*Understand first*. Has it escaped automation in media localization?

This is first thing a professional film translator does and the first thing every audiovisual translation student learns to do. Before timing, before reading speed, lip sync or any rule, you watch the content, read the showguide, do your research. You make sure you understand who is speaking and to whom, about what, what are the emotional implications, what the silences mean.

All of this understanding lives in the translator's mind. In the human brain who will find the way to communicate it to the viewers. This is the oldest idea in the profession, and it has never been a problem when trained professionals work under fair conditions.

What happened to it? Why is it now treated as an innovation and something that needs to be automated? Fragmented workflows have removed humans and displaced the central figure from the source. And the answer to this is more automation. Well, a machine can probably reconstruct something from source material. But is what it reconstructs the same thing, or a structured approximation that looks complete until it isn't?

#subtitling #dubbing #filmtranslation #audiovisualtranslation