With the evolution of the last decades, investing in technologies that facilitate the use of your product or service has become a market requirement. So, the MBA USP/Esalq classes are subtitled and the classes’ materials are translated.
Besides facilitating communication between people from different places and languages, this service promotes the inclusion of people with disabilities, an increasingly relevant topic.
In the MBA USP/Esalq, subtitles and translations are made by Skylar, a startup created in 2016 that uses their own artificial intelligence (AI) in natural language processing for the automatic generation of translated subtitles in real time. The software uses voice recognition and machine learning techniques, in addition to allowing the revision of the generated content by real people.
We talked to Luana Moro, co-founder and CEO of Skylar, to understand how the MBA USP/Esalq classes are subtitled, how this was done, the benefits of this investment and more. Check it out!
What is subtitled and translated?
According to Luana, all the MBA USP/Esalq courses are automatically subtitled by Skylar in Portuguese, English and Spanish. This process is done automatically and live, simultaneously to the transmission of the classes. Also, all extra-class events are also subtitled.
She also tells that, for international courses, in addition to the simultaneous translation and subtitling, a manual review of the subtitles is made, as well as the translation of complementary materials and other additional items.
“All class materials are translated from Portuguese to Spanish and, when there are extra materials in English or Spanish, a version is also made for Portuguese-speaking students. Besides, all the videos used by the professors in other languages also get subtitles before the start of the class”, she explains.
The process
Luana details the operation of the process of subtitling and translation of the MBA materials: “Everything starts with the professor, who sends the presentation of the class and the complementary materials to Pecege’s Planning sector. The material is then appropriate for the layout of the class and sent to the Translation team, which passes the content from Portuguese to English and Spanish, and returns it to Planning.”
Besides, professors who want to show videos in English or Spanish as a class audiovisual material can send them in, so they are subtitled before the live class. The day following the streaming of the class, all the subtitles are reviewed and uploaded so that it is available for the recorded classes as well. The entire translation and subtitling process involves about 30 people, two teams focused on making this happen.
However, Luana complements, even so, not all the supplementary materials can be translated. This is because “some have copyright and we cannot alter the content. In this case, the student is directed to a similar material, usually in English.”
Reach and accessibility
According to Luana, the initiative of translation and subtitling the classes is a financial investment for the future, which benefits both the students and the institution. This is because it increases the reach of the courses, which can go to people from all over the world, while it provides the students with better conditions of study.
And this improvement in the condition of the students goes to outside the classroom and the supplementary materials, since there is also exclusive service in English and Spanish for the internationalized courses. The objective is to help the non-Portuguese speakers integrate themselves fully in the process and get access to knowledge that, many times, are created and centered in Brazil.
Another benefit highlighted by her is the access of people with disabilities: “We hardly see the distance education institutions worry about the accessibility of their students. With all this support and technological development we work internally, it is possible to offer the classes with subtitles for the ones that need it”, explains Luana.
Take advantage of the subtitled MBA USP/Esalq classes and learn more about the courses offered. Experience the Skylar technology first hand!
