on amateur subtitling. preliminary findings
TRANSCRIPT
On Amateur Subtitling Preliminary findings
Mariana Salgado Media Lab, ARTS, Aalto University
Helsinki
4th August 2014
Television heritage
CC by Verbruggen & Pekel
EUscreen project
• EUscreen Best Practice Network eContentplus programme
• 36 months (2009-12) • Consortium
28 partners 17 EU member states (plus Switzerland) Broadcasters, archives, technologists, academic partners and educationalists
• Relationship to Europeana (TV aggregator) • Access to 35,000 items of audiovisual ARCHIVE content
Europeana.eu is an internet portal that acts as an interface to millions of books, paintings, films, museum objects and archival records that have been digitised throughout Europe. (Wikipedia) Screenshot from: http://www.europeana.eu/portal/
à 29m records from 2,200 European galleries, museums, archives and libraries
à Books, newspapers, journals, letters, diaries, archival papers
à Paintings, maps, drawings, photographs
à Music, spoken word, radio broadcasts
à Film, newsreels, television
à Curated exhibitions à 31 languages
Europe’s cultural heritage portal
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EUscreen results
www.euscreen.eu • 40,000 items of content (1950s - ) • 15 European languages • Content viewable on portal and Europeana • Interoperable metadata (back & front end) • Virtual Exhibitions • VIEW e-journal • Multi-lingual
The EUscreen project aims to promote the use of television content to explore Europe's rich and diverse cultural history. It will create access to over 1M items of programme content and information, and by developing a number of interactive functionalities and dynamic links with Europeana it will prove valuable to the widest range of cultural, educational and recreational users. Screenshot from: http://www.euscreen.eu
http://www.euscreen.eu/exhibitions.html#.UnoUGCTudWc
EUscreenXL (2013-16) Large consortium – 29 partners
• Broadcasters and archives (18) • Education/research, designers and technologists • 17 languages
AV content to Europeana • ‘Quantity’ - Aggregation 1m+ items (basic metadata and stills/
thumbnails) • ‘Quality’ - Core Collection (20K+ AV) full metadata
Other tasks • user engagement, network building & sustainability
Partners
CC by Verbruggen & Pekel
Structure
Why to study amateur subtitling?
understand a community that might engage in translating EUscreen content inform the development of a tool that could be used by fansubbers + professional translators
CC by Mariana Salgado
Done, so far…
Interviewed 2 fansubbers from DivX Finland Reviewed work on Subtitling in Finland (Polso, 2013) (Kallio, 2012)(Mäntylä, 2010) Reviewed work on Fansubbing (Mizuko Ito, 2012) Reviewed websites from the fansubbing communities
In relation to the study of amateur subtitling
Done, so far…
One International workshop with professional translators. One Workshop with Content providers to plan the strategy for collaboration in Pilot 1 Explore the possibility to integrate Amara to the project platform. Draw a plan with 5 CP in relation to the Pilot. Benchmark online tools for future
In relation to the Pilot 1
Lessons learnt
• On the practices • On the tools
• On the vocabulary • On the guidelines
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In Finland
On Amateur translation in Finland
• There are many groups. Each has its dynamics and rules for organizing the work.
• DivX Finland: they lived all around
Finland. They have strict rules to organize their translations. They prioritize quality vs speed. Some of them spend a lot of time in this (around 15hours a week)
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On the vocabulary
Cause-driven Collaboration environments UGT
USER GENERATED TRANSLATION
TEP translate, edit,
proofread
digisubs fandubbing
Not professional translation
COLLABORATIVE TRANSLATION
Scanlation (also scanslation) is
the scanning, translation and
editing of comics from a language into
another language
DIGISUBBING
CROWDSOURCE TRANSLATION
Translation hacking
Warez (Warez are copyrighted works
distributed without fees or royalties, and may be traded, in general violation of
copyright law.)
fandoms
Tsing (typesetting)
QC
On the community
Southern and Western Finland
Polso (2013)
Majority of men
IT + language interest
Young: Age from 16 to 24 years
On the practices
Distinctive features of fansubbing 1) the notes added to the screen (enrich
video by adding annotations), 2) not condensed text, 3) authorship (by the typography used and a
more personalized way), 4) well-defined set of guidelines for the
translation work.
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On the practices Motivation 1) The content (it might have good language
or it might be interesting). They love what they translate and they want to see it in their mother tongue. Promote “unknown/new material”
2) Improving language skills in their mother tongue and in the other. Creative ways of using the language. 3) Be the first ones: they want to see the movie asap. They received finished subtitles first. 4) Be appreciated: ranking in the community. Do sth. for others.
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On the practices Community: they know each other and care for their reputation within the community. They have a strict hierarchy within members, a leader board, and a system for the rights to the different roles. Roles (member, apprentice, candidate, insider, mentor, mentors, moderator, lecturer and administrator) do not connect with the prizes. Challenge: phrases and sayings that have not Finnish translation, fast dialogues and technical issues Rewards & sanctions: the ones that have participated received the subtitles earlier than others. Sanctions could be get if members do not keep the time.
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On the practices Wishlist: Someone presents the project and if there are enough people the project starts. Ideally, it has to be 10 persons for project. Project manager subdivide the work in 100 lines per person. The person that present a wish will participate in translating but might not be the project manager. No real time collaboration. The translation work happens off-line. TEAMWORK 100 line package takes aprox. 90minutes from English to Finnish Style: They do not use notes/ comments. They tried to be non-invasive. They are very precise and might not prioritize/summarize as much as professionals Feedback: translators get feedback from the proof readers. This is a motivation factor because it helps the fansubber to improve the work. Expectations are different from professional translators results & the community give positive feedback to amateur translators (Polso, 2013) Languages: from English or French to Finnish and Swedish. Mostly English Time adjusting: it is time consuming (half the time is used on this) and it is a challenge because fansubbers do not enjoy this part of the work. On the audiovisual materials: short films, films, TV series Content Selection: Poor subtitles or there is no subtitles in Finnish Process: Translate- Proofreading and time control phases happens after translating
On the tools Many of the features that the translators considered important in the tool, are used by fansubbers: a) Own profile b) Badges and prizes c) Roles d) Forums for discussion
They used 2 different softwares + IRC channel+ wiki page + Word (for checking the spelling) + dictionaries One discussion forum for each project + general discussion on IRC
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On the tools Aegisub: for getting a more accurate time for the subtitles. You can open the video file as an audio file. You can check the exact moment that someone starts to talk.
Subtitle workshop: for writing the translation and adjusting the time. Error check system- there are subtitles parameters. Before sending the subtitles you have to do this check (too long or too short, or extra spaces).
Aegisub + Subtitle workshop
On the tools Suggestions Integrate dictionaries. They copy and paste the subtitles ready in a Word file to check the spelling. The audio wave is not in Subtitle workshop software and it could be included. A red line to see where the subtitle starts is a key thing. Structure of the sites: personal pages, archives, discussion forums and guidelines.
Aegisub + Subtitle workshop
On Fansubbing
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Provides a twist on the discussion on intelectual property, peer to peer distribution and noncommercial appropriation of digital content. Motives: demand for high-quality localized content, a desire to contribute to the international fandom, and opportunities for learning, being up-dated, and for recognition. ”All fansubbers bring to their work multiple motivations that are altruistic, personal, and social in nature”
Mizuko Ito, 2012
On Fansubbing
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”Sharing economies and amateur production foreground incentives and motivations that center on learning, self actualization, and reputation rather than financial rewards” ”Fansubbing aroise to fill an unmet consumer demand not being served by commercial industries” ”Fan culture begins with the love of professional media content”. Strong desire to support animé industry.
Mizuko Ito, 2012
On Leechers
Leeching (downloading and viewing fansubs). ”Leechers and fansubbers alike acknowledge that high quality fansubs are more accurate, better executed, and truer to the original Japanese source. ” Mizuko Ito.
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On Leechers
Contributors and leechers are two co-dependent groups. They justified their leeching because of the ineffectiveness of professional localization efforts, or because of their lack of financial resources to get the episodes.
Mizuko Ito.
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Hybrid Public Culture
As a way of arguing for an enriching public life that values diverse forms of contribution.
Mizuko Ito.
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Col
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http://about.amara.org/volunteer/
http://www.ted.com/OpenTranslationProject
http://translations.ted.org/wiki/Main_Page
On the guidelines
Future steps
CC by dalbera in Flickr
References • Kallio, Markus Oskari (2012) The effects of broken subtitles norms on the quality
of subtitles . A reception study • Mäntylä, Teemu (2010). Piracy or productivity. Unlawful practices in Animé
Fansubbing. Aalto University • Polso, Mervi (2013). Amateur Subtitling in Finland. A Grounded Theory Study. MA
Thesis, University of Turku • Fandom Unbound: Otaku Culture in a connected world. Editors: Ito, Okabe and
Tsuji. Yale University Press, London.
More on amateur translation Interview with a fansubber: http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/feature/2008-03-11 DivX Finland • http://www.divxfinland.org/index.html Collaborative translation patterns http://collaborative-translation-patterns.wiki4us.com/tiki-index.php
Software Aegisub: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aegisub Software use for fansubbing in various languages Sub Station Alpha (commonly referred to as SSA) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SubStation_Alpha#Software_support Sabbu: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabbu Amara: http://www.amara.org/en/ JacoSub: http://unicorn.us.com/jacosub/ For delivering subtitles: http://www.bittorrent.com/
Thanks!!! [email protected]