Title
A course in interlingual respeaking. Results and reflections
Conference name
Intermedia. 5th International Conference on Audiovisual Translation
City
Country
Poland
Modalities
Date
19/09/2019
Abstract
Respeaking is one of the youngest disciplines within media accessibility and it is used to make live and pre-recorded television accessible to the deaf and hard-of-hearing community. As audiovisual material is increasingly and globally streamed live, there is a growing demand for this live content to be made accessible in a foreign language. This calls for interlingual live subtitling (ILS), which is intended for both foreign-language and hearing-impaired viewers, illustrating the wider and inclusive notion of media accessibility where access is needed for audiences with and without disabilities.
Over the past two years, extensive research has been carried out for my PhD project, which has also informed intellectual output 2 of the Interlingual Live Subtitling for Access (ILSA) project to identify the required skills and the best-suited professional profile for ILS. The comprehensive data acquired about respeaking performance has successfully informed part of the first ever course on interlingual respeaking, which was delivered online by the University of Vigo from January – May 2019, to seven students with backgrounds of interpreting, subtitling and intralingual respeaking.
The course was comprised of three eight-week modules on simultaneous interpreting, intralingual respeaking and interlingual respeaking. Some students consistently reached the 98% threshold for ILS and produced respoken texts that would have been suitable for live broadcast. The results show ILS as a complex task in which (live) translation and speech recognition skills are equally important, but also one that is feasible providing appropriate training is delivered. This presentation will focus on the course design, performance of students, what worked well and what could be improved for future training in ILS. Finally, an outline of a research-informed training programme for ILS will be presented, which is regarded as a step in the right direction to help consolidate this new discipline as an access service.
Over the past two years, extensive research has been carried out for my PhD project, which has also informed intellectual output 2 of the Interlingual Live Subtitling for Access (ILSA) project to identify the required skills and the best-suited professional profile for ILS. The comprehensive data acquired about respeaking performance has successfully informed part of the first ever course on interlingual respeaking, which was delivered online by the University of Vigo from January – May 2019, to seven students with backgrounds of interpreting, subtitling and intralingual respeaking.
The course was comprised of three eight-week modules on simultaneous interpreting, intralingual respeaking and interlingual respeaking. Some students consistently reached the 98% threshold for ILS and produced respoken texts that would have been suitable for live broadcast. The results show ILS as a complex task in which (live) translation and speech recognition skills are equally important, but also one that is feasible providing appropriate training is delivered. This presentation will focus on the course design, performance of students, what worked well and what could be improved for future training in ILS. Finally, an outline of a research-informed training programme for ILS will be presented, which is regarded as a step in the right direction to help consolidate this new discipline as an access service.