Viva Subtitles!

From the very first Hypergrid International Expo back in 2017, we have been using a unique system to allow our audience to follow the main points of the talks being given, even if they don't understand the spoken word. It's a Subtitle system using Group Chat. You join the inworld group for your language, and during the event, the group Chat will light up with paragraphs of text that reflect the things being said onstage. 

Loru Destiny - our first speaker at HIE 25

Making these subtitles ahead of time involves a series of steps - getting the speakers to submit the main points of their talk, editing these for length, and then translating them into different languages. Of course, AI can help with that to some extent, but it takes the eye of a native speaker to check that idiomatic expressions, the jargon of virtual worlds, grammar, syntax, and the context of the talk are all respected. This year's team of translators and subtitleists included Rosa Alekseev for the Portuguese, LadyKa 007 for the French, Tosha Tyran for German and Spanish, plus Lux Tergeste and Snowbody Cortes. Thirza Ember worked on the Italian translations, as well as the editing, formatting, of the subtitles, and organized the team. 

Subtitle Group joiners in the Expo Park.
During the conference, subtitles appear in Group Chat.

But what was the experience like from the point of view of these volunteers? Would they recommend it to others? Lux Tergeste has been helping with subtitles for at least three years now, and has often also helped with translating from Italian to English. 

HIE 2025 German Session

 This year's HIE event kicked off with a big Welcome from the five person panel - Em Jannings spoke in English, Richi Rizzoli in German, Minord Loup welcomed everyone in French, Lorenza Colicigno in Italian, and finally Ana Maggi made some comments in Spanish, just to give the event a fully international feel right from the start!

I you missed the event, you can watch the whole thing, as it happened, over on the HIE YouTube channel, and in days to come there will also be videos of each individual performance. 

The German session was ably moderated by Richi Rizzoli. Richi, a DJ inworld, with his deep rich voice, was a perfect choice as moderator.

Saturday at HIE 2023: German session.

 The first session of the 2023 Edition of the Hypergrid International Expo began with a ... well let's not deny it, a few teething problems!

 Lots of moving parts, to this complicated machine called HIE. 

But within minutes of getting started the event was already attracting a nice mix of audience both inworld, on Craft Grid, and on our YouTube channel, where the event is streamed Live. That's where you will find the archive of presentations, in the weeks following this event, so it's worth Subscribing to the channel so you will not miss out. Please Comment, Like and Share, too of course!

The program for the first session began with greeting in five languages - just to get you in the mood!

It was followed by the German session, introduced by Loru Destiny of ArtDestiny grid, a place full of paintings, 3d art, magnificent Star Trek regions and beautiful Fantasy landscapes, great music events also (Moses Rae is resident there) and of course, Loru Destiny's marvelous freebie 'shops' - she is a fantastic designer of original clothes for opensim, and has been for many years; she began with system clothes and now makes rigged mesh that everyone can enjoy. 

Loru Destiny

Loru is the organizer of Openim's "Modenschau: or Fashion Show events, featuring original creators of clothes in Opensim like herself, check out her youtube channel, it includes vids of her events and some very good tutorials!