Subtitle Quality

 

Around 10 years ago I lead a programme of research looking into the quality of television subtitles. The work was very successful and had a huge impact on the industry, overturning many subtitling practices which had led to a poor quality experience for the audience.

 

If anything our work was too successful, leading to complaints from several academics and eventually a reorganisation at Ofcom, and it was closed down after just 4 years - https://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/projects/live-subtitle-quality

 

However, taking voluntary redundancy gives me the opportunity to develop new ideas and revisit unfinished business. One piece of unfinished business was the idea that I could automatically monitor the various qualities of broadcast subtitles on a 24/7 basis. I am now developing software to meet this challenge and in the process I am uncovering historical trends and current issues which badly affect the quality of subtitles. This work opens up the possibility of automating subtitle Quality Control and may lead to techniques for automatically improving subtitles in some cases.