Subtitling into ELF. When accessibility becomes a counter information tool

Abstract

This study investigates the modalities by means of which the visual arts have recently been transformed by migration, and how aesthetic transformations within the context of (sub)titling have contributed to re-shaping identities and minority groups in filmic genres. The growing interest in migratory aesthetics has brought into representation marginalised subjectivities (i.e. the lives of Italians forced to emigrate from Libya after the Gadhafi coup d’état as the case in point in this work) in ways that depart from migrant depictions in the conventional media (e.g. the news bulletins). Against the backdrop of translation as a form of re-narration and an instrument of accessibility, and drawing on Systemic Functional Linguistics as a method of survey, this study examines the (sub)titling activity in English lingua franca in what may be referred to as “accented cinema”, namely the documentary film My Home, in Libya (2018) directed by Italian filmmaker Martina Melilli. Creativity and experimentation are central to this work of art, also thanks to the use of (sub)titling procedures employed as aesthetic and linguistic devices that go beyond translation proper while covering the filmic narrative areas in terms of authorial titling and diegetic interventions. Against the normative background of subtitles in English lingua franca, (sub)titling is perceived as a practice that encourages the mediation of migrant and marginalised stories, and as a space of re-narration where screen textualities like pieces of (sub)titles give voice to characters’ inaudible thoughts.