Subtitling plays a very important role as it is the preferred multimedia content translation method in most of the European countries
and for most of the genres, to make audiovisual content widely accessible across languages.
The increasing use and transmission of digital multimedia and multilingual content through the web, DVDs and the current European and National policies
promoting the subtitling of contents broadcasted by public TVs have had as a consequence that subtitling demands have increased in recent years,
being the associated market size very important.
However, subtitling and subtitle translation face some important problems that are preventing the expansion of the market
and are therefore hindering new business opportunities to arise: Cost, time and quality.
Subtitling and audiovisual translation have been recognized as areas that could greatly benefit from the introduction
of Statistical MT Techniques (SMT) followed by post-editing techniques.
SUMAT will develop an online subtitle translation service addressing 9 different European languages combined into 14 different language pairs,
with the aim to semi-automatize at a large scale the subtitle translation processes of both freelance translators and subtitling companies,
in order to optimize their efficiency and productivity thereby helping them to meet the market demands.
The Vicomtech-IK4 technological centre is leading a project known as SUMAT, in which a translation service for subtitles
will be developed in nine different European languages, the aim being to semi-automate the translation of subtitles on a large scale.
Thanks to the system, it is expected to save 25% in time and increase productivity by 25%.
The project is financed by the EU and taking part in it are the following partners:
Vicomtech-IK4 (Coordinator) (Spain), Titelbild Subtitling and Translation GmbH (Germany), Athens Technology Center SA (Greece), Traslán Teoranta (Ireland),
Univerza V Mariboru (Slovena), inVision Ondertiteling BV (the Netherlands), Voice & Script International Ltd. (UK) and European Captioning Institute Ltd (UK).
Subcontractor: TextShuttle (Switzerland)
