Alan K. Murray

Whisper of Origins, a YouTube mini-series from GoTürkiye, offers subtitles in eleven languages. But some viewers still ask for translations that already exist. In this Hot Take, I use Laura Gonzales’s concept of multimodal translation (from Sites of Translation) to consider the difference between making translation available and making it accessible.

Transcript

This video has Spanish subtitles.

So why are Spanish-speaking viewers asking for a Spanish translation?

That question came up while I was looking at Whisper of Origins, a recent YouTube mini-series from GoTürkiye. The series follows two characters traveling through southeastern Türkiye, and it seems designed partly to introduce international audiences to the region through a fictional story.

The characters speak Turkish, but I’m able to follow the story through English subtitles. At the same time, though, I’m getting much more than a translation of their words.

I’m seeing landscapes and historical sites. I’m hearing the actors’ original Turkish voices and the music. I’m watching their expressions, gestures, and movements. All of those things contribute to what the scene means.

This connects with an idea from Laura Gonzales’s Sites of Translation. Gonzales describes translation as a multimodal practice. Translation isn’t simply replacing words in one language with words in another. We also communicate through things like images, sound, gestures, cultural knowledge, and the technologies we’re using.

And Whisper of Origins is a really good example of that.

As someone who doesn’t speak perfect Turkish, the subtitles tell me what the characters are saying. But they can’t translate the entire experience for me. The landscape gives me a sense of place. The music creates a mood. The actors’ voices and gestures communicate things that aren’t contained in the written subtitles.

And viewers seem to respond to that combination. In the comments, one person describes watching the series as a “virtual trip.” Another says the series made them want to visit the places being shown. So the video isn’t just translating dialogue. In a sense, it’s trying to translate an experience of Türkiye for an international audience.

But here’s where it gets interesting.

GoTürkiye pinned this comment telling viewers to turn on subtitles. They specifically say subtitles are available in eleven languages, including Spanish.

But farther down in the comments, Spanish-speaking viewers are asking for Spanish subtitles.

So the translation exists.

Some of the audience just can’t find it.

And I think that points to an important problem in digital communication:

Making something available isn’t necessarily the same thing as making it accessible.

For the Spanish translation to actually work, viewers first have to know that it exists. Then they have to know that YouTube allows them to change subtitle languages, find the settings, and turn the Spanish subtitles on.

That means YouTube itself has become part of the translation process.

This is what I find useful about Gonzales’s idea of multimodal translation. It shifts the question away from simply asking, “Did we translate the words correctly?”

Instead, we have to ask whether all of the pieces—language, images, sound, design, technology, and audience knowledge—are actually working together to help people understand.

Because online, a translation that your audience can’t find isn’t completely accessible translation.

Sources and Attribution

• Whisper of Origins — GoTürkiye
• Laura Gonzales, Sites of Translation
• Screenshots from the GoTürkiye YouTube video and its comment section