Vol/51 No/4 2012AUGUST/SEPTEMBERTheLinguist15FEATURESVALUABLE EXPERIENCEManchester University studentson a Year Abroad in BarcelonaThe numbers applying for combinations oflanguages are much greater than for all theindividual languages put together, butapplications there are down 8.9 percent. The pattern of converting applications toacceptances also seems to be different thisyear, with more people deciding either earlieror later than usual. The rise in fees seems tohave concentrated the minds of applicantsand their families. Some knew exactly whatthey wanted and could sign up at once.Others wanted to wait until everything wasclear - especially the fees for the year abroad.Year abroadThe year abroad is a key feature of languagedegrees, but the additional cost of travel andaccommodation is a potential disincentive forstudents already expecting to build up asubstantial debt. This was especially true aslong as the funding arrangements for 2012entrants were unknown.For current students, the financial facts aretransparent but very complex. Students on anErasmus study or work placement - includinga British Council assistantship - pay no fees tothe home or host university, while the homeuniversity receives substantial Governmentcompensation. For work and studyplacements outside Erasmus, fees are cappedat 50 percent of the maximum, and homeuniversities receive less compensation. TheGovernment repeatedly delayed a decisionon funding for 2012 entrants, but made itclear that it would no longer compensateuniversities for students going abroad.The University Council of ModernLanguages (UCML), which is the over-archingbody representing virtually all departmentsand professional associations in languages,linguistics and area studies, lobbied from earlyin 2011 for the Government and the HigherEducation Funding Council for England(Hefce) to show their support for outgoingstudent mobility in a concrete way. We hadmany allies, not least Baroness Coussins, anindefatigable champion for language causesin the House of Lords. The Department forBusiness, Innovation and Skills (BIS) set up aworking party, chaired by Colin Riordan, EssexVice-Chancellor, to consider the issue.The campaign reached a climax with thejoint British Academy-UCML positionstatement, Valuing the Year Abroad (see'Academy Award', TL 51,3). UCML was lookingto minimise disincentives to the year abroadthrough a fee cap or waiver for students;compensation to universities; access to feeand maintenance loans; and public backingfrom Government, universities, employers andgraduates, supported by quantitative andqualitative evidence. This last was providedthanks to the power of online socialnetworking, harnessed by Third Year Abroad,which gathered graduate testimonies thatshowed that the skills students acquire througha year abroad give them a lifelong competitiveadvantage in the career stakes (seewww.thirdyearabroad.com/graduates). UCML also wanted to level the playing-field between Erasmus and other work orstudy abroad, and to remove the incentivefor individuals and universities to play safe,opting for an Erasmus exchange rather than amore distant and perhaps more challengingand rewarding placement in Russia, LatinAmerica, the Middle East or China.The BIS report in May 2012 met nearly allof UCML's ambitions. For students starting acourse in 2012, year abroad fees are cappedat 15 percent of the maximum (£1,350), whileHefce will provide an additional 25 percent incompensation for universities. Students areentitled to both maintenance and fee loans.The rules apply to students anywhere in theworld. And Universities Minister DavidWilletts has said he is 'very pro studentmobility. I'm keen to encourage those whowish it to do some of their study overseas. Ifthere are barriers, I want to remove them.'Announcing the decision on fees, headded, 'Study abroad offers a huge range ofbenefits for students taking part, and also forour universities and the wider UK economy.Students improve their employability,institutions develop their international links,and businesses value the wider experience ofthose who've spent time abroad. It's a win-win for all.'So virtually all of UCML's year abroadobjectives have been achieved. It remains toget the new funding arrangements to applyto work placements outside Erasmus, but ifstudents on work placement also register atthe local university, they may be entitled tothe more favourable fees regime.© ISTOCKPHOTO

FLOUTING CONVENTION: Fansubbersinclude a lot of information on-screen16 TheLinguistAUGUST/SEPTEMBERwww.iol.org.ukCREATIVE TRANSLATIONAdriana Tortoriello asks whether professionalsubtitlers have anything to learn from fansubbingUntil recently, the world was divided intosubtitling and dubbing countries. With theNineties DVD revolution, however, thedividing line between these two blocks wasblurred. Suddenly, even audiences intraditionally dubbing countries could accessaudiovisual products in subtitled versions, tothe joy of many a film buff. More than a decade later, things havemoved on again, and new ways of producingand relating to subtitles have emerged. Theindustry demands increasingly faster andcheaper turnarounds, and in this context,professional subtitlers often struggle tosurvive, or choose to leave the field.But aside from the worrying decline inrates, there are two aspects of subtitlingpractice today that are likely to have aconsiderable impact on the subtitling process itself: developments in professionalsubtitling technology and the relatively new -and mushrooming -phenomenonknown as fansubbing. Technological advances are leading to twovery interesting modalities of production:automatic timing and respeaking (ie, livesubtitling through speech recognition). Whilethe latter is primarily related to subtitling forthe deaf and hard of hearing, which isbeyond the scope of this article, the formershows great promise in the context ofinterlingual subtitling as well.Automatic Subtitle Timing is one of themain features developed by SysMedia (now part of Screen Subtitling Systems) fortheir state-of-the-art subtitling software,WinCAPS, one of the most broadly used inprofessional subtitling.The auto-timingfunction enables subtitles to be timed directlyto the audio of the programme, as long asThe right way to sub?the soundtrack is clear enough. This allowsthe user to obtain a timed and spottedsubtitle file more quickly than with anyconventional timing method, and that file canthen be used as a template for translation. This represents the sort of technologicaladvance that can support the subtitler, andthe subtitling process, in order to meet thedemand for faster turnaround at lower rates.While we are far from a fully automatedprocess, we are getting closer to a situationin which technology supports a faster way ofsubtitling. Far from impinging on quality, thismight be the key to devoting less time to thetechnical side of subtitling, and more time onthe quality of translation. One-stop-shopWhen I started subtitling, in the late Nineties,I worked for one of the major internationalsubtitling companies at the time, the now-defunct Visiontext. In those days we workedwith VHS, watched on a TV set, and arudimentary subtitling software whose namehas long been lost in the mists of time. Thetranslated programme would then behanded to a number of other players, whowould take it to the final stages ofproduction. Subtitling a film from start tofinish would take up to two weeks. Nowadays, subtitling has become a one-stop-shop, performed by one person on onePC. The profile of the subtitler has changedgreatly - linguistic abilities alone are nolonger enough, one needs to betechnologically savvy and able to becomeconversant with the relevant technology veryquickly. Keeping up-to-speed withtechnological advances is now an importantelement of a profession subtitler's work.Qualifications:A background in translationis an advantage, but specific training inaudiovisual translation (AVT) and subtitling- on both the linguistic and the technicalside - is usually required. Increasingly,universities offer AVT at Master's level,either as the main focus (eg, atRoehampton University) or as optionalmodules (as at Imperial College London).Some, including Imperial, offer one-dayintensive courses. Experience:Many companies offerstudent placements. They are usuallybadly paid but provide free training andhands-on experience that can proveinvaluable.Finding a job:Competition is fierce andrates are fairly low. Don't look only tocompanies that do subtitling anddubbing; consider games localisation,transcreation and website localisation. WAYS INTO SUBTITLING