by Dietlinde DuPlessis If you translate subtitles for streaming services into languages other than English, you most likely have received pivot-language assignments. If you are a native English speaker, you might have been asked to produce templates for pivot translations. If you are not familiar with the term pivot language, here is a short definition: […]
Getting Out of Your Comfort Zone: Translating Subtitles from Foreign Audio and an English Template
by Daniela Costa The growth of streaming isn’t surprising. From music and audiovisual content to podcasts, technology has helped these new platforms showcase original works. In recent years, there has been a surge in Netflix’s non-English materials. 50% of subscribers watch foreign-language shows when only 30% of viewers did so a couple of years ago¹. […]
Writing interpretation: an overview on a fascinating AV discipline
by Mara Campbell Last June, the Media for All 8 conference took place at the University of Stockholm. It was two days packed with 15 minute talks on many different subjects regarding audiovisual translation. One very interesting feature at the conference was the speech-to-text (STT) interpretation services provided. STT is basically a live transcription of […]
Forced Narratives? Forced Audiences!
By Mara Campbell and Sebastián Arias Sometimes it takes us ages to realize that we have been doing something inefficiently for a long time and nobody said a thing (probably because they didn’t notice). Generally, we can’t even establish the exact moment it started happening or who began doing it differently. My colleague and co-author […]
Demand for Non-English Subtitlers Rocketing
By Kelly O’Donovan Subtitles were always a part of post-production, but the demand wasn’t so intense until recently. For the most part, subtitled movies and documentaries travelled to film festivals or were distributed abroad. However, in the last five years, global content streaming platforms such as Netflix and Amazon Prime have exploded the subtitling scene. […]
ATA 60 Recap: Roma: Intralinguistic conflicts – In Essence
By Luz Gómez Interest in this in presentation arose when a variety of media sources focused on the linguistic and cultural angles of the Iberian subtitles in Alfonso Cuaron’s film Roma, and their subsequent infamy. Although a non-Spanish speaker might consider this matter superficial, it’s an excellent example of how two variants of a language […]
ATA 60 Recap: Audiovisual Accessibility: What Translators Need to Know
By Gabriela Ortiz This article is a summary of the presentation at the ATA Conference in Palm Springs and, as the title suggests, it is an introduction to audiovisual accessibility. It is arranged as a series of questions and answers to walk you through this field. Why should we care about accessibility? Two notions are […]
ATA 60 Recap: Cloud Subtitling: An Overview
By Pablo Fernández Moriano Desktop subtitling tools have been with us for quite a while now, but what about the cloud? Is it possible to complete the subtitling process entirely online and with professional results? How well do the current online tools cater to the requirements of professional subtitling? What aspects and functionalities are important […]
On the Audiovisual Radar: ATA 60
AVD-Related Presentations and Workshops on ATA60 October 24, 2019 Are you a CAD (Certified Audio Describer)? Joel Snyder This session offered an overview of the fundamentals of audio description and how interested individuals can become professional audio describers. Subtitle Editing: Walking the Fine Line Between Red-Pen Pedantry and Facilitating Audience Immersion Vanessa Wells This […]
Looking forward to ATA 60 with Distinguished Speaker Pablo Romero Fresco
By Mara Campbell The AV Division is thrilled to have Mr. Pablo Romero Fresco as our first Distinguished Speaker in the ATA 60th Annual Conference this October in Palm Springs, California. Mr. Romero Fresco is a Ramón y Cajal researcher at Universidade de Vigo (Spain) and Honorary Professor of Translation and Filmmaking at the University […]
My experience as a mentee in the AVD mentoring program
By Aída Carrazco Last year I attended my first ATA conference in New Orleans. It was a huge step for my professional development, and it changed my life. It was the first time I met face to face with fellow translators! I met people whom I can call friends now. I learned a lot, and […]
SubtitleNEXT Software Review
By Ana Lis Salotti This is the third instalment of the AVD technology column. This time I’ll review SubtitleNEXT by Profuz Digital. SubtitleNEXT is an all-encompassing professional timed-text software with every advanced feature an expert subtitler could ever wish for—so much so that working with it for the first time may be daunting. This is […]
Errors? Not quite…
By Radoslav Genchev Very often translators here and everywhere else are faced with presumably incorrect or erroneous translations, but this is not always the case. There are many factors to be taken into account. In translation, there are multiple errors that on second thought, do not appear as such. Here are some examples from translating […]
Deep Focus 4: Letter from our Administrator
Quality’s Enemy in Subtitling: Peripheral Errors by Deborah Wexler When audiovisual translators receive suggestions from the reviewer, files with track-changes, template changes, etc., they need to review the subtitle in context before making or accepting changes. If they don’t, the odds of introducing mistakes into the files grow dramatically. An example from a Tagalog to […]
Looking back on NOLA @ ATA59: An Audiovisual Perspective
by Ana Salotti This year at ATA has been particularly special for audiovisual professionals. For the first time in decades of a booming audiovisual industry, we finally have a specialized Division for those who work in the audiovisual field, a true milestone in the United States and abroad. However, by the time the brand new […]
