Lina Abraitiene

Surtitles as a Never Finished Product on the Stage

The possibilities provided by the new technologies have influenced the translation practice of audiovisual media and increased the need of translation across the world as the spreading of media and a number of its users have been growing promptly and the theatre has not been an exception. Contemporary foreign-language opera or musical production as well as theatre has been made more theatre-goer-friendly with introduction of surtitles. This mode of audiovisual translation (AVT) born with the need to overcome language barriers in operas and musicals worldwide has already become an integral part of the stage where the audience uses the surtitles as a communication tool with other core modes, namely, image, sound and music, employed in the stage performance for creating meaning. In other words it proposes that surtitles not only serve as a medium for the verbal content of the stage performance, but also help to comprehend music and acting. However, when having such an art form as opera or musical where a wide range of aural and visual channels and modes of communication meet to become a fictional world rich in meaning possibilities, surtitles become a device for approaching other modes especially in case of contemporary opera where the performance is dynamic and the audience is unfamiliar with it as distinct from the classical one. Thus this research aims at recognition of the language- image-link, with a particular focus on surtitles which can be called as an unfinished product on the stage due to its “live” nature as a single performance put on the stage every night is never the same.