Paquet began his subtitle translation career by proofreading English translations and also sometimes co-translating with a Korean friend. “It was about ten years ago that I felt my Korean was at a level where I could do first drafts,” he said. “And even today I have a lot of people review my work.”

Translating subtitles is unlike any other kind of translation, says Pacquet. “The audience can hear the actors speaking, they can get a lot of emotion from the screen. The translation has to compliment that. I watch the performances really closely as I’m translating. It often feels like I’m translating a performance rather than text. You also have to be aware of issues like timing.”

Paquet is the author of New Korean cinema : breaking the waves, which covers the industry from the 1980s to 2000s. He wrote the book in 2009 and notes that one of the obvious ways the industry has changed since then is the increasing level of international interest.

But the biggest change might be the growing number of independent films now being produced in Korea. To celebrate those indie films Paquet founded the Wildflower Film Awards, an independent film festival.

“The independent sector is very dynamic,” he said. “Producing at least 100 features a year with some incredible acting performances. Exciting new talent comes out every year, but inevitably they get somewhat overlooked. This is a time each year when we can celebrate the achievements of these filmmakers.”

“Living in Korea I got to know a lot of directors,” he said. “Both through subtitle work but also as a journalist and at film festivals. Eventually, I came across a director who needed a foreign actor quite urgently, so I stepped into the part. So, when other directors saw that, they said, oh, Darcy. Whenever anyone needs an undemanding not-too-expensive foreign actor, they give me a call.”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/joanmacdonald/2022/11/05/from-subtitles-to-indies-darcy-paquet-captures-the-best-of-korean-cinema/?sh=43970dd94c72

SubComm is launching a series of informal chats on questions related to subtitling. The topic of the first Subtitle Chat is ‘Phone a Subtitler Friend’.

https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/subtitle-chats-phone-a-subtitler-friend-tickets-405090204707

“Respeaking” is a lesser known way to produce on-screen text within a short turnaround. In this practice, a person repeats live audio content into ASR software, including punctuation and other conventions.

A number of variables lend additional complexity to subtitling via respeaking. Some of these are the technology employed, the types of content presented, the purpose of the subtitles, the expected level of quality, and even environmental factors like background noise.

https://slator.com/what-is-respeaking-how-does-it-improve-multilingual-subtitles/

“Stranger Things evoked a lot of emotions this season — especially if you flipped on your subtitles setting. Those subtitles became a sensation among fans: [Tentacles undulating moistly], [wet footsteps squelch], [tense music intensifies] are as memorable as Vecna himself.

While Netflix’s recent efforts have enabled its creative writers to let as loose as they can on a 42-word-count line, all credit of the phonetic mastery of Stranger Things 4 goes to the show’s subtitle author Jeff T. (he preferred we not share his full last name) and his subtitle QA editor Karli Witkowska.”

https://www.vulture.com/2022/07/stranger-things-subtitles-captions-team-interview.html

The wildly popular series Squid Game drew criticism for its English subtitles. Just how did those happen? (…) The practice of outsourcing sees TV stations, movie studios and streaming giants hire external subtitling vendors instead of using in-house subtitlers. The result is that funds trickle down from managers until employees at the bottom — the subtitlers — are left with the dregs.

https://www.cnet.com/news/features/inside-the-dying-art-of-subtitling/

A picture is worth a thousand words, but a video is worth a million. With online video consumption climbing—45% of users watch over an hour of video content per week on Facebook and YouTube, with over 500 million hours of video watched per day on YouTube alone—it is crucial to ensure your videos are accessible to all target markets, language barriers notwithstanding.

Continue reading.

Two researchers from Amazon Prime Video, International Expansion, Prabhakar Gupta and Anil Nelakanti, observed in a recent paper that “providers increase their viewership by enabling content in local languages.” At the same time, they said, “low translation quality can cause increased usage drop-off and hurt content viewership for audience of target language.” So getting the quality right is crucial.

Darcy Paquet (L), a U.S. film critic who translated dialogue of Oscar-winning film “Parasite” for the English subtitles, poses for a photo with Busan Vice Mayor Byun Seong-wan after receiving a certificate of honorary citizenship at Busan City Hall on April 20, 2020, in this photo provided by the city government.

Source

What Audiovisual Translation is

Audiovisual Translation (AVT) is the translation of any audio, visual or audiovisual material to facilitate its distribution in a different market. When we talk about AVT we usually refer to dubbing, subtitling, localisation, and media accessibility (audio description, subtitling for the hearing-impaired).

Most of my workload deals with subtitling and dubbing, so I will focus more on these two subjects and my experience with them.

Subtitling

Subtitles help the audience understand the ‘spoken part’ of a movie while listening to the original dialogues. The widespread practice of fan-subbing made people think that subtitling is an easy job. Sorry to disappoint you, but it is not! As any other translation specialisation, the translator needs proper training, and the existence of degree courses on this subject should be a clear hint! More.

See: Carol’s adventures in translation

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A website that allowed users to share subtitles has been taken offline after the Swedish police raided two properties used by the service.

Undertexter had provided fan-made translations of film and TV show dialogue, which could be merged with video files to provide on-screen text.

A spokesman for the police told the BBC they had acted after investigating a complaint by copyright holders.

Undertexter’s managers insisted they had not broken the law.

Critics have suggested the raid marked an escalation in Hollywood’s efforts to protect its intellectual property.

However, the Rights Alliance – the organisation that prompted the police to act – said it was not the first case of its kind in Europe. More

See: BBC

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The Audiovisual Law of 2010 requires that 90% of public TV programming and 75% of the private should be subtitled. Read the source in Spanish.

See: El Pais

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BOSSES at internet giant YouTube last night admitted its video subtitles are translating Scots into GIBBERISH.

The file-sharing site’s automatic caption service has been bamboozled as it tries to interpret the twang of stars like footie’s Sir Alex Ferguson and funnyman Kevin Bridges.

In one clip, the machine-generated text shows First Minister Alex Salmond calling his deputy Nicola Sturgeon “Necklace Thompson”.

And a routine by comedy legend Billy Connolly, changes Pollokshaws, in Glasgow, to “pork choice”.

Last night, a YouTube spokesman admitted: “Auto-captions work best for clearly spoken American English. Different dialects present interesting challenges that we’re working to address.”

But Paul Redfern, of the British Deaf Association, said: “It’s symptomatic of a larger problem. Lots of internet services are not accessible to deaf people.” Read more.

See: The Scottish Sun

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The Research Centre for Ambient Intelligence and Accessibility CAIAC at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona is pleased to announce the 4th International Symposium on Live Subtitling: Live subtitling with respeaking and other respeaking applications, to be held on March 12th 2013. This symposium will be the fourth in a series of symposiums on live subtitling and respeaking technology. Its predecessors were held at Forli, Barcelona and Antwerp respectively (see: www.respeaking.net). The symposium will bring together specialists from academia, software development, broadcasting and the service industry as well as consumers and others interested in cutting-edge developments in media accessibility.More.

See: UAB

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Friends will sometimes ask if you’ve seen a movie. You will say no. They will tell you what the plot is, and you will immediately realize that you have in fact seen the movie, just with a different title.

In France, where something like half of the movies released are American, movie titles in English are often translated (for example, “The Iron Lady” was “La Dame de Fer” in French, “The Ides of March” was released as “Les Marches du Pouvoir”), but recently, a number of films have been released with an English title—but a different one from the original. “Date Night” became “Crazy Night” “The Hangover” became “Very Bad Trip,” and “Get him to the Greek” was released as “American Trip.”

The most recent film confusing Anglophone Frenchies is “Silver Linings Playbook,” which in France is called “Happiness Therapy.” Cécile Dehesdin, a writer for Slate.fr, called English title translations into simpler English her pet peeve. “Happiness Therapy” is her latest heartache.

The curious trend leads a person to believe that the French public would rather the title remain in English to keep its American cool, but that producers seek a more understandable title.

In an online poll the Web site Newsring recently asked its readers if they were pro or con film title translation; 78 percent responded against. More.

See: The New York Times

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Amara is an organization on a mission. It wants anyone, anywhere to be able to understand the universe of video that’s now available online. Gee, this sure sounds like a job for the crowd…

Amara is, in fact, an award-winning crowdsourced subtitling platform that likes to refer to itself as a ‘Wikipedia for subtitles.’ Tens of thousands of volunteers have been participating for some time now in translating and captioning all sorts of videos, from the State of the Union Address to last year’s inescapable Kony video, in dozens of languages. More >>

The chief justice of the Washington Supreme Court wants state lawmakers to fund video translation for people in court who don’t speak English. Chief Justice Barbara Madsen told a joint session of the state legislature Wednesday that a remote interpreter service would be less expensive than having a translator present.

She says courts currently have certified interpreters for only 35 languages.

“As Washington’s diversity continues to grow, the need for interpreters is exploding,” Madsen says. “With limited resources, we must find a way to provide interpreter services in the most effective and efficient ways possible.” More.

See: OPB

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YouTube rolled out an update to its captions feature today that allows you to automatically translate video captions, meaning you’re no longer restricted to watching content produced specifically for your primary language.

The new feature will work on any video that already has closed caption translations of spoken dialog. To activate a translation, users need to click the “CC” button along the bottom of the YouTube video player and select the default desired language. Then you’ll have to click the button again to toggle on the translated captions. You don’t need to determine the original language of the video.

The feature was previously offered to English, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish captions. And as of today, YouTube has added another six languages, including German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Russian, and Dutch. Read more.

See: VentureBeat

With 70 percent of its global audience living outside of the U.S., the video hosting platform introduces a new tool to make caption translations easier for video makers.

YouTube is looking to help video makers grow their global audience. Google’s video hosting platform announced today that videos can now be translated into more than 300 different languages — from Turkish to Tagalog to Tswana.

“Growing a global audience on YouTube means having your videos reach many people, speaking many languages,” YouTube product managers Jeff Chin and Brad Ellis wrote in a blog post today.

YouTube has two types of translating services. One is the automatic caption translation service that uses Google Translate and has more than 60 languages. The other service translates more uncommon languages by letting users integrate the YouTube Video Manager with the Google Translator Toolkit.

With the Video Manager, users can translate the videos themselves using the Google Translator Toolkit or invite others to help them out. The Video Manager also allows videographers to watch their video as they translate to make the process easier. More.

See: CNet News

(…) Shoddy subtitles are all too common, and they can completely alter a viewer’s understanding of a film. For example, check out these three different translations of the final scene in Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless. The first veers pretty wildly from the actual dialogue. As for the second, who would ever actually say, in English, “It’s a real scumbag”? The last comes close to capturing the spirit of the French, but for me, every one of these versions is unnecessarily distracting.

Anyone who’s seen enough foreign films is bound to have noticed typos, punctuation gaffes and head-scratching translation choices. So why exactly is sub-par subtitling so common? What is it about the process that leads to such clumsy work? To find out, I called Craig Keller, the producer of boutique DVD label Masters of Cinema. More.

See: NPR