Interlingual Live Subtitling for Access (ILSA).

Internet, audiovisual media and digital technology are transforming our world. However, their potential will not be realised until they become fully accessible and enable the participation of all citizens in everyday life. Audiovisual translation and media accessibility have become drivers of social inclusion and integration and have lately received full recognition in the literature (Remael, Orero and Carroll 2012) and in EU-funded projects (DTV4ALL, ADLAB, HBB4ALL). In the area of subtitling for the deaf, a key priority for the users has always been to access live content such as news and public events (AOHL 2013). The preferred technique for this is respeaking, where subtitlers listen to the original soundtrack of a programme or public event and simultaneously repeat or rephrase what they hear to a speech recognition software that turns these words into intralingual subtitles for deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers and for all people who support their viewing with subtitles. When respeaking was first introduced in Europe in 2001, subtitling companies needed professionals who could produce intralingual live subtitles but did not know how to go about it, since there was no academic training or research in this area. As a result, respeaking practices differ greatly across countries and quality has suffered (Romero-Fresco, 2011). Since then, the work carried out, amongst others, by the partners in this application as part of EU-funded projects such as DTV4ALL and SAVAS, has helped to advance research and training in this area, and the industry is now employing respeakers trained at our institutions. However, a new challenge has now emerged, as migration streams and the increased multilingual and multicultural composition of societies worldwide have led to a growing demand for accessibility to live audiovisual content and events conducted in a foreign language. Broadcasters such as the BBC and VRT and political institutions such as the UK and the Spanish Parliament have highlighted the need to find professionals who can produce interlingual live subtitles (ILS) through respeaking, a new discipline that will require translating, subtitling and simultaneous interpreting skills. Although the partners in this project are the only scholars in the world who have so far produced research on this new discipline (Szarkowska et. al 2016, Romero-Fresco and Pochhacker 2017, Remael and Robert, fc.), there is still no training available. The main objective of ILSA is to design (IO3), develop (IO4 and IO5), test (IO6) and validate (IO7) the first training course for ILS and to provide a protocol for the implementation of this discipline in three real-life scenarios, namely TV, the classroom and the Parliament (IO7). The curriculum and training materials will be flexible so that they can be integrated in different learning environments for the users and initial target group of the course: translation and interpreting graduate and postgraduate students, and professionals already working as respeakers, interpreters or more generally in translation and accessibility.

Keywords:MEDIA AND CULTURE, TRANSLATION STUDIES

Disciplines:Literary studies, Theory and methodology of language studies, Higher education, Inclusive and special education