The professional means that a human, given time and effort, composes sentences with the idea that, if you had, for example, no auditory experience, you would be able to ātell the taleā without missing any important details of the story. Even with the ānewā pace. It may seem like a compromise, but for decades, it has maintained such high standards that viewers rarely complain about hardcoded subtitles in the Netherlands. Live subtitles are also a significant part of the Dutch TV experience, with the same origin story. A professional Dutch subtitler must consider Dutch subtitles from an accessibility pov. Subtitles are always an option here because we only dub childrenās content. Even then, we offer āthe originalā with subtitles (e.g., in cinemas). In regular Dutch television, the way people speak (which should not be compared to dramas, Person A - Person B) was not that common; we have moved towards it because the Dutch have always offered American or British TV. Sequences of Dutch segments are always edited in a way that allows for speech beyond the shot. Their message is thatāwhatever the source, except for a human with time and good payāputs accessibility at zero.
This country is the best and simultaneously the worst example, haha.
I work in this business, and I always have to keep in mind that on Viki, much more context is of importance. If you look at the same show from another source, subtitles feel cold and literal. This has nothing to do with accessibility anymore but with time. What is enough to give the audience the idea that they are reading a conversation (for example). So if either AI or human subs are that bad, it sure does hurt!
This is why humans will always remain amazing in our collective eyes (as stated in the article too). We are able to juggle and use vocabulary so effectively and efficiently that the same essence remains with fewer words. In our own context (!). If you follow any study or course on subtitles here, youāre forced to think, āIf I were Dutch, in my thirties, and in a business environment, how would one speak?ā What the article doesnāt mention and something AI will never be able to foresee unless we give it the input, is that language is fluid; if you look at a Dutch network now, the translations or transcript seems old and formal. New compromises are necessary that machine learning will not take into account, but people still have to if they want to outsmart the money grabbers.
I guess that in my reply Iām forgetting the angry people, the ones who pay and/or demand. Are they truly willing to take the bad over delay? I wonder often.
P.S. I hope I didnāt sound too critical, nor too much in favour of the Dutch (lol). Of all the things I find odd here, the accessibility (and its laws!) is something to applaud. From another perspective, one might call this a privilege (try to convince a Dutch business person that being creative is a job).
I had thoughts haha. I feel strongly with you all for the other language subtitlers and viewers.
