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Improving conditions for subtitlers and increasing Netflix’s subtitled content

Research by Professor Jorge Díaz-Cintas has led to the first ever online subtitling test and indexing system that has been used by Netflix and the wider media localization industry.

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28 April 2022

The arrival of streaming video-on-demand services, such as Netflix, Disney+ and many more, has transformed the way in which audio-visual media reaches diverse global audiences, and has radically increased the need for subtitling. This rapid rise in the need for subtitlers led Netflix executives to approach Professor Jorge Díaz-Cintas in 2013 to lead the design, testing and implementation of Hermes, the first online subtitling test and indexing system.  

A new international standard of quality 

Professor Díaz-Cintas’s research had shown that validation of translation competence should take into account not only the candidates’ linguistic knowledge of the foreign and mother tongues, but also the socio-cultural environment in which language is used as well as the technical constraints that characterise the practice of subtitling. As the chief coordinator of the 75+ researchers from 40 countries involved in the Hermes project, Professor Díaz-Cintas developed a pioneering approach to testing both established translators and newcomers to the subtitling industry and proposed a set of guidelines to guarantee quality subtitles. The system was designed to assess the skills of subtitlers around the world, covering 32 languages from Arabic to Vietnamese, to ensure high quality standards. The Hermes test provides a good indication of a candidate’s skill level, enabling Netflix to match high-quality translators with individual projects. A year after it launched around 500,000 had taken the test.  
 
The Hermes system gives subtitlers a competency score (the H number) based on their performance. High H numbers have come to represent a particular standard of service, and this has enabled translation companies and content providers to find and employ the best subtitling professionals. As a result, its success has led to an increase in freelance rates.  

Collaborating for success  

Working with universities in Algeria, China, Colombia, Estonia, Germany, India, Italy, Lithuania, Peru, Qatar, Spain and Russia, among others, Professor Diaz-Cintas has helped to develop new training courses in subtitling to meet the quality criteria set by Netflix and raise the academic visibility of subtitling in countries and contexts where previously subtitling did not exist as an educational topic. 
 
He has given over 120 invited talks on the topic, reaching in excess of 10,000 people, and has led numerous ‘training the trainers’ events. He has also validated undergraduate and postgraduate courses on subtitling around the world. 

Research synopsis

Improving conditions for subtitlers and increasing Netflix’s subtitled content 

Research at UCL by Professor Jorge Díaz-Cintas has led to the first ever online subtitling test and indexing system – Hermes – that has been used by Netflix and the wider media localization industry, to assess the linguistic and translational abilities of subtitlers in 32 languages. The research has also led to professionalization of subtitling, with improved pay and accredited training courses for subtitlers. 

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