Video scripts
Unit 2: The Art of Subtitling
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Part 1: Localization
The language that we speak isn’t just a way to communicate between each other. Our language is central
to our cultural identity.
It’s vitally important that every country can create their own film and television, in their own language,
and that this can be shared with others around the world. Not speaking the language of a film shouldn’t
stop an audience from enjoying it.
In the earliest days of cinema this wasn’t a problem. The very first films were international because they
were silent. It was very easy to translate the ‘intertitles’ – the on-screen cards that explained what was
going on.
But in 1927 sound arrived in the cinemas. And this was a new challenge for film-makers who wanted
people around the world to see their films. Soon, the first subtitles started appearing on screen. While
audiences were reading a translation of the dialogue on-screen they could still hear the actors speaking
the original language of the film.
As technology improved it became easier to ‘dub’ a film. The dialogue was translated and the new
dialogue was recorded by actors in a studio. So, the audience was watching the original actors on screen,
but they were listening to different actors who were speaking their own language.
Dubbing soon became common for foreign language films and television shown in countries like France,
Italy and Spain. And it is still very common today. But dubbing is more expensive than subtitling. And it
never became popular in Scandinavian countries, the UK and the USA. So, most audiences didn’t really
have a choice between dubbed or subtitled foreign language films.
Today, you can watch films and TV from around the world with just the press of a button. With the
incredible rise of video streaming services, audiences can now select from dubbed or subtitled versions,
in multiple different languages. And this demand for international content has created lots of exciting
new opportunities for language lovers.
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Part 2: A challenging job
This is BTI Studios in London. BTI Studios work for broadcasters, video streaming services and film
studios adapting film and television content for new audiences. They translate, subtitle and dub content
for audiences all over the world. In their 22 offices across Europe, the USA and Asia, BTI Studios
produces over 8 million minutes of adapted content every year.
My name is Hilde Jørgensen. I'm from Norway, er, and I've been working and living in London for a little
over three years now. Erm, I work for BTI Studios in Chiswick. I work as a subtitler, er, and an editor.
Er, I do, er, translation from English and the Scandinavian languages and German into Norwegian. And
I do Norwegian and German into English.
So basically, er, what I do is I literally create the subtitles that you see on screen, er, for television and
for, for cinemas and for, er, VOD clients. That's video on demand, the big streaming services.
All the subtitlers at BTI Studios are multilingual.
I come from a background of, erm, literature. I studied literature and linguistics and I studied, er,
English literature, a little bit of German and Italian literature.
Hilde works on all sorts of film and television programmes. While she watches the screen, she listens to
the dialogue, translates it, and types the on-screen subtitles.
Literally what you see is what we do, the physical work of it when the block appears on screen, how long
it's there for, what it looks like, what it contains and where it leaves, where it disappears.
It’s very challenging work, and she has to work quickly.
We normally measure the, er, the time it takes based on, like, one programme, one, one show, one
episode should take about a day. Er, so we should do approximately half an hour a day. That's, that's the
first translation, which means that we do everything from scratch.
Today, she is listening to a conversation in English, translating it in her head, and creating the subtitles in
Norwegian on screen.
You, create these, these boxes of translations, erm, that correspond with the dialogue that you, you hear.
So it's like getting the dialogue in one ear and then the, er, words come out of your mouth, except you,
you're writing them down. Erm, so you have to be able to think in two languages simultaneously.
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The biggest problems are time and space. There isn’t very much room on-screen for text. And people
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haven’t got very long to read the subtitles. So sometimes it’s difficult to accurately translate the dialogue
into short sentences. You have to condense the language a lot. You have to shorten sentences, shorten
long speeches in order to make them fit into these small boxes that are on screen for only a few seconds.
Part 3: A passion for languages
With recent developments in technology, voice recognition and artificial intelligence, it’s easy to think
that translation could be done by a computer. And maybe one day it will be. Computer translation is
improving all the time.
But there’s much more to Hilde’s job than literally translating every word of dialogue, and she doesn’t
think that it’s work that a machine can do.
I, personally, would say that I am completely opposed to, er, what we call auto-translation, which is
basically letting a machine, er, do the work and then just maybe looking through it and making small
corrections.
The offices at BTI Studios are full of talented and creative language experts, rather than just computers,
for a very good reason.
You can't train a machine to understand poetry and sense of humour and, er, understand, erm, to read
between the lines.
And sometimes, especially with idiomatic language, there’s just no literal translation. And then Hilde
needs to use her knowledge and experience to try to find the best possible translation. For idioms such as
‘I’m dying for a coffee,’ a literal translation could sound very strange in some languages.
If I can't really find a good, accurate, er, literal translation, er, I try to remind the viewer of the context,
try to use associative words, erm, for, for idioms and phrases like that.
Subtitling isn’t an easy job. But Hilde loves it.
Although this job can be really challenging and demanding and tight deadlines, sometimes stressful, I
really, really, really, honestly love my job. I would definitely recommend this job to people who are
passionate about languages, passionate about film, erm, and want to do a slightly different kind of
translation work. You always feel like you have done something important at the end of the day. And it's
never boring. It's never dull. It is so, so rewarding.
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