{"id":703,"date":"2019-08-10T15:35:18","date_gmt":"2019-08-10T15:35:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/AVD\/?p=703"},"modified":"2019-08-13T18:32:18","modified_gmt":"2019-08-13T18:32:18","slug":"deep-focus-2-letter-from-the-administrator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/AVD\/deep-focus-2-letter-from-the-administrator\/","title":{"rendered":"Deep Focus 2: Letter from the Administrator"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

by Deborah Wexler<\/h4>\n

In conversations about audiovisual translation, I often hear statements such as, \u201cClients don\u2019t care about quality,\u201d \u201cAgencies don\u2019t care about quality,\u201d \u201cTranslators don\u2019t care about quality,\u201d and so on. This begs the question, who wants quality? And ultimately, who is responsible for it?<\/p>\n

First, let\u2019s take a look at the audiovisual content ecosystem. Its members are content creators (studios, independent filmmakers, etc.), content providers (streaming services, broadcasters, etc.), translation agencies (posthouses, subtitling houses, dubbing studios, etc.), linguists, and consumers.<\/p>\n

On the creation side, does everybody want quality? The short answer is yes\u2026 but with a caveat.<\/strong>
\nContent creators and providers will always want quality, as long as it\u2019s accomplished within their time frame and budget. It\u2019s not that they\u2019re sitting around going, \u201cI want to put out products with the worst quality in the world. I couldn\u2019t care less about brand-damaging consequences due to customer dissatisfaction.\u201d But wanting quality and demanding quality are entirely different things. To strive for quality, content creators and providers would have to resist the two \u201cquality killers\u201d: insufficient time to perform quality work and insufficient money to fund quality work. The \u201cquality-time-money\u201d triangle has been written about exhaustively, but it\u2019s still ignored by many. Its bare-bones premise is that we can only pick two elements of the fast-cheap-good triad.<\/p>\n

On the consumer side, does everybody want quality? Yes!<\/strong>
\nConsumers will always want quality. But wanting quality and demanding quality are also two different things. To expect quality, consumers need to do their part and inform the system when errors or defects slip by.<\/p>\n

Responsibility<\/strong>
\nIt\u2019s clear that everybody wants quality, but who should be responsible for quality? The answer: the entire ecosystem. In the words of W. Edwards Deming, the quality guru, \u201cIn a well-organized system, all the components work together to support each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

The individual consumer has the least input in the audiovisual content ecosystem. But as individual consumers, there is one thing we can control: our voice. And having a voice carries responsibility.<\/p>\n

We are witnessing the phenomenal growth of streaming content. The largest global streaming company already has a button that allows us to flag errors. But do we? Do we pause our movie, click the button, write a note about the error and go back to our movie? No. We just repeat the tired phrase, \u201cThese people don\u2019t care about quality.\u201d Consumers usually don\u2019t do their part; they want to be left alone to watch their content in peace.<\/p>\n

But if, instead, we started creating a consumer culture of \u201cassess-report-improve,\u201d we would be nourishing the audiovisual content ecosystem and letting the creators or providers know that it\u2019s okay to pay for quality and to take their time to achieve it. As end users, we are not part of the quality-assurance process, which is a preventive measure, but of the quality-control process, which evaluates and helps with future improvements.<\/p>\n

How do we assess quality as consumers? A simple way is to ask whether the subtitles or dubbing stream met our expectations. For example: Did it have typos? No. Did it have translation errors? No. Were we able to read the subtitles before they disappeared from the screen? Yes. Then the quality is good. Style preferences should not be considered as a variable in assessing quality at this stage.<\/p>\n

If we look more closely and narrow down the universe of consumers to look at the audiovisual linguists and editors, they have a unique, informed, comprehensive, and consumer-focused perspective that can be invaluable: they know enough to point out real mistakes when caught as end users. And they should do their part to help accomplish the purest goal of this ecosystem: to create quality subtitle and dubbing products.<\/p>\n

Since everyone both wants quality and it\u2019s responsible for it, we should consider it a team activity, and as such, accept and enjoy being part of this wonderful ecosystem.<\/p>\n

\n

References<\/strong>:
\n\u201cW. Edwards Deming.\u201d The British Library. https:\/\/www.bl.uk\/people\/w-edwards-deming<\/a><\/p>\n

K. K. Navaratnam & Rory O\u2019Connor. \u201cQuality Assurance in Vocational Education: meeting the needs of the nineties\u201d. The Vocational Aspect of Education (1993) 45:2, 113-122, DOI: 10.1080\/0305787930450202.
\nhttps:\/\/doi.org\/10.1080\/0305787930450202. https:\/\/www.tandfonline.com\/doi\/pdf\/10.1080\/0305787930450202<\/a><\/p>\n

Jose, Harish. \u201cDharma, Karma and Quality\u201d (2016). https:\/\/harishsnotebook.wordpress.com\/2016\/06\/19\/dharma-karma-andquality\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Deming, W. E. \u201cThe New Economics for Industry, Government & Education\u201d. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for Advanced Engineering Study (1993). https:\/\/maaw.info\/ArticleSummaries\/ArtSumDeming93.htm<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Deborah Wexler In conversations about audiovisual translation, I often hear statements such as, \u201cClients don\u2019t care about quality,\u201d \u201cAgencies don\u2019t care about quality,\u201d \u201cTranslators don\u2019t care about quality,\u201d and so on. This begs the question, who wants quality? And ultimately, who is responsible for it? First, let\u2019s take a look at the audiovisual content […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[58,14,12],"tags":[22,17,20,62,16,63],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/AVD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/AVD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/AVD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/AVD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/AVD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=703"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/AVD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":740,"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/AVD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703\/revisions\/740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/AVD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/AVD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/AVD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}