SUBTITLE WORKSHOP:

Free Software to Improve Student’s Listening and

Translation Skills1

Rahman Hakim
Sultan Ageng Tirtayasa University

Introduction

Teaching listening comprehension is not an easy task

especially for the students of the English department in a teacher
training faculty. It has to be more creative in preparing for the
suitable and appropriate materials since the students are in the
tertiary level that higher than school students. Problem related to
the limited and expensive source of materials is usually faced by
many teachers. Thus, listening skill sometimes disregard to be
taught.
However, since the internet has become widely use and
rapidly change the people’s way of life, provide many kinds of
authentic and interesting source of materials that can be easily and
freely downloaded, the problems become solved. Materials in the
form of audio and video podcasts are becoming the interesting
materials to improve students listening skill. There is a growing
number of podcast sites from where students can download free
materials. We can download a huge amount of extremely useful
listening materials from the internet, provided that we are not
breaking any rules of copyright (Harmer: 2007).
Another advantage that we can get from the internet beside
podcast is free software or usually known as freeware. Freeware is
computer software that is available for use at no cost or for an
optional fee. Freeware is different from shareware, where the user is
obliged to pay (e.g. after some trial period or for additional
functionality). The only criterion for being classified as freeware is
that the software must be fully functional for an unlimited time with
no cost, monetary or otherwise. The software license may impose
restrictions on the type of use including personal use, individual use,
non-profit use, non-commercial use, academic use, commercial use
or any combination of these. For instance, the license may be "free
for personal, non-commercial use." Everything created with the

1
Presented in the International Conference of “Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and its
Contribution to Translation Studies”, Surakarta, 6-7, 2009.

1
freeware programs can be distributed at no cost, for example
graphic, documents, or sounds made by user (Wikipedia:2008). One
of the freeware that is going to be our main discussion in this article
is Subtitle Workshop. We will discuss about podcast and the
software, and how those free materials can be utilized for language
teaching, in the following discussion.

Podcast, iTunes, and Subtitle Workshop

A podcast is a series of audio or video digital-media files which

is distributed over the Internet by syndicated download, through
Web feeds, to portable media players and personal computers. The
term is a portmanteau of the words "iPod" and "broadcast". The
Apple iPod being the brand of portable media player for which the
first podcasting scripts were developed. Such scripts allow podcasts
to be automatically transferred from a personal computer to a
mobile device after they are downloaded. Like the term broadcast,
podcast can refer either to the series of content itself or to the
method by which it is syndicated; the latter is also called
podcasting. The host or author of a podcast is often called a
podcaster. (Wikipedia: 2008).
We can find, play and download of more than 60.000 podcast
from podcast.com every day, either audio or video. Through the
website we can subscribe to the podcast using the RSS feeder so
that we can have the latest episode of the podcast without
accessing the website. Another way that is easier for us to find, play
and download the podcast is using iTunes. iTunes is a free
application for Mac and PC. It plays all the digital music and video. It
syncs content to the iPod, iPhone and Apple TV. We can visit the
iTunes Store to search for podcasts that pique our interest. Once we
find one, give it a quick listen, then click a single button to
subscribe. After then, the latest episode will be downloaded
automatically each time we are connected to the internet and open
the iTunes player.
iTunes is one of the freeware that can be categorized as a
podcast subscriber or downloader and it can be utilized as a good
tools for the sake of language teaching (Hakim: 2008). Through the
iTunes Store we can find many kinds of podcast categories such as
news, talk show, geographical report, science video, lectures, etc.
we can watch and download episodically the news from the
television broadcasters such as CNN, BBC, CBC, MTV, etc. All of the
podcast videos are in the Mp 4 format which can be synchronized to

2
the portable Mp4 player such as iPod. The most important thing is
that all of them are authentic materials for language teaching
especially for teaching or improving the students’ listening skill.

Picture 1. Podcast categories on the iTunes Store

As a portable media podcast can be easily played and listened

by the students from anywhere and everywhere using their own
Mp4 player. They can listen and listen again for several times. The
more students listen, the better they get at listening at listening,
and the better they get at understanding pronunciation and at using
it appropriately themselves (Harmer, 2007: 135). Listening for
several times are sometimes boring for students especially when
the task is not clear and interesting for them. Students need a
challenging and interesting task while they are listening. Listening
and translation are different skills that can be acquired individually.
Translation is a kind of paraphrase , that is, it is a rewarding of the
sense of an original text, and many of the comments made about
paraphrase as listening comprehension activity are relevant to
translation (Urr: 1985).
Based on this principle and especially for teaching the
listening and translation skills, the writer has an idea to use
software that is Subtitle Workshop, which can be used to encourage
students to listen and listen more the materials to improve their
listening and translation skill. Subtitle workshop is free software that
can be downloaded from http://urusoft.net. The guidance of how to
use the software is attached after the paper. The idea will try to
encourage students to do the translation after listening using the
free material, video podcast, and free software, subtitle workshop,
on the computers of self access language laboratory. The activities
are presented on the procedure below.

3
Picture 2. Subtitle Wokshop 2.5.1

Procedure of Teaching Listening and Translation Using

Podcast and Subtitle Workshop

1. Pre activities
- Students are introduced to the use of video podcast and how
to get the materials from the internet. They are asked to
download one video podcast for one student.
- Students are trained about how to add subtitle to the video
using subtitle workshop. The software is installed already on
the computer.
- Students are told about how to retell the story from the video
either spoken or written, and to translate and interpret them
into Indonesian, theoretically.

2. While-activities
- The students are asked to watch and listen to their own video
podcast directly from the computer in the language
laboratory or using their own Mp4 player, for several times.
- Each student is asked to retell and share the brief summary of
their own video podcast through a spoken discussion after
listening for several times.
- The students are asked to listen again and transcribe the
spoken English narration, description or dialog from their own
video podcast and type and save them to the computer.
- The students are asked to add the transcription as the subtitle
of their own video podcast using subtitle workshop. They
have to adjust the time to show and hide the subtitle on the
video with the spoken English narration, description or dialog
they listen to.
- The students are asked to activate the translation mode
beside the original language mode on the software and then
type the translation directly following the subtitle they have
already done before.
4
 - The students are asked to recheck their works by listening and
watch whether the subtitle match or not with the time to
show and hide the subtitle, for both the original language and
the translation.

3. Post-activities
- The students are asked to present their own video in front of
the class and retell the story using their own spoken words
directly while the video are playing.
- The students are asked to interpret the narration, description
or dialog from the video into the spoken Indonesian.

Conclusion

Having teaching students on how to improve their listening and

translation skills using the podcast and subtitle workshop, the writer
assumes that this is an idea of how to make listening and translation
more fun and interesting to be learned and practiced. During the
teaching, the writer found that most of the students were excited
when they were asked to try the program. They said that even it is
hard for them to transcribe the spoken English and followed by
translating into Indonesia, they were interested to learn listening
and making their own subtitle. Using the subtitle workshop, the
students can make subtitle in two languages, the original mode that
is in English and the translation mode that is in Indonesian. They
have to listen and listen more in order to match between the time of
the spoken dialog or narration in the video and the time to show and
hide the subtitle. Each student has one video podcast to be subtitled
and it length about 5 to 10 minutes. They can take the assignment
at home and bring back the result as they finish. Most of the
students are motivated because they think that it is not only
improved their listening and translation skills but also, the best of
all, they can learn on how to make the subtitle for their own video.

Podcast, iTunes, and subtitle workshop are a little bit example of

how free materials from the internet can be used to improve the
language teaching. There are many other materials and free
software that can be explored and utilized for the sake of language
teaching.

Reference:

5
Harmer, Jeremy. 2007. How to Teach English. England: Pearson
Education Limited.
Urr, Penny. 1985. Teaching Listening Comprehension. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Wikipedia,. 2008. Freeware, retrieved on January 9, 2009 from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeware
________,. 2008. Podcast, retrieved on March 11, 2009 from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcast