Subtitle Workshop Full Paper

SUBTITLE WORKSHOP: Free Software to Improve Student’s Listening and Translation Skills1 Rahman Hakim Sultan Ageng Tirtayasa University

Introduction Teaching listening comprehension is not an easy task especially for the students of the English department in a teacher training faculty. It has to be more creative in preparing for the suitable and appropriate materials since the students are in the tertiary level that higher than school students. Problem related to the limited and expensive source of materials is usually faced by many teachers. Thus, listening skill sometimes disregard to be taught. However, since the internet has become widely use and rapidly change the people’s way of life, provide many kinds of authentic and interesting source of materials that can be easily and freely downloaded, the problems become solved. Materials in the form of audio and video podcasts are becoming the interesting materials to improve students listening skill. There is a growing number of podcast sites from where students can download free materials. We can download a huge amount of extremely useful listening materials from the internet, provided that we are not breaking any rules of copyright (Harmer: 2007). Another advantage that we can get from the internet beside podcast is free software or usually known as freeware. Freeware is computer software that is available for use at no cost or for an optional fee. Freeware is different from shareware, where the user is obliged to pay (e.g. after some trial period or for additional functionality). The only criterion for being classified as freeware is that the software must be fully functional for an unlimited time with no cost, monetary or otherwise. The software license may impose restrictions on the type of use including personal use, individual use, non-profit use, non-commercial use, academic use, commercial use or any combination of these. For instance, the license may be "free for personal, non-commercial use." Everything created with the 1

Presented in the International Conference of “Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and its Contribution to Translation Studies”, Surakarta, 6-7, 2009.

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freeware programs can be distributed at no cost, for example graphic, documents, or sounds made by user (Wikipedia:2008). One of the freeware that is going to be our main discussion in this article is Subtitle Workshop. We will discuss about podcast and the software, and how those free materials can be utilized for language teaching, in the following discussion.

Podcast, iTunes, and Subtitle Workshop A podcast is a series of audio or video digital-media files which is distributed over the Internet by syndicated download, through Web feeds, to portable media players and personal computers. The term is a portmanteau of the words "iPod" and "broadcast". The Apple iPod being the brand of portable media player for which the first podcasting scripts were developed. Such scripts allow podcasts to be automatically transferred from a personal computer to a mobile device after they are downloaded. Like the term broadcast, podcast can refer either to the series of content itself or to the method by which it is syndicated; the latter is also called podcasting. The host or author of a podcast is often called a podcaster. (Wikipedia: 2008). We can find, play and download of more than 60.000 podcast from podcast.com every day, either audio or video. Through the website we can subscribe to the podcast using the RSS feeder so that we can have the latest episode of the podcast without accessing the website. Another way that is easier for us to find, play and download the podcast is using iTunes. iTunes is a free application for Mac and PC. It plays all the digital music and video. It syncs content to the iPod, iPhone and Apple TV. We can visit the iTunes Store to search for podcasts that pique our interest. Once we find one, give it a quick listen, then click a single button to subscribe. After then, the latest episode will be downloaded automatically each time we are connected to the internet and open the iTunes player. iTunes is one of the freeware that can be categorized as a podcast subscriber or downloader and it can be utilized as a good tools for the sake of language teaching (Hakim: 2008). Through the iTunes Store we can find many kinds of podcast categories such as news, talk show, geographical report, science video, lectures, etc. we can watch and download episodically the news from the television broadcasters such as CNN, BBC, CBC, MTV, etc. All of the podcast videos are in the Mp 4 format which can be synchronized to 2

the portable Mp4 player such as iPod. The most important thing is that all of them are authentic materials for language teaching especially for teaching or improving the students’ listening skill.

Picture 1. Podcast categories on the iTunes Store

As a portable media podcast can be easily played and listened by the students from anywhere and everywhere using their own Mp4 player. They can listen and listen again for several times. The more students listen, the better they get at listening at listening, and the better they get at understanding pronunciation and at using it appropriately themselves (Harmer, 2007: 135). Listening for several times are sometimes boring for students especially when the task is not clear and interesting for them. Students need a challenging and interesting task while they are listening. Listening and translation are different skills that can be acquired individually. Translation is a kind of paraphrase , that is, it is a rewarding of the sense of an original text, and many of the comments made about paraphrase as listening comprehension activity are relevant to translation (Urr: 1985). Based on this principle and especially for teaching the listening and translation skills, the writer has an idea to use software that is Subtitle Workshop, which can be used to encourage students to listen and listen more the materials to improve their listening and translation skill. Subtitle workshop is free software that can be downloaded from http://urusoft.net. The guidance of how to use the software is attached after the paper. The idea will try to encourage students to do the translation after listening using the free material, video podcast, and free software, subtitle workshop, on the computers of self access language laboratory. The activities are presented on the procedure below.

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Picture 2. Subtitle Wokshop 2.5.1

Procedure of Teaching Listening and Translation Using Podcast and Subtitle Workshop 1. Pre activities - Students are introduced to the use of video podcast and how to get the materials from the internet. They are asked to download one video podcast for one student. - Students are trained about how to add subtitle to the video using subtitle workshop. The software is installed already on the computer. - Students are told about how to retell the story from the video either spoken or written, and to translate and interpret them into Indonesian, theoretically. 2. While-activities - The students are asked to watch and listen to their own video podcast directly from the computer in the language laboratory or using their own Mp4 player, for several times. - Each student is asked to retell and share the brief summary of their own video podcast through a spoken discussion after listening for several times. - The students are asked to listen again and transcribe the spoken English narration, description or dialog from their own video podcast and type and save them to the computer. - The students are asked to add the transcription as the subtitle of their own video podcast using subtitle workshop. They have to adjust the time to show and hide the subtitle on the video with the spoken English narration, description or dialog they listen to. - The students are asked to activate the translation mode beside the original language mode on the software and then type the translation directly following the subtitle they have already done before. 4

- The students are asked to recheck their works by listening and watch whether the subtitle match or not with the time to show and hide the subtitle, for both the original language and the translation. 3. Post-activities - The students are asked to present their own video in front of the class and retell the story using their own spoken words directly while the video are playing. - The students are asked to interpret the narration, description or dialog from the video into the spoken Indonesian.

Conclusion Having teaching students on how to improve their listening and translation skills using the podcast and subtitle workshop, the writer assumes that this is an idea of how to make listening and translation more fun and interesting to be learned and practiced. During the teaching, the writer found that most of the students were excited when they were asked to try the program. They said that even it is hard for them to transcribe the spoken English and followed by translating into Indonesia, they were interested to learn listening and making their own subtitle. Using the subtitle workshop, the students can make subtitle in two languages, the original mode that is in English and the translation mode that is in Indonesian. They have to listen and listen more in order to match between the time of the spoken dialog or narration in the video and the time to show and hide the subtitle. Each student has one video podcast to be subtitled and it length about 5 to 10 minutes. They can take the assignment at home and bring back the result as they finish. Most of the students are motivated because they think that it is not only improved their listening and translation skills but also, the best of all, they can learn on how to make the subtitle for their own video. Podcast, iTunes, and subtitle workshop are a little bit example of how free materials from the internet can be used to improve the language teaching. There are many other materials and free software that can be explored and utilized for the sake of language teaching. Reference:

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Harmer, Jeremy. 2007. How to Teach English. England: Pearson Education Limited. Urr, Penny. 1985. Teaching Listening Comprehension. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wikipedia,. 2008. Freeware, retrieved on January 9, 2009 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeware ________,. 2008. Podcast, retrieved on March 11, 2009 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcast

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