Alastair Cole - International Translation Day 2017 (Colours of the Alphabet Film)

Colours of the Alphabet Film Website: http://coloursofthealphabet.com
Film Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ColoursOfTheAlphabetFilm/
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Hi, my name is Alastair Cole.

I'm a documentary film maker
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 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 translation and subtitling
have been so pivotal and so fundamental

to help this film made.

Those in it, those with me in it,

without them I wouldn't have been able
to have 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 being 72 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 in the film-making process,
subtitling and translation is fundamental.

We used multicolored subtitles in the film

to represent the changes in the languages
that are going 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,

as you can see in the teaser it,
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 technic has foster
more conversation

and hopefully, a greater understanding
that 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 for this film
is what I talk about.

My team of subtitlers and translators
in Zambia, [3:04]