PBT EU Adopts SubtitleNEXT System

PBT EU has adopted the SubtitleNEXT system at Hellenic American College in Athens, making it the first college in Greece to offer the platform for its Masters in Translation (MAT) Program and Audio-visual Translation Lab.

The MAT is one of 14 academic degree programs of the US-accredited Hellenic American University which the College offers in Greece. Students in the MAT program acquire the credentials to begin a career in translation, audio-visual translation and editing. They have the option of specialising in the creative industries and entering the world of audio-visual translation, gaming localization or translation for museums or advertising companies. Graduates of the program have found work as freelance translators or at translation agencies, companies, audio-visual companies and the media.

Dr. Vasilis Manousakis, who teaches Literary and Audio-visual Translation at Hellenic American College, explains why he chose SubtitleNEXT for his students. "It brings an advantage as the environment and functions available in SubtitleNEXT offer my students a platform that matches what exists at large AV translation companies across the world."

Dr. Manousakis is an artist in his own right, having subtitled and translated a broad range of genres, series and films produced by Disney, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros. and Netflix, including House of Cards, Lost, The Good Place, Star Wars and Game of Thrones. His diverse professional and creative background has provided him with well-informed teaching material at Hellenic American College in the Master of Translation and Master of Conference Interpreting program.

He added: "SubtitleNEXT stands out from all the other systems for its functionality and ease of use. It is effective and user-friendly at the same time. My students have already used SubtitleNEXT to subtitle many projects I assigned to them. They learned how to navigate the system themselves and their reaction has been very positive. Our industry is made up of companies such as Netflix, Amazon and Disney; they all require Accessibility Functions (Audio Description and SDH) and it is great to see these incorporated in SubtitleNEXT very soon. That way, we will have an All-In-One package. The most popular SubtitleNEXT tool among my students is definitely the "synchronization" and "in-sub notes" for the QA (Proofreading) task."

Coordinator of the MAT Program and Associate Director of the Ph.D. in Language and Communication at Hellenic American University, Dr. Themis Kaniklidou noted: "We were using freeware before we upgraded to SubtitleNEXT. This upgrade brings added value to the MAT program, and we can proudly state that our students use professional programs that conform to industry standards. We are delighted that our students are learning top skills with SubtitleNEXT. It accustoms them to working within the kind of professional environment you’d find in the industry. In this sense, the skills will come naturally to them when they approach or are approached by studios and AV companies who want to commission subtitling assignments. SubtitleNEXT is a perfect tool to increase quality and productivity."

An engaged researcher, Dr. Kaniklidou has observed the growing segmentation of the market, with more translators specialising in fields such as medical or legal translation. The emergence of new fields such as localizing video games and subtitling for streaming services and the immense progress that has been made in machine translation bring new opportunities. She believes that advances in artificial intelligence will repurpose the work of professional translators, with a lot more post-translation editing demands, a task, she confirms, students in the MAT program are already adept at handling.

Under her leadership, the MAT program is responding to these industry changes. She noted: "We're providing our students with what the market demands, both in content, with the program's courses in specialisation translation, translation technology and audio-visual translation, and in technology. We’re doing a very good job for the lucky few students who decide to do the program. With SubtitleNEXT and through their assignments, our students gain experience in all types of AV translation and have a foretaste of the challenges they’ll face in their future careers. MAT is one of the few, if not the only, institution in Greece to be offering SubtitleNEXT to its students."

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