The word Titling, in the performing arts (opera, drama, audiovisual productions), defines the work of linguistic mediation encompassing subtitling and surtitling.
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The simultaneous presentation of two languages is quite unusual within the more traditional surtitling system, which is used in most cases with monolingual function.
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Vervecken, Anika. 2012. "Surtitling for the Stage and Directors’ Attitude: Room for Change". Media accessibility studies is often considered a part of this field as well,Remael, Aline, Pilar Orero & Mary Carroll. 2012. Audiovisual Translation and Media Accessibility at the Crossroads: Media for All 3.
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Surtitling is similar to subtitling, however it consists of one continuous line displayed with no interruption. Becoming more frequent in theatres and operahouses, the translation is displayed either above the stage or on the backs of seats. Despite being shown in real time, the translations are prepared in advance.
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In October 2019, the Théâtre Édouard VII, in partnership with Panthea and La Fondation pour l'Audition (a non-profit foundation for the hearing-impaired), became the first Parisian theatre to offer surtitling smartglasses for a full season, providing the service at no extra cost for audience members with hearing impairments.
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Each season around half a dozen operas are staged. Most of them are well known classics but the company has developed a reputation for producing works from the verismo repertoire and an adventurous production policy. They are sung in the original language and surtitling is used. Opera Holland Park was named Best Opera Company 2010 by The Sunday Times (London).
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The European Association for Studies in Screen Translation (ESIST) is an international association in the field of audiovisual translation.Díaz Cintas, J. Subtitling: the long journey to academic acknowledgement. The Journal of Specialised Translation, 1, pp.50-70. According to ESIST, screen translation includes all forms of language transfer in the media, including subtitling, dubbing, voice-over, interpreting for the media, surtitling, subtitling for viewers who are deaf or hard of hearing, and audio description for blind and partially sighted audiences.
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After a successful test run in 2015, the French-German surtitling company Panthea launched a pilot project on a larger scale introducing multilingual surtitles on smartglasses to the Festival d’Avignon 2017. The system was the subject of a study which was later published by the French Ministry of Culture. The device became commercially-available the following year and was tested by several houses, such as the Opéra de Paris. The Theatre Times' test user report that: “Supertitles are displayed on the lenses during the performance so that you can concentrate more on what is happening on the stage rather than reading supertitles.”.
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Subtitling developed starting from 1917, during the silent film era, whereas surtitling has been used in the live performing arts since 1983 (at the dawning of digital systems). With the appearance of new information systems, which opened the door to multilingual titling terminological debate started, too. In the audiovisual system, even when more than one language was used, subtitles maintained their position unchanged for many years. The newest software technologies for mobile devices, which came out as an alternative to subtitling in cinemas, or the possibilities opened up by head-mounted displays, such as subtitle glasses, have made a revision of the technical terminology necessary also in the field of those performing arts that are reproducible on electronic devices.
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The > brief, repetitious texts and credulity-straining plots of the bel canto > repertory, with their attenuated melodic lines and spectacular runs, can > pose more challenges to a titleist than do the complex texts of an opera by > Strauss or Wagner. Titling, like any aspect of performance, is a dynamic > technical skill, and a titleist may return to an opera in subsequent > seasons, adjusting and refining both word choice and the technical aspects > of delivery. However the titleist resolves these questions, the resulting > version becomes the audience's live-time reading matter. Operas for which Haddad did the translation and surtitling in the course of her career include: Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades in 1995; Prokofiev's War and Peace; Verdi's Falstaff and I vespri siciliani; Richard Strauss's Capriccio; Rossini's La donna del lago; Mozart's Così fan tutte and Don Giovanni; Pergolesi's Lo frate 'nnamorato and Conrad Susa's The Dangerous Liaisons.
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