Staged(2020)129 Available Subtitles

Staged(2020)129 Available Subtitles

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In recent years respeaking has become the preferred method for live intralingual subtitling; based on speaker-dependent speech recognition technology, it is used to subtitle live TV broadcasts and events for the deaf and hard-of-hearing. The interlingual variant of respeaking is beginning to emerge as a translation mode that can provide accessibility to all, across both linguistic and sensory barriers. There are striking similarities between interlingual respeaking and simultaneous interpreting in terms of process; however, the two modes differ greatly in terms of end product, i.e. a set of subtitles vs. an oral translation. This empirical study analysed simultaneous interpreting and interlingual respeaking (from English into Italian) in the same conference, to compare the semantic content conveyed to the audience via the interpreted speeches and the live subtitles. Results indicate greater semantic loss in the subtitles (especially through omissions), but little difference in the frequency of errors causing meaning distortion. Some suggestions for future research and training are provided in the conclusions.

As IRSP is a very recent development, there is not much research to determine its viability. This paper aims to contribute to the discussion by presenting a small-scale empirical study based on an MA thesis (Luppino 2016-17) that compared the target language (henceforth, TL) speeches produced by simultaneous interpreters with the subtitles produced by interlingual respeakers working in the same conference. A multimedia data archive was created; then, a smaller sub-corpus of 4 speeches was selected for the study. The focus was on assessing how much of the semantic content of the source language (henceforth, SL) speeches was conveyed to the audience via the interpreted speeches and the subtitles. A dedicated analysis grid was developed and applied to our data to shed some light into the challenges posed by the two modes and to inform future IRSP research and training. The paper begins with a brief overview of respeaking research, with a special focus on IRSP (2); it then presents the data and methodology in 3, the analysis in 4 and some conclusions in 5.

As was mentioned in 1, there is relatively little research on respeaking. Starting with the intralingual variant, the focus of the available studies is either on the process or the product, and they are either experimental or empirical. The earliest available studies discussed the similarities between respeaking and simultaneous interpreting (Marsh 2004, Eugeni 2008, Russello 2008-09). More recent studies have tried to pinpoint what makes a good respeaker, i.e. to identify the skills and competences needed to perform this complex task and to determine whether a specific training background can facilitate the acquisition of respeaking skills (Moores 2017, Remael and Robert 2018, Szarkowska et al. 2018).

From the point of view of the end product, respeaking is studied as a form of (live) subtitling, with the related change in semiotic code (from spoken to written) and need for text reduction connected to the speed constraint (Romero-Fresco 2009, Van Waes et al. 2013, Sandrelli 2013). The main focus of the product-oriented studies has been the development of models to assess subtitle accuracy and the analysis of the specific challenges posed by different settings and text types (Eugeni 2009, Romero-Fresco 2011, Sandrelli 2013). The NER model (Romero-Fresco 2011) is the most widely used one to assess the accuracy of live subtitles produced via respeaking.[2] It distinguishes between (software-related) recognition errors and (human) edition errors, and a score is attributed to each error depending on its severity (minor, standard or serious). After testing the NER model on different TV genres, a score of 98 per cent has been suggested as the minimum accuracy threshold for usable intralingual subtitles (Romero-Fresco 2011). The model has been adopted by Ofcom, the UK broadcasting regulator, which commissioned four reports on the quality of live subtitling on British television (Ofcom 2015a, 2015b). Most of the available research on intralingual respeaking has been conducted on TV settings, while the Respeaking at Live Events project (Moores 2018, 2020) is looking at the feasibility of respeaking in museum tours, conferences, lectures and Q&A panels after cinema screenings and theatre shows. The aim is to identify the specific requirements of each setting and produce best practice guidelines to organise services efficiently.

Turning to product-oriented research on IRSP, a reliable method to assess the accuracy of interlingual live subtitles and quality standards for this translation mode must still be defined. Romero-Fresco and Pöchhacker (2017) developed the NTR model, which distinguishes between recognition errors and human errors.[3] Translation errors include both content-related (omissions, additions and substitutions) and form-related errors (grammatical correctness and style). The model acknowledges that some errors are more serious than others in terms of the effect they have on viewers, and distinguishes between minor, major and critical errors (-0.25, -0.50 or -1 point, respectively). Minor errors slightly alter the message but do not hamper comprehension; major errors introduce bigger changes, but the overall meaning of the text is preserved; critical errors result in grossly inaccurate and misleading information and affect comprehension significantly.

The above studies seem to confirm that IRSP is indeed feasible, albeit challenging, and that a training background in a related discipline such as interpreting or subtitling may be an advantage in the acquisition of IRSP skills. However, as IRSP is still essentially an experimental practice, more empirical data from various settings and involving different language combinations are needed. One of the problems of carrying out empirical research on IRSP is that it is not (yet) a widespread method to produce live subtitles. However, over the past few years some MA dissertations have reported on small studies in specific settings in which an ad-hoc IRSP service had been organised: Marchionne (2010-11) described an experiment in which several TV programmes were subtitled live via IRSP in the French-Italian language combination; Serafini (2014-15) organised an IRSP-based live subtitling service (English-Italian) during a film festival in Italy. Case studies of this kind do not allow for generalisations, but as best practices have yet to be defined, they are useful to test different IRSP set-ups. The present paper contributes to the on-going discussion by providing some empirical data on IRSP in a conference setting.

The data used in this study come from the 5th International Symposium on Live Subtitling, respeaking and accessibility which took place at UNINT on 12 June 2015. As both simultaneous interpreting and (intralingual) respeaking are taught at our university, the Local Organising Committee decided to provide both live subtitles via respeaking and a simultaneous interpreting service in the two official languages of the Symposium, English and Italian.

All the conference speakers used the same PowerPoint template for their presentations, in which some space was left blank at the bottom of each slide to accommodate a maximum of three lines of subtitles. The subtitles were beamed directly onto the slides by means of the Text-on-Top software. The end result is shown in Figure 2.

Each of the four SL speeches was subdivided into idea units on the basis of semantic content (with grammatical and prosodic features helping to determine the boundaries); then, matching idea units were identified (if present) in the interpreted version, in the respoken version and in the TL subtitles. In order to carry out the analysis, a taxonomy that could be applied to all of our TL data had to be developed, with categories describing the relationship between each SL idea unit and corresponding TL idea unit in terms of the information made available to the TL audience. To this end, a review of relevant literature on quality in simultaneous interpreting (including Barik 1971, Altman 1994, Falbo 2002), subtitling (Gottlieb 1992, Díaz Cintas and Remael 2007) and intralingual respeaking (Romero-Fresco 2011) was carried out.

Table 3 shows the number of words and the number of idea units identified in each SL speech, accompanied by the corresponding figures for the interpreted speeches and the TL subtitles produced via IRSP (henceforth, subtitles). The figures in the greyscale columns indicate the number of words, while those in white the number of idea units.

When the TL idea unit manages to convey the same and complete meaning as the original more concisely, there is a condensation (C). In Example 2, the SL speaker announces he is going to play a short video for a demo, and both the interpreted version and the TL subtitles opt for more succinct structures to introduce the clip (Interpreter: here is a demo; Subtitle: this is a demo.).

Finally, the macro-category of semantic distortion refers to the alteration of semantic content. The most obvious example is substitution, which replaces an SL idea with a completely different idea in the TL unit. Example 6 shows that both the interpreted version and the TL subtitles replaced 100% with 20%, which results in the audience receiving factually wrong information.[10]

The data in Table 4 show that the number of transfers is much higher in the interpreted output of all four speeches, which means that, overall, the interpreters conveyed the semantic content of the original speeches more fully than the respeakers. Condensation was the second most frequent semantic transmission category in both translation modes, ranking at very similar levels (49 in the interpreted output vs. 52 in the subtitles), but with a different distribution across the four speeches. Predictably, explicitation was