Unit 3A, Easy to understand and subtitling
element 1, Processes
Interview with users on what they think of E2U SDH.
This video includes an interview with Costanza Marini.
She holds a BA in Applied Interlinguistic Communication
from Università di Trieste
and an MA in Linguistics and Modern Languages
from Università di Pavia.
She is currently a PhD candidate in Linguistic Sciences
at Università di Bergamo.
In this interview, Costanza talks about subtitling nowadays
to what extent these subtitles are accessible for all
and how they could be improved.
Hi.
I'm Roberta Cepak, a PhD candidate at Pompeu Fabra University
in Barcelona.
My field of study is Translation
and I'm here today with my dear friend Costanza Marini
who is also a PhD candidate and agreed to collaborate with us.
Hi, Costanza. Do you want to introduce yourself briefly?
Of course. My name is Costanza Marini
and I am a PhD candidate at the University of Bergamo.
I specialize in Linguistics, specifically Croatian.
Okay, very well.
Today, I want to talk with you about subtitling
specifically for the deaf and the hard of hearing.
Do you perhaps use subtitling in your daily life?
Yes, I do.
I use captions.
When there is the option, I usually use captions.
I tend to use them for one or two reasons.
It's either because I'm in a noisy room
and I wouldn't be able to understand what has been said
if I didn't have captions on.
Or I use them for learning purposes
language learning purposes.
When I want to practice my Croatian
then I put on either English or Croatian subtitles
to understand more of what's going on and learn new vocabulary.
I do the same when I'm not sure if I'm going to understand something
or maybe I'm in a loud room.
Yeah, they're very useful.
On which platforms do you use them
or do you only use them on the TV maybe?
No, I use them on several platforms:
Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+
but also Sky Q.
Okay.
And, among all the captions you've been using on these platforms
do you find them all to be accessible to all the people in the audience
or maybe sometimes they could be adapted?
I think that they could be adapted
especially if we think of people who are cognitively impaired
and are not able to decode
what's written in the caption at the same speed as us.
So I would say that definitely some captions might need improvement
maybe in terms of syntax, so I would go for shorter sentences
and maybe I would also avoid using too many modifiers
in noun phrases
and I would also maybe simplify the vocabulary
in so far as maybe exchanging less frequent words
with more frequent equivalents, so synonyms and the like.
Of course.
Yeah, those are all very good options.
Do you think that these adaptations you've been naming
could be actually implemented in all the platforms
or maybe also on TV, and, if so
could they be used in all broadcast content?
Well
I would say that yes, they can be used
on all the platforms.
Maybe, when you think of the layout, the way that users view captions
in some contexts they might be more useful than others.
When there are a lot of characters interacting with each other in a scene
in that case I would say that having captions
that are close to the characters speaking
is more useful than having captions in a documentary film
with only one narrator.
But that doesn't mean that you can't improve
and use captions for a documentary
simplifying the syntax of what the narrator is saying
for cognitive impaired people, but also normal users.
Yes
I agree with you.
But now think about it. Do you think
all captions are always easy to use
or sometimes they could be difficult to read or to comprehend even?
Maybe sometimes I have experienced some discomfort if you think about it
when using captions
that don't allow me to appreciate what's going on in the scenes
sometimes you have big captions
at the bottom of your screen
and that doesn't allow you to see what's going on.
Not being able to choose the size or the colour of the captions...
that's annoying.
So I would say that's a feature that could be added for improvement.
Okay, yes.
So you would customise the format
and the colours of the subtitles and captions.
Definitely, yeah. -Yeah.
Our time is up, but thank you so much for taking part in this interview
and I will see you soon.
Thanks to you, thank you very much. See you soon.
This video was prepared by Roberta Cepak
from Universitat Pompeu Fabra
and Costanza Marini, from Univesità di Bergamo
and produced by Jesús Meiriño-Gómez, from Universidade de Vigo.