Aims & Scope
Over 90% of foreign films and TV shows are subtitled in English for sale, distribution, and broadcast in the Anglophone world, but this is not the case in other countries. In France, Italy, Germany, and Spain, for example (known as the FIGS group), foreign movies and television programs are dubbed before being screened or broadcast. This is standard for their respective industries. These practices create the need for trained professionals capable of translating the multi-faceted subtleties of one national culture to make it accessible to/in another, and also make it necessary for actors and film industry professionals to be linguistic filters and cultural ambassadors in the dubbing/subtitling processes.
Occasionally the result is brilliant and permanently solidifies a film in the imaginary of a foreign culture (e.g.: the Italian-dubbed version of Brooks’ comedic masterpiece Young Frankenstein); yet examples of egregiously flawed translations (or instances in which no ideal solution exists) abound to say the least. Despite its limitations, screen translation has given birth to an immense body of work that engages audiences at a transnational crossroads, a symbolic border that’s been crisscrossed more times than any plurilingual, multicultural film studies expert could quantify. Scholars of Film Studies who are multilingual, and especially those with experience in the field of Translation Studies, share a common responsibility to analyze and interpret the cultural work done by audiovisual translators. The breadth and urgency of this line of inquiry also creates the need for new academic journals that aim to be a locus for scholarly engagement across disciplines.
Housed at the University of Connecticut in the Department of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, the Journal of Screen Translation Studies (a peer-reviewed, web-based, open-access publication) is one of a very small number of academic journals of its kind, and the first in the Americas. Its mission is to foster a new and freely-accessible forum for the interdisciplinary study of the seventh art, in a multilingual context that operates at the intersection between Translation Studies and Film & Television Studies.
In an effort to engage the field of Screen Translation Studies from a global, transnational perspective, JSTS benefits from the collaboration of a diverse and highly accomplished Advisory Board. Our combined team of editors and Advisory board members allow us to consider submissions focusing on a significant array of national cinemas, including (but not limited to) works shot in the following languages: Arabic, Bengali, Catalan, English, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Mandarin, Polish, Russian, Slovenian, and Spanish.