Challenges of code-switching and code-mixing in live subtitling at the Valencian TV station

Abstract

All over the world, we find bilingual communities where people share not only two common languages, but geographical, historical, political, sociological and linguistic variabilities that determine their way of speaking and expressing themselves. In fact, having two languages cohabitating in the same territory can result in a mixing of those languages, resulting in a new mixed language being created when people in that area communicate with each other. Professionals in the field therefore often speak about “code-switching”, when speakers use two different languages within a sentence or several sentences or utterances, and “code-mixing”, when speakers use individual words from another language. This creates this a mixed language when people are speaking in a spontaneous way.

Considering that no language is uniform, given its variabilities and communicational context, how should language professionals deal with code-switching? What determines how these forms should be reflected when translating the spoken language?