The Translation Collective, asked me to take care of the Dutch surtitles of two art performances and the subtitles of a documentary that were shown during the 10th edition of the SPRING Performing Arts Festival in Utrecht. One of the challenges of translating subtitles is the limited number of characters available per title, which calls for creative solutions.
When a translation is part of an artwork, I always do some research on the artist and the socio-cultural context of the work first, which allows me to pick up on context-specific references. Whether the art work in question touches on the Lebanese civil war, 3D printing techniques or American rap lyrics from the 00s, a good preparation always pays off.
Image by Eveline Mineur