Latvia’s first ever national TEDx event, TEDxRiga 2012 — was held 4 years ago. 3 events and 56 talks later the TED Open Translation Community is still bringing ideas into more than 120 languages. And that also includes TEDxRiga!
For example, did you know that Elīna Dobele’s TEDxRiga talk on “architecting a shoe” is fully translated into Spanish and Simplified Chinese? Or that Andris Ambainis’ talk about quantum computing of all the TEDxRiga talks has garnered the most interest among OTP volunteers and is currently being translated into 3 languages, with Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Korean and Hebrew already published?
Even though Latvian volunteers are usually the first ones to pick up a TEDxRiga transcribing task, the torch is then quickly passed on to other volunteers and translators. A special thanks to the TEDx Talk English Coordinator Denise R Quivu who has been most helpful in both reviewing and approving the English transcripts.
Overall, roughly two out of every five TEDxRiga talks are currently fully transcribed (see the image bellow).
Surprisingly, the most active TEDxRiga talk translators are Spanish, who have fully translated 6 of the TEDxRiga talks, while 7 more are on the way. Then they’re followed by Latvian and Russian translators who have each contributed 3 full translations.
But translation is not possible if the talk isn’t transcribed. As it turns out, video transcription is actually a rather time-consuming endeavour, but it gets faster as you get the hang of it. For example, transcribing an 18-minute talk can take up to 4 to 6 hours. But there are so many people that can then benefit from the fruits of your labour. Not only it makes it possible for the wisdom of the speakers to be passed on to other languages, but subtitles also make the video’s content indexable online and accessible to the deaf and hard of hearing.
Check out some of the TEDxRiga talks that need to be transcribed (Amara sign-in required). Make sure you read How to transcribe TEDxTalks in 10 steps beforehand.
And if you have any questions — just comment below, or better yet, join the TED OTP Latvia group on Facebook for discussions and more!
Good luck subtitling and translating!
TED OTP Latvian Coordinators,
