Jan Ivarsson

Jan Ivarsson (* 1931 ) is a Swedish translation scholar who specializes in the field of audiovisual translation.

Life

Ivarsson studied mathematics and physics, literature, Scandinavian languages ​​and English at Uppsala University . He headed the student theater there and later worked at the city theater. From 1960 to 1963 he worked at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel and from 1963 to 1970 at the Sorbonne in Paris as a lecturer for Swedish language and literature. He also taught at the École Supérieure d'Interprètes et de Traducteurs from 1965 to 1970. Ivarsson designed stage pieces and conceived the lighting technology for various Parisian theaters. From 1970 to 1978 he was Secretary General of the Swedish Cultural Center in Paris.

After returning to Sweden in 1978, he worked as a television and film subtitle in Stockholm, primarily for the Swedish television station Sveriges Television (SVT). There he later became program director, focusing on the drama genre. He worked together with ScanTitling / Cavena at SVT to a large extent on a new, computer-aided and timecode- coordinated subtitle system . In 1995 Ivarsson retired and moved to the coastal town of Simrishamn in southern Sweden, where he continues to work as a freelance translator and subtitler.

Act

Ivarsson's areas of expertise include translating poetry, plays and non-fiction from French, German and English into Swedish, as well as various television programs. In 1992 he published "Subtitling for the Media - A Handbook of an Art" and in 1998 with Mary Carroll Subtitling.

From 1992 to 1996 he was a member of the working group Language Transfer of the European Institute for the Media and in 1995 one of the founding members of the European Association for Studies in Screen Translation (ESIST), where he is now Vice President. Since 1996 he has been a member of the advisory board of Languages ​​& The Media, a conference on audiovisual translation.

As a conference participant, he taught various aspects of media translation , including television subtitling at the Nordic Translators' Conference in Copenhagen in 1988, digital subtitling in Istanbul (EIM) in 1993 and in Strasbourg (FIT) in 1995, technical equipment in subtitling lessons in Berlin (L&M) in 1996, tools and Subtitling resources in Berlin (L&M) 1998, Oslo and Stockholm 1999, Guildford (GB) 2002 and Xalapa (Mexico) 2002, and the history of subtitling in Europe in Hong Kong 2001.

Ivarsson trained subtitles in Stockholm (SVT and at Språkcentrum), Berlin (SFB), Riga (UNDP project) and in Xalapa.

Award

The Jan Ivarsson Award is presented by ESIST as an award for outstanding achievements in the field of audiovisual translation. The first dignitary was Jan Ivarsson himself and the award was presented to him at the Language and the Media 2010 conference in Berlin for his life's work in the field of subtitling. Above all, this honored the pioneering spirit, the promotion and dissemination of his knowledge on this topic of translation studies.

Publications (selection)

• Subtitling for the media. A Handbook of an Art. Stockholm, Transedit 1992
• Subtitling. Simrishamn, Transedit 1998

Web links

• private homepage (english)
• The Jan Ivarsson Award