Subtitle analysis of instructional video materials [manuscript] / Marilou A. Bugtong.

Thesis (MAED - Language Education) - BPSU, 2020.

Because there is scarce analysis on the potential of subtitles as a strategic tool in second language acquisition, the present study attempted to give attention to this research gap. This descriptive study revealed its methodological potential by analyzing the syntax and the strategies used in translating the aural medium into a written form of select instructional videos. Three grade 8 and 7 grade 10 English teachers were interviewed about the subtitled videos they utilized in their classrooms as well as their view on the specific skills of the students which are evidently enhanced by subtitles. Lilsub web application functioned as a tool in extracting the subtitles from the 21 videos collected from the teachers. These subtitled videos were classified according to genre and their linguistic parameters. For the genre, the study used the classification of Stephenson, et. al. (2018). In terms of linguistic parameters, Gottlieb (1992) has two: interlingual subtitle and intralingual subtitle. From the set of videos, 17 have intralingual subtitles and 4 have interlingual subtitles. Through syntactic analysis, it was learned that out of the 260 utterances extracted from two selected videos, 231 were sentences, 15 were clauses and 14 were phrases. Their syntactic patterns were also enumerated and analyzed. Aside from this, the commonly omitted linguistic features in the subtitles, in contrast to the spoken dialogues, such as short answers, articles, and the like were observed. In addition, this study investigated the translation strategies used in a documentary entitled "I-Witness: Ang Huling Gubat." The data were categorized using Newmark's vii translation strategies (2009). Faithful, literal, word-for-word, and semantic translation were the identified translation strategies. The teachers shared that subtitled videos positively reinforce the speaking skills particularly the pronunciation, vocabulary learning, listening comprehension, cultural awareness and grammar of the students. In light of the findings, it is concluded that subtitles are a rich reservoir of linguistic content, which, if planned strategically, can be used as an instructional material in second language teaching.