factsheet Access services
Live subtitling

Access services
Live subtitling

The importance of subtitling and live subtitling for audiovisual content has risen steadily in recent years and will continue to rise even more in the future. This is due to a variety of reasons:

Those responsible for making programmes are increasingly discovering that they are able to win additional viewers thanks to subtitles. For instance, non-native speakers can understand the content more easily. If audiovisual content is broadcast on social networks and consumed on the move, it is only understandable thanks to subtitles.
Subtitles help to find the right point within a programme, whether in an internet search engine or internally in an archive.
The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has been ratified in almost all European countries and is gradually being adopted into national law. This requires the countries to ensure that people with sensory disabilities have a guaranteed right of access to information. For people who are hearing-impaired, it is subtitles which ensure access.

Respeaking

Subtitling can also be prepared for planned programmes. Live subtitling requires more. Only the main outlines, the subject and the participants are known. The rest happens «live», in real time and thus unpredictably.
To be able to face these challenges, SWISS TXT has been using for years a language identification software based on respeaking. How does it work? The respeaker listens to the spoken text, transforms the content into a written version, leaves out redundant parts, where possible, and adds punctuation. Of course, the respeaker does all this orally, through a microphone and during the live-programme. Respeakers are specially trained for this task and are usually university-trained interpreters or translators with an additional qualification for live work plus many years of experience in live subtitling for the Swiss TV corporation.

the System

SWISS TXT is one of the few on the market mastering the linguistic as well as the technical challenges of access services.

It has been subtitling television programmes for 30 years and started using respeaking 10 years ago. Quality monitoring is done through scientific processes.
SWISS TXT operates the Access Media Cloud where it migrated its subtitling server. The programme provider then installs an inserter that receives the signals from that subtitling server. Live subtitling is thus totally outsourced, and the programme provider can commit himself entirely to its programme.