Dr. Jan-Louis Kruger began his research career in English literature, focusing on how Modernist poets and novelists manipulate language and construct narrative point of view. His interest later expanded to film, exploring how audiovisual translation—specifically subtitling and audio description—enhances audience immersion in fictional worlds.
In the past decade, his research has evolved to examine the multimodal integration of language in video, particularly how auditory and visual elements complement or compete with subtitles.
Dr. Kruger uses eye-tracking experiments, psychometric tools, and performance measures to study cognitive processing of language in multimodal environments. His current work investigates how redundant and conflicting information affects subtitle reading at varying presentation rates and in different languages. He also conducts research in accessible communication.
Pre-Conference Workshop: Media for most: The impact of changing speed guidelines on diverse audiences
Date: May 28, 2025 AM-
Venue: TBC
Abstract:
Subtitle presentation speed has long been a contentious and hotly debated topic. Also sometimes called subtitle speed or (perhaps less accurately) reading speed, it has an impact on the way diverse audiences access audiovisual content. Most providers have traditionally used speed guidelines as a single maximum speed ranging from 12 characters per second (CPS) to 20 cps, although there are indications that such speed limits might soon be abolished in favour of fully verbatim subtitles, which will also have an impact on interlingual subtitles.
There are a couple of problems with such a single subtitle speed limit. The first is that a single speed limit assumes that viewers need the same proportional time to read any subtitle. However, because it takes viewers some time (around half a second) to move their eyes down to subtitles to start reading once they have appeared – called latency – short subtitles actually have to be presented at a much slower speed.
The second problem with a singular limit is that different audiences have different needs and abilities. Proficient, hearing readers may well be able to keep up with (relatively) fast subtitles as stated by Szarkowska and Gerber-Morón (2018), although even then, there is evidence that subtitle speed does matter as fast subtitles (over 20 cps) result in significantly more superficial and incomplete reading (cf. Kruger, Wisniewska & Liao, 2022). But what about all the users who are not fast readers? How does the one-speed-fits-all approach impact on their ability to understand and enjoy subtitled film?
In this paper I will present some findings on the difference in processing of a group of proficient, hearing viewers and a group of signing deaf viewers of fast (verbatim) vs. slow (edited) subtitles. This is part of a bigger project looking at the impact of high subtitle speed on groups such as elderly viewers, second language viewers, and deaf viewers.
-
Kruger, J. L., Wisniewska, N., & Liao, S. (2022). Why subtitle speed matters: Evidence from word skipping and rereading. Applied psycholinguistics, 43(1), 211-236.
-
Szarkowska, A., & Gerber-Morón, O. (2018). Viewers can keep up with fast subtitles: Evidence from eye movements. PloS one, 13(6).