World Cup Subtitling First For ARD With SysMedia's WinCAPS Technology

Using SysMedia’s market-leading WinCAPS subtitling system, German national public broadcaster ARD is providing extensive subtitling for hearing-impaired viewers during its live coverage of the FIFA 2006 World Cup in Germany.
This follows ARD’s use of the system earlier this year during the Winter Olympics.
The extent and nature of the subtitling for the World Cup far exceeds anything previously achieved for live broadcasts in the country. As well as live match coverage itself, subtitling has been significantly extended to include interviews, pre and post-match analysis and background stories on ARD’s Das Erste channel.
Sabine Wahrmann, Head of ARD Text, explains: “We are using one subtitler per match who we have trained to use speech recognition software. We call them “subtitle reporters” because they are creating their own coverage rather than translating the audio into a subtitle. We believe that this is the most efficient way of operating and avoids compromise.”
ARD has also partnered with another SysMedia customer for this project - Titelbild Subtitling and Translation GmbH, a highly regarded subtitling service provider. Teams of two subtitlers from Titelbild are providing the subtitles for all the other coverage beyond the matches themselves using SysMedia’s unique dual keyboard input system - another WinCAPS feature.
Wahrmann adds: “This is big deal for us with this amount of live subtitling running over four weeks. It is the biggest live subtitling event in Germany. Providing this service for the hearing impaired is important because it is part of the value that we add for the audience as a public service broadcaster. We are very happy to be able to do this.”
Andrew Lambourne, SysMedia CEO, concludes: “This is significant project for all concerned and we have demonstrated yet again our ability to enable broadcasters to deliver cutting edge services. The three companies involved have taken broadcast subtitling to the next level in Germany and we look forward to future projects.”
(SP/CD)