Embracing the threat: machine translation as a solution for subtitling

Bywood, Lindsay, Georgakopoulou, Panayota and Etchegoyhen, Thierry 2017. Embracing the threat: machine translation as a solution for subtitling. Perspectives. 25 (3), pp. 492-508. https://doi.org/10.1080/0907676x.2017.1291695

TitleEmbracing the threat: machine translation as a solution for subtitling
TypeJournal article
AuthorsBywood, Lindsay, Georgakopoulou, Panayota and Etchegoyhen, Thierry
Abstract

Recent decades have brought significant changes in the subtitling industry, both in terms of workflow and in the context of the market for audiovisual translation. Machine translation (MT), whilst in regular use in the traditional localisation industry, has not seen a significant uptake in the subtitling arena. The SUMAT project, an EU-funded project which ran from 2011 to 2014 had as its aim the building and evaluation of viable MT solutions for the subtitling industry in nine bidirectional language pairs. As part of the project, a year-long large-scale evaluation of the output of the resulting MT engines was carried out by trained subtitlers. This paper reports on the impetus behind the investigation of MT for subtitling, previous work in this field, and discusses some of the results of this evaluation, in particular an attempt to measure the extent of productivity gain or loss for subtitlers using machine translation as opposed to working in the traditional way. The paper examines opportunities and limitations of MT as a viable option for work of this nature and makes recommendations for the training of subtitle post-editors.

Keywordsstatistical machine translation
subtitling
audiovisual translation
SUMAT project
productivity
JournalPerspectives
Journal citation25 (3), pp. 492-508
ISSN0907-676X
Year2017
PublisherTaylor & Francis
Accepted author manuscript
File Access Level
Open (open metadata and files)
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.1080/0907676x.2017.1291695
Web address (URL)https://doi.org/10.1080/0907676X.2017.1291695
Publication dates
Published03 Jul 2017
Published online27 Mar 2017
FunderCouncil of Europe/European Commission

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Embracing the threat: machine translation as a solution
Bywood, L., Georgakopoulou, P. and Etchegoyhen, T. 2013. Embracing the threat: machine translation as a solution. Subtitling: a collective approach. University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK 12 Jul 2013

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