Netflix expanding sub-titles, and introducing language tests.

[Xenops]

I'm just happy they're making an effort to get more foreign materials.

[lingopear]

Out of curiosity I just took the test for translating English to German and it is HARD. My score is 82%, which means I passed their threshold for this language combination. For context, I am a German native speaker and have lived in the US for about one year. I assume that I got most of the listening/translation multiple choice questions, but messed up a few of those that deal with the timing, punctuation etc. of subtitles. Translating 1 minute of video took me about 15 Minutes. I did have to google a few expressions here and there. Overall I would say, Hermes is a fun tool to test your English listening skills as well as your knowledge of colloquialisms.

I am curious if Netflix will ever get back to me and actually offer a translating job for subtitles, since I have no experience whatsoever in this field. It would be awesome though, since they do pay 12$/min for English > German, which would mean my hourly rate would be nearly 50$. Not bad!

Edit: Actually, I realized, that the rate includes other services, so no 50$/hour after all

[Ellie]

This is great news! I'm not proficient enough in any of the languages I'm learning to be a translator for Netflix, but I watch several of their movies and original series to learn/maintain languages. They already have a good selection for audio and subtitles. It's great they are working on adding more.

And congrats to anyone who is hired to subtitle for Netflix!

[Cainntear]

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.
...
I wonder what people think of the subtitles on live news casts on other stations and in other languages?

Live subtitling is a very different beast from prerecorded subtitling.
Basically, you have two people taking turns, and what they do is just repeat everything that is said by anyone as clearly as they can into a voice recognition program. They can retype to correct the worst errors, but as often as not it's not worth the time, and the viewers are better off just interpreting the errors for themselves.

[tommus]

Live subtitling is a very different beast from prerecorded subtitling.
Basically, you have two people taking turns, and what they do is just repeat everything that is said by anyone as clearly as they can into a voice recognition program.

I believe that is how live subtitling in done by the English and French public broadcasters in Canada. Unfortunately, for the Dutch NOS Journaal daily news, I see no indication that it is done like that. In many cases, the sentences and the words are so different that there is no way the "repeaters" are repeating what is being said. But even more obvious, there are huge (I mean "huge") gaps of perhaps 2 - 3 minutes of people (other than the news anchor) speaking. I think than anyone in a position of authority in the Dutch public broadcaster community, who also had a sincere interest in addressing the requirements of the hearing impaired and the government requirements for subtitling, would be quite surprised at the low quality, and would be moved to do something about it. It can be done well (as witnessed in French and English live news subtitling in Canada) but it is not being done well at NOS Journaal.

[Tillumadoguenirurm]

Do you work at Netflix DaveBee?

[Cainntear]

Live subtitling is a very different beast from prerecorded subtitling.
Basically, you have two people taking turns, and what they do is just repeat everything that is said by anyone as clearly as they can into a voice recognition program.

I believe that is how live subtitling in done by the English and French public broadcasters in Canada. Unfortunately, for the Dutch NOS Journaal daily news, I see no indication that it is done like that. In many cases, the sentences and the words are so different that there is no way the "repeaters" are repeating what is being said. But even more obvious, there are huge (I mean "huge") gaps of perhaps 2 - 3 minutes of people (other than the news anchor) speaking.

The huge gaps are typical of subtitles by repetition, and the lack of them for the anchors suggests that their subtitles are preprogrammed. In that case, the differences are likely to be typical subtitle differences -- rewriting the sentences to make them quicker to read -- and it might even be that due to time constraints, the subtitlers have to work from draft scripts that get changed before broadcast.

[tommus]

The huge gaps are typical of subtitles by repetition

I don't understand. Why would the "repeater" choose to ignore most, sometimes all, of the comments of someone being interviewed or making a comment, that lasts 2 - 3 minutes?

[Cainntear]

The huge gaps are typical of subtitles by repetition

I don't understand. Why would the "repeater" choose to ignore most, sometimes all, of the comments of someone being interviewed or making a comment, that lasts 2 - 3 minutes?

Mostly because I'm not really paying enough attention to what you're saying... ...sorry.

It's not such a good idea to try to read forums while listening to [name of political event redacted due to forum rules ]

Again, sorry.

[Sommerson]

Do test link you work at Netflix DaveBee?

What will the language tests involve?