A Day in the Life of a Subtitler: Challenges and Techniques Explained (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: Hello, my name is Martin Cornwell and I am a subtitler. As a subtitler we work on pre-recorded programmes, everything from Bargain Hunt to Question Time and also on a lot of live output such as the BBC News Channel. Also we have invested in new road projects in and around the area which have been called for for years. Most people think subtitlers do an awful lot of typing whereas actually we produce subtitles using voice recognition software and a technique that we call re-speaking where I will have an audio feed of what's coming on through the TV and I will speak along with that input repeating it. We need to make sure that whatever changes we make have children POSMAC rights at the heart. It doesn't sound much like normal spoken English. We have to speak in this monotone way giving equal weight to each syllable we speak. So comma you know how the game works full stop, let's meet the usual suspects full stop. This is because the computer can't understand a lot of the intonation of normal speech. Today I'm starting off doing a piece of pre-recorded television, it's a BBC game show so I'll have a chance because it's pre-recorded to speak in all the subtitles. Behind this screen are four contestants who will be hoping their knowledge is flawless comma and then to go back and tidy it all up correcting any spelling mistakes and making sure it's 100% grammatically accurate as well. This afternoon I'm going to be live on air doing BBC Parliament. Where this differs from the pre-recorded stuff is that I have to before I go on air research all the words that the computer might not recognise and teach these to the computer beforehand. Moodies comma moodies comma the UK has been downgraded by moodies full stop so that when I go live I should be able to produce some fairly accurate live subtitles. One of the most important qualities a subtitler should have really is the ability to concentrate for long periods and for many families involved comma the process can be drawn out and emotionally draining full stop. We are on air for 15 minutes at a time so it'll be 15 minutes on, 15 minutes off but that could be over the course of two and a half hours so you need to be able to maintain your concentration the whole time making sure you're hearing everything that's being said by all of the speakers and recreating it accurately. It is very satisfying to think that we're helping people hard of hearing to enjoy TV in a way that they might not have done in the past. Obviously they have a right to expect a very high standard and when we can provide that it feels good.