Netflix expanding sub-titles, and introducing language tests.

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DaveBee
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Netflix expanding sub-titles, and introducing language tests.

Postby DaveBee » Wed May 31, 2017 8:54 am

...[Netflix.com]’s new Hermes program invites users to help create subtitles for Netflix’s catalog of content in more than 20 different languages. They’ll work as contractors through local partner firms and be compensated based on the volume of translation and subtitling.

Netflix says it created Hermes to address the difficulty of finding professional subtitlers in different parts of the world; as an example, it estimated in a blog post that there are only about 100 – 150 professional Dutch subtitlers on the planet.

To qualify, you’ll need to complete a 90-minute exam that tests your understanding of the English language, as well as your abilities to translate idiomatic phrases into their target language, and spotting linguistic and technical errors.


https://thenextweb.com/apps/2017/03/31/ ... subtitles/
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Re: Netflix expanding sub-titles, and introducing language tests.

Postby Whodathunkitz » Wed May 31, 2017 9:26 am

Pay rates?
https://npv.netflix.com/_assets/GLOBAL- ... r-2016.pdf

https://npv.netflix.com/_assets/JP_NPV_ ... y_2017.pdf

https://npv.netflix.com/resources

Lots of complaints about the tests, videos freezing etc.

May work best on firefox.

Professional translators getting fail scores or better scores in a less well known language.

Teething troubles, but lots of people seem to be (attempting) signing up.

Anyone manage this one?

"From Japanese Audio into Icelandic $27.50" (per minute).
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Re: Netflix expanding sub-titles, and introducing language tests.

Postby mcthulhu » Wed May 31, 2017 12:39 pm

Interesting. I noticed that they want "Translations to be performed by a quality tested, native or bilingual translator on the IRL (sic) 5 level" -- i.e., full native proficiency. That's two levels above "professional working proficiency" (L-3), which would normally be sufficient for most translation jobs.

I wonder how effective this will be as a way around the shortage of professional subtitlers, given the very high requirements not only for language level but for quality control, turnaround time, etc. They essentially seem to be asking for professional subtitlers anyway.

It's also not clear to me whether the pay rates listed are just for the translation agencies/vendors, rather than for the actual translators employed by them. If so the translation agencies would be taking a big cut, and individual translators and QCers would be paid substantially less.


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Whodathunkitz
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Re: Netflix expanding sub-titles, and introducing language tests.

Postby Whodathunkitz » Wed May 31, 2017 1:40 pm

mcthulhu wrote:Interesting. I noticed that they want "Translations to be performed by a quality tested, native or bilingual translator on the IRL (sic) 5 level" -- i.e., full native proficiency. That's two levels above "professional working proficiency" (L-3), which would normally be sufficient for most translation jobs.

I wonder how effective this will be as a way around the shortage of professional subtitlers, given the very high requirements not only for language level but for quality control, turnaround time, etc. They essentially seem to be asking for professional subtitlers anyway.

It's also not clear to me whether the pay rates listed are just for the translation agencies/vendors, rather than for the actual translators employed by them. If so the translation agencies would be taking a big cut, and individual translators and QCers would be paid substantially less.


.


Yes, I suspect these rates aren't what the 'workers' would be getting. Indicative only of rarity and demand for some languages.

However, it was based on a quick search, only posted it in case it was interesting.

I get the impression it's hard to earn a living through language skills alone, even if impressive.

Possible exceptions for teaching and a few rare careers I'm not aware of.

This is coming from a native English speaker. For many fields, having English is probably near essential or a significant way to increase your wage.

So unless I become a teacher, L2s are for interest, social and travel.
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DaveBee
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Re: Netflix expanding sub-titles, and introducing language tests.

Postby DaveBee » Wed May 31, 2017 2:12 pm

Whodathunkitz wrote:I get the impression it's hard to earn a living through language skills alone, even if impressive.

Possible exceptions for teaching and a few rare careers I'm not aware of.

This is coming from a native English speaker. For many fields, having English is probably near essential or a significant way to increase your wage.

So unless I become a teacher, L2s are for interest, social and travel.
I was watching some post-fight interviews the other day. The foreign atheletes seem to be shadowed by an interpreter at these events, Portuguese-Polish must be quite rare.
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Re: Netflix expanding sub-titles, and introducing language tests.

Postby mcthulhu » Wed May 31, 2017 3:18 pm

Oh, you can earn a living with languages outside of the teaching field, Whodathunkitz. Foreign languages don't have to be just a hobby. Freelance translation is one option. I've mentioned www.proz.com here before; take a look at the open job listing at http://www.proz.com/jobs/, which might give you some idea of the language pairs and fields covered. "With over 300,000 registered translators and interpreters, ProZ.com has the largest online database of language professionals in the world."

(Coincidentally, in line with the topic of this thread, it's currently offering translators a course on "Subtitles: principles and techniques.")

Of course, it can be hard to get established as a translator (Proz has a forum for that, too), there is a lot of competition, and clients usually aren't looking for someone with no experience. A lot of jobs are technical or specialized commercial ones - definitely not the kind of material most people would translate, or read, for enjoyment. (There was a recent thread there that I enjoyed, discussing translation rates that should be charged for poetry - apparently translating poetry takes much longer than translating prose, understandably.) Specialization helps; if you combine a language background with a medical, engineering, or legal background you might be able to charge higher rates. It can take time to develop expertise, as in any field.

If you're interested in the idea of translation as a profession, there are also a lot of blogs out there by professional translators. Kevin Lossner's blog at http://www.translationtribulations.com/ is one I like, and has links to a number of others. http://www.thoughtsontranslation.com/ is more oriented toward translation as a business.

Translation is the profession that I'm most familiar with, but there are others, such as simultaneous interpreting. Becoming a certified court interpreter would present its own challenges (e.g., high pressure and zero room for mistakes). I've known people who did that for a living and I was in awe of them. And of course these days, natural language processing/text mining has become a field of its own, though I think the jobs are more corporate than free-lance. I know quite a few linguists who are also computer scientists and researchers.
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Re: Netflix expanding sub-titles, and introducing language tests.

Postby tommus » Wed May 31, 2017 4:37 pm

DaveBee wrote:it estimated in a blog post that there are only about 100 – 150 professional Dutch subtitlers on the planet.

That probably helps to explain the extremely low quality of "ondertiteling" on the Dutch public broadcast news at 8:00 PM daily:

https://www.npo.nl/nos-journaal-20-00-uur/NOSjnl2000

Now to be fair, they do say that the "ondertitling" may suffer because it is live. But it is never improved, even though there is a large archive of the 8:00 PM news, and Dutch public broadcasters are required to provide quality subtitles. I am surprised that Dutch nationals who have a hearing impairment, and rely on subtitles, put up with this poor quality. It may be that they don't realize how poor the subtitling is. To be fair, the subtitles for what the news anchor says are a bit better, but a large part of the news consists of interviews and statements by other people. That is notoriously bad, and normally huge portions of such talking are totally missing. The subtitlers take great poetic licence to use different words, expressions and grammar, and often not to shorten it but just to make it different. About once a week, on a random basis, the subtitles are very much better, indicating that it can be done, or that there is at least one good subtitler on staff. But the rest of the time, it is poor. People on the news broadcasts, especially public figures such as politicians, should insist that the subtitles say what they said.

For other Dutch public broadcaster programming such as series and documentaries, the subtitles are very good. Granted, there is more time to do it correctly, not like the live news. But with today's technology of speech-to-text and related aids, and with the script of the news anchor, and with many of the interviews having been done well in advance of the "live" broadcast, they could do better, much better. Sometimes I use Google Translate in the speech-to-text mode, and it often does a lot better than the subtitles.

I am only a foreign Dutch language learner, so NOS Journaal has no mandate to worry about me. But again, I find it hard to believe that the people these subtitles are targetted at, the hearing impaired, put up with such poor, incomplete and inadequate subtitles.

In Canada, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation provides closed-captions of the news on both English and French channels. They are remarkably accurate. The only problem is the way too much latency (delay) to make them useful for a language learner to synchronize with the audio in real time. However, using recordings and closed-caption transcriptions can be very useful and effective for the French and English news broadcasts.

I wonder what people think of the subtitles on live news casts on other stations and in other languages?
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Re: Netflix expanding sub-titles, and introducing language tests.

Postby aokoye » Wed May 31, 2017 4:43 pm

Whodathunkitz wrote:I get the impression it's hard to earn a living through language skills alone, even if impressive.

Possible exceptions for teaching and a few rare careers I'm not aware of.

This is coming from a native English speaker. For many fields, having English is probably near essential or a significant way to increase your wage.

So unless I become a teacher, L2s are for interest, social and travel.
Language skills alone aren't really good for anything outside of communicating with people and reading (or listening to things). Language skills alone aren't going to say, get you a job doing translation and while the illusion of native speakers being better teachers is a thing, that doesn't actually pan out in practice even if you can get a job (there are reasons why I'm getting my TEFL certificate as part of my BA...).
That said there are jobs that you can get that either require (high) knowledge in an L2 or are bolstered by L2 knowledge. Translation and interpreting are obvious (though I would argue that it makes sense to actually know about the theory behind translation as well). But also working at multinational companies, working as a speech pathologist (which, in the US at least, pays really well and is in very high demand), musicology, international development (or policy), working in the criminal justice system (there was someone in my Hebrew class last Fall who used Hebrew on a somewhat regular basis in the jail she worked at as a social worker), social work (I have a very good friend who sees countless clients whose native language is not English - yes they have interpreters, but her knowing even a little bit of the language is still useful for everyone involved), anything in tourism, working for a cycling team (or soccer/football, or...), working in a restaurant (in the US at least), national security/intelligence positions (not something I would do but I am not you), and so on.
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Re: Netflix expanding sub-titles, and introducing language tests.

Postby aokoye » Wed May 31, 2017 4:46 pm

tommus wrote:That probably helps to explain the extremely low quality of "ondertiteling" on the Dutch public broadcast news at 8:00 PM daily:

https://www.npo.nl/nos-journaal-20-00-uur/NOSjnl2000

Now to be fair, they do say that the "ondertitling" may suffer because it is live. But it is never improved, even though there is a large archive of the 8:00 PM news, and Dutch public broadcasters are required to provide quality subtitles. I am surprised that Dutch nationals who have a hearing impairment, and rely on subtitles, put up with this poor quality.
It's probably also an issue of how much or little agency deaf people in the Netherlands have in terms of requesting/demanding very logical accommodations and actually getting them.
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Whodathunkitz
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Re: Netflix expanding sub-titles, and introducing language tests.

Postby Whodathunkitz » Wed May 31, 2017 10:51 pm

mcthulhu wrote:Oh, you can earn a living with languages outside of the teaching field, Whodathunkitz. Foreign languages don't have to be just a hobby. Freelance translation is one option. I've mentioned http://www.proz.com here before; take a look at the open job listing at http://www.proz.com/jobs/, which might give you some idea of the language pairs and fields covered. "


Thanks, I forwarded to someone I know.

As just a beginner I can't imagine ever being good enough. Especially as I'm not young.

I'm established in my career in IT, where I could imagine some use for languages.

Customers in European countries.

Suppliers / services in India, Vietnam and Philippines. Previously suppliers in Spain and turkey
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