By Parthibhan Amudhan | General Manager
Dear Friend,
I am pleased to submit the following report on the Same Language Subtitling (SLS) project we carried out with the support of Oracle Giving.
We were invited by Oracle Giving to submit a proposal in February 2015 following which an application for subtitling 30 minutes of Bollywood songs every week for one year, was submitted. In April 2015, PlanetRead was selected as one of the grantees by Oracle.
By end of May 2015, PlanetRead completed the due diligence as required by Charities Aid Foundation by submitting all the required documents and information. We signed the MoU on 25th May 2015 following which we received the grant of $20,000 in the first week of June 2015.
From the month of April itself, we had started the ground work for identifying the right channel partner to telecast the songs with SLS. We approached Doordharshan and had several rounds of discussions and meetings in order to choose the program that we will work on. Unfortunately, Doordharshan was not able to provide us with a program for SLS.
Due to the lack of support from Doordharshan, we decided to approach Zee TV, with whom we had already been working with for over 2 years. Having seen the value of Same Language Subtitling (SLS) for literacy development, they agreed to give us another slot of 30 mins of Same Language Subtitling per week for another year.
In August 2015, we started subtitling the songs of popular Hindi movies for Zee TV and they have been telecast on both Zee Cinema and Zee Classic since 1st October 2015.
The aim of this Oracle supported project was to add SLS to songs of 52 movies that will be telecast over a period of one year. With Oracle’s support, we added SLS to all the songs in 52 Hindi movies (one movie per week). The average number of songs per movie is 5 to 6 and the length of each song is about 6 mins thereby giving 30 minutes reading practice. Weak readers benefit the most when there is an increase in quantity & frequency of SLS exposure. For example a weak reader who watches 3 hours of SLSed songs per week will benefit much more as compared to a weak reader who watches only 30 mins of SLSed songs per week.
As of date, we have subtitled all 52 movies and roughly half of those movies have been telecast on Zee TV. The songs we subtitle appear with credit to Oracle and CAF. View a sample clip.
Checkout this photo stream on our Facebook page, which has snapshots of the songs we have subtitled.
Here are links to other documentaries and work we have done:
Coverage by SBS Dateline, April 2014, Australia: Watch on YouTube.
Coverage by Deutsche Welle, May 2012 Germany’s international broadcaster: Watch on YouTube.
Clinton Global Initiative Features PlanetRead “A small thing that has a staggering impact on people’s lives.” -- President Bill Clinton, Sept. 24, 2009. Watch on YouTube.
The PlanetRead Story - documentary on literacy in India and impact of Same Language Subtitling. Watch on YouTube.
Links:
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