Subtitle Editing

Be Natural Needs to Be Accessible

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Review of Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché (2018)

Old black and white photo of a sign on wall inside an industrial space that says BE NATURAL.
The sign at Alice Guy-Blaché’s Solax Studio in the US. She wanted her actors to remember this guideline in order to avoid the overacting so common in films during the silent era.

 

Six years ago, I made a pledge to a Kickstarter campaign for the documentary Be Natural. There have been some bumps in the road for supporters, which is to be expected for a passion project, I suppose: some of the perks never arrived, some were disappointing, and some have yet to arrive (promised post–home video release). It seems creators Pamela Green and Jarik van Sluijs had more success in the campaign and developments with the film than they had anticipated. I applaud them. They’ve brought a major project to fruition.

However, when I finally got to see it at one of only three Toronto screenings, I was underwhelmed. This was mostly due to its inaccessibility but also its overall direction. Then I learned more about the premise of Alice being “discovered” by the filmmakers. I’d like to share some thoughts on this film because I’ve yet to see a review online that wasn’t bursting at the seams with enthusiasm, and I think some balance in its reception is merited.

Robert Redford and narrator Jodie Foster are listed as two of the executive producers, which gives it some cachet, I expect. However, direction by Green is problematic. As a backer, I got to see teasers and contacted the production company about issues with the subtitling as it stood then; I did not get a reply. The final product is less than accessible to several groups of people.

The music is far too loud and drowns out other elements, making it hard to follow the extremely fast pace of the doc. There are some interesting ideas for indicating sources—for example, audio tape via a little icon in the corner of the screen—but often these are more cute than necessary, adding clutter to a busy screen; I found it hard to watch such indicators, plus maps, dynamic travel routes, superimposed pictures and image captions, and subtitles. The viewer must be resigned to picking and choosing what information they want to take in, which is a shame because it’s quite interesting.

I wish I could have acted as a consultant for them on the function and form of effective captions and subtitles. In fact, there are no captions at all for the film because of the overcrowded shots, so right off the bat the film is not available to Deaf, deaf, or hard of hearing viewers, or any other group who uses captions. Also, the subtitles are full of bad line breaks and inconsistencies. The worst practice is when the text was deemed worthy to highlight, it is often presented in a cursive font in paragraph form across the width of the screen, making it difficult to read, particularly as there is a great deal of figured background used. Also, the reading speed required for the longer excerpts is too high given the font and form. Accessibility to the French audio is therefore very poor through the subtitling.

Black and white still showing 2-line subtitle with far too many characters/words per line

The other unfortunate directorial choice made is the pace of the overall contents. Understandably, the creators wanted to share as much of Alice’s history as possible within the time available, and the story is fascinating. But too much of the search efforts are shown, so that clips from Alice’s films that are highlighted are on-screen for about one second (maybe two seconds) each. In that time, the viewer has to take in the visual and the captioned title and date before they are on to another example; a series of these make it impossible to really learn much about the films Guy-Blaché made, which I would have thought was a major goal of the documentary. So, the information itself is often inaccessible.

This is the type of film that would have benefited from subtitle editing (and captioning), and it could have been done if a director of accessibility and translation had been consulted, as recommended by Pablo Romero-Fresco. As it stands, there are multiple barriers to the documentary.

But that’s only what I gleaned from watching it. I’ve since learned that, in fact, Alice’s history has been under our noses all along. (Note to self: do your homework before backing on Kickstarter.) It turns out that there have been a few documentaries made about her already, including a 1996 Canadian doc and an eponymous 1997 German one. There’s also a book about her, Alice Guy-Blaché: Lost Visionary of the Cinema by Alison McMahan (2003). And there is no lack of knowledge and discussion about her in academia or the blogosphere/internet. So, the hype of discovering Alice is misplaced.

Alice’s life is an interesting topic to cover in a documentary film, to be sure, but Be Natural seems a bit meta, focusing more on Green’s journey to find Alice than being excited to share the story in a well-paced exposition of Alice’s story. I came away feeling I had missed a lot of the audio and visual in it and retained bare bones. Another audience member asked me afterwards if I remembered the location of the Solax studio, and we decided we’d have to google it when we got home. (It was Fort Lee, New Jersey.)

I feel like the film festival and critical hype is due to others not having done their homework, either. It’s a nice film, but it’s not earth-shattering in form or as provenance. Since it’s so hard to find screenings, why not find some clips of her films on YouTube or watch this introduction to Alice Guy-Blaché on Vimeo? The captions here aren’t perfect either, but the video allows you the time to appreciate the creative and technical contributions Alice made in a man’s industry a hundred years ago.

PS: I did have to laugh at one clip that was shown long enough to take in. In the 1913 A House Divided, about a separated couple living together, there’s some acrimony. Plus ça change…

 


Perhaps “Word Nerding through Netflix”

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Read the background and objections here, then delve in to my POV.
Please note I’ve used quotation marks rather than italicizing words as words (in captions/subtitles) with the aim of making a more accessible document.

Spoiler alert: you aren’t going to learn a language with the “Language Learning with Netflix” browser extension. You may confirm what you know, learn the odd word, or see something spelled that you’d only heard before, but you aren’t going to learn a language.

Now, I’m a language nerd, so I’m not knocking different modes of language acquisition or people’s desire to expand their worldview or personal skills. But to get viewers’ hopes up by presenting this tool thus is like saying you’ll learn to be a chef by working as a cashier at McDonald’s. You’ll learn stuff, it may be fun—it may even be “cool” as the linked article says—but you won’t be able to converse in the original language of the show. Especially based on most of the subtitles.

There are indeed some very cool functionalities to this tool. You can choose to see the automatic voice recognition–software’s subtitle translation or the human translation or both. Most useful is the ability to set the automatic pause on each text box. Unfortunately, the two versions of subtitles are so poorly handled that there’s no way in Hades you could learn much language from them.

I experimented with a film and language I was familiar with: “Incendies” by director Denis Villeneuve (2010) in French—Québécois to be exact, which is no mean feat for a French-from-France-translator to tackle. (I know because I went to translation school and, being in Canada, we dealt with Québécois French as much as European French.) (And sidebar, it’s a difficult film to watch but excellent. I recommend it.) I chose to watch both the “machine” translations (as Netflix calls the autocraptions) and the “human” translations simultaneously. In the following examples, when all three languages are shown, the original French is on top, machine in the middle, and human on the bottom. The Arabic is not subtitled. And by the way, I could have selected a film in any of the languages I know and found similar issues; this is just an illustration.
Let’s look at some examples.

Longshot man and woman approaching their car in a city , captioned J'ai la crisse de paix/I have the crease of peace/I feel so fucking peaceful
“J’ai la crisse de paix” is not about “the crease of peace” or even, dictionary-wise, “the crisis of peace”: it’s swearing with “Christ” and colloquially would be used as in the human subtitled “I feel so fucking peaceful.” So, that part is good! If it were France, it would likely have been some form of “putain,” but it looks like the translator asked someone who was familiar with swearing as you’d find it in Quebec or perhaps Maritime Canada (because as we’ll see below, the rest of the translation is problematic). But how did a machine supposedly translate “la crisse” to “the crease” if they’re using a corpus dictionary? Autocraptions 0, #NoMoreCraptions 1.

Young man at side of woman in hospital stretcher captioned Souffle haletant/Breathless breath
“Haleter” means “to pant,” “gasp,” or “puff” in French, but for the moment, let’s look at the autocraption “(Breathless breath)” which a human has not chosen to correct. That’s somewhat of a grammatical nullification in English, never mind a contradiction in meaning. In this scene, the young man is upset, stressed. A good subtitle would have replaced the machine one with something like “(sighs with stress)” or “(anxiously sighs).” This subtitle is used many times in the film, unfortunately.

Doctor examining woman in hospital, adult children looking on, captioned Elle est absente en general/She is absent in general/She's usually confused
Here the doctor is taking a history of the woman and asking her children questions about her health and behaviour of late. The machine subtitle is typically autogenerated: it just translated the line literally. The subtitler is just wrong. “Absente” and “désorientée” or “confuse” wouldn’t be synonymous here. In fact, here’s an argument for giving captioners and subtitlers reasonable work timelines instead of ridiculous demands of urgency. Had the subtitler watched the film first, they would have known that the woman has PTSD, which is unknown to her children, so her son just finds her emotionally unavailable and is very hurt and angry about that. Therefore, the subtitle must be “She’s always absent”: the English audience would understand that it doesn’t mean just physically but more so emotionally; the always would be more colloquial than “usually,” and it would be understood as “[not literally] always” but “[pretty much] always.” So if someone went to a French class and used what they’d learned here and said to the teacher, “Je suis absente” to indicate they needed further help, they’d be laughed at. Not what you want when learning a language.

Young woman looking from desk skeptically at offscreen woman, captioned J'etais meme pas nee/I was not even born/You're kidding right? I wasn't born
Here the “You’re kidding right?” is a hangover from the previous shot/subtitle and shouldn’t even be included again. But the young woman is being asked about something from thirty-five years ago and predictably responds with the French line as shown. The machine version is literally correct but not idiomatically. The human translation is incomplete and misses the mark, thus leaving the viewer in the dark. “I wasn’t born” is not the same as a snarky “I wasn’t even born yet” or “I wasn’t even alive then.” So let’s imagine someone (for some reason) wanted to learn how to say “I wasn’t born” in French: they would use a totally incorrect/inappropriate construction, confusing their listener. Part of learning a language is about clarity, so that there is no miscommunication.

Woman looking distraught in the front of a bus, captioned Cris de fillette/Cree of little girl
The translation by machine apparently went for an aural equivalent here; a human should have changed this to “(cries of little girl).” Unfortunately, this one is doubly problematic in Canada: “Cree” is the name of the Algonquian language of the indigenous Cree people. Confusion could reign supreme here, especially in a film so much about culture and place. Furthermore, knowing it was a Canadian film, viewers might see the subtitle briefly, wonder at it, and then lose track after it has passed by but still be pondering the meaning: audience immersion down the toilet. It certainly would detract from the cultural aspect of learning French.

Longshot of open-doored car in the countryside, with a man pointing the way to a woman on the road, captioned Stridulations d'insectes/Stridulations of insects
This is a good example of the need to understand diction and register in audiovisual translation. “Stridulations” can mean “chirps,” “chirring,” or “shrill sounds.” It refers to the sound crickets and other insects make by rubbing their legs, wings, etc. together. In English, “stridulations” would only be used within a scientific context, perhaps even only an academic one. Here, it’s just about the countryside setting, and we would say “(insects chirring)”—if at all. There’s an argument that the caption is not even necessary as it doesn’t advance the plot: we can see it’s empty and remote. In any event, a language student who then said on a beautiful summer night in Provence, “Oh listen to the stridulations of insects!” would be looked at like they had three heads…or too big a head. Subtitling and captioning is not about dictionary and thesaurus use. The audiovisual translator has to understand meaning, context, and changes in the target language. For the record, I don’t believe the audio has insects: I think it’s birds and the wind.

Arab older man captioned C'est la Femme qui chante./It's the woman singing./She's the Woman who Sings. Number 72.
The machine definitely blew this one with its literal translation. This is a key thematic and character-relevant phrase and is even a chapter title in the film. The human was closer but the “Number 72” is repeated in the next subtitle. Also, there is no understanding of capitalization conventions: as an epithet and important theme, “the Woman Who Sings” needs a capital on “who” in headline style; here it’s a mixture of headline and sentence. Probably the subtitler is working under the misapprehension that “little words” don’t get capitalized, a rule from the dinosaur age. All caps on the phrase would forewarn a language learner that this is not everyday usage.

Arab older man, captioned Inspiration/Inspiration
Here, “Inspiration” (and elsewhere “(Grande respiration)” as “(Great breath)”) is a total craption. Inspiration comes from the Holy Spirit or a muse or a lightbulb above your head, but its Latin root about breathing cannot be applied here. Furthermore, it’s hardly a notable or significant inhalation (unlike an example below) and could have been omitted. I don’t understand how a professional translator or QC person could have stetted this machine error.

Vista with woman at wall and car in midground, chapter title La Femme Qui Chante, captioned Un homme parle en arabe sur un haut-parleur/A man speakes in Arabic on a speaker/THE WOMAN WHO SINGS

Vista with woman at wall and car in midground, chapter title La Femme Qui Chante, captioned Gazouillis d'oiseaux/Bird chirping/THE WOMAN WHO SINGS
The errors in these subtitles are obvious in that the chapter title denies access to the viewer of the other subtitles if using the human version. “La Femme Qui Chante” should have been made a forced narrative, and the correct translations of the audio should have been “(man speaking over PA system)” and “(birds chirping),” despite the latter being insignificant. Most importantly, during the top shot, the young woman is sobbing (plot pertinent!) and that absolutely should be captioned, with the PA part placed on the next shot where that audio continues. No one’s learning any language here.

Middleeastern-dressed nurse speaking over an ill Middleeastern woman's bed, captioned Mme Mika?/Ms. Maika?/Mrs Manka?
As far as I know, Arab culture doesn’t espouse women’s lib, so the machine “Ms.” is a cultural #SubtitleFail. Then, it seems the translator is used to British conventions because in North America we use a period after “Mrs.” and the surname is misspelled. In any case, these inconsistencies would be confusing to a language learner without the knowledge of these cultural points.

Middleeastern-dressed nurse speaking over an ill Middleeastern woman's bed, captioned Elle a recueilli les enfants./She collected the children./She safeguarded the babies
Here the nurse is interpreting from the patient’s Arabic. “Safeguarded” is the wrong diction for this scene: it’s too formal and, in terms of babies, is a bit archaic. For the newborns, who are essentially refugees, “took in” is an appropriate choice. A student using this would sound like they were talking about a report by a board of governors rather than caring for little ones.

Young woman facing young man, her face expressing horror, captioned Inspiration/Inspiration
No spoilers, but here is another misrepresentation of “(Inspiration).” This is a gut-wrenching gasp of horror at the first of two climaxes in the film…

Closeup of young man and woman, captioned Je vous aime/I like You/I love you.

Closeup of young man and woman, captioned Vore mere, Nawal/Your mother, Nawal./Your mother.

Closeup of young man and woman, captioned Reniflements/Sniffles/Nawal
The problems with these three subsequent subtitles are obvious. Again, they take the viewer out of the narrative, disrupting their immersion in the poignant dénouement of the story, and teaching nothing about language.

These are just a few examples to illustrate how the notion of teaching a language is far more complex than throwing up some setting options and calling it language learning.
Yes, it’s great if you know some, say, Polish and want to check what a character said, or if you need to pause the subtitles for better comprehension. But to suggest that language lessons are being made available by a streaming service that is known for its problematic subtitles and its craptions is misleading. It’s just another way Netflix holds a monopoly on the international offerings of video-on-demand but is putting the cart way before the horse. They need to get serious about native target-language speakers as subtitle and caption editors and fix the timed text before they start misinforming the public about foreign languages. For now, I’d recommend using some language-learning software or apps, or—much better—taking accredited classes in the language you want to learn. You can’t learn how to drive an eighteen-wheeler on the highway by trying out a Segway.

Interview: Tessa Dwyer, author of Speaking in Subtitles: Revaluing Screen Translation

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Cover of Speaking in Subtitles: Revaluing Screen Translation by Dr. Tessa Dwyer, showeing a film still of a young Asian couple in a dramatic setup, with the subtitle, "There's something I haven't told you yet."

RW: Hi, Tessa! Thank you for agreeing to this interview. I found your book  Speaking in Subtitles: Revaluing Screen Translation very timely, and it provoked many questions and some new thinking for me.

I started my university studies in translation, but I was surprised to learn about “value politics” in translation, which certainly wasn’t something I heard about 35 years ago. Could you provide a sort of elevator-pitch definition for readers?

TD: Perhaps because I come from a different disciplinary background – Film and Screen Studies – the “value politics” of translation immediately stood out to me when I started to engage with intercultural viewing practices and, especially, subtitling and dubbing. In fact, it was an encounter with “value politics” that really sparked my sustained interest in the topic. I was writing about Hong Kong action films in my MA thesis, using some French critical theory. My supervisor suggested I read the French theory in the “original,” yet had no qualms about my viewing of subtitled Hong Kong action films. Obviously, there are hierarchies in place about when and why translation does, or doesn’t, matter. What I found ironic was that a very learned translation of a French theorist by someone with expert knowledge of the field was not deemed worthy of serious analysis, while the less than stringent (to say the least!) subtitling of the Hong Kong film industry flew completely under the radar.

In Film and Screen Studies – especially Anglophone film theory – translation is so undervalued and un-theorised that it is almost entirely invisible. Despite the canonical centrality of European filmmaking, for instance, in the development of film theory and culture, the role of translation and the inter-cultural basis of much theorisation is almost entirely ignored. Translation speaks to reception contexts, over those of production/creation, and for this reason, it is often regarded as utterly inconsequential or, worse, as an affront to the creative process and to authorial vision. In this way, translation threatens the core stakes upon which so much of film and screen culture remains invested. That, I guess, it why I find it so fascinating and why I love how translation can demonstrate in myriad ways how the very distinction between production and reception breaks down. Everyday practices of subtitling and dubbing can really challenge so many assumptions and biases in the way we understand and discuss film and screen.

So much for an elevator pitch!... more like a meandering rumination.

RW: That’s great: all helpful!

You discuss critiques of subtitles which include elitism. Do you think wider access to film and video through prevalent video-on-demand streaming services is reducing this problem, which perhaps was more of an art-house issue for foreign films in the past?

TD: This is certainly something to consider. The disruptive influence of streaming platforms is immense, and as I argue in the book, the global media flows enabled by online networking are affected, at every turn, by language difference and translation. These recent industry shifts really bring issues of translation to the forefront of our changing media landscape. So yes, I think that streaming services are set to impact significantly on attitudes to subtitling and dubbing, yet it is too early to tell how this will play out. In 2014, there were predictions that Netflix would cause the demise of dubbing within Europe by providing timely access to content in its original language. However, by 2018, Netflix was streaming dubbed versions of shows by default, claiming that even when audiences insist they prefer subtitling, dubbing keeps more people watching.

RW: You cover issues around translation studies in your book, and current focus on content accessibility has certainly made this area more important than ever. Do you see audio-visual studies increasing in popularity, either as a result of demands for accessibility or because of the globalization of video content (VODs, gaming, etc.)?

TD: Yes, as I mentioned above, I think that the advent of streaming services is increasing attention exponentially on screen translation and localisation (including fan translation and crowdsourcing) and hence, burgeoning areas of research are emerging within Translation Studies. Content accessibility is definitely on the agenda in terms of industry regulation and policy, while global streaming services are having to prioritise translation and localisation. In 2017, for instance, Netflix launched the custom-built HERMES subtitling and translation test and indexing system, which it claims will allow them to “resource quality at scale” through standardised testing and unique identifiers, enabling it to use “metrics in concert with other innovations to ‘recommend’ the best subtitler for specific work based on their past performance.”

RW: Cultural misappropriation in the arts is a hot topic at the moment. Can you share some advice for young or emerging filmmakers, who might be trying to be more creative in order to get a foothold and visibility in a noisy film climate, about how and why to avoid détourning?

TD: Well, I think cultural misappropriation is an ongoing (perhaps necessary) risk attached to many forms of intercultural communication and creation. Détournement was a radical, activist strategy that sought to upset boundaries and challenge modes of thought and politics. It didn’t shy away from cultural misappropriation, but rather, confronted it head-on. It set out to offend and to shock. My take on all this is that intercultural modes of production and reception are vital, essential elements of mediatisation – no matter how risky. We need to recognise this and consider the complexities of translation involved in everyday practices and modes of engagement. I would rather that misappropriation continue to surface as an issue, than that creatives simply avoid engaging beyond their own safe cultural borders and boundaries.

RW: You talk about abusive and corruptive translation and quote Derrida about translation: “... it necessarily violates even as it devotedly follows or respects the original.” As a copy editor of books, I find my profession needs to walk a fine line between being “at once violent and faithful” in helping but also maintaining the author’s voice. “Nornes locates translation abuse within populist practices like anime fansubbing.” I feel the same way about self-publishers who think Grammarly can replace professional editing or who just want to ignore all writing conventions in the name of creativity. But your book seems to make a reasonable, unemotional examination of fansubbing. You changed my black-and-white thinking about it—well, brought my righteous indignation down a notch or two! Just as editors should not encourage grammar policing, what can you say to people who really bristle at fansubbing?

Let’s start with a provocation: maybe translation is, at heart, a fan activity?

TD: Let’s start with a provocation: maybe translation is, at heart, a fan activity? What motivates someone to labour so intensively and minutely with another’s text or creative work, if not some form of respect, devotion or fandom? Of course, the professionalization of the industry means that naturally many translators now routinely labour on works they do not love in any sense, but if we try to think about the origins of the practice, in scholarly and religious contexts say, the fan sense of investment holds.

Speaking from outside the field of professional translation – without the need to defend my own territory – I think it’s easier for me to appreciate the creative and sometimes subversive nature of fansubbing. Also, I’m interested in what fansubbing shows us about global media industries broadly. Fansubbing alerts us to very interesting things that are happening within global media flows, articulating gaps and loopholes, challenging politics, re-purposing technologies and, in some ways, helping to shape the future of global media industries.

Fansubbing is thought to have begun in the US when TV networks stopped broadcasting anime titles like Astroboy and Gigantor. Fans simply went in search of content themselves (sourcing video tapes directly from Japan or Hawaii), which then needed to be translated. As they set about translating for themselves, they discovered the extent of cultural adaptation/appropriation and reworking involved in the US TV broadcasts, and came to see their own translations as more faithful and authentic, and ultimately as safe-guarding the texts. This history is important as it shows how professionalism is by no means a guarantee of quality, due to corporate agendas, industry conventions, cultural attitudes and others factors.

Also – I should mention that many professional audiovisual translators are themselves very interested in fansubbing, and feel that there are many lesson to be learnt. Minako O’Hagen, for instance, notes the benefits of collaborative, peer-to-peer working environments with in-built feedback and mentoring mechanisms. O’Hagen and others also point to the value of expert genre knowledge as something that the industry is learning from the example of fansubbing. Netflix’s Hermes tool is a case in point: the aim is to match the right translator with the right content.

... we should value, not fear, fansubbing...

One of the major reasons why we should value, not fear, fansubbing is due to the fact that many language communities around the world are underserved by online offerings and by professional translation. Collaborative fansubbing provides a means to do something about the inequalities that persist in online modes of screen media access. While Netflix has expanded into 190 (out of 195) countries across the world, it only supports around 20 languages. The Netflix Vietnam service, for instance, offers a very limited range of Vietnamese-subtitled content, and so, once again, viewers resort to fansubs, using websites like subscene.com.

RW: Some people might be surprised to learn about subversive and spontaneous translation of films by audience members; online, I recently learned about lektoring. These brought to mind my days watching shadow-cast performances at The Rocky Horror Picture Show! You also talk about the “participatory” nature of today’s popular and public realms in the area of media consumption. Recently, an article I had posted, about the “good enough” attitude to captions being unacceptable particularly in terms of accessibility, was criticized by a competitor as being too simplistic. I know your book focuses on debates around translation in subtitles, but what’s your opinion on accepting a “good enough” level of captioning? (And you don’t have to agree with me. )

TD: I think it’s always important to advocate for high standards in captioning and other forms of media translation – especially in relation to policy guidelines and regulations. Yes, “good enough” is not an attitude that industry bodies should take on board, nor translation professionals. And yet, I would never want to dismiss the efforts of amateur, volunteer and community translators, who largely labour at the task of translation in response to industry gaps. I agree whole-heartedly that machine translation can never substitute for human translation and perhaps streaming platforms like YouTube that offer automatic captioning tools are creating such a misconception. The fact that captioning is often unedited is indeed a sign of discrimination and shows a lack of commitment by governments and media industries. It’s an important issue, and one that I think fansubbing and DIY captioning can actually aid. The battle isn’t against amateurs lending a hand where they can – it’s about governments and corporations avoiding their responsibilities and obligations. This is largely what fansubbers are also battling against: lack of access. So why not join forces and get fansubbers to champion the cause and help advocate for change? (n.b. Viki did this when it joined with deaf actor Marlee Matlin in the Billion Words March campaign.)

RW: If I ever teach a course on caption and subtitle editing, Speaking in Subtitles is going to be one of the books on my required reading list, and it really should be a staple on cinema studies intro courses. Although it’s academic, it’s packed with interesting information for general readers that will open their eyes to subtitling and captioning issues that go way beyond craptions and typos: literacy, ethics, politics, media piracy and guerilla efforts, cultural capital, interactivity, quality control, “thick translation” and User Generated Content, massively open translation, CT3—community, collaborative and crowdsourced translation, and Viki. Even the term animé is demystified. And thank you for setting us straight on the word for @#$%&! to represent prohibited expletives: grawlixes or “obscenicons” (Dwyer, pg 120; Díaz Cintas, pg 13). Finally, you’ve provided me with the terminology I needed for a future article I’ll be posting about more creative applications of captions: “integrated subtitles.”

Is there anything else you’d like to share? Perhaps something that didn’t make it into this book?

TD: I’ve published recently on barrage cinema in China (where viewers text comment onto the movie screen) – which relates tangentially to subtitling as a text-on-image mode! I’m also developing a fansubbing project around an in-production Spanish-language web-series called Distancia (watch the trailer here).

RW: I love the discussions around language and vocabulary in the barrage cinema article (“assault,” “bullet subtitles,” “hecklevision”!), and I'll keep an eye open about Distancia. Thank you again, Tessa!

TD: Thanks so much for this positive feedback. It’s truly gratifying to hear that you have found something of value in my book (despite its occasional forays into academic abstraction), and that it even has use for someone working in the industry. I really appreciate your thoughtful comments and enquiries and look forward to catching your next post. So, the pleasure is all mine – thank you!

 

Headshot of Dr. Tessa DwyerDr. Tessa Dwyer is a Lecturer in Film and Screen Studies. Prior to arriving at Monash, she taught Screen and Cultural Studies at the University of Melbourne, and worked as a researcher at the Swinburne Institute for Social Research, Swinburne University. Tessa is a member of the inter-disciplinary research group Eye Tracking the Moving Image (ETMI) and president of the journal Senses of Cinema (www.sensesofcinema.org).

Tessa’s research focuses on screen translation, language difference and transnational reception and distribution practices. She holds an Honours and MA degree in Fine Arts (Film) from the University of Melbourne, and a PhD in Screen and Media Culture, also from the University of Melbourne.

Captions Need Show “Bibles”

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Colour photo closeup of gilded Bible pages, with gold cover, snap closure and tasselled bookbark hanging in the foreground.

 

Captions and subtitles need "bibles" just like theatre pieces or movie productions. Like their literal iterations, these collections of information are guides for all the relevant players on how to present content so that it's clear, correct, and, most of all, consistent.

When I was a captioner, some shows had 'em and some didn't. Worst was when we had to consult fan wikis for character name spellings, backstory, etc. VODS, shows, and movies need bibles templated and used, if they're going to commit to full accessibility for all users.*

Depending on where the captioner or subtitler is, there are differences in how they would normally write as a layman and how they would do their work. A Canadian captioning a show from and about the States would defer to American dictionary spellings and definitions and standard writing style guides, plus the client's house style guide. But an American subtitling an import series from Scandinavia would be wise to not only adhere to the client's wishes and that country's standard guides but also recommend other applications based on show content and branding, audience composition and an eye to future distribution potential.

Show bibles vary from artform to artform. It may well develop to have set and costume notes and samples, helpful visual ephemera, guidelines on authorized style guides, character details, notes on directorial changes and edits (updated), and all of this should be backed up—at least twice. Hard copies might also be wise should the internetalypse happen midproduction.

Here's an example of what Netflix's much (self-)touted subtitling policies did not address or succeed at (or this wouldn't have happened).

Peaky Blinders, Season 4, Episode 5 (accessed December 2017). In one scene, Cockney Jewish character Alfie Solomons is saying Good boy but the caption says Goodbye. Perhaps the non-native captioner (or one without British background or dialectic familiarity) should not be the titler for dialogue if they can't understand the accent, let alone understand that Goodbye wouldn't even make sense in the context if that were the audio. It causes errors and (although apparently not here) extra costs in QC corrections.

Screenshot of Alfie Solomons and Luca Changretta characters in Peaky Blinders show. The erroneous caption for Alfie says, Goodbye, trot on. Down there is Bonnie Street.
Image: cropped screenshot accessed Netflix, Peaky Blinders, December 31, 2017.

If a show bible is not extant or available, a good editor will do some research and preferably some subsequent consultation. The latter should be done by the most qualified expert in their professional network: moms with English degrees don't count. Having established some form of NDA, the editor should present their problem and its context, their research, and a suggested edit to the consultant. Confirmation or correction should lead to a fix, and either way the edit should be flagged with a justified query or note to the managing editor. Time is tight on titling projects, but there's no excuse for guessing. I have a time limit on how long I'll do my own research before turning to an expert; if I can't get the ME a recommended edit, I'll pass on my recommendations for next steps.

This example also points out the pitfalls of having blinders on about vendors. Perhaps your regular multilingual translator in Europe is multitalented, but this show would have required a titler who had ties to or experience with people in London and Birmingham, for instance.

Another problem with this scene was when, in the same episode,

Alfie Solomons was captioned as speaking Italian when in fact he was speaking Yiddish...

Alfie Solomons in Peaky Blinders show is captioned as "[speaking Italian]"

 

...but the captioner didn't have enough linguistic background to tell the difference between guttural and romance language phonemes. (Note that although different, captions and subtitles are sometimes needed in the same product. Read more here.) The titler should have consulted someone (or perhaps shouldn't have been contracted in the first place). I have a whole discrete presentation I can give about foreign language subtitling inconsistencies within Netflix captions; see the Engagements tab to book similar lessons and discussions.

So a bible, shared with the captioner, would have been available to tell them that Alfie Solomons is a Jew from the East End, living in Birmingham, with the common interruptor of the area's "yeah" and that he has no known connections to the Italian language. These are two instances where Netflix would have been saved embarrassment from YGWYPF vendors. If they aren't embarrassed, simply in terms of access to content for the deaf they should be.

Bibles can be simple, and they don't have to be pretty. But they do need to be complete, proactive, shared and USED.

 

*Read here about who should be using captions and/or subtitles (and sometimes both); it's not just a "deaf problem."

Changing Text: Part II — Expletives

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Ada Shelby from Peaky Blinders is shouting to the projectionist behind her in a dimmed, empty cinema, Oi! I'm a Shleby too, you know. Put my fucking film back on!"

 

Expletives may have different treatments based on house styles, but they must still be retained in some form or another (even if it’s %^@##!).

Swear words in films or shows often bring up the issue of censorship—by whoever has the final word on content and house style. But the captioner/subtitler has a duty to at least present an argument (even if they don’t win people over) as to why potentially objectionable words must remain or at least be titled in a similar form.

No matter what country you’re working in, standards of captioning/subtitling will all get at the point that it is the titler’s job to provide full access to the video product, with 95–100% accuracy for preprogrammed content. As in book editing, the titler must not edit the work to the point of changing content. So, if I’m a very conservative person, I may not decide to “fix” f-bombs or other offensive dialogue; even if I’m liberal personally, I must not “err on the side of caution” and tone down swear words in case a vulnerable audience is watching. I may be allowed, or indeed instructed, to use house style to represent those f-bombs with nonsense characters, universally understood to mean expletives, but I may not choose to as a matter of my practice.

I complain often about CCs on Netflix (see this article for a good chuckle and my opinion here), but I do appreciate that their style guideline says “Dialogue must never be censored.” They do retain expletives as used by onscreen characters. This is as it should be.

Just as we do not cover classical sculpture with fig leaves or add clothes to nudes in paintings, we should not censor swearing in films. Screenplay writers and directors include it intentionally to produce an effect, and it is effectively intellectual theft for the titler to remove it. There are many aspects of a video product that could offend audiences, but it is their job to choose their entertainment judiciously and not ours to introduce our personal bias into the work. Titlers do not have the right to judge; the have the responsibility to provide access. Period.

 

[Note that the incorrect caption in the image above should read: Oi! A native English speaker, especially one with British background (who would be the ideal choice as titler) would know this. Oy is an alternative. Spelling and punctuation fails…]

If you ever see an example of captions or subtitles that do not represent the content (with the exception of occasional fudges required by timing and space allowance for reading speed), please email a screenshot to or tell me about it at info@reelwords.ca. I keep a file of such infringements to accessibility rights.

 

 

Changing Text: Part I — Opera Surtitles

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Long shot colour photo of an opera production with a seafaring theme as a set and English surtitles projected above the stageImage not credited on original source: https://www.sdopera.org/experience/supertitles

I’ve commented elsewhere about the responsibilities of the captioner or subtitler, which include the best practice of not changing the film’s text.* Our personal feelings about content, as far as producing or editing the content is concerned, are irrelevant. (If something is truly offensive, you can turn down the project, just as we do in book editing.) I recently participated in a survey of subtitlers about emotional reactions to content we are working on; it is a legitimate consideration. However, assuming we are content to work on the file, the captioner or subtitler (or book editor) may not change the content. We are not the creators of the work.

I saw the HD Live Met presentation in the cinema of the fabulous opera Exterminating Angel by Thomas Adès. Although it is in English, surtitles** are provided, which is common for most major opera companies. With the exception of one title which might have caused confusion with an appositive due to the accompanying live shot, they were excellent. Until the climax of this dystopian nightmare story. There, in terror, and also in the last lines of the opera, the characters are singing a prayer: Libera me de morte aeterna et lux aeterna luceat, which translates to “Deliver me from eternal death and let eternal light shine.” The use of the Latin is intentional and very moving because these words are excerpts from the Catholic Office of the Dead text. (If you know the movie or the opera, you’ll understand why these are used.) To my amazement, the Latin was not only not projected in the surtitles, it was replaced with the English as the Latin was being sung. This is unacceptable captioning (or surtitling).

While it is possible that the surtitle writer felt they were being “helpful” by providing the English, they shouldn’t have.

First, they changed Adès’s and librettist Tom Cairns’s work fundamentally. They did not write that part in English for a reason. So, right off the bat, they made an editorial decision about an artist’s work. (If Adès or Cairns directed them to do so, I would happily stand corrected, but I doubt this very much. If the Metropolitan Opera directed it, I would disagree with that decision.) Captioners do not have the right to change art text: their responsibility is to make the piece as it stands accessible. A caption editor would know to retain the original text.

Another reason this is not best practice is that it makes an editorial assumption about the audience: that they are not culturally savvy enough to know what these words mean, even if they aren’t Catholic. It would be deemed fairly common knowledge in the humanities audience to at least have a sense what that Latin excerpt was about, even if they couldn’t translate it word for word. So the surtitler decided who they were dealing with. (Again, if the Met directed them to do it—well, my words would then be directed at them.) The composer knows who he will reach with the Latin, and he knows how best to do it in that scene: with the atmospheric layer of using Latin. He does not dumb down his librettist’s text for the audience.

Opera is attracting more young people these days, so some might argue that Millennials just don’t have that common knowledge, but that too is insulting and presumptive. The surtitler may not assume: that’s not their job.

The other thing that is wrong about this involves the Deaf/deaf/hard of hearing community. Did you know that some deaf people do go to and love the opera? My deafened friend loves opera: she said as long as the voices are big enough and surtitles are provided, she can attend and enjoy live opera and HD broadcasts. So the surtitler assumed it wouldn’t matter if the English were used (even if they did know deaf folks can go to the opera), and that is the type of trope the Deaf/deaf/hard of hearing community too often faces: they don’t matter. This is akin to the attitude of I’ll tell you later or Why can’t you just enjoy the beat? which I have tweeted about. If they are in the audience, they have the right to access the artistic work as it was created by the artist. It is not the surtitler’s right to even assume they won’t be in attendance, never mind that best practices wouldn’t apply to them. They cannot change an aspect of art because they figure an attendee won’t know anyway.

A final note about surtitles: there are various technological choices available, such as the old PowerPoint way still used by some, and current surtitling software. These products can force certain style decisions for the surtitler. Also, some theatre and opera companies take divergent theoretical views of how far translations or same-language titles are to go. I belong to the more prescriptive school, obviously, and disapprove of summarization. However, there are times in opera when very repetitious text, such as in arias, may be omitted and understood as such, or when multi-part sections must be flexibly handled. Straightforward English libretti do not fall into these specialized areas of captioning skills.

“Good Enough” Captions Aren’t

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I recently watched an amateur video about DIY captions. The fellow who made it was earnest, trying to make it easy for the average person to create captions, and I'm sure he meant well. But then he said that although they wouldn't be perfect, they'd be "good enough."

Granted, he was referring to fansubbing movies (which is a topic for another time), but I get the sense that this is a common attitude of the hearing world towards captioning for the accessibility purposes. Would blue and purple traffic lights be good enough? How about food with just a bit of salmonella? I know I wouldn't want to buy a tire with a slow leak.

Captions are used by the Deaf, deaf and hard of hearing (Deaf/HoH), second-language learners, university students as study aids, people in sound-sensitive environments, and many other folks.

Many countries, provinces and states have legislated that media must provide video material that is accessible and that captioning be of excellent quality. It's not optional. But very rarely do I see closed captions that meet the required standards.*

Some producers of video rely on automated captioning services or, if they have "the budget for it," a closed-captioning provider. But the latter do not have trained professionals copy editing the files and/or they often don't understand the specialized editing required to meet the accessibility standards needed for users. Anybody can transcribe audio. But caption text has to be rendered readable by humans in 2-second chunks. And by readable, I mean comprehensible so that the entire video context is taken in with ease and appreciation for the content. But that's not what’s getting churned out. (See my opinion about video-on-demand services here.)

I'm tired of "good enough." I'm frustrated by reading about craptions being doled out to the Deaf/HoH. I'm fed up with empty promises about the delivery of accessibility.

When are the Deaf/HoH going to get the quality of captioning they're legally (and morally) entitled to? Why is "good enough" the status quo?

I've written many articles and posts about why captions and subtitles require not just proofreading but copy editing, just as the printed word does. (You can read them here to learn more about the nuts and bolts.) But I'm increasingly interested in making some noise about cranking up the demand for #NoMoreCraptions! As someone who appreciates closed captions (and may later need them more), I am no longer willing to let this slide.

“Captioning should not look like throwing magnetic letters on a fridge.”**

And yet, that's what the CC setting on our screens usually generates because (seemingly) providers don't think the Deaf/HoH are worth the expense of creating high-quality, copy-edited captions. Like other areas being bandaided because of a lack of enforcement or true dedication to creating accessibility (e.g. the wonderful but shamefully needed food banks, Stopgap Foundation, etc.), unedited captions are generally of such poor quality that they're useless and watching TV, movies, etc. is often given up on.** And saying there isn't money for quality captioning comes from an outlook of discrimination.

It's also uninformed. Budgeting for this aspect of production and distribution does not have to be expensive. If absolutely necessary, fine—use automated captioning in some form of AVR (automatic voice recognition). But then turn the rough copy over to a professional to be perfected. It's like writers who say they can't afford any professional editing or proofreading but then complain that no one bought their book: if its content isn't edited properly, readers aren't going to want to slog through it.

Until governments enforce the standards they've promised on paper so that the digital files are accompanied by high-quality captioning, they're short-changing the Deaf/HoH of their right to a huge part of full engagement in modern cultural content.

I'm not. . .er. . .crapping on the DIYer per se. I'm saying his comment is exemplary of the attitude society has towards people needing captioning: if you're not a hearing person, you can just make do with good enough. (And that's audism.)

#NoMoreCraptions!

 

 

*Canada's 2016 CRTC policy can be found here.

**Unattributed comments from CRTC 2008 Stakeholder Consultations on Accessibility Issues for Persons with Disabilities.

The Netflix Subtitling Test Is Inadequate

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Neflix logo with black-outlined letters against red background, "Netflix"

Netflix introduced a subtitling test called Hermes to vet potential vendors. Here's how it's inadequate and why not much is going to change.

  1. The announcement on the Netflix blog is rife with errors that need copy editing. That should be our first red flag.
  2. The comments following that post indicate that the test system itself is full of bugs; potential vendors ("Fulfillment Partners") can't access or proceed with parts of the text. (Ironically, one says the videos won't load.) Second red flag.
  3. The queries to Netflix from would-be test takers have not been replied to. Vendors might do well to take that as an indication of how they'd be treated if they were signed on to translate titles... While they invite contact via email, posting answers would be a more expeditious way of sharing info other folks would be needing.
  4. It refers to the importance of ensuring quality, but it contains writing not worthy of a communications professional. Aside from the errors mentioned above, there are scare quotes, which indicates to me that quality is not in fact ensured.
  5. It's copyrighted 2016 but was posted at the end of March 2017. This tells me that better meeting subscribers' viewing needs are not a priority, and that change in this area will be very slow.

I don't have a particular hate-on for Netflix: I'm sure most (S)VOD entities are streaming international shows with substandard subtitles. But it's the subscription I have and, as a professional, I can confidently report that the quality and consistency of title delivery is all over the map. (See a mini-gallery here of the hundreds of error examples I have on file.) They need subtitle editing, and they're going at it back-asswards. They could continue to use current vendors and have the files edited as tweaks. No need to re-invent the wheel. And that new wheel is going to raise your subscription price.

They're big on tech innovation (e.g. here), but if basic spelling and grammar errors prevent comprehension, it's sort of useless. Reminds me of the joke cartoon of the caveman who invented square wheels for his cart.

Here's an example. It's not huge, but it's telling. Netflix house style apparently allows for the use of "alright" in its subtitle translations. That spelling is recognized as a nonstandard alternate but is not the recommended or preferred spelling in Canadian, American or British dictionaries. If non-English shows and films are to be streamed in what is commonly called "world English" and usually defers to UK preferences, why are they condoning a second-choice, nonstandard—I'd go so far as to say colloquial or popular—spelling for a common idiom? Standard spellings and conventions are taught and used for good reason, and there is no contextual reason to use variations in most cases. It's sloppy, and it shows a disregard for viewers who use titles for many different reasons.

What bothers me about the providers and the regulation makers is that improvements to subtitles and captions are moving at a snail's pace. In Canada, a report issued in 2008 revealed useful—and at times poignant—data and commentary on the state of accessible telecommunications and, while much has been done on paper,

people with disabilities are still not treated with the respect (via access) that other Canadians enjoy.

From what I see in industry sources and reporting, it's not much better elsewhere.

And if you'd like to watch video programming made in other countries, you'd better resign yourself to subtitling that does not facilitate your immersion into the story. See my case for subtitle editing here.

Craptions is a lighthearted word, but the bureaucracies and corporate attitudes preventing us from having (long overdue) accessibility and seamless enjoyment of mainstream culture is no laughing matter.

If you have experiences with poor subtitles and captions, please share them in the comment section.

Get Distributed

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Get Noticed for the Right Reasons

You've invested a lot of time, money and heart into making your film, show or video. You have big plans for distribution—whether it's worldwide or just to corporate headquarters. You can't afford to become one of those online memes because of errors.

Reel Words is the only subtitle editing company providing quality control for flawless English text because it's the only one with extensive editorial and titling experience behind it. Translators and transcribers are terrific at their craft but, like authors of books, they're not trained to review text for correctness, consistency and clarity.

Don't settle for error-ridden automated titles. Impress distributors or stakeholders with professional-looking, accurate subtitles or captions, and enjoy rave reviews from audiences by fulfilling the growing demand for No More Craptions!

Who Benefits from Caption or Subtitle Editing?

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Black and white photo from the 1950s with a young woman seated on the carpet between two television sets; image appears to be an advertisement

You might think subtitles and captions are compartmentalized in one or two business niches like foreign films and TV shows watched by people with hearing loss. But there are many places captions and subtitles are needed, and if you produce any of the following, you need to have them edited properly for consistency, correctness, and clarity if you want your target audience to benefit from them.

Before you scroll away because you "don’t know any deaf people," consider this: you may think you don't, but a lot of people don't advertise their deafness because a) it doesn't define them, and b) it's frustrating to keep explaining it over and over to hearing people.

Here are some examples of products and users for where there's a need for a final edit for audience immersion and comprehension:

  • hearing and deaf friends who want to see a movie together
  • English language learners
  • people needing cognitive support with visual reinforcement cues
  • shows with heavily accented or audio-obscured speakers
  • folks in noisy or quiet places or where the volume is off or problematic
  • company profile videos
  • corporate promos and demos
  • automatically craptioned YouTube videos
  • educational and training videos
  • supertitles for live performances, such as opera or bilingual theatre
  • projection of lyrics for sing-along events, movies or congregational worship
  • TV pitches and pilots
  • conference recordings
  • DIY videos
  • online tutorials
  • captioned programming requiring localization (i.e. using the correct conventions for another country's standard English)
  • presentations and pre-written talks
  • institutional video archives
  • reported speech on TV shows (e.g. quoting a speaker on a news report)
  • museum or art exhibits
  • retrofitting outdated visual materials (especially in light of new legislation in many areas which directs content to be fully accessible)

The beauty of subtitle editing is that you aren't adding a large expense to your budget: the larger outlay is already done (translation and/or transcription), so you're only paying for an edit of your current product, which will be recouped by higher sales from satisfied customers and, by extension, word of mouth. It's an affordable add-on that increases product value, adheres to accessibility rights, and gives you an edge over competitors. You stand to win when others in the marketplace are generating social media memes for their uncaught errors in the current grammar-vigilante atmosphere. It's not true that the public doesn't care about spelling and grammar: they judge reliability and credibility by professionally presented products and copy and, if they're comparison shopping, they're bound to choose the company that communicates flawlessly.

 

The Case for Subtitle Editing

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Colour photo of a cinema from the back row looking at a blank screen.

 

The explosion of access to international shows and films from independent filmmakers and from (S)VOD* suppliers like Netflix provides viewers with diverse and exciting choices. Many series and movies are outstanding. Except in one area.

If you hope to reach viewers around the globe, your production’s subtitles or captions must communicate flawlessly, and currently many are failing miserably.

You only have about 2 seconds per title to enable the viewer to absorb the content, so it needs to be picture-perfect.

What does picture-perfect mean in subtitling? It requires quality-control editing to catch more potential problem areas than you’d think. Recently, I did a survey of pitfalls in the final episode of a foreign TV series I’d been watching on Netflix. During that one episode, I documented 84 discrete errors—meaning 84 usage errors, not repeated occurrences like “hte” or even the possible multiple errors within one word or phrase.

At that rate, the reader stumbles due to incorrect subtitles about every 30 seconds and loses concentration on the dialogue.

By the time the brain has sorted out the discrepancy or compensated for misunderstanding, another title has flown by. Subtitles must facilitate viewer immersion.

The problems I found in the show I surveyed involved not just typos but also errors in spelling, grammar, punctuation, timing, capitalization, speaker identification and, most often, idiomatic usage.** Never mind missing titles or titling a character’s use of the English “Okay.” with “alright”. [Can you identify the 5 errors there?] A subtitle editor would catch and fix those.

Why does this happen? It’s probably not the subtitler’s/captioner’s fault. They work under extremely tight deadlines. Good translation takes time. The technology is intricate. And they are usually not briefed to copy edit—nor should they be: translation and copy editing for film are totally different skill sets.

Many shows are titled by people contracted to do the freelance work by companies that, frankly, want output quantity rather than quality. But if you’re working with a professional subtitler and translator, such as those affiliated with SUBTLE, the international Subtitlers’ Association (full disclosure: I’m a member), you are likely dealing with a highly trained and invested individual contractor or small company. Just like writers who need copy editors and proofreaders, as the filmmaker you may wish to hire a collaborative team: the translator/subtitler and the subtitle editor to check for idiomatic correctness. Did you know that “English” in print and film is edited by country? Editing English texts from Britain, the U.S., Canada and Australia requires education and experience in working with those countries’ conventions. Like all types of editing, to edit titles for film you need more than experience helping your friends with their resumes or teaching English for 20 years. You need formal training and ongoing professional development because “the rules” are always changing.

“Native speakers only” is not an adequate qualification requirement for captioning.

Subtitle editing is affordable because the subtitler has done the bulk of the work; the editing just cleans up the titles with a fresh pair of eyes and ensures that your long and expensive project is professional and truly accessible.

The goal of subtitles and captions is to communicate while making viewers forget they are reading titles. Good titling is as important as movie soundtracks: they should enhance the experience while being unnoticeable in the moment.

 

 

*(Subscription) Video on Demand

"Facilitate viewer immersion" (and all grammatical variations of it) is a copyrighted phrase. © Vanessa Wells, 2017.

 

 

 

Photo by Daniel Olnes, February 14, 2008, Flickr.com

 

Subtitle Edit Draw: Hindi version

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Here is the Hindi version of the subtitle edit post from this week:

कनाडा में फिल्मकारों के लिए मुफ़्त फ़िल्म सबटाइटल सम्पादन का मौका

क्या आप कनाडा में रह रहे एक फिल्मकार हैं? क्या आपके पास अंग्रेज़ी के अतिरिक्त किसी दूसरी भाषा में बनी फ़िल्म है? आप अपनी फ़िल्म की रिलीज़ के पहले उसके कैप्शंस या सबटाइटलों के अनुवाद का मुफ़्त सम्पादन जीत सकते हैं!

19 अप्रैल 2017 को मनाए जाने वाले नेशनल कैनेडियन फ़िल्म डे 150 (NCFD 150) #CanFilmDay  के उपलक्ष्य में को वेल्स रीड एडिटिंग द्वारा 25 अप्रैल की शाम को एक लकी ड्रा का आयोजन किया जा रहा है (रैंडम पिकर द्वारा, अधिकतम 1000 प्रविष्टियाँ). विजेता को एक फ़िल्म के अंग्रेज़ी सबटाइटलों की मुफ़्त प्रूफरीडिंग, सम्पादन और भाषागत शुद्धता की जाँच की सुविधा दी जाएगी.

ड्रा में भाग लेने के लिए आपको कनाडा का नागरिक होना ज़रूरी नहीं है, लेकिन यह आवश्यक है कि आपकी आयु 18 साल या उस से अधिक हो और आप कनाडा में अपने वर्तमान पते और काम/सेल्फ़ एम्प्लॉयमेंट/फ़िल्म स्टडीज़/अमेचर फ़िल्म निर्माण का सबूत दें. फ़िल्म की लम्बाई दो घंटे से से अधिक नहीं होनी चाहिए, हालाँकि 120 फ़िल्म मिनट से अधिक का काम हमारी सामान्य दरों पर पूरा किया जा सकता है; इस स्थिति में भुगतान पहले से तय और अग्रिम होगा. समय की गिनती पहले फ्रेम से शुरू होगी, चाहे वह क्रेडिट टाइटल/विजुअल हों. काम के पूरा होने की तारीख़ सम्पादक और विजेता द्वारा तय की जाएगी. सबटाइटल अंग्रेज़ी भाषा में ही होने चाहिए, और आपको यह तय करना होगा कि कैनेडियन, अमेरिकन, ब्रिटिश और ऑस्ट्रेलियन में से किस पद्धति की अंग्रेज़ी का प्रयोग किया जाएगा (आप जिस बाज़ार में अपनी फ़िल्म ले जाना चाहते हैं, उसके अनुसार). इस ड्रा के पुरस्कार के रूप में दी गई सेवा में सम्पादन का काम टेक्स्ट डॉक्यूमेंट या स्क्रीनशॉट के पीडीएफ़ में मार्क-अप के साथ या संपादक और विजेता द्वारा तय किये गए अन्य किसी तरीके से होगा. सम्पादित सबटाइटल को वीडियो फ़ाइल या टाइटलिंग सोफ्ट्वेयर में एम्बेड करना इस पुरस्कार का हिस्सा नहीं है. फ़िल्म के क्रेडिट्स में '"Subtitle Editing by Wells Read Editing" शामिल किया जाएगा.

भाग लेने के लिए @vwellseditor को संबोधित करते हुए  #CanFilmDay #SubtitleEditDraw हैशटैग के साथ ट्वीट करें.

I would like to thank editorial colleagues Shruti Nagar for translating this post and the related tweet and Vivek Kumar for his additional help.

Subtitle Edit Draw

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Are you a filmmaker in Canada? Do you have a film made in a language other than English? You could win a subtitle edit of your transcribed captions or translated subtitles before your film’s release!

In celebration of National Canadian Film Day 150 (NCFD 150) #CanFilmDay on April 19, 2017, Wells Read Editing will hold a draw (via Random Picker, maximum 1000 entries) on April 26 for entries received by (re-)tweet with the hashtags #CanFilmDay #SubtitleEditDraw by 11:59pm EST on April 25. One winner will have one film’s English subtitles proofread, edited and checked for idiomatic correctness for FREE; two alternates will be generated by the software in case the winner cannot accept the prize.

Entrants do not have to be Canadian citizens but must be 18 years of age or older and able to provide current proof of residence, work/self-employment/film studies/amateur film making in Canada. Film length is not to exceed two hours, although work past 120 film minutes may be completed at regular fees; payment to be arranged and paid in advance; minutes begin with opening frame even if they are credit titles/visuals. Date of work fulfillment to be determined between editor and winner. Language of subtitles must be English, and Canadian, American, British or Australian conventions can be specified (depending on your intended market). For this draw’s prize, editing will not be embedded in the titling software or video file and will be completed by text document, screenshot PDFs with mark up or another mutually agreed-upon manner. Film credits will include reference to “Subtitle Editing by Wells Read Editing.”

To enter, tweet #CanFilmDay #SubtitleEditDraw to @vwellseditor 

~ FIN ~

Subtitle First Aid, Part I

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It happened again.

I was watching a foreign film with subtitles. They were very well done: the English was correct, the titles themselves were very readable, and the subtitling did not distract from the content—which is one of the key requirements of successful titling.

But, as I am wont to do, I stayed and read the credits. [Insert car-brakes-screeching sound effect.]

“Filmed on Loaction”

I wasn’t obsessively looking for errors. I wasn’t putting on my Holier Than Thou grammar hat. But this jumped out at me, all the way to the back row of the theatre.

Granted: errors in subtitling or end credits are not the end of the world. They don’t make it a horrible cinematic experience. And mistakes slip by. But doesn’t the visual text of the project you’ve slaved over for months or years warrant a professional once-over? Doesn’t it deserve to have all its elements treated with regard for correctness and excellence? Shouldn’t the film have a great shot at international marketability and good critical reception?

If you skip the proofreading of your film’s text, you may be sending a message to your audience that they’re not worth considering: it’s only the end credits, right?

If you skip the proofreading of the subtitles, you may be sending a message to foreign distributors that their audiences aren’t as important as your original-language audience was to you: it’s just a secondary market, so no big deal.

This is not about being too uptight, too nit-picky, too pedantic. You wouldn’t distribute your film with sloppy sound editing or jump cuts. You probably have someone (or plural, if you’re lucky) either exclusively handling or at least keeping an eye on prop and costume continuity. You want to create a beautiful, whole and masterly film. So you can’t afford to leave the most in-their-face part of the film half-addressed for your audience. If you do, you’re—perhaps only subconsciously—conveying an attitude that says that film can be dumbed down for the masses and that the bums-in-seats don’t care about writing and language or their experience with your art.

If your production budget is over $5000, you need to have an editor review the text or at least a proofreader look at it with fresh eyes. (Your mum/husband/BFF won’t do because there are things to consider that they aren’t trained to look for.) For as little as the price of a couple of first-release DVDs, you can have your post-production text in a workplace-training video reviewed (word count depending, of course). For the price you’d plunk down for a new cellphone, you can have your short documentary proofread.

All the social media shares of signs with bad spelling, grammar and punctuation are an indicator of the appetite people have for mocking errors. If you don’t want your work turned into a derisory meme that gets more coverage than the original piece, you need to consider this often-overlooked aspect of post-production.

Just as THX reminds us that “the audience is listening,” it would be wise to remember that it is reading, too.

 

 

This is the first of three pieces about why film subtitles need copy editing and proofreading by a professional editor and subtitler. The others will address inadequate translations and poor word choices in subtitles. Vanessa Wells is a member of Editors’ Association of Canada and SUBTLE: The Subtitlers’ Association.

Subtitle First Aid, Part II

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Young man wearing a helmet holds a vehicle's steering wheel, visibly crying with red and tear-filled eyes. Captio reads: "[SADLY GO-KARTS]'

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Please note: a new version of the WordPress theme won't allow the previous spacing in this post. Please forgive the poor layout.]

Very generally, subtitles are used in film and TV for translating foreign or indistinct speech and closed captions are for providing the hearing-impaired viewer with the audio information they are missing. As I said in the first article of this series, subtitling must not distract from the film experience, so titles or captions both require judicious choice of wording.

There are many variables involved in subtitling that aren’t evident when we watch a subtitled foreign film or closed-captioned TV show. As in many areas, projects are usually not adhering to their projected timeline, and titlers (like book proofreaders) are at the end of the process; read: rush job with no rush-job fees. Subtitling and captioning have many spatial and temporal requirements; some are based on government standards, others on average reading rates, on industry-wide conventions, and so on. Pop-ons and roll-ups use different production models. And cost is affected by companies using international roster or tender systems for finding the most cost-effective labour market they can. So it’s not always fair to complain about subtitle quality but, reasons or excuses aside, they do get noticed and it does matter.

The reason [Sadly go-karts] is lamentable is that there is a finesse to captioning and subtitling in knowing what needs to be written and when. Paul Aaron (above) is neither saying that he is sadly go-karting, nor is that a sound that must be replicated for the viewer: it’s a visual, and it’s self-evident.

Let’s look at some other problematic subtitles and captions.

I’m sure you can discern the utter uselessness of this one:

Long shot of TV coverage of tennis match, captioned [tik...tak...tik...tak...]

 

Or this one:

 

A noble ancient Roman woman stands inside a large arena, with a group of lower-classed men listening to her, and stadium step seating full of spectators. Caption reads: "Is Rome won'th one good mars life?"

 

But what about this one?

A middle-aged man is on the floor against filthy kitchen cupboards, screaming and recoiling from something in front of him off screen. Caption reads: "[SCREAMING LIKE A SISSY]"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is sort of funny, and it does the trick. But “sissy” is a subjective description, and it’s likely a localized idiom that may not communicate to people of all ages or all cultures. An editor should have flagged this caption as problematic because it could put up a potential barrier between the medium and some viewers.

And here’s one for the “intensity” sub-genre of bad captions:

Scene from Breaking Bad; woman recoiling from obscured individual, holding a baby protectively. Closed caption says "Stealing intensifies."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can’t steal intensely; you can only steal with intense emotions. Even then, this is not a word or sound to be communicated aurally.

 

Just as you can’t loudly imply cannibalism:

Man in dark scene captioned [loudly implied cannibalism]

 

You could perhaps convey that there is a loud gnawing sound, but if it’s cannibalistic eating, that’s either known to the viewer or will be, but cannibalism is not inherently aural, nor is implication loud.

Here’s another inaccurate one that a caption editor would have re-written:

Piper sitting on the toliet, captioned [urinating forcefully]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I saw this episode of Orange Is the New Black, and Piper is not urinating forcefully, as if she were straining with a kidney stone; she had been desperate to go for hours and was finally allowed to but only with a male guard present. A more accurate title would have said [Urgent stream of urine]. That’s a sound and that fills in the missing information more correctly. Her face conveys her disgust.

This isn’t the worst caption in the world:

Man in green hospital scrubs captioned, {makes "I don't know" sound]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But in best practices, it might have been better to write something like “Expresses indecision” (if that were the case; I don’t know the scene) because the “I don’t know” sound is a culturally differentiated mannerism.

My final example is not from a subtitle or caption but could easily be. A fellow editor told of a South African correspondent who was talking about a "toot" which, to her, meant a drink. My colleague commented that "toot" means something very different to us in North America (and she didn’t mean a cute car-horn sound). This demonstrates the need to have an editor review the text for idioms appropriate for the intended market. Sometimes idioms must be retained to convey cultural richness and idiosyncrasies in the story, but it is important to have someone who is aware of potential stumbling blocks (and riotous audience laughter) and who is capable of supplying synonyms that will still work with the film. The Harry Potter books were Americanized for this continent’s market (and some would argue unnecessarily), but there are times when professional copy editing of the subtitles can prevent gaffes, offence or derision and—ultimately—loss of post-distribution revenue.

Subtitlers and captioners have to work at unbelievable speeds and too often with insultingly low pay. It's not always their fault if the titles we see are poor or just plain wrong. But a subtitling editor can check the work with a lot less hassle than your production team would have going back down the pipeline to get the errors dealt with. Then, when your film is received with popular and critical acclaim, you can pop that bottle of bubbly and have a toot to celebrate!

 

This is the second of three pieces about why film subtitles need copy editing and proofreading by a professional editor and subtitler. The first addressed proofreading as a basic component to post-production and the final one will deal with inadequate translations. Vanessa Wells is a member of Editors' Association of Canada and SUBTLE: The Subtitlers' Association.

 

 

The balance of the photos used in this post were retrieved on July 7, 2016 from here.

Subtitle First Aid, Part III

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Four boys lead a smaller one by the ear down a dimly lit institutional hallway; a still from the movie The Tribe.
                                                               http://www.vice.com

Parts I and II discussed the need for filmmakers to incorporate proofreading and copy editing respectively into their post-production plans. I also wrote about some of the technical difficulties titlers and captioners face, including time and space, which are connected to fonts and the languages themselves. For instance, French text is typically 20% longer than English, so if titling for an English-to-French film, you'd have to take all of these things into consideration to keep the titling up to speed with the English actors' speech.

In this final piece, I'll discuss issues of translation for subtitles, and you'll note complicating crossover problems. I picked a random foreign film to examine its subtitles' translation. (I'm not going to name the film because my aim is not to shame anyone making mistakes, for reasons outlined in Part II). I'll simply outline typical problems I found in it.

First some good points: the translator used slang such as "gonna" appropriately, based on character. They correctly ignored a lot of background chatter that was intended to establish setting elements and that was not integral to the plot or action. For the most part, idioms were correctly used. I bristled a little at the choice of US over UK/World English spelling but, looking at the secondary releases, I see that it had greater American than European distribution, so fair enough. (Although I still believe that World English is preferable because it prevents reader stumbling for more viewers worldwide.)

As in any copy editing job, there are stylistic choices decided on by the higher-ups which must be respected. Just as in editing an author's book, you can't hijack their style and have it your way, unless you can demonstrate your concerns about potential problems the reader may encounter and provide workable solutions. So this film used some editing choices in the subtitles that I found a bit clunky for continuity, such as capitalizing a new phrase following an ellipsis from another frame, when I would have used less distracting commas and lower-case letters, as it befitted the grammar. I found my eye jumping to the upper case and wondering if I'd lost the train of conversation from the last title. However, this is a grey area.

But my encounters with inconsistencies, treatments of numbers, expressions and, most egregiously, omitted titles were problematic.

Aside from the above regarding caps following ellipses, there were too many inconsistencies in punctuation treatment. Numerous clauses and sentences were incorrectly elided, either with too many or incorrectly placed commas, so that some sequences of subtitles should have been self-contained sentences and some should have been restricted to fewer clauses. Good writing in the script was misrepresented as long strings of spoken clauses.This sloppiness loses the reader, whose focus is returned to concentrating on the subtitles rather than absorbing their content subconsciously.

The treatment of numbers may seem like a picky topic, but it's not. Generally, editing conventions are to write out numbers between zero and nine or ten and to use numerals for 11 and above. Even if this had not been the stylistic choice, the jumping around was very distracting. I saw "2," "1st," "6-7 years" and, worst, "five minutes" and "15 minutes" and "30 minutes." In their contexts, those first three examples should have been written as "two," "first," and "six to seven years." Yes, the last three follow the above convention but a good editor knows when to break the rules to maintain reading flow. The scene involved counting off time being wasted by a character, so for better flow, I would have recommended using "5 minutes" to match the latter two time references.

Another translation and copy editing issue was around "n" and "N" plus a numeral: viewers were expected to know that "n55" and (inconsistently) "N55" meant number 55 or #55 as used in street addresses. This kind of error shows lack of consideration for the audience: it assumes a worldliness in all filmgoers, that they will know cultural references for all countries.

Here is another example of culturally differentiated mannerisms not being served by the subtitles. A character said she was going for—and made a going-to-sleep gesture, putting her head to the side on her joined hands under her ear. This is a gesture that is not culturally exclusive and probably is understood by most of the world as meaning "going to sleep." But in this case the subtitle was not left out and inserted "A nap!" (which is both incorrectly capped and punctuated); this is poor titling because she did not say "a nap" verbally, she only gesturally conveyed it.

One expression missed the mark. "It's a bit tradesman's entrance" should have been "It's a bit of a tradesman's entrance" or, because the point was to emphasize the slang and the distaste of the speaker, "It's a bit of a tradesman's entrance" (since italics would work better than single quotes inside double in titles). Not a horrendous problem, but I was stopped momentarily by it.

The choice to omit subtitles for some words was very unwise. One example was when a foreign word on a sign, key to a sub-plot, was left untranslated. It should be assumed that filmgoers are not all bilingual or multilingual and, even if they are, that the film's original language might not be one of theirs (and English itself might be a learned tongue). This type of error excludes some viewers and affects their experience with the film.

The other omission was frequent: completely non-existent subtitles for foreign words that were proper names for objects—and inconsistently! The post-production team and translator should have discussed and decided on the treatment of these names, applied the usage consistently and, again, not made assumptions about the viewers and what is general knowledge, especially when it applied to another language and a very particular niche of work. Equally annoying was when they allowed a spoken English word mid-phrase to have no subtitle, because it was assumed the English viewer knew what it meant. But when you have an actor saying it with an accent and when you drop a subtitle off, that creates reading and film-watching stumbles. Here is a fictional example of what I'm referring to:

Yes, it was on the

 

Was it? I didn't see that.

The words "BBC News" were omitted because they were spoken in English. But that is egregiously poor subtitling practice. The constant omissions were very distracting from the film experience, which is antithetical to subtitling and captioning.

It is rare to have perfect subtitles in a full-length feature, but the above examples illustrate some of the problems a subtitle editor can find by reviewing the text before distribution. The key is to allocate budget and time for this step in post-production. Film cannot engage foreign viewers if their absorption is interrupted, and being engrossed in a film is the audience's primary desire. Subtitling excellence is part of the value which filmmakers owe them.

 

This is the final of three pieces about why film subtitles need copy editing and proofreading by a professional editor and subtitler. The first addressed proofreading as a basic component to post-production and the second looked at editing poorly worded subtitles and captions. Vanessa Wells is a member of Editors' Association of Canada and SUBTLE: The Subtitlers' Association.

The photo above is from The Tribe, a movie which was made all the better for not using subtitles. Read my review of it in the second entry of this blog post.