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Live Text Access: Training for real-time intralingual subtitlers.
This is Unit 2. Linguistic competences.
Element 3. How to cope with speech related challenges?
Speech-related challenges, exit strategies and readability standards
Created by UAB and SSML
The learning outcomes for this unit are:
Identify speech-related challenges
when producing verbatim and sensatim subtitles,
apply exit strategies when necessary and comply with readability standards.
In this unit we will be dealing with the following points:​
Real-time intralingual subtitling and simultaneous interpreting,
exit strategies, readability standards,
main challenges and we will finish with a summary.
Real-time Intralingual Subtitling and Simultaneous Interpreting.
Live subtitling versus interpreting
Interpreters undertake various cognitively demanding tasks
such as retrieving, retaining, producing and monitoring information
almost concurrently.
Realtime intralingual subtitling
is sometimes linked to simultaneous interpreting
according to Carlo Eugeni 2008.
Real-time subtitlers perform two major tasks simultaneously,
comprehending the audio comments and producing subtitles.
Real-time intralingual subtitlers should pay attention
not to overload the focus of attention
and the language processing and retrieval
should be completed before the working memory fades away.
There are mainly three big skills
that real-time intralingual subtitlers have to poses:
Phonetic or ortotypographic, synthetic and psychocognitive.
First, phonetic or ortotypographic.
In the case of respeakers every single word
has to be pronounced in the clearest way possible.
taking into consideration non-gramatical aspects of language
that may cause a bad recognition by the software.
In the case of fast keyboard professionals such as velotypists
they have to master spelling.
Second, synthetic.
Deaf, read subtitles at a slower rate in comparison to normal hearers
Realtime subtitlers have to compress the ST syntactically and semantically
trying not to lose any relevant information.
Third, psycho-cognitive
Realtime subtitlers need to have SI competences
since they have to speak while listening to the ST.
Working memory.
Realtime intralingual subtitling poses a serious challenge
for an individual's cognitive load
In this sense the working memory is a limited-capacity mechanism
that is involved in both the processing
and the storing of currently active information
while tasks are being carried out.
An example of working memory is:
Peter gets two apples from his mother every day, but eats only one per day.
How many apples does he have at the end of the third day?
This classic example of mental arithmetic
is a good illustration of what working memory is for.
In addition to the working memory, the work of the real-time subtitler
involves the four main activities formulated by Jones in 2002
for simultaneous interpreting
which are: listening, understanding, analysing, and re-expressing.
Understanding refers to ideas that have to be rendered as a ST.
Obviously, the real-time intralingual subtitler cannot understand ideas
if he/she does not know the words the speaker is using to express them.
In the case of analysing,
real-time intralingual subtitlers may proceed to analyse the speech.
Speeches may be of different kinds,
such as reasoned, logical, argumented, narrative, chronological sequence, descriptive,
purely rhetorical, under others.
Real-time intralingual subtitlers should differentiate
between what is important in the speakers utterances
and what is secondary,
and what is essential and what accessory.
Real-time subtitlers need to reformulate the wording of the original
to maintain the right distance from the speaker.
Long and complicated sentences
are to be broken down into easier and shorter ones.
Relative and subordinate clauses can be shifted around
within a sentence or passive clauses changed into active.
Real-time subtitlers must use reformulation as the tool
that will enable them to deal with all kinds of difficulties
while remaining as close as possible to the utterances of the speaker.
To this aim, some exit strategies can be applied.
Exit strategies
It is important to highlight that there are no exact rules
as to when to condense and reformulate, or when to omit.
Long and complicated sentences are to be broken down
into a series of easier, shorter ones.
This is the case of reformulation.
One of the most used techniques in terms of reformulation
is the so-called “salami” technique proposed by Jones in 2002.
The author refers to salami technique as a way of slicing up a sentence
like cutting slices of salami.
Speakers, usually formulate long, complicated sentences.
The real-time intralingual subtitler must divide up the speaker’s sentences
into a number of short, self- contained and then link them as appropriate.
Real-time intralingual subtitlers are constantly under pressure
with the added burden of not knowing where the speaker is going.
The need to be able to reformulate so as to express oneself efficiently
exists for all languages,
but for some languages it is more acute than others.
Simplification consists in a lexical or stylistic simplification of the original.
A real-time subtitler is sometime faced with highly technical material.
For such speeches, it is desirable to simplify the speech
through generalisation or deletion.
Generalisation consists in 'buying time' by producing generic utterances
such as replacing a segment with a general term or idea unit.
Deletion consists in an omission of superfluous information.
These techniques might apply if the speech is too technical.
A real-time intralingual must try to save the essentials by simplification.
Second, the speaker may be talking too fast
or in some contexts different speakers might be speaking at the same time.
The faithful rendering of the message would just leave the audience confused
also due to delays.
Addition, real-time subtitlers maybe faced with notions,
cultural, or institutional references that are not known by the audience
and should be explained.
The problem is that this takes time.
Real-time subtitlers can use additions in order to clarify the message
and explain the meaning of a term or wording, such as an acronym,
the first time it is mentioned, and after refer to it an abbreviated form,
thus saving time.
Addition can be used also to maintain the coherence.
In terms of anticipation real-time intralingual subtitlers
should take anticipation when they often begin a sentence
without knowing exactly where the sentence is going.
The anticipation can be possible from the context of a meeting.
For instance, a discussion or negotiations, delegations...
Positions or arguments will become known,
return to points already made by the same or other speakers.
It should be stressed that these exit strategies
are just means, not ends.
Exit strategies are not and end in itself, but make real-time subtitling possible.
They are tools that allow professionals to master their own decalage.
The decalage is the length of time between the start of the speech
and the beginning of the text shown on the screen.
Long decalage allows higher accuracy but results in long delays.
Such exit strategies have the potential
to reduce the cognitive load of real-time intralingual subtitlers
by allowing professionals to concentrate on fluent
and accurate production of the target message.
Readability standards.
Readability standards for subtitles can differ depending on the country.
A common factor is that high-quality subtitles must be readable,
otherwise, they aren’t accessible.
The goal of subtitles should be to match the intent
and tone of the audio so that D/deaf and Hard of Hearing individuals
can comprehend the content.
Punctuation.
Real-time subtitling requires also traditional subtitling skills
like punctuation, which applies to both verbatim and sensatim subtitles,
and segmentation in the case of sensatim subtitles.
A major problem when dealing with readability standards
is the reading speed.
The following table based on a study carried out by Arnáiz Uzquiza,
presents the speed-related information in different countries
based on number of characters, lines and speed in words per minute
as included in the SDH guidelines of different countries.
In the vase of UK, the official standards drawn by Ofcom’s
is that subtitling speed should normally not exceed 180 wpm,
which are 15 characters per second.
Therefore, more of the times exit strategies are applied.
Simple syntactic structures are both shorter and easier to understand
than complex syntactic structures.
So, make it simple!
Main challenges.
Main challenges are the following:
Decalage has to be kept short
Rigid time constraints due to synchronisation,
Keep up with fast dialogues
Terminology management, technical terms,
proper names and foreign words,
Summary.
As a summary we would like to stress the following points:
Real-time subtitling is closely linked to interpreting.
Working memory is a limited-capacity mechanism.
No clear rules can be given as to when to condense
and reformulate, or when to omit.
Reformulation depends on the speech rate of the source text.
Simple syntactic structures are shorter and easier to understand
than complex syntactic structures.
High-quality subtitles must be readable,
otherwise, they are not accessible.
Decalage has to be kept as short as possible
Exercises.
The exercises for this video lecture are in the trainer’s guide
and the PowerPoint file.
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