Subtitling and dubbing for multiple version releases
DAVID SHADBOLT
(David Shadbolt is a research editor with MultiLingual Computing & Technology. He can be reached at david@multilingual.com)
If any industry could claim global marketing success, it is the motion picture industry. While the 1939 movie Gone With the Wind was created for an American audience, directors of contemporary movies such as Gladiator (2000) have global release and merchandising sales as their goal. The official Web site for the 1997 movie Titanic even included, in addition to worldwide release dates, links to English, German, Italian and Spanish trailer clips. It is now commonplace for studios to release subtitled and dubbed movies in 36 languages or more.
International broadcasting networks also pump out subtitled and dubbed series to other national broadcasters, many of whom are multilingual. For example, Europe has 15 to 20 different multilingual channels broadcasting in up to 22 different languages.
“There are approximately 5,000 international broadcast and cable networks around the world,” says Deeny Kaplan, executive vice president of Miami-based TM Systems (TMS), “creating a continuous demand for dubbing, subtitling and translation. Some countries have hundreds geared towards specific languages or specific audiences. Even a little country like Jordan broadcasts three languages a day, 24 hours a day on its television networks, and everything has to be dubbed or subtitled, whether it’s a movie or news piece.”
Markets
The need for subtitled and dubbed material has spawned a specialized language sector, particularly in countries with major international broadcasting networks. London alone has more than 30 organizations with roots buried deep within the industry. Europe’s largest broadcasting vendor, Broadcast Text International (BTI) with its head office in Sweden, subtitles 40,000 hours of television, video, cinema and DVD content annually — the equivalent of 70 feature films a day, all year round. Bjorn Andersson, chief executive officer of BTI, says, “We existed for 20 years in different constellations doing subtitles for broadcasters before merging into this new group in 1998. We began subtitling in one country for one language but now do multilingual subtitles for broadcasters — for example, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), first in Scandinavia, then Western Europe and now the growing Eastern European market.”
BTI has also developed its client base in the DVDs and SDH (subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing) sectors. SDH, better known as Closed Captioning in North America, has three categories: prerecorded programming, real-time for live programming and live display.
“SDH demand is really growing in countries like Germany, France, Italy and England.” Andersson says. “The DVD market sector started five years ago and is very strong, which is one of the reasons we have recently opened an office in Santa Monica. Last year, the movie studios released about 6,000 DVDs, and it will probably remain around that mark annually until the studios deal with the backlog of movies in their vaults. In seven or eight years, these numbers will probably go down to around 3,000 per year. The DVD market is divided into local markets, for example, German companies releasing DVDs with SDH and maybe a couple of other languages, and the international DVD market primarily based in Los Angeles and London, which subtitles and dubs movies into 36 languages.”
The movie versions take into account not just language but cultural considerations and viewing. “At a big studio such as Warner Universal or Paramount,” says Kaplan, “you have a number of departments in charge of market niches — feature films, DVD, home video, broadcasting, even airlines. An airline version of an X-rated movie would need editing for general viewing because you might have your eight-year-old son sitting next to you.”
Subtitling Workflow
Andersson outlines the workflow of a typical subtitling project: “Let’s say our Santa Monica office receives a video from one of our clients such as MGM or Universal Studios. We encode the work into MPEG1 using a softel-encoding system purposefully built for video subtitling and send the result on to our in-country office where it is either assigned to one of our own 60 or 70 translators or a freelancer on the local payroll. That translator does the translation with the template he or she has received from us, and then the local office proofreads the work in real time, looking at the tape together with the subtitles to see if there is anything wrong with the translation. Then it’s shipped back to Santa Monica where they make a final technical check to see if there are any technical problems. For example, it’s very important that the subtitling doesn’t cover chapter breaks and that the exact time codes haven’t changed on these files since we sent them out. The final test is in real time, running the tape or the digital file against the subtitled file once more just to see if it’s accurate. Before we send it back to the client, it’s often converted into a bitmap or TIFF file.”
One set of problems encountered in providing subtitles is the expansion and compression factor. A 66-page English script could expand to 86 pages in German and 96 pages in Spanish. Yoshie Anjiki, formerly a graphics technician at Studio 26 and now part of the Polarity Post Production (PPP) team in San Francisco has worked with a number of clients such as Albertsons, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Chevron and Starbucks.
“We’ve encountered problems when a client has insisted on using its own translation company,” Anjiki says. “Timing is always the key, and sometimes the client’s translation is too long to fit in the lower third of the screen. A maximum of two lines for subtitles is ideal, or the viewer is too busy reading and can’t comfortably watch the video. We clean up the translation and do line breaks that will prepare the translation to fit in the lower third of the screen.”
Most dubbing studios use a linear, tape-based approach to dubbing and subtitling. A master tape in a professional format such as Betacam SP or Digital Betacam is used to play back in the studio for recording, while copies of it in a consumer format such as VHS are used by translators, casting directors and others to create the translated script, assign voice talent to characters, create cue lists for recording and so on.
“When we start a subtitling project,” Anjiki says, “we ask our client to provide us with a beta SP or DigiBeta English master as a guide, and an un-keyed (clean or text-less) submaster as a source. According to the original version, we try to recreate it in ethnic languages by replacing show title or name keys when requested. If an un-keyed version is unavailable, then we have to squeeze or move subtitles to fit on the screen whenever there are any conflicting graphics in the lower third of the screen. There are many things we have to pay attention to — existing keys, background color, close-ups and so on. This is where the timed and precise translation comes in handy. It helps our editing process greatly.”
Timing is just as important in the dubbing process. As Charles Xavier, localization director at PPP, explains, “A big portion of translation is the actual timing of the phrases. It has to work well because they usually don’t re-edit picture for foreign languages. Automated dialog replacement (ADR), also called looping, replaces production sound recorded on the video with the voice of the talent (actor) recorded in the dubbing studio. Picking the right phrases to fit the timing for the voice-overs is a challenge. You have to find words that match the rhythm of the original language to fit the lip movements. Take English to German. If it’s 11 seconds in English, too literal a translation might add an additional eight to nine seconds to the dialogue. With video games and some other products, exact matching of lip movement is impossible. We actually take out breaths and slide in words to make them match better. The phrases are edited to the picture once they are recorded to tighten up the phrases even more. It can be a challenge. Many games originate in Japanese, and we do the English version, and people have commented that our version looks almost better than the original does.”
Technology
Reducing time-to-market for language versions is a priority for movies and television series as it is with software or other time-critical product. Kaplan at TMS says, “An episode of Friends shown tonight in the United States is seen in 50 other countries as a subtitled or dubbed version, so time is of the essence. In the movie business, the major studios have tiered levels that reflect their concerns and objectives for a given movie. A studio’s first target is the group comprising France, Italy, Germany and Spain (FIGS), with Thailand now added for some reason. Increasingly, the majors want to include India, Israel and other countries, even worldwide same day release. A major animation movie has just received simultaneous release in 83 countries.”
Broadcast news is even more time-sensitive. When the Voice of America needed the main evening news broadcasts of ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS and FOX translated to Arabic and subtitled daily, it turned to Applications Technology, Inc. (AppTek), which developed a fully automated process. Sami Shamma, responsible for business development at AppTek, explains: “This process required the translating and editing of three and a half hours of news, which is an average of 32,000 words, and a task we had to complete in six hours. We developed new tools alongside our machine translation engine to automate the insertion of time-stamped subtitles into the news footage. AppTek developed a workflow process that included voice recognition of the newscast and production of English text; machine translation of the text to Arabic; post-editing the Arabic text; auto-generation of time-stamped Arabic subtitles; and superimposition of subtitles on the original footage. As soon as we had finished, Voice of America had someone literally running to the aircraft so that it could get over the Gulf and broadcast the subtitled news footage.”
Solutions from companies such as AppTek and from companies such as CPC, Screen Subtitling Systems and SoftNI (originally Software & New Ideas) have significantly reduced the time and cost of movie and broadcast localization.
SoftNI developed and released its off-line computer-based video subtitling system in 1986. The company provides a wide variety of services and software related to translation, subtitling and dubbing of motion pictures and television programs, including what it describes as the first software-based multichannel, multilanguage subtitling system for digital video broadcasting (DVB).
It was TMS, however, that received a technical achievement Emmy award for its fully integrated, non-linear language localization system for translation, dubbing and subtitling. The award is given to companies that make a contribution to television broadcasting that forever changes the face of the industry. Other winners include Apple Computer, Inc. (Final Cut Pro editing and finishing system) and the ARRI Group (ARRIFLEX Cameras).
Carlos Contreras, chief technology officer at TMS, says, “While there are differences in the user interface between our system and competitive solutions — as well as in the general approach to the actual subtitle file preparation — in general, all get the task done. One of our unique advantages, though, is that ours is the first comprehensive system for both subtitling and dubbing. Our scripts can even mix both formats in one single document. We also do away with proprietary file formats and go for open standards for video, sound and text files so that the user is never trapped into a proprietary technology. The learning curve is minimal as well.”
The TMS system consists of four modules: PrepStation, TranStation, DubStation and SubStation. In the PrepStation the video is digitized in preparation for the translation process. “It is then encrypted, so even if someone has access to the actual file, it can not be played to get a copy of it,” says Contreras. “Our players contain hardware keys to allow playback of the tracking file only on authorized TranStation or DubStation.” Digital files enable access from a network or over the Internet, thereby reducing costs, delays in customs or loss and piracy that the current practice of making copies of a videotape or VHS cassette can cause when packaging and sending by courier to translators and dubbing studios.
The lightweight TranStation module, the least expensive component at $1,495, provides a transcription and translation function for both dubbing scripts and subtitling blocks. Major features include automatic single keystroke time code insertions and automatic loop or line counters. As the software provides pictures and text on a single screen, translators operate in a familiar Microsoft Word environment or compatible format, thereby simplifying the process of preparing the document for subtitling and/or dubbing compared to the process of starting, stopping and rewinding a VCR to find the exact place on a video cassette.
The translator can also create Closed Caption files with TranStation CC, a new component introduced by TMS at the 2003 National Association of Broadcasters event. “It is easily integrated into the existing TranStation as an upgrade or can be purchased as a standalone unit,” says Contreras. “The TranStation CC contains features needed to create Closed Caption files and is comparable to other Closed Caption preparation suites, typically more complex and inefficient, some of them even still working with VHS tapes with time code soundtracks.”
Upon completing the subtitles or dubbing files, the translator returns the file in a CD format or over the Internet to a dubbing or subtitling facility where it is proofread, loaded into the subtitling component, the SubStation, and burned in real time, in any color, style or character set. The fourth component, the DubStation, controls the recording session. “Linked to protocols or any audio workstation that reads time code, the DubStation contains an abundance of tools to assist in the production of scheduling and the administration process,” says Kaplan. “A graph on the DubStation shows the time frame of each character and provides precise cues as to when the talent should speak the lines. In the dubbing recording suite, the actors stand on one side and the engineers on the other side telling the characters when to do their lines, while recording the voices directly into the computer.”
WANTED! Post-Productions in Toronto negotiated the TMS sales agency for Canada after a successful experience dubbing a major children’s television series. Company president John deNottbeck explains, “When a client asked us to do a Japanese-to-English conversion of a children’s television series, we only had three weeks to deliver. Apparently, the original subtitling company had made a budgeting mistake in its bid and told the client it would now cost more per episode, quoting basically the same price for the 40-episode project as we had originally proposed. Although we only had three weeks rather than the original three-month lead time, we met the deadline after purchasing TMS, which requires only a short learning curve and operates instantaneously in computer time.”
According to deNottbeck, “The TMS will eventually have competition from two other systems currently under development, but they have yet to be debugged. What we’ve discovered with TMS is that it’s knocked off a third of our record time, so clients save on the costs of studio time and talent fees. Additionally, the system can print out the line and word count per character, which saves producers the headache of manually working out how much to pay the talent.”
In Canada, deNottbeck sees TMS proving very successful. “Montreal has 15 studios operating non-stop, converting English content to French. They all use the Rythmoband system, developed in France almost 40 years ago. It’s far slower than using a TMS system. Within two weeks of the talent working with TMS, the two companies using Rythmoband in Toronto were calling us looking for information.”
At $30,000, TMS is relatively inexpensive. Kaplan says, “We met recently with an executive at a Miami-based international network. We were told the network had a room in which they intended to place a subtitling suite, and he was astounded when we told him our solution would only cost $30,000.” Contreras explains, “A traditional voice recording room using standard playback decks and recording equipment, that could go well into the $50,000-$100,000 range, much more than our solution. The savings basically come from the fact that we are using standard PC software and hardware to replace high cost video and audio equipment.”
The system has proven itself to a number of clients, beginning with Caracas-based M&M, which operated the software successfully for two years before the formation of TMS in 2001. The biggest installations are located at the localization studios of The Kitchen, Inc., in Miami, built for Claxson Interactive Group, a Latin American multimedia conglomerate. It contains eleven dubbing suites to cope with the volume of localization projects. Juan Bernardo Alvarez, The Kitchen’s language conversion service head, claims the software cuts “translation time by half and significantly reduces the time it takes to convert a show like South Park into Spanish or other languages. If we have an emergency and need to rush out a show, what would take eight hours of recording in one studio we can now do in as little as an hour and a half using several studios at the same time.”
Specialized Skills
Andersson at BTI says that companies not only have to understand the native language and culture but also the broadcasting and movie industry. “Localization is so much more than translating from one language into another, and the translation itself is a very specific type of translation, somewhere between the spoken and written word, and many translation companies did not do so well when they tried it,” Andersson says. “A comprehensive translation is needed, as well as the elimination of narrative conclusion because the text needs condensing to meet the limitation of 70 characters per five or six seconds. It’s a big task, but also an interesting task when you are translating. It’s also the only time with translated content where everyone can compare both the source (dialogue) language and the target (written translation) at the same time. We hear about it in countries like Germany or The Netherlands if we get it wrong when an English movie is shown with subtitles.”
BTI creates multilingual subtitles from 90% American English and 5% British programming with the balance from other languages. Andersson stressed that only by living in the target-language country can a translator make certain assumptions on how much his or her fellow natives know about a certain subject and how to translate it.
“For instance,” Andersson says, “in British comedies, name-dropping is common, where the person named has certain characteristics. He or she may be frugal, generous, foolish, strong or whatever. In one episode of The Vicar of Dibley, we counted more than 60 names, and we had to research each name so that we understood the person’s characteristics before making a decision on retaining or substituting that person’s name. Some of the people don’t mean anything to anybody in Iran or India or even in Sweden for that matter. Making decisions is easier if you live in the target country and not the source country like the United Kingdom or the United States.”
Research also is important, according to Andersson. “While we don’t have the experts on law texts or on technical texts or other topics,” he says, “translators need to know a little about the many different things so that they can handle a drama series or comedy. If they don’t, they have to find out, and sometimes just a couple of lines will take many hours of research to figure out what the lines actually mean. We may also omit Latin names of some species if it’s a nature documentary, for example. It’s much easier for translators to find the equivalent in their own languages. This applied to the Blue Planet series which we did for the BBC into many languages, among them Scandinavian. The fascinating thing with this series was that it had 350 different species of animals and plants. Some of them didn’t have corresponding names in the Scandinavian languages, but through our local contacts at the Museum of Natural History, we named some for the first time. In Sweden, for instance, they added the names of 20 different species of fish. We have almost weekly contact with natural history people due to our BBC documentaries and National Geographic work.”
Some television programs probably require too much editing to work in other countries — editing Friends for India, where scenes of holding hands and kissing is restricted, or the Middle East, where showing midriffs is prohibited — but one-off movies would seem more feasible. Directors can accommodate a broader range of cultural requirements by avoiding obtuse terminology and substituting visuals for verbal communication where possible. Misakes, though, are sometimes made, even by studio bosses. Think of the movie The Spy Who Shagged Me, the title of which raised many eyebrows in Britain where shag is commonly used as a substitute for the four-letter word beginning with f.
Errors of cultural blindness may occur less frequently as escalating production costs necessitate international sales and therefore the demand for localized content. Legislation in some countries will also drive the need for subtitling, dubbing and closed captioning content. In the United States, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 compels video program distributors (cable operators, broadcasters, and satellite distributors) to phase in closed captioning of their television programs in Spanish as well as English.
One can hope that the streamlining of subtitled and dubbed motion pictures and broadcasting will not result in the Hollywoodization of the world, but increase the diversity of content watched globally. globe
———————–
This article reprinted from #60 Volume 14 Issue 8 of MultiLingual Computing & Technology published by MultiLingual Computing, Inc., 319 North First Ave., Sandpoint, Idaho, USA, 208-263-8178, Fax: 208-263-6310.
