Over the last thirty years audiovisual translation (AVT) has experienced an impressive growth in terms of research interests, developments and applications. It is common knowledge now that AVT is not simply a question of linguistic and technical constraints bur rather that it also affects the social, political and educational spheres. Therefore, diverse approaches have been developed in order to face the new technological challenges and meet the needs of increasingly heterogeneous audiences. One of the recent lines of research which has highlighted the interdisciplinary nature of AVT, is the one which explores gender within and through screen translation (De Marco, 2006). It has been observed that the ways in which films are dubbed and/or subtitled may contribute to encouraging or preventing the reinforcement of gender stereotypes and prejudices found in people’s ways of thinking and behaving. At the same time, the training of the newer generations of subtitlers and dubbers and the didactics of AVT have become an issue (Díaz Cintas, 2008).
This paper will try to combine these two areas by exploring how gender and identity-related issues may be integrated into the curriculum design of a subtitling module. In line with the didactic objectives of most translation courses, the primary goal of this module remains that of enhancing the students’ capacities to deal with linguistic and non-linguistic difficulties inherent in the (audiovisual) text, and of enabling them to acquire the transferable skills necessary to gain further experience in the professional environment. However, the author believes that the classroom represents the best arena for awareness-raising related to problems of social discrimination and marginalisation. For this reason, the development of the aforementioned skills is seen along with that of sensitivity to social issues, which are intrinsic to any professional environment. The subtitling module offered for the Master in Applied Translation Studies at London Metropolitan University serves as a point of reference. The methods used by the lecturer to test this new teaching approach, as well as the students’ reactions to the introduction of this unusual topic, will be investigated and discussed.

References
De Marco, M. (2006). Audiovisual translation from a gender perspective. The Journal of Specialised Translation, 6, 167-184.
Díaz Cintas, J. (Ed.) (2008). The didactics of audiovisual translation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Marcella DE MARCO has a degree in Foreign Languages and Literatures from the University of Bari (Italy) and a PhD in Translation and Interpreting from the University of Vic (Spain). Currently, she is a senior lecturer in Applied Translation at London Metropolitan University, where she teaches BA and MA courses. She has published various articles on translation and Hispanic philology. Her main academic interests are related to audiovisual translation and gender studies, which constitute the subjects of her current research, its focus being on the contribution that dubbing and subtitling can make in strengthening or weakening the perpetuation of gender stereotypes.