ATRAE, the Spanish Association of Audiovisual Translation and Adaptation, represents all areas of audiovisual translation and adaptation, from translation subtitling and access services to dubbing, voiceover and video game translation. This was the second ATRAE awards, and the first time that Red Bee Media has won one of them.
Under the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 (BSA), television license holders must provide captioning for all programs broadcast on primary channels between 6 pm and 10.30 pm, and these captions must meet standards determined by the ACMA relating to readability, comprehensibility and accuracy.
According to the notice issued by the FCC on 2 June 2014, after representatives of the programs lodged initial petitions for exemptions, they were asked to provide further information. As they had failed to do this to the FCC’s satisfaction, it dismissed the petitions, which means that the programs have 90 days to meet captioning requirements. The programs include Zomboo’s House of Horror Movies, The Norm Prouty Real Estate Show and several religious programs.
The channels which most exceeded their captioning requirements include the Cartoon Network, the Disney Channel, ESPN, Fox News and Foxtel movie channels
Broadcaster SBS has the rights to the World Cup and will be showing matches on both SBS1 and SBS2 with live coverage, repeats and highlights packages. Most coverage is captioned, with the exception of some of the games that are entirely within the Midnight to 6am exclusion zone. However, when those matches are repeated later in the day, they will appear with captions. The captioned coverage also includes two feature programs, The Full Brazilian and the 2014 FIFA World Cup Show.
Audio description of live events on television is very rare, and most blind football fans will follow the World Cup via radio coverage where commentators give some visual description of the action. However, for those blind and vision impaired ticket holders attending matches in Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Brasilia and Belo Horizonte, FIFA is offering special descriptive commentary via short-range radio inside the stadiums.
Included in this is a requirement for an audio description service on the National Television and Radio Broadcaster, RTE, with an initial target of 1.5% of programming, growing to 2.5% of programming by 2018. This equates to less than one hour per day and contrasts with the UK, where Irish channels source a lot of programs and which has a target of 10% and actual services of double and even triple that quota on some channels.
Ofcom is requiring broadcasters to prepare four six-monthly reports on the quality of live captions on a sample of their programs from three genres: news, entertainment and chat shows.
In looking at the standard of closed captioning on US television, Robson breaks down the evolution of captioning into three distinct stages. The first is establishing a service, followed by broadening the base through legislation and finally achieving a good quality product.
Ofcom’s ‘Code on Television Access Services’ sets targets for captioning (called subtitling in the UK), signing and audio description, based on the length of time a channel has been broadcasting. ESPN’s audio description target was 5% for 2012, but only delivered it on 2.3% of its programs.
