MTV3’s daily soap Salatut Elämät just got Finnish subtitling for the hard of hearing, effective from yesterday.
Until now, only the state-owned national broadcaster YLE has provided Finnish-to-Finnish subtitling/captions for the hard of hearing and this service has only been available on a select few shows. All other subtitling on Finnish TV has been done for the purposes of translation only. (The commercial TV channels, always thinking about the bottom line, have never before provided any “superfluous” subtitling services for minority audiences; only the regular foreign-language-to-Finnish translation subtitling [1].)
This change of policy is not due to a change of heart but a change in legislation. The act on TV broadcasting was amended last year (733/2010, 292/2011) making it obligatory for the licensed broadcasters to provide hard-of-hearing subtitling on a certain percentage of their programming. This year, subtitled programming on TV should amount to at minimum 15% for both Finnish/Swedish shows and foreign shows (when viewed as separate groups) but the percentage is to be gradually increased each year. (In 2012, it should be 25%, in 2013: 35%, in 2014: 40%, in 2015: 45%, in 2016: 50%.)
Technically, the hard-of-hearing subtitles are broadcast as DVB subtitling data stream which can be decoded by a standard DVB receiver – either a separate digital converter (set-top box, digibox) or the built-in DVB tuner/decoder in the newer TV sets.
In order to actually view the subtitles, check out the subtitling options during the show using the subtitles button on your remote or try to find a similar option in the menu. In some implementations, the selection of a subtitling language is incorporated on the same screen where the selection of the audio soundtrack is made. Note that at least YLE broadcasts their hard-of-hearing subtitles falsely flagged as Dutch language. This is because some DVB receivers/decoders have not been properly tested for markets where subtitles are also used for day-to-day regular foreign language translation. Such receivers/decoders may perform in unexpected ways when two different types of subtitling are provided with the same language code. Hence, YLE has concluded they will rather use a false language definition for the HoH subtiling to keep the two types of subtitling separate. I’m not sure how MTV3 flags their HoH subtitles but if they follow YLE’s lead, they might well succumb to the same practice. So if you see “Dutch” among the available subtitling languages, try that one.
The better availability of Finnish-to-Finnish subtitling should be a useful aid for anyone trying to learn the language. I guess these hard-of-hearing subtitles, once created, could also more easily end up on the future DVD releases of Finnish shows and movies. Yay!
This could also benefit those who are living abroad but have remote access to a Finnish PVR (HDD recorder) or have some other means of getting their hands on recorded Finnish DVB TV shows in their original MPEG-2 TS encapsulation format with the DVB subtitling streams intact. Such recordings, complete with the subtitles, can be viewed with e.g. the free VLC media player.
_____
[1] Finnish TV channels never dub the imported shows they broadcast, save for those aimed for toddlers and kids below reading age. Any regular imported/foreign programming for older kids and adults is translated by the means of subtitling.