Abstracts

Eye-tracking, Audiovisual Translation and Accessibility
Pablo Romero Fresco, University of Roehampton

This presentation will deal with the use of eye-tracking to explore the reception of audiovisual translation and media accessibility by foreign, deaf and blind audiences. A brief overview will be provided of the main findings obtained so far from the application of eye-tracking technology to film and to audiovisual translation and accessibility. Special attention will be devoted to two studies: the eye-tracking-based analysis of the reception of live and pre-recorded subtitles for the deaf across Europe and the first application of eye-tracking to dubbing, which has recently led to the discovery of the so-called dubbing effect.

Eye tracking in translation research: Processes and perspectives
Kristian T. Hvelplund, University of Copenhagen

Eye tracking has become increasingly popular in translation process research since it was first introduced some 10 years ago, and it has helped advance our understanding of translation as a cognitive activity considerably. Translation process research using eye tracking has examined topics such as translator expertise, translation directionality, cognitive efficiency, translators’ genre familiarity, reading processes in translation and audiovisual translation.

This talk will discuss methodological issues related to the collection and analysis of eye tracking data in translation process research and it will present examples of research that has explored the cognitive processes of translation using eye tracking as a key or as a complementary method.

Using eye-tracking to study online comprehension of written texts
Jukka Hyönä, University of Turku

In my talk, I will demonstrate the usefulness of using readers’ eye movement registration to study online processing of written texts. I will demonstrate it by reviewing studies examining (a) how signaling of the content structure of expository texts by topic headings influences online text comprehension, (b) how comprehension of written sarcasm is revealed in the readers’ eye movement records, (c) how the presence of static and dynamic advertisements in webpages affect the reading behavior, and (d) what kind of individual reading strategies can be gleaned from competent readers’ eye movement behavior.

Reception of television subtitles – A view through eye tracking camera
Juha Lång & Jukka Mäkisalo, University of Eastern Finland

Eye tracking methodology allows us to study translations from the point of view of the users in the translations’ natural context. This is useful especially in the case of audiovisual translation, in our case subtitles, where the context, i.e. the sound and the image, are in many cases crucial elements in understanding the message. In our research we have concentrated on the reception and reading of subtitles. Key questions in our studies are: how subtitles are generally read, how information is acquired from subtitles, and what happens when subtitles contain errors.

Differentiating real and synthetic scenes
Jukka Häkkinen, University of Helsinki

In human cognitive processing it is important to be able to differentiate between real and not real stimuli. For example, we need to discriminate visual perception from mental images and dreams. Similarly, we have to differentiate between a boulder that resembles a face from a real face. This is probably done by utilizing reality-likeness cues in the visual scene. In our experiments we have used real and synthetic scenery to find out what kind of cues might serve as reality-likeness criteria and how they are used in visual processing.