In Broadcast - September 2021 - 56

56
www.inbroadcast.com | Vol: 11 - Issue 9 | September 2021
InStudio
Captioning & Subtitling
Machine Translation
With the increased demand for accessible
and localized content, automatic speech
recognition is essential with word error
rates now very low for broadcast material...
By Adrian Pennington
A
to
utomated Speech
generate
closed
Recognition
(ASR) systems learn from data
captioning
and
subtitling at close to 100 per cent
accuracy. This includes the creation
of a preliminary transcript,
splitting
the transcript or script into frame-byframe
captions/subtitles, automatically
checking for conformance with styles
from publishing platforms, and
generating machine translation to
make the text localization process
much more efficient.
One variable is the update of
vocabulary with new words - ASR
systems must have a mechanism to
learn these new words. " When we have
deviations from these conditions there
will be a drop in quality depending
of
the
deviation
(e.g.
VoiceInteraction,
background
noise, overlap speech, several people
speaking at the same time, music), "
says
Marketing
Manager Mariana Manteiga.
" Speech recognition has come a long
way and word error rates are now very
low for broadcast material, " agrees
Wayne Garb, CEO and Co-Founder,
OOONA. " We've seen an increase in
the demand for this technology to
facilitate the creation of subtitle and
caption files in the same language
as the audio, so have integrated a
few state-of-the-art engines into our
Create Pro editor to cater for client
demand. Of course, the automated
output isn't perfect, so you still need
a professional to fix the errors, but it
is good enough to provide significant
productivity increases. "
There are two additions the company
has recently made as part of its effort
to
support
the
media
localization
market - both claimed unique to our
sector. Explains Garb, " The first is
our EDU platform, which is tailored
to the needs of academic institutions
and was built with input from worldrenowned
academics (including Jorge
Díaz-Cintas, Professor of Translation
at the Centre for Translation Studies,
University College London). All our
tools are browser-based, which
makes them ideal for remote training
scenarios and compatible with any
operating system students have access
to.
" Aside from facilitating the training
of new professionals, we also created
The POOOL, an online directory for
such professionals to connect to the
hundreds of LSPs in the market.
Voice Interaction is releasing a new version of its automatic
closed captioning software Audimus.Media
editor, enabling translators to make
the most out of their work and boost
their productivity.
ASR is on-par with human captioning
in many respects. Today, ASR is being
used to provide captioning in both live
and file-based situations. Accuracy
varies based on speech engine, genre,
language and audio quality.
" No system
is hundred per
cent
accurate but the technology is vastly
improved over the last few years, "
says Chuck Jones, CMO, BroadStream.
Editing file-based captions must be
done manually to bring them up to
hundred percent.
with Polistream or OASYS Integrated
Playout for a fully integrated, 'onebox'
solution.
" SubCaptioner provides file-based
captioning and does the majority of
the transcribing work humans have
typically done. It delivers an SRT file in
just minutes and we provide scoring to
easily locate areas we think may need
editing. SubCaptioner will be available
in both cloud and on-premise versions.
Both solutions are cost-effective and
easy to use. "
ASR and neural machine translation,
when properly trained in the source
material domain, create significant
efficiencies inside captioning
and
subtitling workflows. This is further
improved with custom features
such
as AppTek's
VoCaption from BroadStream is for live broadcast subtitling
" We wanted this to be an inclusive
initiative to everyone's benefit, so
The POOOL is run by key industry
stakeholders and academics and we
are in the process of inviting more key
players to join our community. "
The company has also embarked
proof
on
a
claimed
first-of-a-kind
of concept to add high-in-demand
translation-assisted tools in its subtitle
BroadStream offers two solutions:
VoCaption for live broadcast and
SubCaptioner for file-based captioning.
Explains Jones, " Both include easyto-update,
custom dictionaries to
ensure
local
names,
locations
language.
and
terms or phrases are accurate and
also provide word replacements for
unacceptable
VoCaption
can be used stand-alone or integrated
Intelligent
Line
Segmentation. This produces line
breaks in subtitles closer to how a
professional would create them, on
the basis of syntax and semantics, for
better readability.
" However, the industry will need
to rely on manual human-in-theloop
editing, not only to guarantee
hundred percent accuracy, but also
for the more creative part of the art of
subtitling itself, " says Kyle Maddock,
SVP Marketing.
Ooona has made additions to its ecosystem in our effort to support
the media localization market
AppTek plans to launch a new machine translation technology
http://www.inbroadcast.com http://www.voice-interaction.com/marketing/brochures/Audimus.Media.US.pdf https://broadstream.com/products/vocaption/ https://www.apptek.com http://www.ooona.net
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