M+E Daily

During the conference panel session “The View from the Academics – Training the Talent for Tomorrow” at the Innovation and Transformation Summit (ITS): Localisation event in London on Feb. 28, academic localisation experts discussed how media and entertainment (M&E) companies can best prepare their organisations for the talent needs they will have in the future.

We already hear the words “talent crunch” quite regularly within the localisation sector amid the changing nature of localisation.

The panelists discussed how, as machine learning becomes more widely deployed, companies can ensure that the next generation of talent are equipped to work in the M&E industry.

“Where can you learn media localisation?” Agnieszka Szarkowska, audiovisual translation researcher and trainer, University of Warsaw & AVT Masterclass, asked rhetorically.

“The answer is there are many programmes at universities that offer [localisation education], typically as part of an MA programme,” she said. “But this comes with lots of constraints. You are typically offered some very rudimentary training” in just 10-20 hours.

“But how can you become a subtitler in 10 hours or in 20 hours?” she asked, pointing out: “There’s so much to cover and you also need to write your thesis. You need to attend some theoretical classes, attend in-person lectures, etc. And not all training programmes are available in all languages or countries.”

Additionally, she noted: “Not everyone wants to sign up for this fully-fledged university program [for] translation, and a lot of people just want to learn some specific skills.” What is needed is “bridging this gap between academic training on the one hand and the industry needs on the other hand,” she added.

She pointed out that her school offers courses targeted at some specific skills and it offers two types of training, and “I think it’s really necessary now.”

So currently, she explained: “We’ve got some publicly available, self-based courses for individuals and they typically take that as part of their continuing professional development…. And, on the other hand, we’ve got a mix of self-based and live training sessions for companies that are customised to their needs.”

There are also a “growing portfolio of courses that we believe answer the needs and we teach subtitling for the hard of hearing closed captioning, fundamentals of subtitling and template creation,” she said.

Also planned are courses related to post editing, audio description, subtitling guidelines and more specific niches, she said. Individual freelance translators, meanwhile, are typically interested in brushing up some specific skills, like how to describe music” through Subtitles for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (SDH) or how to time subtitles around short changes,” she added.

Come companies, however, are “more interested in skills like template creation or subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing, and also in people getting trained in their particular tool so that they’re ready to start working immediately for them,” she said.

Meanwhile, “we’ve identified recently” that there is “going to be more need for Ukrainians” who will need closed captioning, she said, noting: “We continue to support Ukrainian linguists in their efforts to provide this type of captioning.”

Also important, she added: “Many companies are looking for talent and I’m wondering now, who should be paying for the education, for the training in media localisation? Is it individuals themselves who want to become professionals in media localisation? Or is it perhaps the companies that are looking for talent that should be offering training for linguists rather than expect them to come with the necessary skills?”

High Levels of Dissatisfaction

Kristijan Nikolic, a lecturer at University of Zagreb, said he conducted a survey on the levels of satisfaction of translators in the industry in 21 countries. This was “the first time that we actually have data about … working conditions” in the sector, he noted.

“Some of the data is very interesting [and] some unsurprising,” he said, adding: “Many find that [they’re] underpaid but also a lot find it very stressful. We didn’t really anticipate this level of stress in the job. And another thing that’s very clear is that freelancers find this job to be more and more precarious, uncertain, unsafe.”

As a result apparently, “graduates are not very keen anymore to go into media localisation,” he said, noting he teaches localisation and EU translation. “They don’t want to work weekends and kill themselves working. They want to enjoy life a little bit and they tend to go into more lucrative areas, even something completely different.”

Therefore, something will need to change when it comes to working conditions, “if we want to retain talent anyway,” said moderator Yota Georgakopoulou, Athena Consultancy audiovisual localisation consultant. Jorge Diaz-Cintas, professor of Translation Studies at University College London, also participated in the panel discussion.

The Innovation and Transformation Summit: Localisation was sponsored by AppTek, Signiant, EIDR, Iyuno, LinQ Media Group, Vubiquity, OOONA, XL8, and Collot Baca, and was produced by MESA, in association with the Content Localisation Council.