The ethical demands of translating Gender-Based Violence
The Ethical Demands of Translating Gender-Based Violence:
a Practice-Based Research Project
Professor Charlotte Bosseaux was the primary investigator for this research project. She was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to consider the ways in which the voices of GBV and trauma survivors are translated. Her practice-based research created a multilingual documentary Surviving Translation (© University of Edinburgh, 2023) underpinned by new research into the ethics of translation and an Open Access monograph A Voice of Their Own. Encouraging Caring and Ethical Practices in Screen Translation (Palgrave Pivot, 2025). Charlotte co-created and co-produced Surviving Translation. She also oversaw the subtitling and voice-over process, subtitled the documentary into French and wrote the good practice guidelines.
Her research interests span different fields. She has worked on literary translation and point of view, and is the author of How does it Feel: Point of View in Translation (Rodopi, 2007). Current research interests include voice, performance and characterisation in audiovisual material. She has authored a monograph on this topic; Dubbing, Film and Performance: Uncanny Encounters (Peter Lang 2015). Other publications include work on Marilyn Monroe (2012 and 2012a), Julianne Moore (2019), and on Buffy the Vampire Slayer (2008 and 2014). She currently writes on documentaries dealing with Gender-Based Violence investigating how the voices of women are translated in this context (2019). Other publications include work on multilingualism in TV series (2023), music in translation (2011, forthcoming 2024) and crime fiction in translation (2018).
Charlotte’s first article on GBV in documentaries is available here:
Translating Gender-Based Violence Documentaries: Listening Ethically to the Voices of Survivors
You can also hear Charlotte talk about her research in the Beyond the Book podcast, when she was interviewed by Emma Aviet on her work on voice and GBV and trauma:
Saheliya
Saheliya, a leading charity providing support for Black and Minority Ethnic women in Scotland, has helped us select the women who took part in the documentary. Saheliya believes that Charlotte Bosseaux’s research is vital as it enabled her to provide guidelines needed for service providers, in particular language professionals, filmmakers and charities supporting BME women, like Saheliya. With Saheliya onboard, our focus on the ethical demands of GBV and trauma translation was met from the outset, i.e. from the careful selection and treatment of participants.
Saheliya is a specialist mental health and well-being support organisation for black, minority ethnic, asylum seeker, refugee and migrant women and girls (12+) in the Edinburgh and Glasgow area. Their mission is to promote mental well-being by combating the effects of discrimination and abuse, reducing the stigma of mental health and improving access to mainstream services. They aim to reduce barriers such as isolation and depression by using a holistic range of services including counselling, practical support, befriending, complementary therapies, outreach, group work and Young Saheliya.
Their vision is a fully inclusive Scotland where women are active citizens, socially engaged and economically integrated.
Screen Language
The specialist film subtitling, translation and audio description company Screen Language offered consultancy services throughout the project. They supported us in recruiting language professionals (including subtitlers and voice-over artists). Elena Zini has extensive experience in the translation of multilingual documentary and believe that it is important to provide guidelines for ethical translation. With her onboard, as well as MArk Bradshaw, the voices of the survivors and of the language professionals taking part in the documentary were translated ethically.
Screen Language is currently recognised as one of the leading experts in disability access materials creations and audiovisual translation in Scotland and specialises in the production of high standard and purpose-made subtitles and audio description.
They work alongside filmmakers and distributors, universities and professional organisations, and love to take on work that aims to support minorities and their rights, through film accessibility for people with disabilities and translation of endangered, indigenous and rare languages.
Screen Language Founder Elena Zini has a background in audiovisual translation and has been promoting film accessibility since 2009. She loves to overcome linguistic and accessibility challenges alongside film producers and directors, and crafting spotless public-ready subtitles and beautiful sounding audio descriptions. She has been training the next generation of audiovisual translators and exploring the possibilities of using technical advances to improve access to subtitles and audio description in cinemas and online.
Ling Lee: Film Director
Ling Lee is the film Director who directed, shot, edited and co-produced the documentary. In previous projects, Ling often found it difficult to find trustworthy interpreters. She thinks that current film productions frequently fail to allow enough time to look for suitable interpreters and that translation is usually a marginal part of a budget. Consequently, she feels that the resulting translations are often sound stilted, clumsy, or unrepresentative. Ling is committed to understanding further how to overcome these challenges.
Ling Lee is an award-winning Director and Editor whose work focuses on human stories, crossover cultures, and experimental film techniques. She is curious about people and is interested in finding sensitive ways to convey their intimate stories. She brings out the emotional journey of each story by getting to the heart of each individual subject she works with.
Ling has lived and worked in various countries including Germany, UK, Italy, China and Argentina. After gaining an MA in Documentary Directing at the National Film & TV School she made films in the UK and abroad. As Editor, she is best known for ‘DAU. Degeneration’ (Dir. Ilya Permyakov and Ilya Krzhanovskiy) and most recently ‘The Hermit of Treig’ (Dir. Lizzie MacKenzie). As Director, she made films in the UK and abroad including ‘Miles Apart’ and ‘Balancing A Dream’, both of which are stories about individuals struggling with the effects of change in modern China. Her latest film ‘The Black Veil’ explores the challenges being non-binary person and is currently screening on BBC iPlayer.
Ling’s work has been broadcast on Al Jazeera, BBC Scotland, Channel 4, ARTE/ZDF, VPRO, and screened at international film festivals. She has won a number of awards as Director as well as Editor – including the Edinburgh Film Festival Trailblazer Award (Edge of Dreaming, Dir. Amy Hardie), and also a One World Media Award (Miles Apart, Dir. Ling Lee).
SUBTITLERS
Denice Zura
Denice Zura was born and lives in El Salvador. She studied her degree in translation at the Universidad Evangelica de El Salvador and have experience translating legal, literary, and various other documents. She has a specialization in video games, but has also been involved in the translation of virtual university courses and the subtitling for series and movies with some streaming subtitling companies.
Denice was contacted by Charlotte via Screen Language to collaborate on her project as we had a testimonial from a fellow countrywoman. This experience was very different for her as it was out of any subtitling guide she knew.
“Most of the agencies make you respect a series of rules that limit the translator quite a lot. Sometimes you must reduce the dialogues too much so that the subtitles can be adjusted to the reading times, and so many other aspects that you must follow and where pauses and repetitions are left out.
With Charlotte, I experienced more fully what it was to captivate both the emotions and the meaning of the words by having an openness to deal with certain dialogues based on what the victim had to say; and not only in terms of the meaning of words, but also in terms of what she felt. The pauses, the incoherencies, the changes in meaning that a victim of abuse experiences when recalling a traumatic experience. Knowing how to understand the victim and putting yourself in her place, for me, it was a very interesting and rewarding experience as a professional.”
Alexia Delesalle
Alexia is a bilingual Franco-South African audiovisual translator. She completed her MSc at University College London in 2017, specialising in complex subtitling and audio description. She has since been working as a freelance translator on projects varying from interlingual and intralingual subtitling to subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing, documentary voiceovers, and audio description. She translates from French to English, English to French and Spanish to both languages. She created innovative guidelines for the audio description of the horror and thriller film genres as part of her MSc.
She has a special interest in accessibility and humanitarian matters. This has led her to work on projects on climate change, healthcare, mental health, road safety, social issues, domestic violence, among others. Her experiences living and volunteering in France, Spain, the UK and South Africa prompted her interest in helping vulnerable and disadvantaged people’s voices be heard and accurately told. The lack of intention in the current reporting and audiovisual translation often leads to their misrepresentation. This is what she strives to improve through her work.
“Working alongside Dr Bosseaux and her team’s Ethical Translation project has allowed me to play a part in the future of audiovisual translation. I hope to see the project’s guidelines and the collaboration of the whole team act as a blueprint for filmmakers and audiovisual translation companies alike. I believe in the importance of intention in subtitling to show respect to the people who are sharing their difficult stories. Being trusted as a professional subtitler, being offered training and support, and being able to truly collaborate on relevant aspects of a project should be non-negotiables in the industry. This is what this project did right.“
Rejeen Musa
“My name is Rejeen. I am originally from Kurdistan (North of Iraq). I am a qualified doctor with experience in both Iraq and the UK. Going through the feeling of not belonging, loneliness and confusion when I first moved out of my hometown , made me feel quite compassionate with immigrants and foreign patients. I knew what it was like to feel irrelevant and unheard because you can’t understand neither the language nor the culture. This prompted my passion towards giving my patients more than just medical care. I became a linguist. Now I work as an interpreter, translator and subtitler. I also work with the International School of Linguists to train medical interpreters.
I had an exceptional experience working as a subtitler on this documentary. The team demonstrated outstanding work ethics and a strong commitment to quality at every stage. They were immensely supportive, collaborative, and always willing to help, which made the process smooth and extremely rewarding. I also appreciated how they created a safe space for honest expressions allowing vulnerability and real emotion to be part of the process. Seeing the impact and success of this project now, I feel truly proud and honored to have contributed to it.”
Tatiana Ngah Ebode
Talking about her experience in this project, it was an amazing one. Tatiana was very delighted and excited as it was her first time to work on a research project of this nature. It was both interesting and challenging to render emotions and trauma in subtitling.
During the whole process, she kept asking herself questions like: how to render hesitations, mistakes and pauses which may reveal some deep and painful emotions? How to be sure that viewers will understand the use of a specific punctuation mark as a sign of a particular emotional sign like anger or frustration?
Apart from this, she was confined to the instructions to follow regarding the subtitling of the interview she worked on and subtitling guidelines in general. They were really confusing and contradictory. At the end it was a nice and rich experience.
She is grateful to Screen Language and Dr Charlotte Bosseaux who have given her the opportunity to participate in this project as a subtitler.