Multilingualism in Audiovisual Texts for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Audience

A great variety of original audiovisual (AV) texts such as films, television series, teletext, videogames, live performances may include more than one language as an outcome of the director’s initial intension. The producers of the AV texts tend to portray specific cultural aspects with different linguistic variations, which are also related to particular stylistic, pragmatic or discursive functions. In certain cases, translators of such AV texts face serious challenges. One of the thorny problems arises with the adaptation of the multilingual AV texts to the deaf and hard of hearing audience. Different strategies and methods of employing the multilingual AV texts for the needs of the deaf and hard of hearing audience have been adopted in various countries; however, nowadays Lithuania has only taken its first steps in developing a unified system of working out translating and subtitling strategies of the AV texts in general. This article aims at discovering professional translation and subtitling practices along with the norms, criteria and strategies of this specific translation activity in Lithuania and abroad. Firstly, the existing overseas reality of the translation and subtitling of multilingual AV texts is described and afterwards the tendencies within the Lithuanian adaptations of AV texts are discussed.