Optimising subtitle reception: subtitles for all Pablo Romero-Fresco (Roehampton University, Transmedia Catalonia) Henrik Gottlieb (University of Copenhagen) Agnieszka Szarkowska (University of Warsaw) Veronica Arnaiz (Universidad de Valladolid) Carlo Eugeni (Intersteno) Large scale user evaluation of subtitles in seven European countries

Quality in SDH  Analysing reception by deaf, HoH and hearing viewers  Countries involved: UK, Spain, Italy, Poland, Denmark, Germany, Greece Looking at  Opinion through surveys  Comprehension through questionnaires  Perception through eye-tracking

Quality in SDH  Surveys to find out what users think  Questionnaires to find out what users understand  Eye-tracking to find out what users see

General figures  Opinion (surveys) - 1,400 participants - 85,000 questions (12,000 per country)  Comprehension(questionnaires) - 70 questions per participant - 12,600 questions  Perception (eye-tracking) - 83,000 subtitles - 4,140 minutes

Common conclusions  Quantity: still an issue  Quality: country per country basis  Live subtitling is an issue across the board. - video delay as a solution?  Time to revise current guidelines  More reception and eye-tracking research needed for – SDH – Live subtitling – Interlingual subtitling

Denmark  Interlingual bona fide subtitling: General satisfaction, but Deaf & HoH need nonverbal info Hearing want ’better’ translations, yet enough time to read  Intralingual bona fide subtitling: More viewers would benefit if they knew Deaf & HoH want names or colors, plus sound sources Deaf want everything subtitled HoH want subtitles in sync with dialog  Intralingual live subtitling: Many still don’t know this service Some dissatisfaction (lack of synchrony)

Poland SDH shown in  Public television (TVP) on its two channels TVP1 and TVP2 – 2009: ca. 8% broadcast time – 2010: ca. 4% broadcast time  Films, soaps, TV series, current affairs programmes, documentaries + one news programme per day  Intra- and interlingual

Poland  First priority: increase in SDH provision – Currently: 8% of two major public TV channels [TVP1 and TVP2], including repeats – No road map for accessibility – Viewers in favour of paying license fee if SDH provision is guaranteed  Most viewers strongly against editing in SDH

Spain  Spain – 45m people – deaf – 1,000,000 – (deaf & hard of hearing – 4,000,000)  Spanish AVT landscape – Dubbing on TV – Analogue switch-over ( ) – Ley General del Audiovisual

Spain Ident.Place.Justi.BoxesBorderShad.Emot.IconsSpeed HearersColourTopCentreNo Box BorderShad.Descr. Stand. DeafColourBottomCentreNo Box No Border No Shad. Descr./ (Emot.) Descr. Stand. Hard of Hearing ColourMixedLeftNo Box BorderShad.(Emot.)Descr. Stand.

Italy Deaf go by habits Hearers go by aesthetics Hard-of-Hearing go by usefulness Difficulties noticing presence of ≠ techniques Comprehension: Hearers understand more thanks to audio > visual for Deaf > textual for H and HoH

UK Deaf viewers seem to be more - resourceful - knowledgeable - open to changes than hard of hearing viewers when it comes to SDH - DVD subtitles seen as more reliable - TV subtitles preferred when no technical problems are involved - Edited vs verbatim: slight preference for verbatim SDH

UK Live subtitles : -Unawareness/Unrealistic expectations regarding speech recognition -Concern about delay / errors  DTV4ALL + BBC: Documentary on live subtitling  Recommendations applied by Swiss TxT in Switzerland  Delayed signal? Perhaps at the viewers’end? Pre-recorded subtitles: -Lack of availability in digital channels (US, +1, etc.) -HoH: complaints about editing and lack of synchrony - Viewers can cope with different conventions

The Reception of SDH in Europe Contents 1.Introduction………… 2. Spain……………… 3. Poland Italy Greece Germany UK Denmark Conclusions

The Reception of SDH in Europe

Thank you! Questions Suggestions