Salto Project
Salto is the public access tv and radio channel of Amsterdam, broadcasting programs of Demet-TV, Prisma-TV, Y-TV, CR-TV, Edge entertainment, SME-TV and many more.
Last year, the city council decided to stimulate mutual contact between citizens and further integration by having the foreign language programs on Salto TV being subtitled in Dutch.
During 2007, subtitling software for the Salto filmers was being developed by ArtiVisuals, when we were approached in the fall to help finish the development and to give workshops for about 80 Salto-filmers.
The languages involved are many - Sranantongo, Turkish, Somali, Ethiopian, Urdu, Chinese, Russian and of course English and Dutch.
January 2008, four workshops were held in the offices of Salto neighbor MediaGuild, and the filmers learned the theoretical and practical basics of subtitling. By practicing timing they made their first step toward developing their own subtitling skills.
We also demonstrated the disastrous effects of bad subtitling, increasing the awareness of the participants, who became strongly motivated to produce good subtitling in their productions.
The variety of languages posed a challenge, as subtitling rules specific for English-Dutch have to be adjusted when subtitling from other languages to Dutch. So the general principles and ideas behind all these rules were discussed and explained.
Follow-up
Becoming a subtitler takes about three months of training and two years of work experience. And although the Salto filmers, helped by their filming and editing experience, made a good start, it was obvious they would need further assistance while developing their subtitling skills.
We chose for a Google discussion and mailing group for the Salto filmers, a well-tried method to get people to help each other while at the same time providing them with the necessary support.
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