Subtitled Finnish broadcasts

[time traveler]

I'm looking for an online TV guide which lists subtitled Finnish TV broadcasts. By that, I mean TV shows which are spoken and subtitled in Finnish. I found the following YLE link by searching the forum:

http://yle.fi/ohjelmaopas/tekstitys/

Does anyone know of another? Thanks in advance.

[Jukka Aho]

I'm looking for an online TV guide which lists subtitled Finnish TV broadcasts. By that, I mean TV shows which are spoken and subtitled in Finnish. I found the following YLE link by searching the forum:

http://yle.fi/ohjelmaopas/tekstitys/

Does anyone know of another? Thanks in advance.

According to Valtioneuvoston asetus televisio-ohjelmiin liitettävästä ääni- ja tekstityspalvelusta 292/2011, YLE, MTV3, Nelonen, and SuomiTV (which was recently turned into “Fox” as Murdoch bought it) are required to provide Finnish-on-Finnish or Swedish-on-Swedish subtitling for the hard of hearing in a certain percentage of their shows. The percentages are different for YLE and the others. YLE needs to subtitle 50% of their Finnish or Swedish shows whereas the listed commercial channels only have a requirement of 15%. TV companies or channels not mentioned in the decree 292/2011 have no legal requirement to provide HoH subtitling at all.

The Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority, Ficora, has monitored the HoH subtitling as it was actually realized by the TV companies in 2011, and found out SuomiTV (Fox) did not provide HoH subtitling at all. Also, MTV3 was lagging behind the required percentage. Ficora has sent notification letters to the respective companies but it is unclear to me whether this is going to lead into any penalties for them as the act does not currently appear to define any such thing.

So... I do not have an answer to your actual question (maybe you’d want to ask directly from the companies involved), but for what it’s worth, it seems you can only expect to find HoH subtitling on YLE channels, MTV3, Nelonen, and possibly Fox — if they have inherited the original HoH subtitling requirement from SuomiTV. Interest groups for hard of hearing (primarily Kuuloliitto, I guess) are of course trying to influence legislators to make HoH subtitling a legal requirement for a greater percentage of shows and every channel.

[time traveler]

Thanks for the comprehensive info. I guess I don't understand the entertainment industry enough. I'd figure a spoken Finnish non-reality tv show must have a transcript already so it's matter of publishing it to meet or exceed the subtitle requirements. I bet it's not as simple as I think. At any rate, I'll try to write to the channels. Thanks again.

[Jukka Aho]

Thanks for the comprehensive info. I guess I don't understand the entertainment industry enough. I'd figure a spoken Finnish non-reality tv show must have a transcript already so it's matter of publishing it to meet or exceed the subtitle requirements.

To maintain readability, subtitles are generally constrained only to a maximum of two lines. For obvious reasons (pertaining to the size of the font), there’s also a limited number of characters available per line.

There are other practical limitations and established customs as well. For example, even if there was room for yet more text, subtitlers only tend to show lines from no more than two different speakers at a time, in a single panel. Additionally, a sufficient time needs to be reserved for displaying each panel so the viewer will be able to read and absorb it effortlessly. If spoken dialog were to be turned into subtitles verbatim, there often wouldn’t be enough room for all of the text or at least the panels would change too rapidly.

This means subtitles usually cannot follow the original spoken dialog or script verbatim. They often need to be simplified in some regard, such as by leaving out expressions or words which do not fit in the available space or time; sometimes even replacing individual words or expressions with shorter equivalents... or resorting to clever tricks such as turning a positive question or answer into a negative one in a way that retains the intent but demands less space... or a negative question or answer into a positive one. And even if you were trying to pull it off by only using text copied and pasted from the original script (which isn’t going to work, really), a mere script is not enough: someone needs to actually divide the dialog into subtitle-sized chunks and synchronize the panels with the actual spoken lines while minding all those other factors which might affect readability. Sometimes this will require juggling the text around and making it appear already before the actual spoken line. And so on, and so forth.

Furthermore, it is customary in Finnish HoH subtitling to assign different colors to different speakers so that those who can’t hear the voices at all can more easily discern which one of the characters is speaking. Also, the HoH subtitlers tend to replace very slangy, colloquial expressions with something a bit more neutral and more widely understood... presumably because the deaf viewers might be unfamiliar with the latest fads of spoken language.

You might want to check out this thread for some more discussion about the technicalities of subtitling.

[time traveler]

I'm enlightened. There sure is a lot of work behind subtitling. Coincidentally, I stumbled upon the mentioned link divxfinland.org recently. Something about Netflix posting a fansubbed video by divxfinland...

What about transcripts? By any chance, are they readily available for download?

[Jukka Aho]

What about transcripts? By any chance, are they readily available for download?

I have not heard of such thing. Not much demand for them among natives, I guess.

Some time ago tabloids ran a story about someone finding a pile of papers on a park bench... which turned out to be the script for some future episode of Salatut elämät, revealing future events which the production company might have wanted to keep under the wraps. Apparently that episode had already been shot, using the park in question as a location, but not scheduled for broadcast until the next fall. I am not aware of scripts for TV shows being published commercially, though.

[time traveler]

Salatut elämät revealed. I like the irony in that story.