| Abstract [eng] |
As hearing-impaired audiences have little access to auditory information, their viewing experiences differ greatly from their hearing peers’. To compensate for the missing auditory information, subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing (SDH) have been implemented in all types of audiovisual media. While SDH essentially functions as a bridge between auditory and visual information, relatively little research has been done in Lithuania and globally. Hence, this Master’s thesis aims at revealing the peculiarities of representing paralingual information in SDH created for young viewers. Its object of research is the representation of paralingual information in English and Lithuanian SDH in films catered for viewers ages 6 – 18. To achieve the established aim, the thesis employs the comparative qualitative and quantitative analysis methods and delves into the unique qualities of the hearing-impaired audience as well as the characteristics of SDH and reviews the collected empirical data from Inconvenient Films Class, Netflix, and Disney+. The methodological chapter introduces the selected target audience, empirical material as well as the developed classification. The theoretical part delves into the technical aspects of SDH and the heterogeneous nature of hearing-impaired audiences. The empirical part focuses on the Lithuanian and American SDH guidelines as well as on the analysis of the collected empirical data. This thesis is concluded with the introduction of recommendations related to the creation of SDH and a section dedicated to the conclusions. The results of this study reveal that character identification is the prevailing type of paralingual information among the three streaming sites, occurring in approximately half of the collected cases. When regarding the construction style of descriptions, Lithuanian subtitles are generally linguistically complex, while the American approach is relatively minimalistic. Furthermore, while all three platforms generally adhere to the provided guidelines, possible issues with readability are evident. |
