Translating DVD subtitles from English-German and English-Japanese using Example-Based Machine Translation

Due to limited budgets and an ever-diminishing time-frame for the production of subtitles for movies released in cinema and DVD, there is a compelling case for a technology-based translation solution for subtitles (O’Hagan, 2003; Carroll, 2004; Gambier, 2005). In this paper we describe how an Example-Based Machine Translation (EBMT) approach to the translation of English DVD subtitles into German and Japanese can aid the subtitler. Our research focuses on an EBMT tool that produces fully automated translations, which in turn can be edited if required. We have chosen these language pairs as both are commercially significant. We will seed the EBMT system with a corpus consisting of existing human translations from DVD to automatically produce high quality subtitles for audio-visual content. To our knowledge this is the first time that any EBMT approach has been used with DVD subtitle translation. Schäler et al. (2003: 88) propose that “the time is ripe for the transformation of EBMT into demonstrators, and eventually viable products”. We attempt to answer their call with an EBMT approach to the translation of subtitles.