Hi, my name is Alastair Cole.
I'm a documentary filmmaker based here in Scotland.
It's a pleasure to be here today
to celebrate International Translation Day 2017,
and to talk to you about Amara as well,
which is, of course, a wonderful platform for subtitling and translation.
As part of my role as a filmmaker,
subtitling and translation is such a pivotal part to what I do.
Specially as I make films, and at the moment
I'm making a film about languages, about the subject of language,
including a recent project, a feature documentary project
called, "The Colours of the Alphabet",
which I'm going to talk a little bit about now,
because subtitling and translation have been so pivotal and so fundamental
to how this film is made.
Those in it, those with me in it, without them,
I wouldn't have been able to made the film.
The film is a feature documentary,
it released last year at the Glasglow Festival,
and it's been turned around festivals and cinemas
around the UK, in Europe and Africa, since then.
It's the story of three children in a village in Zambia,
in a village called Lwimba.
It's a story of language and politics in education, if you want, and childhood.
It follows the children for 12 months at their first year of school.
And there's a school in the community,
where the community speaks one language, called Soli,
the region and the teacher speak another language, called Nyanja,
and they all must learn English,
because English is the only official language of Zambia,
despite there being 72 different languages,
and only less than 2% of the population speak English at home.
So, of course, it's a film about this political dynamic,
but at the same time, it's a film about childhood, and it's funny,
and it'a film that, hopefully, we can all relate to at times,
and it reminds us of those days at schools and their difficulties,
but of course,
for someone that is going to school in a different language completely,
these difficulties are really highlighted and exasperated, if you want.
But within the filmmaking process, subtitling and translation is fundamental.
We used multicolored subtitles in the film
to represent the changes in the languages that are going on in the classroom
and somewhere like Zambia.
This multilingualism is incredible, it's very impressive, but of course,
conveying it to a non-indigenous African language speaking audience
is often difficult, and it's often not taken as a priority.
But for us it was a priority,
so we used a creative approach to subtitling, if you want, in the film,
that you can see in the teaser at the end of this video.
Soli, one of the languages, is orange, has orange subtitling,
Nyanja has green subtitling, Bemba has ping subtitling,
and English has white subtitling.
And this technique has fostered more conversation, and hopefully,
a greater understanding about this multilingualism that exists,
this beautiful multilingualism that exists and the complexities and the skills,
which so many people across the continent embrace this.
And I suppose, within the documentary more broadly,
subtitling and translation is so important and my team --
and my team for this film is what I talk about.
My team of subtitlers and translators in Zambia, [names]
[names] were so important
and without them I wouldn't be able to make the film.
And also my team in the UK [names]
and those screen languages,
who helped to bring the film to international audiences,
and creating foreign languages for the film.
But more generally, in documentary filmmaking
having translation, and translators that work seriously to approach it,
to understand the importance of representing someone,
and that language can be misconstrued
and [ ] stood a translation isn't taken seriously is so important.
And I think documentary filmmaking provides the case sometimes,
because people and the film that an audience can see and hear
are real people before and after the film,
so their accurate representation is so important,
and their understanding of them as people is so important.
I think translation and subtitling has done a wonderful job
to help audiences around the world experience cultures and languages,
but also, at the same time,
understand people in the best way possible.
I also want to mention a new project that I'm working on
around "The Colours of the Alphabet",
but the release of "The Colours of the Alphabet"
early next year across Africa,
where it'll be forecast into 49 different countries with