“Shahid Meray pass kahi Taswir hay”
The Doctor
“Jedyna rzecza ja biore jest ciastko”
Cookie Monster
Supertitle is one of eQuality Time’s developing projects, focused on UK communities with English as An Additional Language.
- If you are interested in setting up a Supertitle group, or would like more information, please read on.
- If you are running a Supertitle group, and would like to see what translations are currently available, please see the group page.
- If you would like to watch a TV show with Supertitle subtitles, then you can see a full list of our completed shows.
Where it began…
In March 2015 eight students at Mount Carmel – Secondary School for Girls, produced an entirely Polish subtitling of the BBC show ‘Eve’ just in time to put on a showing for their families. They showed leadership, self-organisation and fierce determination to do something real for their community.
Those eight students were the first group to join the Supertitle project, an innovative community intervention that provides young people with the opportunity to bridge differences in their local communities.
Every week Supertitle students meet to translate an episode of UK TV so that it can be easily enjoyed by people in their community.
We provide the software, the source materials and the training. All schools have to supply is a room with some PCs.
Dear Joe,
This sounds like a fabulous project. The Leopard Drama team feel very honoured that you’re going to watch Eve together.
Well done for all your hard work on this project.
Wishing you all great success and a fun robotic time,
Jez Swimer
Series Producer, Eve
Background…
“The proportion of students recorded as EAL varies widely across the English regions, ranging from around 6% in the South West and North East to 43% in Outer London and 56% in Inner London.”
“Ethnic group and EAL are very closely related. At KS2, 96% of Bangladeshi students, 88% of Pakistani, 88% of Chinese, 86% of any other group, 79% of Indian, 74% of White Other and 71% of Black African students are recorded as EAL.”[1]
English as additional language students can be a hugely beneficial resource for a school; however many schools struggle to find staff time, resource, or initiatives to help them reach their full potential.
“Bright children from migrant backgrounds are routinely placed in classes for low ability pupils because bilingualism is still wrongly associated with special educational needs, a new study suggests”
“As a result, many bilingual secondary children identify themselves as monolingual. Their experience is that their home languages are of little value in the education system.”[2]
The nature of the UK school system is such that students can feel distanced from their cultural /religious heritage and experiences; particularly when they are at a time in their life when they may be searching for answers to questions about identity, faith and belonging. This can cause a spectrum of problems ranging all the way from attendance problems to a risk of a complete rejection of one or both cultures.
Supertitle breaks down such barriers by providing subtitle translations to popular BBC and ITV broadcasts in native languages.
The benefits of Supertitle split out into the local community with one in ten UK households having a non-english speaking member. Supertitle provides EAL students with an opportunity to enrich their own communities, improve integration, and feel connected while improving their own knowledge of language.
How it works
Our programme includes a trainer attending for the first three weeks, include one of purely training the assisting staff in the use of software and process.
Briefing session
We normally carry out a phone, or sometimes in person, briefing, working with the contact member of staff to look at each school’s unique needs and approaches. During this session we work with the staff to go thought the process using a small exercise and introduce all aspects of the software (the staff don’t need to be bilingual, the exercise works regardless), and provide training manuals and resources.
Session 1
Starting with a small group of students, and a set of subtitles (which we supply on a week-by-week basis), the trainer leads the students though a carefully developed process to translate them. It’s important to note that this is not a line-by-line translation: each student takes responsibility for a particular set of characters and works only on scenes involving those characters – thus reducing the overall workload per student and improving consistency. After the translation is completed, depending on the choice of the school, either the program to screen to an audience (possibly including the families of the children) or to give the students the instructions to make use of the subtitles at home. This session is trainer lead rather than staff lead.
Session 2
This is the consolidation week – this week the staff member leads the class. This week transitions the class from ‘interesting experiment’ to ‘productive skills training’. This week involves the same process with the students, but with regular stops to discuss various narrative issues inherent in the process, along with a much stronger feedback loop, during this phase we start to concentrate much more on the student development than on the overall result.
Session 3+
These weeks are entirely staff lead. We continue to supply subtitles and support the use of the software, but at this point the Supertitle club is self-sufficient. We encourage staff to become part of a network of schools, each concentrating on the translation of different programs.
For more information, or if you’d like to start a Supertitle group in your school or community, please contact us.
[1] https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/uploads/pdf/EAL_and_educational_achievement2.pdf