Cuts in quality control

Throughout my career in the Access Services department at Red Bee Media / Ericsson, I developed a certain eagerness to produce high quality subtitles for all audiences, whatever the program content or the channel broadcasting the. The same can be said of my colleagues. One might think that this kind of pride in offering high quality services to téléspectateur.rice.s malentendant.e.s would be shared and encouraged by the lead. In place, I have observed recurrent cuts in quality control programs, sacrificed in favor of higher profits. The logic behind these practices is that all the work invested in the revision, proofreading and improving our business could be more "productively" used in the production of a greater amount of subtitles. Inevitably, subtitles come out lower quality. The cuts are particularly pronounced in North America offices, to Montreal (QC) et Duluth (GA), who are new to the landscape and have been targeted by the objectives of reducing overall operating costs implemented by management.

As part of their subtitling activities and administrative tasks associated with them, Deputy titreur.euse.s regularly confronté.e.s the last remnants of a quality control infrastructure now moribund. Before addressing the issue of infrastructure itself, it is important to understand that in terms of precision, the live subtitling is a very imperfect process. The sub-titreur.euse.s must take editorial decisions on the fly and a voice recognition software can be a fickle friend. Live Captions can be either created from scratch by the sub-titreur.euse.s (i.e. "Live repetition"), be produced from text prepared and provided by the broadcaster, or (in the case of repeated content) they can be text broadcasts created in advance. Originally, chez Red Bee Media / Ericsson, when the text was to be transmitted in this way, it had to be replayed after the first transmission to ensure that all subsequent transmissions have an almost perfect accuracy. Today, this process no longer takes place. The result is that the same errors are repeated for transmission to the other. Attempts to correct errors on the fly are often prevented by technical problems. Over the years, Similar reductions replay process was put in place regarding the captioning of pre-recorded programs.

Ignore the demands of employees

When preparing to caption a live program, every minute is precious. However, Deputy titreur.euse.s often have a completed copy of typos and spelling. Sometimes, he also left with an odd layout that must be meticulously modified to create compliant subtitles guidelines and the customer's style. In the course of the past year, preparation time allocated to subtitled live programs was almost unilaterally cut in half. Management has repeatedly ignored requests subtitling staff and training to increase the preparation time for some live programs. It argues that going travailleur.euse.s “s’adapter” new requirements, when even the sub-titreur.euse.s expérimenté.e.s struggling to fulfill the bare minimum in terms of preparation work.

Chez Red Bee Media / Ericsson, the main quality control measures in place to ensure the accuracy of live subtitles is the detailed examination of the work of sub-titreur.euse.s. In the British wing of Operations, long established, Deputy titreur.euse.s are examiné.e.s three times a month: once a eux.elles themselves, once a un.e pair.e, and once by support staff. During the last year, the direction of North American operations eliminated exams by pair.e.s and cars-exams, and eliminated the system which provided a wide variety of work was revised. The sub-titreur.euse.s not have so very little information about how to improve their work.

A quality control problem seems particularly egregious. Ringer's cas d'un.e employé.e daltonien.ne here about the ranking in coloriser du texte pour les émissions britanniques. Cet.te employé.e was told repeatedly that accessibility accommodations are not provided to travailleur.se.s because the color of the text is not a high priority for broadcasters. Note that téléspectateur.rice.s, and not broadcasters, are subtitles of utilisateur.rice.s. In many areas, color changes are the only method used to indicate a change of speaker. Le.a téléspectateur.rice has the right to expect that the sub-titreur.euse.s at least try to use colors accurately. In that case, the direction of Red Bee Media / Ericsson doubly fails: it fails meet its téléspectateur.rice.s and meet its employé.e.s. The blasé attitude of the management of access services to its accessibility responsibilities for its own employé.e.s gives a disturbing idea of ​​his attitude to accessibility services in general.

Disinterest possible improvements

these cuts, as well as removing a bulletin informing travailleur.euse.s on the access services sector in general, underline the disinterest of management to provide high quality access services to its customers. The management of Red Bee Media and Access Services Ericsson has clearly indicated that many broadcasters for which we produce subtitles do not care about the quality of subtitles, and have often used this argument to justify decisions to reduce or eliminate quality control measures mentioned above. Contempt Officer of Red Bee Media / Ericsson téléspectateur.rice.s for using the product is clear.

When travailleur.euse.s are informé.e.s as improving their work is a waste of time, there is something wrong – when téléspectateur.rice.s in the deaf and hearing communities lésé.e.s with a priority placed on profits at the expense of individuals, the injury is doubly shameful.

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The union of the sub-office printers and Montreal captionists currently seeking to negotiate its first collective agreement with Red Bee Media / Ericsson, a company that has refused to negotiate effective 21 mars 2018. The travailleur.euse.s demand fair wages and global operations based on breaks, and the late model shifts grueling currently in place.

Solidarity,

The union of the sub-office printers and captionists Montreal.

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