Open Forum

At Gallaudet, where our primary visitor audience is Deaf and hard of hearing, we have closed captions on all of our videos.  (90% of the time these videos are in ASL and the captions are for non-signers to be able to follow along.)  These are provided via an in-house video player that does not allow for multiple caption/subtitle tracks, so English is the only one provided.

I can suggest an easy way to offer multi-lingual captions and subtitles - use YouTube as the video player.  You still must supply the subtitle file in English (YouTube's auto-captioning is useless most of the time), but when you do, you gain access to auto-translated subtitles in other languages.  If you happen to have already translated subtitles, you can upload them directly and not rely on the machine translation.

It's worth noting that there will be errors in machine translation, but it's far more readable to do this than rely on auto-captioning of audio.  When videos are in English with auto-translation, most are not usable by Deaf and hard of hearing viewers.  When I have encountered Spanish caption tracks on YouTube, I have used the machine translation to get them to English, and this is much more usable.

Of course the ability to use YouTube in a museum setting will be dependent on the equipment and setup, but it is a great solution to offering multi-lingual subtitles (only one language can be displayed at a time, though) in addition to the English captions the ADA requires in most situations.

Hope that helps!

------------------------------
Meredith Peruzzi
Manager
Gallaudet University Museum
Washington DC
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 10-31-2017 01:37 PM
From: Brian Shaffer
Subject: Closed Captioning

1.      Does anyone have closed caption on their films that you can change form English to another language?

2.      If you do, do you have both languages running on the film at the same time?

3.      If you don't, do you offer another alternative to your foreign visitors for closed captioning.

 

 

 

Brian Shaffer

Vice President of Facilities

Gettysburg Foundation

1195 Baltimore Pike

Gettysburg, PA 17325

 Office#717 339-2113

bshaffer@gettysburgfoundation.org

 

The Gettysburg Foundation is a non-profit philanthropic, educational organization operating in partnership with the National Park Service (NPS) to preserve Gettysburg National Military Park and the Eisenhower National Historic Site, and to educate the public about their significance.

 

Hi Brian,

I run a small translation agency that focuses specifically on museums' needs, including this sort of project. We translate your text into the desired languages and give you the choice of having one or several of the languages displayed at once. If you think we can help you out, please get in touch!

If there's no time or budget, or if the quality of the translation isn't a priority, then I agree with Meredith, YouTube is a great alternative (plus it's free and easy to use).

------------------------------
Kevin Gerry Dunn
Translator

www.kgdtranslation.com
info@kgdtranslation.com
(+1) (520) 477-7507
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 11-01-2017 12:46 PM
From: Meredith Peruzzi
Subject: Closed Captioning

At Gallaudet, where our primary visitor audience is Deaf and hard of hearing, we have closed captions on all of our videos.  (90% of the time these videos are in ASL and the captions are for non-signers to be able to follow along.)  These are provided via an in-house video player that does not allow for multiple caption/subtitle tracks, so English is the only one provided.

I can suggest an easy way to offer multi-lingual captions and subtitles - use YouTube as the video player.  You still must supply the subtitle file in English (YouTube's auto-captioning is useless most of the time), but when you do, you gain access to auto-translated subtitles in other languages.  If you happen to have already translated subtitles, you can upload them directly and not rely on the machine translation.

It's worth noting that there will be errors in machine translation, but it's far more readable to do this than rely on auto-captioning of audio.  When videos are in English with auto-translation, most are not usable by Deaf and hard of hearing viewers.  When I have encountered Spanish caption tracks on YouTube, I have used the machine translation to get them to English, and this is much more usable.

Of course the ability to use YouTube in a museum setting will be dependent on the equipment and setup, but it is a great solution to offering multi-lingual subtitles (only one language can be displayed at a time, though) in addition to the English captions the ADA requires in most situations.

Hope that helps!

------------------------------
Meredith Peruzzi
Manager
Gallaudet University Museum
Washington DC

Original Message:
Sent: 10-31-2017 01:37 PM
From: Brian Shaffer
Subject: Closed Captioning

1.      Does anyone have closed caption on their films that you can change form English to another language?

2.      If you do, do you have both languages running on the film at the same time?

3.      If you don't, do you offer another alternative to your foreign visitors for closed captioning.

 

 

 

Brian Shaffer

Vice President of Facilities

Gettysburg Foundation

1195 Baltimore Pike

Gettysburg, PA 17325

 Office#717 339-2113

bshaffer@gettysburgfoundation.org

 

The Gettysburg Foundation is a non-profit philanthropic, educational organization operating in partnership with the National Park Service (NPS) to preserve Gettysburg National Military Park and the Eisenhower National Historic Site, and to educate the public about their significance.