Beyond the Screen: A Systematic Review of Perception/Reception Studies in Interlingual Dubbing and Subtitling

This paper aims to provide a systematic review of English-language journal articles and book chapters that consider the audience perception/reception perspective in interlingual dubbing and subtitling, with the goal of describing the evolution of this type of empirical research over the last two decades. After establishing exclusion and inclusion criteria, the authors used four databases – Scopus, BITRA, TSB, and Web of Science – to retrieve 93 relevant publications in the time frame 1990–2024. The results showed that the number of publications on reception/perception in interlingual dubbing and subtitling has increased – especially since 2017–18 – but that it remains a fraction of the overall research published in AVT. Moreover, relatively small case studies and non-randomized sampling remain the prevalent methodologies implemented by scholars. The final section of the paper explores potential reasons for and consequences of these methodological choices.