Last week I spoke to Palash, one of our seasoned Bengali and Hindi subtitlers, to find out what kind of projects he has been handling recently. As well as subtitling, Palash also works on transcription and direct translations of media files into English.
KH: I know you live in the UK now, but where were you born and where were you brought up?
Palash: I was born in Bangladesh, but I also spent a number of years living in India before moving to the UK.
KH: So that explains the magical combination of Bengali, Hindi and English!
Palash: Yes, yes.
KH: Has your work always been based around your linguistic skills?
Palash: Pretty much. When I finished my MA in Language and Linguistics, one of my university contacts recommended translation work and so I began working from English into Bengali and vice versa. My mother is American and so we spoke English a lot at home. Combined with living in India for some years, I am pretty much trilingual.
KH: How did you fall into subtitling and transcription work?
Palash: During my time in India, I worked as a journalist for a tv production company. I soon found myself transcribing Bengali and Hindi interviews, and depending on the eventual audience, sometimes providing direct translations of the speech in the footage into English. I kitted myself out with all the relevant equipment and found that I really enjoyed working with audio-visual material. I could see that my colleagues often struggled to find accurate subtitlers in Bengali and Hindi and so I decided to learn how to subtitle too!
KH: Did you teach yourself or did you go on a course?
Palash: A mixture of both really. Subtitling is quite an art. I signed up to an online course but I also spent hours practising my subtitling skills on YouTube videos.
KH: What kind of material do you work on these days?
Palash: I work mainly on documentaries and promotional videos for charities.
KH: Thank you so much for your time.
Learn more
If you have any Bengali or Hindi video or audio files and require same language Bengali transcription, Hindi transcription, direct translation from either Hindi or Bengali into English, or you would be interested in learning more about our subtitling services, do please get in touch and one of our project managers will be happy to help.
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