation preferences by group
I don't know
rectangle-shaped
pyramid-shaped
semantic and
syntactic phrases

23.
“ Line breaks have their value,
yet when you are reading fast,
most of the time
it becomes less relevant.
Deaf participant

24.
So what?
▪ Viewers show marked preference
for segmented subtitles
▪ People spent more time deciding
in the non-segmented condition
▪ Revise Ofcom’s subtitling standards
– no conjunctions at the end of lines
▪ Subtitles as linguistic input for the Deaf

25.
www.facebook.com/SureProject
This project has received funding from the European Union’s
Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme
under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No. 702606