[LTA intro music]
LiveTextAccess.
Training for real-time intralingual subtitlers.
This is Unit 1. Understanding accessibility.
Element 3. Embedding accessibility in working environments.
In this video lecture, we show the first part
of a testimonial by D’Arcy McPherson,
a real-time intralingual subtitler from Canada.
He will talk about real-time subtitles in the TV context.
You can also watch the interview on the same topic
made with Evan Dorrestein.
My name is Piero Cavallo
from the Internationale Hochschule SDI München, in Germany.
I have prepared this video lecture
in collaboration with Rocío Bernabé Caro, also from SDI München,
and the European Federation of Hard of Hearing, in short, EFHOH.
On completion of the training sequence,
you will be able to advise customers about how to best set up
an accessible real-time working environment
for persons with hearing loss
in the trained working contexts and settings.
To achieve that,
we will show testimonials and interviews of professionals.
The agenda is very short.
First, I am going to introduce our invited speaker, D’Arcy McPherson.
Then, I will illustrate the topics of the interview.
Finally, this video lecture ends with a summary.
Please note, that this is the first part of the lecture.
First of all, let me introduce you D’Arcy McPherson.
D’Arcy McPherson is a broadcast captioner and court reporter from Canada.
During his career, he also worked in other countries.
He is now the director of Hansard Services,
at the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia, in Canada.
He uses a stenotype machine to provide real-time subtitles.
Let me give you some information
before watching the first part of the video.
In this first part of the video,
D’Arcy answered some questions that we sent to him before
using a webcam.
He talks about how to best set up
in order to provide accessibility with real-time subtitles in live TV,
or broadcast captioning, as he calls it.
First, he introduces the equipment that he uses,
with a focus
on how artificial intelligence is helping to provide a better service.
He also highlights the importance of having a good study background
and the differences between subtitling different TV programs.
Finally, D’Arcy addresses to the importance of having
a first period of internship.
Ok, let’s watch the video now!
Hello. My name is D'Arcy McPherson
and I am a speech capturer.
I use capture speech in broadcast captioning
by using this little machine here.
I was trained as a court reporter
and took that training, and I’ve done different things in different ways with it.
work in different locations,
both in Canada, where I live, and abroad.
I've been very lucky with that
and I was asked to speak to you today a little bit about broadcast captioning.
And what I need to do in order to do my job,
I’ve already shown you the machine, but I’ll go through a few other things.
I’ll talk about the skills, the equipment that I use,
as well as some additional considerations,
including consumer needs and expectations,
as well as the future prospects
and what I believe the career is looking like
in coming years.
So, to begin:
the method of operating is with a stenographic theory,
which is based on phonetics and syllable content,
and the aim is to...
produce captions at a high rate of speed and a high level of accuracy.
That does take a lot of years of practice, and study, and application.
It does require a solid shorthand dictionary without conflicts
that you use prefixes and suffixes
and, again, a software program where you build your dictionary,
so that when you type a stroke on the machine,
it coordinates with the database in the dictionary
and puts out the correct word, or phrase or syllable.
There are also other aspects to the software which are really helpful.
We didn't used to have those,
but there are certainly features that are welcome and appreciated now,
such as: phonetic spellings.
You can design the application to mirror your theory,
so that, if it comes across a stroke that's not in your dictionary,
it will use artificial intelligence to give it a good guess.
And while it's not always right, it often is,
That's very helpful. It's always good to have tools that work.
As a stenographer and a speech capturer
it's very important to be able to reflect the spoken word
in a readable way.
That means you have to have a solid foundation,
a good grounding in grammar and punctuation,
so that, as someone is speaking, you're able to punctuate them
so that it comes up on the screen correctly,
and that you have a good understanding
of what they're trying to say grammatically,
so that it can also be conveyed
and you can make minor tweaks along the way.
So, that's helpful.
One of the things that differentiates a stenographer
from, say, artificial intelligence,
at least at this point, is that we can input speakers’ names,
so that, when you have multiple speakers,
you can show the difference between,
say, the reporter, the reporter's name
in a news broadcast,
or an announcer's name
or whoever's speaking, you can input that,
so that the reader has more information
to be able to better understand what they're watching,
which is the goal.
We have specific speaker identifiers.
We also have environmental sounds that we reflect,
because someone who's Hard of Hearing,
or who may not have the sound on the television on,
will need to understand if a phone is ringing.
If someone who is hearing can hear it, then someone who's not hearing
should understand what's going on those environmental sounds.
That can include things like music,
as an intro to a segment or laughter,
so that they know that it's a joke
if it's not always clear with the words that are being put up.
Also, to indicate there's silence, that there's nothing going on,
so they're aware of that
and they're not thinking there's a problem with the captioning.
If a phone rings or a dog barks, if there's a siren,
thunder, or if a different language is spoken,
you have to indicate that as well.
If you know what the language is, that's great,
because that's additional information.
But if all you know is that it's...
a language other than the one that you're committed to writing,
then you have to indicate that. Usually, you would say something like:
[another language spoken], or [foreign language spoken].
Those are the basic foundational aspects, in terms of skills.
When it comes to equipment,
I've shown you the machine, and I use a small computer
that connects to that a laptop
I have excellent network and satellite and cable capability,
because you want to be able to rely on your tools,
and the last thing you want is to have...
something go out or something go wrong
when you're 2 minutes away from going on air.
That's not ideal and causes stress. And you want to avoid stress.
I have an ergonomic chair and a good desk.
The machine that I have has an adjustable tripod,
so I can make it go forward or back, or up or down,
That makes my life a lot easier
and I have less stress and strain at the end of the day, which is which.
I have noise-canceling headphones that I use, which are wonderful,
especially if you live in a household, where there may be
other noise from people that you live with.
I have multiple screens,
on some screens, if it's a sporting event that I'm captioning,
and there are teams, I have the rosters there.
If I have to research for a specific program, I’ll have a vocabulary list
that's available to me,
and I don't have to go wrestling through papers to look for it.
For my work, I do broadcast captioning
as an adjunct to another role that I play,
which I will talk about in another video.
For me, most of the work that I do is in the evenings, or on the weekends,
in addition to my day job,
That's a little bit of background there.
Other considerations for a lot of people who do
closed captioning:
they also do one-on-one work with people who are Hard of Hearing.
But even if you don’t work one-on-one with people who are Hard of Hearing,
it's still important to have an understanding that the prime target
for broadcast captioning,
real time closed captioning,
are people who have hearing loss of some nature.
It's not exclusive to that,
but that's the primary consideration,
especially, when you're talking about accommodation and accessibility.
It's helpful for...
people who are providing that service to have some sensitivity training,
so that you're aware of that audience and the needs of that audience.
that's not always something that's addressed,
but local associations can provide training like that.
And I think it's really useful
and puts everything in context for the work that you're doing.
Some people also have basic sign language,
or more advanced sign language,
especially if you're working one-to-one with people.
That's a very important thing
just to be able to get that ball started.
Not all people who are Hard of Hearing...
are from the culturally Deaf community.
They may not know sign language, but it's nice to be able to, at least, start.
And it indicates that you have a--
you've put some thought and effort into how to communicate
with people who may be Hard of Hearing.
As a broadcast captioner, I work through a company.
They assign me work
and have a certain standard of codes of ethics
and captioning protocols,
ways that they like to see their captions that they're providing
for their clients on the screen.
That's an important factor for captions to be aware of:
that not all networks are the same and not all contacts are the same.
For instance, if I'm doing a basketball game,
they like to have their captions on the top of the screen with two lines.
If I'm doing a news program, they like it slightly above the bottom,
so that they can have their graphics come through,
and usually, it's in two or three lines, depending on their preference.
Sometimes there'll be graphics on the left-hand side of the screen
and you can shift your captions through your machine
to the right side to make sure that things are a little clearer
for the viewer,
so they can have that same information, those graphics, available to them.
It's important to understand the jurisdiction, or firm,
that you're working in
and communicate with others in the field,
to get a good sense of what's expected of you.
As you're starting out,
most schools will encourage you
and, in fact, it would be part of the curriculum
to have a period of internship, or shadowing,
with a reporter who's...
already doing the job and has been doing it for a while,
so that you can ask questions on the fly.
The summary.
To briefly sum up,
we can say that in order to work
as a real-time subtitler in live television,
it is very important to have a strong theoretical background,
both on linguistic aspects
and the end users for whom subtitles represent an access service.
Then, we have seen that the development of artificial intelligence
in the last years can really help to improve your service.
Of course, the subtitler needs to always monitor the situation.
Moreover, we have seen that not all TV programs are the same,
and because of that,
the subtitles provided will differ from program to program.
The subtitler should be aware of that.
Finally,
D’Arcy addresses to the importance of having a first period of internship.
This is suggested to put into practice
what you learned and to improve your skills
with the help of a mentor or experts in the field.
Exercises.
The exercises for this video lecture are in the Trainer’s Guide
and the PowerPoint file of part 2.
[LTA outro music]
LTA - LiveTextAccess.
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
SDI - Internationale Hochschule.
Scuola Superiore per Mediatori Linguistici.
2DFDigital.
The European Federation of Hard of Hearing People - EFHOH.
VELOTYPE.
SUB-TI ACCESS.
European Certification and Qualification Association - ECQA.
Co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union.
Erasmus+ Project:
2018-1-DE01-KA203-004218.
The information and views set on this presentation
are those of the authors
and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion
of the European Union.
Neither the European Union institutions and bodies
nor any person acting on their behalf
may be held responsible for the use
which may be made of the information contained here.