Forum: Subtitling
Topic: Is it unusual for companies to provide their own subtitling software?
Poster: José Henrique Lamensdorf
Post title: I thought someone might ask that
[quote]Melina Kajander wrote:
Yes, this is how I'd understood it; although I'm not sure how much financial sense it makes for companies to have something translated a number of times, but then again that isn't my problem, of course ;) [/quote]
It's a problem of RIGHTS on the subtitles.
Envision this, in the not-so-distant pre-globalization times...
Mogul Studios, Hollywood, CA, USA, produced some movie or TV series that became very popular, which was distributed to 100+ countries. The local film distributor for cinemas, VHS publisher, TV station that had the rights so show/resell it in each country took care of translating, subtitling, dubbing, etc. Maybe in some countries Mogul had a local representative, a subsidiary, whatever, who did it once for all of them.
Whoever hired and paid for the localization process owns the intellectual property of that dubbing soundtrack or subtitles file. Merely "snatching" such existing file for reuse is tantamount to piracy, a delicate matter in this industry. If, for instance, Mogul ever became known for using someone else's subtitles without the proper license, pirates would feel justified in making all of Mogul's productions freely available for download on the web.
Then Mogul decides to launch a remastered DVD or Blu-ray international version of one or many of their most successful movies, with menu-selectable subtitles in umpteen languages (let's skip dubbing audio soundtracks to keep it simple). Imagine how much work it would involve to discover who are the umpteen subtitles' rights holders for each flick, negotiate with each of them, and buy the rights. Some might be pretty bad quality. Other such holders may have split, merged, gone out of business, etc. Some might be in a bad financial situation or plain greedy, and struggle to make a bundle from it, making negotiations longer and tougher.
One subtitling studio might have in its agreement that translators are entitled to some additional pay, in case those subtitles are ever resold to anyone else. Not so farfetched. Some such translators could now be flipping burgers again, owning a gas station, or seven feet under. Not always so easy to find.
On another front, Mogul might now stand the chance to sell the rights to Netflix or any other VOD operation. If they offer it with subtitles in dozens of languages, they might ask for a considerably higher price.
So the least complicated, faster, and potentially cheaper way is to get it redone from scratch.
I've oversimplified the entire setup, and kept to a limited number of possibilities, but that's what often happens.
Topic: Is it unusual for companies to provide their own subtitling software?
Poster: José Henrique Lamensdorf
Post title: I thought someone might ask that
[quote]Melina Kajander wrote:
Yes, this is how I'd understood it; although I'm not sure how much financial sense it makes for companies to have something translated a number of times, but then again that isn't my problem, of course ;) [/quote]
It's a problem of RIGHTS on the subtitles.
Envision this, in the not-so-distant pre-globalization times...
Mogul Studios, Hollywood, CA, USA, produced some movie or TV series that became very popular, which was distributed to 100+ countries. The local film distributor for cinemas, VHS publisher, TV station that had the rights so show/resell it in each country took care of translating, subtitling, dubbing, etc. Maybe in some countries Mogul had a local representative, a subsidiary, whatever, who did it once for all of them.
Whoever hired and paid for the localization process owns the intellectual property of that dubbing soundtrack or subtitles file. Merely "snatching" such existing file for reuse is tantamount to piracy, a delicate matter in this industry. If, for instance, Mogul ever became known for using someone else's subtitles without the proper license, pirates would feel justified in making all of Mogul's productions freely available for download on the web.
Then Mogul decides to launch a remastered DVD or Blu-ray international version of one or many of their most successful movies, with menu-selectable subtitles in umpteen languages (let's skip dubbing audio soundtracks to keep it simple). Imagine how much work it would involve to discover who are the umpteen subtitles' rights holders for each flick, negotiate with each of them, and buy the rights. Some might be pretty bad quality. Other such holders may have split, merged, gone out of business, etc. Some might be in a bad financial situation or plain greedy, and struggle to make a bundle from it, making negotiations longer and tougher.
One subtitling studio might have in its agreement that translators are entitled to some additional pay, in case those subtitles are ever resold to anyone else. Not so farfetched. Some such translators could now be flipping burgers again, owning a gas station, or seven feet under. Not always so easy to find.
On another front, Mogul might now stand the chance to sell the rights to Netflix or any other VOD operation. If they offer it with subtitles in dozens of languages, they might ask for a considerably higher price.
So the least complicated, faster, and potentially cheaper way is to get it redone from scratch.
I've oversimplified the entire setup, and kept to a limited number of possibilities, but that's what often happens.