ange a number of my translation solutions, the neutralisation strategy having turned out to be inappropriate. Fortunately, I still had a couple of hours to bring the register of the target version in line with the rather colourful original. When the programme was aired in the late evening, the subtitled Norwegian version contained a rather high number of four-letter words; there were no viewer reactions in the days and weeks to follow., spatial and decoding restraintsaddition to linguistic restraints there is the visual factor. Trying their best to read everything that has been translated, viewers are often unable to concentrate adequately on other important visual information and sometimes also on oral information. This is regrettable since audiovisual programmes combine words and images, and the translation should observe the interrelation between the way a plot is told and the manner in which it is shown. Subtitles should synchronise not only with speech, but also with image.years ago, cinema and television films were cut less fast than they tend to be now. This is undoubtedly an important reason why the history of subtitling does not contain much discussion of editing and camera manipulation techniques. Visual aspects are now more an issue, which reflects the rapid development of the last couple of decades in camera manipulation, sequence construction and programme editing. This is not only due to the number of cameras involved and the way they are used, but also to what takes place when the filming of a programme is complete, when the different sections, with their shots, scenes and sequences, are assembled and edited.is increasingly important for the subtitles to be integrated with the film and to fall in with the rhythm of the visual information on the screen. This is far from easy to achieve when the editing of the film is gaining momentum and the flow of the shots is adjusted to the demands of the narrative and the impact on the audience. With respect to spatial constraints, in the Nordic countries, one- and two-line subtitles are used. The length of the line varies, but normally does not exceed 38 characters. The main limiting factors are the size of the television screen and the size of the font.the subtitles follow each other in rapid succession, reading one two-liner appears to be less strenuous than reading two one-liners containing the same amount of information. Although precise timing has usually been defined in terms of subtitle-speech synchronisation, research carried out by Baker (1982) in Great Britain indicates that subtitles overrunning shot changes cause perceptual confusion. Interesting as these results may appear, they do not seem to have had too much of an impact on subtitling territory in the Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries and the great majority of Norwegian screen translators still favour two-line subtitles., However, two lines occupy too much space and interfere substantially with the visual information and composition of the picture. A case in point is the animation series South Park, where the bodies and faces of the characters fill up most of the screen. This series can be difficult to handle for subtitlers. Also in news bulletins, faces often dominate the screen as the camera focuses on the so-called talking head but since there is limited activity in the picture, the viewers are able to concentrate on the translation., Current affairs and documentary programmes frequently contain captions or inserts. These are texts added to the film after shooting. They may be names of people taking part, or names of places visited or shown. As captions often appear at the bottom of the screen, there is the risk that they may collide with the subtitles, a situation that should obviously be avoided.may present translators with a difficult task due to the presence of ambiguities. Normally a translator has the means of following up unclear linguistic or factual points; for the subtitler, however, this is not necessarily the case. One reason may be the lack of a manuscript or dialogue list, often the situation when interviews are made in news programmes. However, as the reporter tends to know enough about the context, the subtitler may be helped with potential decoding problems.the subtitler does not have the time to obtain adequate knowledge of the context. In addition, the huge number of varieties of English - and the fact that the interviewees command of the language may be far from satisfactory - often make translation a rather difficult process. A mistake may occur after the translator has spent considerable time trying to decode a difficult word. But sometimes we simply misinterpret what somebody is saying without realising it until we are con-fronted with our mistake at a later stage. The following mistake belongs to the latter category. It was made by Swedish television in a translation of Bill Clinton s тисячу дев'ятсот дев'яносто шість re-...
