Speaker 1: My name is Łukasz Tutka and I'm from the University of Warsaw, Poland. In this ILSA project video, I will give you an introduction to SDH. Subtitling for the Deaf and the Hard of Hearing, or SDH, as the name indicates, is mainly done for people who are deaf or hard of hearing. In some countries, it is referred to as closed captioning, which can be abbreviated as CC. Today, in most contexts, both SDH and closed captioning mean the same. Apart from the dialogue, SDH also contains information about important sounds and speaker identification, which makes it different from standard subtitling for hearing viewers. SDH can be intralingual, that is done within the same language, for instance from English to English, or interlingual, that is translated from one language into another, for example from English into Polish or French. The main target group of this type of subtitling are people who are deaf or hard of hearing. The Deaf, spelled with the capital D, are people who typically use sign language as the mother tongue and who identify themselves with Deaf culture. Overall, SDH viewers are a very heterogeneous group. They are very diverse and they have different preferences and needs. There are different degrees of hearing loss, ranging from mild, moderate, severe to profound. Depending on when it occurred, hearing loss can be classified as prelingual, perilingual or postlingual. The onset of hearing loss may affect literacy, with prelingual hearing loss frequently coinciding with lower reading skills in some Deaf people. Given that deafness may be a predictor of lower reading skills, some scholars recommend that subtitles for the Deaf be condensed and displayed at lower speeds to allow Deaf people to follow them comfortably. Many Deaf viewers and associations take the opposite view and argue against text reduction in subtitles. They claim that Deaf and hard of hearing viewers want to have access to exactly the same information as the hearing. The Advocates for Unreduced Subtitling claim that for Deaf people, subtitles are the source of meaningful linguistic input, which they use to learn the language. Hard of hearing viewers tend to use residual hearing and also lip-read, and therefore often prefer the text in the subtitles to be exactly the same as the soundtrack. However, owing to high speech rates in many programs and the necessity to add sound and speaker identification in SDH, some degree of reduction may often be necessary. Otherwise, subtitles would appear and disappear too quickly for viewers to be able to read them comfortably and watch their images at the same time. In SDH, it is customary to help Deaf and hard of hearing viewers identify speakers by using name tags, different colors, or speaker-dependent placement. Chevrons are used in closed captioning in the USA. Let's have a look at some examples of name tags. They only need to be used when it's not clear from the image who is speaking. For instance, on the left, the speaker is identified as Trevor, as in this shot. It's not clear which of the two characters is speaking. On the right, the tag identifies Kasia, the woman in the shot, as the speaker. The viewers don't see her mouth moving. Thanks to the name tag, it's clear that it's not somebody else in the room who is speaking. You can see more examples of name tags here. Please note, these and the following images are copyrighted and we're using them through an agreement with Viacom, the content owner. Colors can also be used to identify speakers, as in this example from a TV series for kids. Usually, not more than four colors are used to identify most important characters. One color refers to one character only, and the use of colors is usually consistent throughout the whole show, or at least the whole episode. Using more colors than three or four could be confusing, as some colors make the text difficult to read. A typical scenario would be to use three colors for the main characters and name tags when there's a need to identify other characters. Sometimes, subtitle placement can be used to help with speaker identification, as in these examples, where subtitles are moved to be closer to the speaker. The woman's utterance here is moved to the left, to be closer to the character who is saying this. This approach works best in scenes where there's some distance between the characters, as in this example. SDH subtitles also need to name relevant sounds that are otherwise difficult to identify. These include background music, sound effects, as well as some paralinguistic information, such as dialects, tone of voice, or manner of speaking. Let's have a look at some examples. This subtitle identifies the sound of an approaching train. And this one describes the music which creates a certain mood for the scene. Here, on the left, the subtitle describes the sound of laughing. This is relevant here because the characters that are laughing are not seen in the shot. It's actually the kids that you can see only in the next shot, which is shown on the right. So, from the first picture, from the first shot, it's not clear that there are some characters laughing. Please note that sounds need to be described only if they are not clear from the image. In this shot, you can see a woman laughing too. Because it's clear from the image that she is indeed laughing, there's no point to describe this sound. The best practice is to describe only relevant, that is, plot-pertinent sounds, rather than all the possible sounds. In this example, the subtitle is redundant, that is, unnecessary. It's clear from the image that there are fireworks in this scene. This subtitle does not introduce any new information. Such redundant sound descriptions distract from the images, and some viewers might find them annoying. When describing music, a good practice is to identify the song or the music piece when possible. When a character speaks a foreign language, and the dialogue is not meant to be understood by the viewers, it's customary to identify the language, rather than just say it's a foreign language. If you know the language, you can also transcribe the dialogue in such cases. In this video lecture, you learned the basics about DSDH. You now know what SDH is, who are the users, and what are the conventions used in SDH. Please remember that SDH is a vital tool that helps many people access audiovisual content. Thank you.