Subtitling is an art form  – it combines linguistic skill, technical expertise and creativity

 

For a film to be a global hit, high quality subtitles are key and a worthwhile investment.

 

Production managers, studios, directors, and producers benefit from being aware of how significant subtitling is in a competitive global market, and that it adds substantial value to the final product.

 

Subtitling is a vital linguistic, creative, and technical skill that can provide lucrative opportunities for film and television businesses.  It includes disciplines such as translation and interpretation and involves adaptation and localization techniques that help the meaning to resonate with multilingual audiences across the globe.

 

A few leading experts in subtitling within the film industry and from major universities across Europe shared their insights with the SubtitleNEXT team recently into why subtitling needs to be considered at the start of production and also what it entails in terms of what the differences are between interpreting and translating and how localization comes in.

 

This week we feature Ivanka Vassileva, who is a dynamic Language Services Professional and also the CEO of systems integration firm PBT EU, resellers of the SubtitleNEXT system designed and developed by Profuz Digital.

 

Ivanka notes, “Filmmakers are missing a trick if they don’t consider subtitles at the start of the process.” Ivanka Vassileva, CEO of PBT EU states. “By using subtitles that appeal to a wider global audience, they can boost revenues and provide content creators with the potential to reach a vast global audience.”

 

Running through a brief overview of what industry-leading experts told us recently on this topic, we heard from Lukasz Dutka, a member of AVT Lab, a research group on audio-visual translation and a trainer in subtitling at the University of Warsaw, Poland. He said that “with eye-tracking technology you can study how people view movies and how subtitles affect the viewing process.”

Dr Vasilis Manousakis, who is the Literature, Literary and Audiovisual Translation instructor at Hellenic American College in Athens, and a skilled successful subtitling artist in his own right, having subtitled and translated a broad range of genres, series and films produced by Disney, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros. and Netflix, including “Lost”, “The Good Place”, “Star Wars” and “Game of Thrones”,  told us that subtitling is an integral part of any movie that wants to be internationally successful and is a link in the chain of the production of any movie.

 

Riccardo Mimmi, who is an accomplished professional film translator and subtitler in Italy has been translating and subtitling hundreds of high profile movies, TV series, and documentaries from major Hollywood studios, broadcast networks and online streaming companies such as Netflix and Amazon over the course of his entire career, such as ‘The Man in the High Castle’, ‘Vikings’, ‘The Americans’, ‘The Office’ and others, points out, “Something apparently as simple as a different cut of the film could result in a different translation choice due to time, colour, sound, or other factors. Part of a subtitler’s job can be regarded as that of a film dialogue author. A paramount goal is to maintain the meaning and especially the impact of the original version while also keeping the dialogue interesting, entertaining, and suited to the target audience, without losing each character’s personality. A plain translation might in fact be faithful to the original but also very boring to the viewers, hence ruining the experience. Adding the technical constraints of subtitles to the equation, the translation might deviate from the most obvious or straightforward solution, so to that end, collaboration and communication with the filmmakers at all stages should be encouraged, ensuring their creative intent and characterization is fulfilled.”

 

Subtitling Team Leader at IT Pros Monica Paolillo recently wrote an article titled “Why subtitling can be considered an art form” where she outlined that subtitling is not just about studying languages or speaking multiple languages fluently. In subtitling, she says, you don’t just transfer ideas and words to make them accessible to the reader in the target language. She insists that “Subtitlers carry a message and stand in-between cultural settings, straddling the languages they work with the way simultaneous interpreters do. They have a profound knowledge of idioms and slang both in the source and target languages.”

 

AV translator and subtitler Valentina Stagnaro told us she works like a surgeon while picking up words and making them fit into character limitations.

 

AVT and transcreation professional Serban Dudau with a wide-reaching portfolio including high-end titles such as `The Crown`, `Black Mirror`, `Mad Men` and many others adds that subtitling in its basic form should ideally be as close to invisible as possible, in that the text which interprets the media for the audience must be so well blended into the experience that nothing important on-screen is missed and the viewer never has to feel as if they are reading instead of watching.

 

Independent writer and AV translator Dorthe Pedersen declares that you need to have good interpretation skills and be able to make a translation that fits in context. You also have to be able to time subtitles and make them readable, and feels that sadly, subtitling often seems like an afterthought.

 

Elena Konotopova who is the CFO of RuFilms LLC (School of Audiovisual Translation) and President of The Association of translators and editors of subtitles “Eurasian subtitlers’ league” (ESL) reveals that the success of Russian cartoons and TV series worldwide was based on skilful localization that was incorporated into the production process from the very start saying, “It wasn’t just a post-production issue. Subtitling as a part of the localization bundle was integrated into the business planning of TV and cartoon producers., and localization really encountered the production process.”

 

Professor Agnieszka Szarkowska of the Institute of Applied Linguistics at the University of Warsaw stated, “Subtitling is crucial for the international success of a film, TV series or show. And yet, it’s surprising how little attention filmmakers typically allocate to subtitling, which – from their perspective – is probably merely an afterthought, a minor part of the post-production process. shatters their suspension of disbelief, annoys them, makes them switch off and feel disappointed with the film as a whole.”

 

To round up, Ivanka Vassileva concludes with these words, “Reflecting on all the excellent contributions received concerning this important topic, Monica Paolillo’s words also resonate with the creative industries such as the film industry with production and post-production, in that subtitling is considered an art form. Subtitling is an art in my view too, because it not only requires linguistic skill or language knowledge, but it also demands technical expertise and creativity with regards to adapting and transferring the original message in the best possible way for the viewer.

 

Our SubtitleNEXT subtitling platform offers subtitling professionals many toolsets that can enhance their work, one example being the “live dictation” function which can be used in live subtitling workflows in order to caption news and events in real time which is quite an exciting new development. There is a lot more we have released since then and more to come on the horizon for 2021. Visit our website www.SubtitleNEXT.com for further updates on our latest news. We always have an exciting new feature to try out and we welcome you to join the SubtitleNEXT club!”

More about Ivanka Vassileva, CEO of PBT EU, please visit www.pbteu.com

Note: We conclude this series of blogs in early March, so keep an eye out for final Blog 11 where the team hears from CTO Kamen Ferdinandov, creator and developer of the popular software system SubtitleNEXT.  Kamen is always busy working on the next feature, and he will provide insight on this timely topic, which has become more relevant than ever in the current pandemic.

With more people having to adapt to working remotely and relying on accessible tools online, and in need of staying connected globally at the same time, SubtitleNEXT’s subtitling capabilities play a key role in many media facilities including film productions.  By leading content creators to provide multilingual content, subtitling as a skill plays a major role in helping companies navigate and change how they work for the better.

SubtitleNEXT welcomes further comments from professional subtitlers out there who would like to contribute to this discussion, as we need to keep the topic going and keep the industry engaged. Please send us your words of wisdom and we will feature them in a new series on this topic in the future. Email info@subtitleNEXT.com

“Timing the subtitles to the media, may be viewed in itself as a profession akin to video editing”

In our 8^th blog of the series, we received invaluable feedback from Serban Dudau who is an AVT and transcreation professional who specialises in subtitling.  Armed with an impressive and vast portfolio of high-end titles behind his name, such as `The Crown`, `Black Mirror`, `Mad Men` among  many others, he says he encourages content creators to integrate subtitling as much as possible.

His catchphrase “Subtitling is at most 50% translation” has raised many eyebrows over the years.  He says the reason is simple and explains further, “The discipline is surrounded by an aura of mystery and confusion both within the conglomerate of translation-related professions that are known as the “localization industry” and, more severely, within the filmmaking sphere, which heavily relies on it the era of globalization and its inherent accessibility demands. But I have always found it a good conversation starter on the particulars of the media / subtitling dynamic.”

Serban claims that subtitling in its basic form should ideally be as close to invisible as possible, in that the text which interprets the media for the audience must be so well blended into the experience that nothing important on-screen is missed and the viewer never has to feel as if they are reading instead of watching.

He further notes, “The defining element of subtitling is ultimately on-screen, which encompasses both its transformative limitations and creative potential and gives it its unique complexity and character. Spotting, or in laymen’s terms, timing the subtitles to the media, may be viewed in itself as a profession akin to video editing, whereby the containers of the adapted text have to adhere to the creative intention as displayed in the direction and editing of the media, in an interpretative fashion.”

Serban says that this is all achieved while also having to adhere to highly specific technical and linguistic requirements such as limited reading speed that viewers are able to handle, while still observing the action, and continuing with a number of characters per line, number of lines, line breaks, formatting, continuity, character sets, fonts, text size, screen positioning and a whole range of other aspects.

“These are the objects of heavily principled practices that have been developed over decades in different schools of thought and locales, and also of sustained research from the fields of film studies to eye-tracking and to linguistics. The majority of these are, very importantly, open to further interpretative processes and integration into the process of filmmaking, for those content creators willing to open up to the complexities of this complementary profession which makes media functional, but also transforms it, and as such must always be taken into proper consideration as early in the creative process as possible.”

• Serban Dudau: https://www.linkedin.com/in/serban-dudau/

Subtitlers carry a message and stand in-between cultural settings

Monica Paolillo is the Subtitling Team Leader at IT Pros (www.itpros.it). She recently wrote an article titled “Why subtitling can be considered an art form” where she outlined that subtitling is not just about studying languages or speaking multiple languages fluently.

In the article she quotes Henrik Gotlieb, summing up subtitling’s key role in the film industry today:

“Due to the complex nature of subtitling,
the subtitler must possess the musical ears of an interpreter,
the stylistic sensitivity of a literary translator,
the visual acuteness of a film cutter and
the aesthetic sense of a book designer”.

Monica feels strongly that subtitling is more in line with interpreting skills, rather than translation in itself.  In subtitling, you don’t just transfer ideas and words to make them accessible to the reader in the target language she says. “Subtitlers carry a message and stand in-between cultural settings, straddling the languages they work with the way simultaneous interpreters do. They have a profound knowledge of idioms and slang both in the source and target languages.”

Monica shares her thoughts on why producers and directors should consider subtitling at the start of film production, and not at the end in the post production phase:-  “In an industry where the required skills don’t seem sufficiently clear, the very perception of subtitle quality from the point of view of the client, director, producer and the audience is obviously biased. There must be thousands of subtitle translators out there producing low quality subtitles, what I very personally call “binnable subtitles”, subtitles that are of no use to anyone, but very few professionals taking on the whole subtitle production chain and contributing high quality to the industry. Thinking about subtitling in the production phase would obviously be ideal.”

She continues, “These days international distribution is a must and subtitlers play a crucial role in a context where viewers are global and thirsty for new, engaging, exotic audiovisual content, for stories coming from different parts of the world, as a way to learn and practice foreign languages, and a way to absorb different cultures. Therefore subtitlers literally accompany the audience in a completely new adventure.”

More generally, Monica adds that what she finds lacking in the industry is awareness at all levels. “Universities should be aware of the role they play when they train future subtitlers, and not just instil frustration and delusion. Graduates should be aware that they might be great translators with a dictionary and references at hand, but not necessarily great interpreters or subtitlers and refrain from jumping on the subtitling bandwagon just because they like the idea. Directors and screenwriters should be aware that if it took them one year to write a film dialogue, they shouldn’t expect subtitlers to rewrite it in three days. Film editors should be aware that if they use just a few frames for a shot change, on-screen text, and dialogue all at the same time, that it is going to cause issues in the subtitling stage. In a nutshell, we’re working under far from ideal conditions which ultimately impact how subtitling is perceived within the industry and beyond.”

On the expansive topic of interpreting and translation vs. subtitling, Monica elaborates further, “As one of just a bunch of small Italian companies focused on subtitling only, universities for language studies often reach out to us to promote their students for possible internship and training opportunities. Subtitling is creative, it’s dynamic, it’s special, you could say it’s sexy, but that doesn’t mean it’s for everyone, quite the opposite. If only universities informed their students of what it is about and trained them accordingly, maybe poor-quality subtitling wouldn’t be so widespread at this point and students, subtitlers and clients would be less frustrated.”

Monica further outlines what defines subtitling and the skills involved, “The very adjective “audiovisual” is a total game changer and turns translation into something that is definitely more similar to interpreting. Just like in the interpreting setting, you will have to deal with the spoken language, with idioms and cultural references. Just like in the interpreting scenario, a dictionary will not help you out. Just like in the consecutive interpreting context, where you summarise a speech under time pressures, you will have to be able to determine quickly what matters and what doesn’t and leave all unnecessary and redundant parts out. Just like in the simultaneous interpreting setting, you will work in a fast-paced environment with an almost instant production as content is always subtitled “by yesterday”.

In this scenario, your language proficiency will have to be comparable to that of a native speaker and you will have to use your work languages in the most natural way. When that happens, then you can invest all your time and resources in developing the necessary skills you need to become a professional subtitler: timecoding, dialogue division, text condensation, guidelines and standards and much more.”

Monica Paolillo:

• www.itpros.it
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/monicapaolilloitpros/?originalSubdomain=it

Capturing the meaning in Context using Subtitles

Subtitles can boost income opportunities. Social media platforms alone are accessed by over 3 billion people across the globe, and by going multilingual, content creators can reach global audiences.

 

Subtitles should never be an after-thought and should be considered right at the start of the production phase.

 

For a film or TV documentary to be successful internationally, high quality subtitles are a worthwhile investment.  Those who have a say in production budgets, whether it be the studio, director, or producers, need to be made aware of how significant subtitling is in a global market, and that it can add substantial value to the final product.

 

Subtitling is a vital linguistic, creative, and technical skill that can provide lucrative opportunities for film and television businesses.

 

As part of our series of SubtitleNEXT blogs on the topic, we interviewed leading experts in subtitling within the film industry and from major universities across Europe to share their insights into why subtitling needs to be considered at the start of production.

 

This week, we hear from independent writer and AV translator Dorthe Pedersen.  She declares that subtitling is a diverse job. She explains how on one day she might be translating a comedy, which entails creativity with language and puns, and then on another day, she might be working on a documentary about the Russian revolution for example, which requires much more research and accuracy.

 

Regardless of the content, she regards subtitling as an incredibly intuitive job.

 

“You need to have good interpretation skills and be able to make a translation that fits in context. You also have to be able to time subtitles and make them readable. I think the use of locked templates, which is sadly a quite common phenomenon these days, puts little trust in the subtitler’s capability and lowers the overall quality of subtitles. Locked templates make for strange division, forcing you to leave in unnecessary things, and omit more important information due to space limitation.”

 

Dorthe goes on to say that in fiction, the best subtitles are the ones where the translator manages to capture exactly what is being said, without saying exactly what is being said.

 

“A good example of this is the use of girl/bro in American colloquial language.” She explains, “In my language people don’t go around calling each other” girl” or “bro”. It’s also not used to express surprise, disbelief, anger, or amazement as it can in Americanised English. Here the subtitler really has to read the person saying it and convey the meaning into the target language. In this situation the subtitler is making an important interpretation on the behalf of the audience. A good subtitler or dubbing translator can make this difficult task look effortless.”

 

Dorthe feels that sadly, subtitling often seems like an afterthought. More and more companies are looking for cost-efficient ways to delivery localization. She notes, “When millions are being spent on creating a movie or show in the first place, why are subtitles only seen as a necessary evil that have to be as cheap as possible? In the end, subtitles can determine the level of success for a show or film. An example comes to mind of the Oscar winning film “Parasite”, where the subtitles were praised and seen as an important factor in taking home the statue.”

 

Find further information about Dorthe Pederson here https://www.linkedin.com/in/dorthe-pedersen-581746160/

For more information about subtitling software platform SubtitleNEXT, please visit www.SubtitleNEXT.com

 

FILMMAKERS NEED TO THINK IN ANOTHER LANGUAGE

For a film or TV documentary to be successful internationally, high quality subtitles are a worthwhile investment.  Those who have a say in production budgets, whether it be the studio, director, or producers, need to be made aware of how significant subtitling is in a global market, and that it can add substantial value to the final product.

The second expert shares with us his insights in our SubtitleNEXT Club series of subtitling within the film industry.

Dr Vasilis Manousakis, who is the Literature, Literary and Audiovisual Translation instructor at Hellenic American College in Athens provides further insight, a highly skilled professional and successful subtitling artist in his own right, having subtitled and translated a broad range of genres, series and films produced by Disney, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros. and Netflix, including “Lost”, “The Good Place”, “Star Wars” and “Game of Thrones”:

“After 20-years in the localization industry, I have long realised that subtitling is an integral part of any movie that wants to be internationally successful. Therefore, it is something that should be on the mind of all filmmakers, scriptwriters and producers and can be expressed by asking the question: ‘how is this going to be rendered in foreign languages across the globe? or ‘how is this going to resonate with viewers?’ Then it is the job of us, subtitlers, to render, not only the essence of the word, but also its feel, its impact, its atmosphere, its double or intrinsic meaning.”

 

“Subtitling is a link in the chain of the production of any movie. We subtitle for the one person who does not speak the source language. Despite their obvious differences, subtitling resembles interpreting in the sense that it is as if it is done live, in other words, the moment the protagonist speaks, that very moment we read the subtitles beneath the image or we listen to the Voice Over. Also, if we look further into accessibility, subtitling and interpreting, we find their common ground in the audio description category, where a person describes the scene for people with eyesight problems.”

* Credit:  Dr. Vasilis Manousakis: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vasilis-manousakis-22a9a371/

Literature, Literary & Audiovisual

Translation instructor

Hellenic American College, Athens, Greece

Hellenic American University, Nashua, New Hampshire, USA

http://haec.gr/en/master-translation

http://haec.gr/en/master-conference-interpreting
http://haec.gr/en/bachelor-studies-english-language-literature