27 February 2014
Subtitling and Intercultural Communication
European Languages and beyond
International Conference
Siena, Italy
Invited speakers:
Jorge Díaz-Cintas (Imperial College London)
Yves Gambier (University of Turku)
Henrik Gottlieb (University of Copenhagen)
David Katan (Università del Salento)

Organized by the Università per Stranieri di Siena, this one day conference aims to bring together - under the umbrella of Intercultural Communication Studies and Audiovisual Translation Studies - researchers who are particularly sensitive to cross-cultural issues in subtitling.
The conference aims to explore key concerns associated with subtitling and intercultural communication with a particular focus on European languages such as English, German, Italian and Spanish, in order to promote the cross-fertilization of practices, ideas and theoretical approaches.
The idea to investigate subtitling from an intercultural perspective, and also with reference to language teaching, is due to the fact that the Università per Stranieri di Siena, the promoter of this initiative, has been actively engaged for many years in these areas of research. In addition to this, recent studies have correlated the relevance of new technologies (of which subtitling is an example) with language learning, creating new scenarios which involve an increasing number of people with different languages and cultures. Other subject areas have developed an interest in subtitling: from translation studies to linguistics to studies on communication for the deaf and hard of hearing.
The purpose of the conference is therefore to gather scholars of various disciplines who share a common interest for the phenomena under analysis, in order to discuss these specific research topics:
1) subtitles for language learners;
2) subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing;
3) fansubbing and/or/versus professional subtitling.

The conference will address key questions which have been raised by audiovisual translation, language teaching and intercultural communication studies, with the aim of enlarging borders and enriching past representations.
Official languages of the conference: Italian and English.