Academic Lead: Eilian Roderick, University of South Wales Business Partners: Leslie R. Herman, Integrated Branding Dafydd Roberts, BIC Innovation Ltd
Project description App-Teitl is a subtitling app. By nature, apps have global potential, but for all its multilingual, multinational potential, as our goal is to firmly establish this as a Welsh product, we would begin by developing the product to provide a Welsh language service. Our first major aim is to develop and produce an app designed to provide exemplary Welsh language subtitling to live cultural events specifically, and with a broader brief to do the same for other cultural events.
App-Teitl’s importance can be illustrated by example: you are at the opera – a performance of Rigoletto, sung in Italian at the Deutsche Opera, Berlin. Your Italian isn’t very good, and the in-house German subtitling is of no use either. Welsh subtitling, providing by App-teitl would greatly enhance the experience for Welsh speakers.
We see the provision of subtitling for live events to be App-teitl’s primary USP, and probably the largest challenge. The notion of provision for live events is what is most novel about this project, and this is what drives us. The design phase of the project involves design, guerrilla testing, technological research and linguistic research.
2014 update The research in to the ‘app teitl ’ concept has proven that the app has potential to enhance live concerts and break down linguistic barriers. Minority languages as well as ‘world’ languages could benefit as new audiences could be introduced to their body of work through use of app teitl’s translation function. There could also be a demand for the app within a diverse spectrum of commercial entities, due to possibly being able t provide a cost-effective way of delivering surtitling services to audiences in all kinds performance spaces, this due to the mobile nature of the concept. We also have seen some potential educational benefits as the app could support language learning in numerous and diverse educational environments, including classroom and field work activities.