University of Warsaw selected SubtitleNEXT for courses including live subtitling

We are pleased to confirm that the Department of Interpreting Studies and Audio-visual Translation (ISAT), as part of the University of Warsaw’s Institute of Applied Linguistics – selected SubtitleNEXT for their subtitling courses.

The Institute of Applied Linguists at the University of Warsaw is the leading centre in Poland which is responsible for training audio-visual translators and accessibility specialists.

Responding to the growing demand for further education in this field, the institute runs courses in interlingual subtitling in many languages, including courses that involve subtitling for the hearing impaired and live subtitling through “respeaking”.

Respeaking is a captioning technique that produces captions and transcripts through the use of voice-recognition technology. Captioners who use respeaking are called respeakers.

Łukasz Dutka is a lecturer at the Institute of Applied Linguistics with an impressive portfolio. He is a member of the University of Warsaw’s Audio-visual Translation Lab (AVT Lab), the Polish Association of Audio-visual Translators (STAW), the European Society for Translation Studies (EST) and the European Association for Studies in Screen Translation (ESIST).

Łukasz also works as a consultant for streaming and broadcasting companies in the field of accessibility and AVT quality and is involved in training interpreters and audio-visual translators. In 2012 he became an in-house subtitler for Polish public broadcaster TVP and was responsible for semi-live subtitling of news broadcasts.

In 2013, together with Monika Szczygielska, Łukasz pioneered the use of “respeaking” to provide live subtitling in Poland, both in live events settings and on television. In association with Professor Agnieszka Szarkowska, he has been offering courses in live subtitling at the University of Warsaw since 2015. Previously only semi-live subtitling was available in the country at the time. Łukasz, along with his team were at the forefront of experimenting with live subtitling with respeaking, and actually provided live subtitling capabilities in Warsaw for the very first time.

Łukasz outlines why he chose SubtitleNEXT for his courses at the Institute of Applied Linguistics, “We chose SubtitleNEXT for our courses because it is an exceptional platform that fits our needs perfectly.  It is a powerful and flexible tool that allows for both regular subtitling, closed captioning/SDH, semi-live subtitling and live subtitling. SubtitleNEXT also allows us to use the same software for all the courses that we have on offer.”

Łukasz continues, “The interface is highly customisable, and it can be as simple or as complex as required, with just the necessary features on display, which is particularly important for beginners who would otherwise feel overwhelmed with all the possible options. Our students appreciate how intuitive and easy it is to use SubtitleNEXT and our trainers are happy with the speed at which the system operates. SubtitleNEXT is fast and efficient, enabling users to import and export configuration files to ensure consistency across all of the workstations.”

“The pace of innovation and responsiveness of the SubtitleNEXT developers should also be praised,” Łukasz adds, “They are quick to improve current features and add new ones. Once our students eventually graduate and start their careers in subtitling, they will find that SubtitleNEXT is a cost-effective solution that offers various purchase and rental options, which is a great advantage.”

Profuz Digital’s  CEO Ivanka Vassileva comments, “We are proud to support Łukasz Dutka and his team at the University of Warsaw. We collaborated with them at the Intermedia Warsaw Conference last year where we showcased the SubtitleNEXT system. We learned at the event how Łukasz has also worked on important research projects, including “Respeaking –  process, competences, and quality”, led by Professor Agnieszka Szarkowska at the University of Warsaw, where they both participated in organising training workshops in the field of respeaking.”

“We are delighted to equip the University of Warsaw’s AVT Lab with SubtitleNEXT software. This move will allow them to teach their second semester courses about subtitling and live subtitling, based on SubtitleNEXT. We are thrilled about this new venture as the university is well-respected and highly proactive and has international appeal. It is an extraordinary university and its outstanding team is making an incredible impact in subtitling work worldwide, which is extremely positive for the industry.” Ivanka notes.

In context concerning the Covid-19 pandemic, the SubtitleNEXT team is available to help assist universities that want to transition to remote training. Ivanka states, “We are in a position to support educational organisations such as universities and colleges with SubtitleNEXT licenses if they need to work from home during the current situation. We have already helped to set-up other customers such as the Hellenic American College in Athens.

About the University of Warsaw
Visit http://welcome.uw.edu.pl/the-university-of-warsaw/ for further information.

 *Photo Courtesy copyright University of Warsaw