The introduction to this Unit has already explained what velotyping is.
The introduction to this element has already explained
what are the psycho-cognitive skills a velotypist must possess.
This video lecture is aimed at letting you know
the strategies a velotypist applies
when he or she realises the speaker is challenging.
To do so, I will define the challenging speaker.
to then move to the strategies a velotypist tries to apply
when having to deal with specific challenges
like a fast speech,
incomprehensible speech,
a low-volume speech,
an impromptu speech
and plays on words.
This is the agenda of this presentation.
As you have seen,
a velotypist has to do many things at the same time.
In this Element,
we will deal with the psychocognitive skill
of activating exit strategies while velotyping,
if you realize the speaker is challenging.
In particular,
for a velotypist to be able and become a professional in the field,
he or she has also to apply solutions to problems
he or she may encounter when subtitling,
due to the fact that he or she is no longer capable
of providing the service as required.
While you can only develop these competences by the time
and thanks to ad hoc exercises,
you may be interested in understanding the rationale behind it all.
To do this, we will see what a challenging speaker is.
For every challenge, I will try to provide concrete solutions.
What does it mean a speaker is challenging?
There are many situations where I found myself
trying to subtitle a speech I found it hard to subtitle.
Here we will see five situations
which may cause troubles to respeakers
when subtitling a speech in real time.
For sure, a speaker is challenging
when he or she speaks above your MARS,
or your capacity to produce text as rapidly and accurately as needed,
However, a fast speaker can be less challenging than a speaker
whose utterances are incomprehensible for some reason
or pronounced far from the mic or at a low volume.
These are the worst to me.
Some colleagues also find it difficult
to subtitle speakers who have not planned their speech beforehand,
and speakers who keep using plays on words.
Here are some examples of challenging speakers.
When trying to subtitle people speaking very fast,
there are three types of problems.
One is that you are not capable to produce accurate text at the same speed.
A second problem is that you cannot memorize or even understand
what quick speakers say.
Last but not least,
even if you were capable of keeping the same pace as the speaker,
your audience would have problems reading your subtitles at the same speed,
especially if subtitles are visible as two-liner subtitles.
So what shall we do when a speaker speaks too fast?
Let’s consider this example,
taken from the opening of the famous address
delivered by Martin Luther King in 1963,
at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
Let’s read it.
I am happy to join with you today
in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom
in the history of our nation.
Five score years ago, a great American,
in whose symbolic shadow we stand today,
signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope
to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared
in the flames of withering injustice.
It came as a joyous daybreak
to end the long night of their captivity.
Now let’s pretend we are subtitling Dr. King’s speech in real time
and that we were not given the text of the speech beforehand.
If we had the script of the speech, we could feed the software with this
or train ourselves with it.
But we cannot.
Let’s also pretend he is very stressed and starts speaking very quickly.
What can we do?
In this case one solution may be the Gordian Knot Strategy,
or cut and knit.
It means that you can subtitle
only half of the sentences pronounced by the speaker
while trying to keep coherence.
In this example,
you can avoid pronouncing every other sentence
and still provide understandable subtitles,
with little or no cohesion effort.
Let’s read the text as a result of this strategy.
We will see it keeps saying more or less the same thing.
I am happy to join with you today.
Five score years ago,
a great American signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope
to millions of Negro slaves.
It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.
Of course this is not always easy.
Sometimes, doing this may cause even more troubles.
Let’s consider the same example,
and apply the Gordian Knot strategy in a different manner.
Let’s read the text as a result of a badly applied Gordian Knot strategy.
I am happy to join with you today
in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom
in the history of our nation.
This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope
to millions of Negro slaves,
who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice.
But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free.
We can see that this creates some inconsistencies.
Given that the sentence with the reference to Abraham Lincoln
having signed the Emancipation Proclamation is left out.
with Abraham Lincoln having signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
This creates a huge cohesion problem,
because the following sentences refer to it.
Are we still capable of guessing what the speaker means by "Negro slaves"?
Are the subtitles referring to the same people the speaker is referring to?
And what does the "hundred years later" phrase refer to?
When you are not confident going for the Gordian Knot,
prefer the Garwood Strategy.
When in doubt, leave it out.
You leave out an entire chunk.
And start from the first sentence
you think makes sense to re-start from.
In this case, it is the last sentence
without the reference to that "something",
you were not able to subtitle which happened 100 years before.
The final result is the following.
I am happy to join with you today
in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom
in the history of our nation.
The Negro still is not free.
This is an extreme solution.
The audience realizes that subtitles do not read
what is said by the speaker.
This is not a problem if this is rarely adopted
and if you are capable of explaining the reason.
Do you remember Charles Chaplin in the Great Dictator?
There dictator Hynkel speaks fake German to the people of Tomainia
who applaud him.
When we type, it may happen that we as real-time subtitlers
find ourselves in situations
where we don’t understand the sentence or sentences
that the speaker pronounces
while it seems that his or her audience does
as in this famous scene.
In such cases, you can adopt the Generalisation Strategy.
If you know the topic and the context,
and you more or less know what he or she is saying,
you can either relate to the last concept you have understood
by either reformulating it,
or saying something that does not commit yourselves too much,
like something general or logical.
Let’s consider some examples.
Let’s consider the same example as above.
Here you stop understanding the speaker when he says:
“This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope
to millions of Negro slaves,
who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice”.
What can you do?
You can try to keep providing the subtitling service,
by reformulating the last concept you have understood,
meaning: "Five score years ago,
a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today,
signed the Emancipation Proclamation".
Here is the result.
The sentence is replaced
by the reformulation of the last subtitled sentence,
"The Emancipation proclamation signed 100 years ago,
by such a Great American, is the symbol of us all today".
It may sound a bit redundant
but this is an inspirational speech with an important use of rhetoric.
This strategy is not to be confused with cheating.
Here you don’t lie.
On the contrary, you keep providing correct information.
And consequently, the audience keeps relying on the subtitles
because they keep seeing them under the speaker’s mouth.
If you understand the overall message
the speaker wants to deliver
thanks to context, body language or from slides he or she uses
you can replace the missing bits
with logical consequences or general statements,
without jeopardising understanding of the source text,
or cheating with fake information,
The final result is:
"This was a fundamental step in our history
that made this gathering possible".
You have replaced
the incomprehensible sentence with a general statement,
which is also a logical continuation of the previous sentence.
When you are no confident going for the Generalisation Strategy, again,
prefer the Garwood Strategy: when in doubt, leave it out.
Remember that this is an extreme solution
and that the audience realizes that subtitles do not read
what is said by the speaker.
Some speakers, like Marlon Brando's Don Corleone in The Godfather
who mumble or speak with a low volume
that the problem is not that you don’t understand them.
With a little effort you do.
The problem is when you try to type
your concentration is on typing correctly.
Moreover, the extra effort involved in understanding the speaker,
reduces your capacity to type.
So, what can you do in such cases?
If the speaker speaks out of the mic or with a low volume,
there is little we can do.
You can ask the speaker to speak closer to the mic or louder,
if you are physically close to him or her.
However, sometimes it happens
that a speaker used to do this, speaking with a low volume
or not caring about the microphone,
he or she will not manage to behave for long.
In such cases, you can only adopt
the Gordian Knot strategy, or cut and knit.
As seen previously,
the Gordian Knot consists in hearing a sentence
and repeating it as fast as possible once it is over,
by compressing it if you can.
Then, you can skip the following sentence
and concentrate on the third sentence of the row.
Which you are going to repeat as quickly as possible once it is over,
by paying attention to cohesion and coherence
As in the case of a fast speaker,
this is something that you cannot do for long.
There is a huge debate, among scholars and among professionals,
about whether one can subtitle all features of orality.
Somebody says yes,
because one must be faithful to what the speaker actually says.
Somebody says no,
because readability and understandability is more important.
Especially when it comes to a politician,
the question of reproducing one's bad grammar or mistakes
is all the more important.
It has to do with being fair with the opposition,
or diplomatic with the speaker.
Though an answer is difficult to provide
because, to me, both parties have their point,
Let me now concentrate on how to deal with features of orality.
They jeopardise both your understanding as a real-time subtitler
and that of the audience reading verbatim subtitles.
So, what can you do?
Though we always have to understand which strategy is better to use,
verbatim or sensatim,
an impromptu speech is an obstacle to the subtitling process,
especially in the case velotyping is used as a subtitle tool.
Because it is sometimes a challenge to type non-existing words,
like those speakers, especially foreigners
may produce as a result of calques from their native language
or as a result of mispronunciation.
So, how to cope with impromptu speech?
If it is a challenge to the subtitling process,
you can go for correcting one’s bad grammar
or go straight to the point.
If it is not relevant that the speaker makes mistakes
because he or she is a non-native, speaking English as a communication tool,
no matter if he or she doesn’t pronounce words properly,
selects wrong words, mumbles,
hesitates, self-reformulates, produces extra sounds etc.
What is important in a conference speech is the main message.
If you manage to understand what he or she says,
and recognize pronunciation, grammar and lexical mistakes,
due to the speaker’s native language,
you can go and correct his or her output.
Preferably, with short sentences.
Given that foreigners tend to speak slowly compared to native speakers,
the strategy is to wait for a complete sentence and then continue typing.
The delay should be enough to let you produce correct sentences.
Don’t try to follow the pace of the speakers
Because you might have to go back and retype parts of what was said.
Concretely, let’s consider this concrete example
taken from the transcription of a speech made by an Italian politician
famous for not being an excellent speaker of English.
[reads the slide]
This speaker is challenging.
Especially if you don't guess what is the meaning the speaker wants to deliver.
However, truncating what the speaker says into smaller chunks is quite easy
because grammar is simple
Now consider the examples we have just seen
Mr. Renzi who speaks here is a challenging speaker.
However, truncating what the speaker says into smaller chunks is quite easy
because Mr. Renzi, like many foreigners, uses a simple grammar.
A possible result trying to keep as much of the original as possible
and producing short sentences could be:
[he reads the slide]
OK, remember that this manipulation of the source text
is only possible at the grammar level.
Not at the content level.
Otherwise this may cause differences between those who hear the speaker
and those who read the subtitles.
Also consider that somebody having heard what the speaker says
may contradict him or her
or correct him or her.
Plays on words are really terrible to type for many reasons.
especially if you have to subtitle them live.
In the movie Pulp Fiction, Uma Thurman tells a joke to John Travolta
Which says:
[he reads the slide]
I don’t want to know how much time it took
to those who had to subtitle this into other languages,
or if they managed to do it.
But even intralingually, this is not an easy task.
This joke is based on two homophones.
The verb "catch up" as a synonym to "speed up"
and the noun "ketchup", the tomato-based sauce.
When it is a play involving a non-standard spelling,
we normally stop and type the word in uppercase letters.
As a signal to the audience that that is the word or group of words
where they have to focus their attention,
as that is the funny part of the joke.
Some colleagues use inverted commas.
Some others put an exclamation mark after the wordplay.
Some others use the caption [laughter].
What do we do in this case,
where a homophone is used to provoke the laughter in this case?
One solution can be that of spelling the non-standard homophone,
the unexpected one.
In this case we use ellipses as a suspense technique.
Then we use uppercase letters
to say that they have to concentrate on the word Ketchup,
the unexpected, laughter-provoking synonym to catch up or speed up.
In this video lecture, we have seen some concrete examples
of how to behave when a speaker is challenging.
When a speaker is challenging,
we need to adopt what we call here Exit Strategies,
meaning strategies to apply to exit a potentially dangerous situation,
for either the subtitler, the audience or both.
In case of a fast speaker,
the mostly used technique is the Gordian Knot,
or cut and knit strategy.
Meaning trying to reduce the speech by omitting whole chunks
and managing to make the non-omitted parts coherent among them.
An extreme solution is the Garwood strategy,
meaning leaving everything out and explaining why you did so.
The Garwood strategy is also an extreme strategy
for incomprehensible speeches.
However, replacing incomprehensible bits with general or logical bits
is to be preferred if possible.
When a speaker speaks with a low volume, the Gordian Knot is the best solution.
When a speaker makes an Impromptu speech with mistakes and features of orality,
the strategy is to skip them
and try to produce short and correct sentences.
Finally, when it comes to plays on words,
the best solution is to type the laughter-provoking unexpected word
in uppercase characters.