Resumo

Subtitling is one of the modalities or modes of language transfer like dubbing, voice-over and audio-description which are used in the area of screen translation or audiovisual translation (AVT). It has a fairly long history and is an ever-growing specialisation across the globe. It is firmly established in such European countries as Belgium, Denmark, Portugal, the Netherlands, Finland, Norway and Sweden, in Israel, in Australia, and in a few countries of Asia such as Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan and of South America such as Argentina, Bolivia and Peru. In Africa, subtitling is an emerging university discipline in the field of Translation Studies (TS). It is gaining ground in such countries as Cameroun, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Egypt, Zambia, and South Africa.
While research in subtitling is far advanced in Europe and other parts of the world, Africa is lagging so far behind that it is always under-represented at international AVT conferences. It is against this background that the present paper deals with the status of subtitling as a new research genre in Africa. The purpose of this paper is thus to sensitise the students and other researchers in translation to the potentialities that subtitling offers in the African context. The hypothesis underlying the paper is that subtitling is both a burgeoning and captivating area of study and that it opens new avenues in AVT research.