Tips for Aspiring SDH Subtitlers: Understanding the Audience and Building a Word Bank (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: Surely there are some students watching us who are thinking about hopefully in the future working on SDH or there are lots of subtypers who have been working in translation and are considering also accepting SDH tasks and they would want to move and do this work as well. What tips can you give to such people who are interested in exploring this area of subtyping? How can they get prepared well for these tasks?

Speaker 2: I think it's really important to understand the community and so deaf awareness training for me is very important. I think there's a lot of people that come into the job of SDH having no clue about the audience that they are preparing a file for and so that's my advice. I think be very aware of the community because at the end of the day it's a service that we are providing for them and for me that's the beginning of any good career in SDH is understanding the audience. I also think that this is something that I wish that someone told me at the very start and that's to create your word bank from the beginning if you're going to work in SDH because there's very particular sounds that are provoking a very particular emotion at times and getting those words perfectly to describe that moment can come with a lot of added time and so if you do intend to start working on SDH tasks I would prepare a word bank from the very beginning. I didn't do it until a couple of years into my career and I know that it just made a lot more room for, I had to make a lot more room for that added thought time and so now that I have started one and I'm trying to collaborate with my peers to make a massive one, yeah that really is beneficial.

Speaker 1: Now that you mentioned this word bank, perhaps you can disclose some of your secrets around it so is that somewhere in some note-taking software? Do you have a physical notepad? How do you go about creating your personal word bank?

Speaker 2: I do actually have a notepad that I sit on my desk and if I am watching something or I'm seeing something and I like a few of the descriptors that they use and I don't have it, I think I don't have it in my own list, I'll write them down. So I've got it here, this is just from this week, a couple that I had written down because I hadn't thought of them myself. I loved the word plucky for a very like plucky sort of string music that was playing. I had written that one down because I didn't think I had that specific one in my list. And then there was, what else? Strident. Strident, I added that as well because you know like I say, it is a creative job and finding those words that describe the particular moment perfectly is extremely important so any time I come across them, just note them down and then later go and add them to my list.

Speaker 1: So in a way you're a collector of words.

Speaker 2: Yes, definitely and like of course I come up with my own too but like it's great when you see one and you think that might work for a moment in the future and so just good to have them, yeah.