1. Introduction
Online streaming continues to increase their popularity, as more and more viewers watch their favorite shows and movies on the services, instead of depending on the supply of entertainment on traditional television channels. In the past few years, streaming service providers have strengthen their position on the market, providing viewers with a vast amount of readily available content, often originally in a foreign language to the viewer. From the service providers, Netflix remains to maintain its status as the world‟s leading streaming subscription service. Since launching its streaming subscription services in the United States in 2007, both the number of Netflix‟s subscribers and operating countries have been steadily growing, reaching the number of 100 million subscribers in 190 countries in 2017 (Statista1, Netflix). Although Netflix has a number of competitors, both Finnish and international, it has accomplished to attain the status of the most popular streaming subscription service among Finnish viewers with over 500,000 subscribers (Karkimo 2015, Heyman 2015). As an increasing number of viewers use and subscribe to online streaming services, the quality of subtitling in the services becomes an increasingly pertinent issue. Due to service‟s status and global spread, this MA Thesis aims to study the subtitling quality of online streaming subscription services by executing a case study on Netflix.
Since the competition for streaming services grows with the popularity, one of Netflix‟s means to maintain its status and gain competitive edge is the launch of Netflix Originals, i.e. shows and movies that are produced for Netflix and mostly available on the subscription service. The investment on content has been estimated to be 6 billion US dollars for the year 2017 (Castillo 2017), rising up to 8 billion US dollars in the year 2018 (Koblin 2017). From the total content budget, Netflix has reported that 25 per cent has been spent towards Original programming, and the portion is expected to grow even larger in 2018 (Koblin 2017).
Finland has a long tradition in subtitling foreign content for Finnish viewers.
The start of Finnish subtitling began at Suomen Televisio (now known as Yleisradio, from here on referred to as Yle) in the late 50s and late 60s (Luova 2010). Nowadays subtitles are among the most read texts (Mäkisalo 2006), and for years broadcasting companies such as Yle and MTV had their own in-house translators providing translations of high quality, and the subtitling conventions of those networks, especially Yle, have been studied to further examine the construction of a high-quality subtitling (Vertanen 2007b, Lång 2013). However, the practice of broadcasting networks using in-house translators has decreased in recent years,
2 as many networks have outsourced their translation services to multinational translation companies (Palosaari 2016).
With the changing practices, the decreasing quality of subtitling has not gone unnoticed (see, for example, Palosaari 2016). The differences in quality have often been examined through the structure of the subtitling production processes (Abdallah 2012), and contributed to the increased competition between translation companies resulting in lower compensation for audiovisual translators (from here on, audiovisual translators will be referred to simply as „AV translators‟) (Lång 2013). The production processes and their effect on subtitling quality will be discussed in subsection 2.1.3.
Poor quality subtitling can have a notable effect on the viewing experience of a television show or a movie. Noticeable translation errors in subtitling can cause the viewer‟s attention to be drawn to the subtitling itself, instead of focusing on following the plot (Vertanen 2007b). Furthermore, as mentioned in the blog maintained by an anonymous audiovisual translator (Pseudonym U 2012), idiomatic errors in the sentence structure and other anomalies in subtitling, which the viewer might not even notice, can have a negative effect on the viewing experience. This negative effect can leave the viewer with the impression that the fault is in the content instead of the subtitling (Heikkilä 2014, discussed in subsection 2.3.).
Subtitling quality on Netflix has not always been a priority for the service. The Finnish subtitling on Netflix have been criticized on its quality, production practices and the compensation AV translators receive from the work since the Finnish version was launched in 2012 (Jansson 2012). After the critique Netflix received, the service has attempted to upgrade its subtitling quality by acquiring subtitling services from acceptable providers, and controlling the level of the translators‟ professional abilities by implementing the HERMES test in 2017 (Netflix5). However, as the test is only aimed to ascertain the translators‟
abilities, instead of aiming to enhance the entire subtitling production process, it is worthwhile to continuously study Netflix‟s subtitling to monitor how the quality and production evolves with the added developments. Furthermore, as this study began before the implementation of HERMES, it should provide some insight if the developments have been a necessary addition.
In my BA Thesis (Ponkala 2016), I analyzed the quality of subtitling on Netflix using Buffy the Vampire Slayer as an example. In the study, the total number of translation errors was as high as 669 in three episodes. Most of the translation errors discovered from the material fell into the categories that would indicate visibility to the viewer (see, for example, Vehmas-Lehto 2005, Heikkilä 2014 on translation errors viewers are more prone to notice,
3 discussed in subsections 2.2.2. and 2.3.). Furthermore, Vertanen (2007b) points out that the main function of subtitling is to work as an aid, so that the viewer is able to follow the plot of the show, and not draw unnecessary attention to the subtitling itself. For that reason, both the number and quality of the translation errors discovered from the material indicated that the quality of subtitling was not at the level one would expect from chargeable streaming subscription service.
As the quality of subtitling in online streaming services was examined using Netflix as an example in my BA Thesis (Ponkala 2016), and the high number of translation errors was discovered, I wanted to study if the quality would improve when Netflix Originals, shows that were produced by and for Netflix, were concerned. Since Netflix Originals are a major investment for the streaming service, aiming to gain leverage among other streaming services and to ensure that subscribers stay with Netflix, it could be imagined that the investment would reach all aspects of the content, including subtitling. Furthermore, Netflix is an example of a service listening to the critique it receives from its customers and making active attempts to improve on quality, therefore examining if the service has reached an acceptable level of subtitling quality is an interesting subject to study.
Netflix provides an interesting example for the purposes of this study by producing new seasons for popular shows that have been previously produced and aired in other networks, therefore the decision to study a show that had both Original and non-Original content was an obvious choice. One of the shows featuring both Original and non-Original episodes, Gilmore Girls, was selected as the research material of the study. The show had seven seasons that were originally aired between 2000 and 2007 (Internet Movie Database1, from here on IMDb1), and a newer season, produced as a Netflix Original in 2016 (IMDb2).
From the show, three episodes were randomly selected from the non-Original seasons and two from the Original season produced by Netflix for this study. The subtitling quality of the selected episodes is studied by using the same methods that were used in the BA thesis (Ponkala 2016) to find out the number of translation errors. A new aspect used in this study to further examine the subtitling quality will be provided by studying the number and severity of the translation errors by using O‟Brien‟s (2012) translation quality evaluation model to examine if the subtitling quality can be deemed acceptable. Once the quality has been examined, the translation quality of the Netflix Original episodes will be compared to the non-Original episodes to determine through statistical significance whether the subtitling quality on Netflix is higher on the Original episodes, and if the large investment on Original content follows through to an integral aspect for Finnish viewers, subtitling. Furthermore, as the
4 subtitled non-Original episodes were added to Netflix‟s content library prior to the release of the Original episodes, the statistical significance test could indicate if the quality is evolving in the right direction.
This MA Thesis will proceed as follows. Section 2 will present the theoretical background of this study, discussing the existing conventions of subtitling, how subtitling has been examined before, and what could be assumed from the previous studies and how the studies can be applied in this thesis. Section 3 will then present the research material of this thesis: Netflix and Gilmore Girls, and what needs to be understood from them to be able to discuss the quality and execute this study. Section 4 will present the research methods applied in this study and how the analysis will be conducted. The material will then be analyzed in section 5, divided into three parts of analysis. In the analysis, the first part will examine the number and type of translation errors found from the material, the second part will apply O‟Brien‟s (2012) translation quality evaluation model to determine if the translation quality can be deemed acceptable, and finally in the third part, the numerical data on the Original and non-Original episodes discovered from the first two parts of the analysis will be compared to each other in order to investigate whether the added investment to Original content on Netflix extends to subtitling. After the analysis, section 6 will compile the results from the three-part analysis and discuss what can be assumed from it. Finally, section 7 will then conclude the research by discussing how the situation can be connected to the previous research on subtitling quality and subtitle production processes, and if the situation could be improved.
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