EASIT. Easy Access for Social Inclusion Training.
This is Unit 3A.
Easy-to-Understand and subtitling.
Element 1.
Processes.
Video lecture:
What are Easy-to-Understand subtitles?
My name is Rocío Bernabé
from the Internationale Hochschule SDI München, in Germany.
This video lecture introduces the concept of Easy-to-Understand subtitles
and their characteristics.
We will also discuss briefly
what constraints influence the creation process,
and what type of guidelines we can use.
The focus in this video lecture is on pre-recorded subtitles.
At this stage, we assume that you already have basic skills
in creating subtitles.
If this is not the case, we recommend you to acquire some knowledge
before attending the video lecture.
For instance, we recommend you to visit
Module 1 of the European co-funded project
Interlingual Live Subtitling for Access,
in short ILSA.
Easy-to-Understand subtitles aim to support viewers
in the meaning-making process
when they are watching an audiovisual product,
for instance, a video, a movie, or the news.
To do so, Easy-to-Understand subtitles resort to simplification methods.
Easy-to-Understand subtitles can be then classified
according to different criteria, such as the type of simplification.
Easy-to-Understand subtitles can use text simplification methods,
such as Easy-to-Read or Plain Language,
but it is also possible to use graphical simplification methods,
for instance, easy pictograms.
One example of the use of pictograms would be
the use of emoticons in a subtitling line
for expressing feelings and/or emotions.
Of course, you can also have mixed forms.
You can have text simplification methods
and graphical simplification methods
in one subtitle line.
Ultimately, the decision concerning the type of simplification
will depend on many factors
as in any other translation, actually.
It will depend on the translation order,
that means the preferences of the client,
but also on the target audience,
the target language, the genre,
and the medium of publication.
Easy-to-Understand subtitles can also be classified
according to the target language.
For instance, they can be interlingual,
and use a different language as in the source text,
or subtitles can be intralingual,
and use the same language as in the source text.
For instance,
Easy-to-Understand subtitles which have been translated
from German into Spanish would be interlingual,
while Easy-to-Understand subtitles that have been translated
from standard Spanish into Easy-to-Understand Spanish
would be intralingual.
In several countries, intralingual subtitles are also called “captions”,
or subtitles for the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing.
This is often abbreviated as SDH subtitles.
In this video lecture, I will use the term “subtitle”
to refer to both intralingual and interlingual subtitles.
Easy-to-Understand subtitles are subjected to different types of constraints.
The first type emerges from the audiovisual nature of the product,
meaning the limited time and space that we have for a subtitling line.
The other types of constraints are, or emerge,
from the simplification method.
What I mean here is that Easy-to-Understand subtitles
have to be compliant with the principles and recommendations
of whatever simplification method is being used.
Lastly, another constraint that we face in the creation
of Easy-to-Understand subtitles is the lack
of empirically-based guidelines.
This lack of guidelines is translating at the moment
into different subtitling practices
and the use of different subtitling parameters.
The lack of guidelines for Easy-to-Understand subtitling
can be solved by resorting to other type of guidelines,
for instance, we could use the guidelines for subtitles
for the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing,
especially, for those persons with pre-locutive hearing loss.
Why?
Well, because this type of guidelines have shown to be beneficial
for other parts of the population.
For instance, for persons who have a low level of literacy,
the elderly,
or persons who have a limited command a language,
be it because they are second-language learners or,
for instance, in the case of immigrants upon arrival in a host country.
Although we see that the target groups overlap to some extent,
we should keep in mind that the primary users of SDH
and those of Easy-to-Understand subtitles,
they also have different needs.
For instance, Easy-to-Understand users often do not have a sensory impairment,
meaning that they do not have a hearing loss,
and, therefore, they receive the audiovisual content multimodally,
that is they hear and they see the content.
We must also keep in mind that Easy-to-Understand users
may not be familiar with the conventions
that are used in SDH subtitling,
for instance, the use of colours for identifying a speaker,
or the addition of contextual information,
such as “[laughing]”, when a person is laughing
and you can hear it, but you cannot see the person on the screen.
Conversely, Easy-to-Understand audiences, especially Easy-to-Read users,
are used to own conventions such as the use of digits
for all numbers.
That is to also use digits for the numbers 1 to 10,
which are often spelt out in standard languages.
Let’s recap at this stage.
In this video lecture, we have classified Easy-to-Understand subtitles
by the type of simplification method and by the type of target language.
We have also seen the constrains that we will face during the creation.
And we have discussed the extent to which we can use SDH guidelines,
as well as the limitation of the use of these guidelines.
In the next video lecture, we will talk about
Easy-to-Understand subtitling parameters for creation.
This video lecture was prepared by Rocío Bernabé,
from the Internationale Hochschule SDI München,
in collaboration with the Universidade de Vigo, in Spain.
You can reach me at
rocio.bernabe@sdi-muenchen.de
The project EASIT has received funding
from the European Commission under the Erasmus+ Strategic Partnerships
for Higher Education programme,
grant agreement 2018-1-ES01-KA203-05275.
The European Commission support for the production of this publication
does not constitute an endorsement of the contents,
which reflect the views only of the authors,
and the Commission cannot be held responsible
for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Partners of the EASIT project:
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
Università degli Studi di Trieste.
Universidade de Vigo.
Stiftung Universität Hildesheim.
SDI München.
Dyslexiförbundet.
Radiotelevizija Slovenja.
Zavod RISA.
EASIT. Easy Access for Social Inclusion Training.