ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines a number of methodological challenges that complicate the study of activist audiovisual translation and called for a rethinking of research priorities and theoretical assumptions in this area of scholarship. It focuses on political rather than aesthetic activism, and on subtitling as the most common mode of circulating activist audiovisual products on a global level. The chapter discusses the visibility and agency of subtitlers in political movements, activist textual strategies, abusive subtitling, prefiguration, the impact of technology, and the tension between politics and logistics. Activism can assume different forms and involve divergent and opposing choices. Subtitlers working with activist collectives in the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, the context of Mona Baker's study, seemed to lack visibility, and indeed not to be keen on even reflecting on the issue when it was raised in interviews. Most discussions of activist textual strategies in the literature focus on subtitling, rather than other modes of audiovisual translation.
