Simple Subtitling - how the Compact Course
came into existence
There is a similarity between playing chess and the art of subtitling: in both disciplines one has to apply very diverse general rules in countless specific situations.
In the nineteen nineties I read and studied Michael Steans Simple Chess. In the introduction he warned that the chess game by no means was simple, but you could break the game down in basic principles and from there get more and more specific. The book greatly intensified the pleasure I found in playing chess.
Colleagues I was teaching how to subtitle were constantly getting lost in all the specific rules, and suddenly I saw I had to break up the 'game of subtitling' and help beginning subtitlers always to remember the basic principles (readability, clarity, look, timing, consistency etc.) behind every choice to be made and, in a further stage, the subprinciples governing more specific cases.
The next step was solving the problem of learning via the brain or via practising. Subtitling is a handicraft and to learn it via the brain is not only an enormous detour but will force the beginning subtitler to pick up wrong subtitling habits that will have to be unlearned, an uphill struggle.
This problem was solved by making this easy to go through the material via a system of buttons leading to the different parts of the art of subtitling.
This way another important goal of the Compact Course was reached: students can scan parts of the material quickly just before starting to practise. By doing so, the subtitling principles enter their short-term memory, and while practising, very gradually, their long-term memory.
A further refinement was found in interlarding the Compact Course with simple, basic examples, in bold font, which can serve as support when encountering more or less parallel subtitling problems later in one's subtitling life. By analogy a subtitler can then solve almost all these problems.
The Compact Course was tested extensively by beginning subtitlers of a major Dutch subtitling company and we constantly improved it.
The success of the Compact Course in The Netherlands and Belgium prompted us to have it translated into English, enabling students all over the world to acquire the basics of the art of subtitling. The step-by-step guide will give students extra grip on the material, increasing their chances for success.
Neither chess nor subtitling is a simple 'game', but after learning it the right way, one can become a better 'gamer'.
Bartho Kriek
Subtitling Worldwide
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