‘That’s not what they said!’ The impact of incongruities between the dialogue and intralingual subtitles on viewer experience

Subtitling is often viewed as a vulnerable form of translation, subject to close scrutiny and criticism, especially by viewers who can readily assess its accuracy against the original dialogues. Today, an increasing number of viewers choose to watch audiovisual content with intralingual English-to-English subtitles although they can understand English and have no hearing impairment. In this study, we explore how such viewers, proficient in the language of the soundtrack, react towards slight incongruities between the original dialogues and the accompanying subtitles. Our participants comprised 160 individuals: 43 L1-English speakers from the UK and 52 from Australia, and 65 L1-Polish L2-English speakers. They viewed English-language videos with intralingual English subtitles, with and without incongruities, while we gauged their cognitive load, enjoyment, and comprehension. We found that incongruities led to a slightly higher cognitive load and reduced enjoyment, yet did not impact comprehension. Polish viewers did not report the highest cognitive load, nor did they exhibit the lowest levels of enjoyment or comprehension. These results and their implications are discussed within the landscape of current audiovisual translation practices.