The perception of subtitled humor in Italy

Despite the central place occupied by language transfer of audiovisual products, particularly in the European cinema and television sector, audience perception of both dubbing and subtitling is a largely neglected field of study and research. When, however, we start looking into the available research on the perception of translated humor and, more specifically, of the perception of humor as rendered into another language by subtitles, we realize that this is an even more neglected and unexplored field of study. This paper will attempt to address the effectiveness of subtitles in the appreciation and perception of humor, and, more specifically, will present an overview of the scant literature and research published on this subject.