Can subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing convey the emotions of film music? A reception study

The present paper describes a reception study into subtitling music in subtitles for the d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing. The study makes use of a database of film fragments that were selected and tested for eliciting a specific emotion. The research involves two highly emotional clips from the database as well as one control clip. The three excerpts were shown to a control group of 26 hearing people. Then, three versions of subtitles were added to each clip – one with music description, another with the composition title and the name of the performer, and another one with no information on the music. Subsequently, the fragments were shown to a test group of 60 d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers divided into three groups. The participants reported on the emotions they felt by filling a Differential Emotions Scale questionnaire. For every emotion the clips were supposed to elicit, the results for each subtitling method are very similar to each other, suggesting that either method of subtitling music is equally effective in an emotional scene. Moreover, the emotion intensity the d/Deaf felt is also very close to the intensity experienced by the hard-of-hearing and the hearing control group.