It probably has something to do with the fact that when you work at
something and get paid to do it, it is really hard realizing that there are
people that do the same thing for free.
The case in point is subtitling. There is a whole industry that caters for
the production of subtitles, and the agents in this industry are facing increasing
problems. Their inability to see some of the possible solutions come from a few
mental obstacles, a few shortcomings in seeing things in different ways. It is
not the case that they are hard to understand or that people in this industry
are less intelligent than average. Each of these shortcomings has a
understandable origin and a rationale that once made sense, but they are
increasingly making it hard for the industry to come to terms with its new
challenges.
1.Bad management disguised as cost cutting.
The relative small number of subtitling companies in London can give the
impression that one or two companies are representative of the industry, or
that whatever they say it’s necessary for the
industry is necessary for the industry, and not just necessary for this particular company. It is just like
when someone says that they really like you, but they are not ready for a
serious commitment. As is widely known, that only means that they do not want a
serious commitment with you.
The lack of a more competitive environment can give birth to the false
idea that the way things are being done by the only existing actors is the right
way, or the only way things can be done. That is particularly dangerous when
bad management and bad business practices end up being disguised as necessary
measures, like downsizing, dividing the workload between workers who end up not
having any responsibility for the end product, hiring cheap untrained staff,
falling standards, etc. These are just products of bad management and business
strategy, but in a scenario with no competition, the short term cuts in costs
can look like a good thing for the company, something that very often turns out
not to be the case.
Bad management is just bad management, it should not be confused with the way things have to be now, because
of the crisis and all. Feel free to think about analogies with the whole
banking crisis, or property prices in the UK, the American tea party craze, or any other suitable comparison.
2.Piracy is not always the enemy
People working in subtitling tend to hold to the common belief that file
sharing is killing the industry. While this is a complex discussion with lots
of arguments from both sides, they should not blind us to the fascinating fansub scene that has blossomed alongside
internet piracy.
Originating from the demand over obscure Japanese media (anime, manga,
videogames) amateur subtitles, translations and adaptations have expanded side
by side with the internet. From the point of view of the English speaking
world, fansubbing has never
transcended its niche otaku ghetto,
but everyone else is aware that a big proportion of media produced in the
planet is in English, and not everyone speaks it. This demand for translated
material is not always efficiently explored by market forces, and in this gap
the fansub phenomena expanded into
being one of the main sources of translated material, especially in the
developing world.
Even without the monetary aspect of it coming into play, market forces
of some kind also operate in the fansub
world. There is fierce competition between not just different producers, but
even among different individual translations, with their varying qualities in
timing, translation, when they were first available after the original show was
broadcasted, etc. They even adopt practices that the official subtitling industry still has not incorporated, like
giving proper credit to the individual workers in each project. This is not
just good for the consumer (that can identify the differences between good and
bad translators), but in the long term for the whole fansub ecosystem. It’s not like they have to
invent giving credit to their workers, books have that as standard procedure
since Latin translations of the Greek classics started to appear.
The usual way to look at things is just to attribute the success of
unofficial subtitles and adaptations to the fact that they are free. But once
you familiarise yourself with the dynamics of it, factors like how soon these
translations are available and how good they are at what they do (adapting the
media following the subtitling constrains) start to show how they are competing
with official translations in other areas as well. Reliable fansub producers have loyal customers
and high quality standards, and are able to acquire those because they have
adopted practices that are lacking in their official counterparts.
