Reading of Humor-added Subtitles of Foreign Films in Persian: An Eye-tracking Study

It is becoming an established strategy to add humor in Persian subtitles even often when the original dialogue does not include the created or any other humor. This study measures the impact of this strategy on viewers’ attention allocation while reading subtitles. The eye movements of ۳۲ participants were recorded while watching a humorous and non-humorous version of the same scene extracted from Superchondriac (Boon, ۲۰۱۴), a French comedy. The results show that there is a significant difference between attention allocation in the two versions, and the viewers’ attention to the subtitles with added humor is significantly larger than non-humorous subtitles. The interviews showed that some viewers liked the added humor because they thought it is funny and close to their cultural and ideological views. On the other hand, some of the participants opted for the non-humorous subtitles because they thought the added humor was distracting, confusing, at times offensive, and detached from the original culture.

Reading of Humor-added Subtitles of Foreign Films in Persian: An Eye-tracking Study Keywords:

subtitling , humor , eye tracking , attention allocation , audiovisual translation , subtitling , humor , eye tracking , attention allocation , audiovisual translation