Forum: Subtitling
Topic: Netflix Hermes test
Poster: Natalia2504
Post title: Have you been answered yet?
Thanks for the tips!
Did you get the corrections yet?
Best regards ;)
[quote]BNN Medical Tr. wrote:
I just did the Hermes test and would like to share some tips.
Use the latest Firefox or Opera browser with the latest Flash Player version (it should still work fine if your versions are a little bit outdated, though). Some people on this thread reported problems with Chrome. Firefox worked fine for me. Use the privacy mode.
Open dictionaries in a separate browser window before starting the test. For English, I recommend [url removed] , [url removed] and [url removed] The first one is the best for idiomatic expressions (tests 1 and 2), and the last two are perfect for searching suitable words for translations in your target language.
The first two tests are multiple choice and mostly ask about the meaning or translation of very obscure idiomatic expressions. Trust me, I have been speaking English fluently since childhood, I have grade A score on the Cambridge CPE test (upper C2 level in English) and still I didn't know many of the expressions listed. Regardless, by looking them up on the above dictionaries, the tests became quite easy.
The third test gives you short 10-second clips with audio and ask you the meaning of what they are saying. Pretty straightforward and not hard if you have good listening skills in English.
The fourth test also gives you short clips, but this time with a single subtitle event, and it asks you to pinpoint wrong with them, choosing from many options (timing is off, there's a typo, punctuation error, and several more). There's also the possibility that the subtitle is completely correct, and there's an option for this. The problem I had with this test is that a particular subtitle had no less than 3 distinct errors with it, so I didn't know which answer to mark! I'll report it to them.
Lastly, it will give you two different 2-3 minute clips to subtitle, with the English lines already displayed, so you only need to translate each line. The problems with these are that the "available time" (that is, character-per-second count) is often not enough, no matter how much you try to simplify your text to fit it. I left several lines a few milliseconds over the threshold because it was frankly impossible to make them any shorter. Unless your language happens to be especially succint, be prepared for this. I also left a few lines with more than 42 characters (1-3 more) because again, there was simply no feasible way to shorten them without omitting important words (which I believe would be a worse decision to make). I hope they don't knock too many points off because of such small deviations from the limits.
I scored 95% on tests 1-4 overall. This result is given to you after ALL the tests are done. I'm now awaiting the correction of the subtitling test.
I hope this helps.
[Edited at 2017-08-09 01:59 GMT] [/quote]