译研动态 | OTT业务推进视听本地化，云是新丝绸之路
Yota Georgakopoulou
帕娜吉奥塔·乔加克普洛
Chinese Culture Translation and Studies Support Network
帕娜吉奥塔·乔加克普洛（Yota Georgakopoulou），中国文化译研网（CCTSS）高级会员，Deluxe娱乐服务公司希腊分公司研发与国际发展部门高级总监，“语言与媒介”国际会议指导委员会成员，“大众的媒介”国际会议咨询委员会成员，多语种欧洲技术联盟技术理事会特邀会员。
今年6月，我应邀到上海参加了由中华人民共和国文化和旅游部外联局、国家广播电视总局国际合作司联合主办的2018年中外影视译制合作高级研修班。
中外影视译制合作研修班自2015年首次举办，旨在加深影视译制领域的交流与合作，推动知识共享和人才交流，不仅反映出中国对于生产中国文化、向世界输出中国文化兴趣十足，也体现了世界人民对中国语言和文化的兴趣愈发浓厚。
全球范围内，视听行业正成气候，世界人民对中国语言和文化的兴趣愈发浓厚也便不足为奇。OTT业务改变了我们这个行业，其方式已被深入广泛地讨论并记录下来：从所有市场均对高质量连续剧不断增长的需求和消费，到非英语影视节目制作和分销的无穷机会。由于OTT业务没有地理界限，对非英语内容的消费不断增加，一个英语不再是王者的全球社区已然出现。
今天的市场中，任何源语言和任何播出时长的音频都有潜力成为一个热门商品。
中国影视行业正风起云涌。由于全球一半的互联网用户位于亚洲，汉语正逐渐成为网络空间的主导语言，目前仅次于英语，因此汉语内容的本地化有潜力在未来的翻译行业中举足轻重。
据在线统计数据门户Statista估计，到2021年，全球娱乐市场的价值将达到2.2万亿美元，到2020年，中国媒体和娱乐市场的价值将超过2500亿美元。同时，根据分析公司Media Partners Asia的数据，到2022年，中国将占亚太地区视频点播订阅量的85%，其在线视频收入将占整个在线视频行业收入的78%。
这个行业将如何应对潜在的井喷式源语言内容翻译的挑战？答案在于云。正如DESG公司首席技术官艾伦·拉金（Allan Lamkin）所强调的，借助云平台，服务提供商可以在全球范围内扩大或缩小规模，以即时满足需求。
但这并不是唯一的挑战。如果将其他因素考虑在内，例如缩短周转时间、实时交付、新格式、安全性、诸如VR和AR之类的新技术，当然还有成本压力，那么显然语言服务提供商会有适合的工作。
因此，我们需要其他有创造性的解决方案。正如最近机器翻译领域所取得的进步所表明的，语言技术能够帮助人们克服语言障碍，特别是对于在神经方法学方面已经取得了重大飞跃的汉语。
中国研究人员对机器翻译十分精通，百度是其中的佼佼者，因此他们将人工智能运用在翻译中不足为奇。
此外，业界专业人士在拓宽视野思考地域复杂性的同时，应该记住，粉丝一直是推广特定文化产品最强的力量之一。
每个国家的粉丝团体，都有他们自己的规则和行为准则，控制着艺术过程和结果，打破字幕的规范，通过创新的技术，如网上博客、创造性的字幕位置、上下文释义、非主流字体等，打破传统视听翻译的界限，这可能是能成功解决文化障碍问题的新途径。
我此次中国之行的重点之一是参观第24届上海电视节电视市场。中国生产的内容，其数量之大、种类之多，令人眼花缭乱，显然这需要提高翻译质量，以更好地迎合外国观众，但内容的高质量艺术特征和有趣的叙事方式才能确保中国内容在全世界广受欢迎。
这是我的第一次中国之行，行程结束前，我登上了东方明珠广播电视塔，站在离地面263米的玻璃底人行道上，这让我想起了飞快前进的感觉。上海是一个向着未来飞驰的城市，如果人们想了解中国的潜力，想了解未来中国将在世界中的作用，那它绝对是一个值得驻足的城市。
▲ 2018年中外影视译制合作高级研修班（2018 SFTAD）
With OTT’s Audiovisual Localization Landscape, the New Silk Road is the Cloud
In June I spent a week in Shanghai as an invited speaker at the 2018 Sino-Foreign Audiovisual Translation & Dubbing Cooperation Workshop (SFTAD), hosted by the Bureau for External Cultural Relations of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, and the International Cooperation Department of the State Administration of Radio and Television of China.
Kicked off in 2015, SFATD aims to strengthen communication and cooperation in the field of audiovisual translation and dubbing, support the sharing of knowledge and talent exchange, and reflects not only China’s interest in producing and exporting Chinese culture to the world, but also the world’s growing interest in Chinese language and culture.
The latter is no surprise given how the global audiovisual landscape is shaping. The way OTT has disrupted our industry has been discussed and documented far and wide: from an increased demand for — and consumption of — high-quality serial dramatic content in all markets, to endless opportunities in terms of production and distribution of non-English film and television content. As OTT knows no geographical boundaries, the increasing consumption of non-English language content has built a global community where English is no longer king.
The market today has evolved into one where any source audio language and any length in terms of programming time has the potential to become a hot commodity.
The Sino film and TV industry is riding the wave. With half of the world’s internet users located in Asia, Chinese is heading towards becoming the dominant language in cyberspace, currently second only to English, so localization of Chinese content has the potential to play a pivotal role in the future course of the translation industry.
Statista estimates the value of the global entertainment market to be 2.2 trillion US dollars by 2021, and the value of the media and entertainment market in China to be over 250 billion US dollars by 2020. Meanwhile according to Media Partners Asia, China will account for 85% video-on-demand subscriptions in the Asia Pacific region by 2022 and will contribute 78% of the online video sector revenues by the same date.
How will the industry deal with the challenge of translating this explosion of content in any potential source language? The answer lies in the cloud. As highlighted by Allan Lamkin, CTO at DESG, cloud platforms are allowing service providers to globally scale up/down to meet demand instantaneously.
But this is not the only challenge to solve. If one considers other parameters too, such as shortening turnaround times, live delivery, new formats, security, new technologies such as VR and AR, and of course cost pressures, it is clear that language service providers have their work cut out for them.
Other creative solutions are thus called for. Language technologies can help with the language barrier issue, as recent improvements in the machine translation field indicate, especially for the Chinese language, which has seen a major leap forward with neural methodologies.
The Chinese research community is well versed in the machine translation field, with Baidu a prominent player, and thus implementation of AI in translation workflows is the logical response.
Additionally, as industry professionals begin to broaden their view to think about regional intricacies they should keep in mind that fans are traditionally one of the most powerful forces in promoting specific cultural products.
Entire communities of fan-subbers in each country, with their own rules and code of conduct, maintain control of the artistic process and its results and break away from subtitling norms, pushing the boundaries of traditional audiovisual translation by innovative techniques such as blogging on-screen, creative placement of subtitles, contextual explanations, atypical font styles, just to mention a few, which could be a fresh way to more successfully address the culture barrier issue.
One of the highlights of my trip to China was the visit to the 24th Shanghai TV Festival TV market. The volume and variety of content coming out of China is dazzling and, while there is an obvious need for improvement in translation quality to better address foreign audiences, the otherwise high-quality artistic characteristics of the content and the interesting narratives explored will ensure Chinese content gains worldwide popularity.
At the end of my first trip to China, I brought back the feeling of moving fast forward as I climbed the Oriental Pearl Radio & Television Tower and stood on the glass-bottom walkway at 263 meters above ground. Shanghai is a city whizzing into the future and definitely one to go back to if one wants to understand not only China’s potential, but also its future role in the world.
来源 | MESA News