This paper presents the results of an experimental study investigating reception capacity and audience response to subtitled movies. Twenty-seven viewers were shown four movie excerpts, with commercially available standard subtitling or with innovative subtitling. The latter comprised additional information regarding language and culture-specific elements in the original soundtrack. Data were collected simultaneously with eye-tracking and consecutively with questionnaires. Eye-tracking measured fixation duration and percentage of gaze time in the various areas of interest, whereas the questionnaire assessed accuracy on questions about movie content and audience perception and satisfaction. The results show no significant differences in accuracy between the two conditions, indicating that viewers of subtitled audiovisual productions are able to process more information than established subtitling norms suggest.
