AVT researchers very often take film semiotics as a starting point for analysing film and film translation. However, a semiotic approach disregards the technical character of the medium, its impact as a means of mass communication, and it deals with the question of audience reception only theoretically, whereas certain aspects of Cultural Studies, such as audience research, can be adapted and turned into suitable tools for analysing AVT products (e.g. subtitles in narrative films). In this paper I will attempt to show what such tools might look like and how they can be used to analyse the quality of subtitles, audience expectations and reception.

Mandana TABAN holds a degree in translation studies from the University of Vienna (Austria), Center for Translation Studies. She works as a freelance translator and subtitler and teaches interlingual
subtitling at the Center for Translation Studies (University of Vienna). Her research interests are audiovisual translation in general and interlingual subtitling in particular, in addition to the field of cultural studies.