Multidimensional Assessment of Subtitling Quality (MASQ)

The digitalisation of our world is making subtitles more and more a strategic tool for equity, equality, autonomy and human rights. Research and policies on subtitling have been steadily shifting their focus from promoting the widespread provision of subtitles to their quality. However, quality is a rather vague concept. The project “Multidimensional Assessment of Subtitling Quality” (MASQ) addressed the problem by adopting an innovative and interdisciplinary perspective, through the integration of translation studies with insights from other fields. The core theoretical contribution of MASQ is the solution of the vagueness problem by interpreting subtitling quality as a multidimensional construct. As such, subtitling quality can be broken down into various elements (dimensions) which jointly concur to define it. This new perspective has then been put into practice with the draft of the first multidimensional matrix of subtitling quality.