Victoria University of Wellington is the first university in Australasia to offer students the chance to use world-leading advanced voice synchronisation software.
VoiceQ, developed by Auckland media company Kiwa Digital, automates the dialogue replacement process in film, television, video and gaming industries. The software has a global reputation for the precision of its process and is at the cutting edge of momentous change in the global language services market.
School of Languages and Cultures Associate Professor Marco Sonzogni from the University’s Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences says VoiceQ will enable language students to have an entirely active experience in which they can watch a video, transcribe it, translate it, caption it, subtitle it, and dub it.
“Rather than simply learning the skills of language and translation, Victoria University of Wellington students will now be able to live them,” says Associate Professor Sonzogni.
“This technology puts us at the cutting edge of teaching and research and enables us to give students the digital skills and experience they need to take with them into future jobs,” he says.
VoiceQ will be available to students of all disciplines at the University from Trimester 1, 2019.
Globally, leading institutions to include VoiceQ in their degree programme include the International School of Audiovisual Creation and Realization in Paris (EICAR) that offers one of the most cutting edge film education programmes in Europe, with a considerable reputation for its investment in new technologies.
In welcoming the move Kiwa Digital CEO Steven Renata says that the evolution of technologies in the media industry is calling for new approaches to training tomorrow’s professional.
“As the global demand for content skyrockets, so does the requirement for video localisation. Localising media content – video, film, and television series – requires much more than just recreating dialogue in other languages. The combination of sound, music, images, and language for audio-visual or multimedia translation has created a new paradigm on how to communicate,” Renata says.
“While subtitling and dubbing have been around since the 1930s, the rise of OTT services distributing media content via streaming has turned audio-visual translation into a billion-dollar industry. As Netflix have declared, the idea of media being in any one language or any one culture is about to change. We are excited to support Victoria University to be at the forefront of this change, getting its students ready for the media world of the future.”