Films subtitled by students of the "Film Translation" course at the Institute of Romance Studies at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (HU) have been nominated for the 98th Academy Awards on 15 March. They are competing for Oscars in the categories "Best Short Film" and "Best Animated Short Film". The films will be shown in German cinemas from mid-March.
Translation without AI
The project to subtitle short films for the Academy Awards has been running at HU for three years. The film translation course has been in existence since the 1990s. The initiator is Xavier Bihan, who, as a lecturer for special tasks at the Institute of Romance Studies at HU, deals with the topics of translation, interpreting and French culture and regional studies. He has expanded international cooperation in the film and theatre sector, including with the Cannes Film Festival and the Sundance Film Festival. Translations are offered in German, English, French, Italian, Polish and Spanish, as well as less popular languages such as Romanian and Catalan. By 2025, the "Berlinguists", as the film translation students call themselves, will have translated 59 films, four plays and 13 songs, reaching an audience of around 130,000. Xavier Bihan emphasises that no AI is used for the translations: "We are committed to intellectual work; not only is this the purpose of the courses, but the organisers also appreciate the quality. At the end of the films we subtitle, we always write: 'No AI was misused in the production of these subtitles. Rely on Berlinguistic intellectual work!'"
Another current project by the Berlinguisten is called "Stolpersteine zum Sprechen bringen" (Making stumbling blocks speak) and is being implemented in collaboration with the Schule am Teutoburger Platz school in Berlin. The students interpret interviews with survivors of the Shoah or their relatives. The resulting podcasts are available via the Berlin History App .