Malta Literary Short-Film Contest winning film gets multilingual subtitles

The National Book Council would like to congratulate the University of Malta Masters students who have participated in this year’s Tradutech sessions. For this edition of Tradutech, the Department of Translation, Terminology and Interpreting Studies has been collaborating with the National Book Council to facilitate the development of an audio-visual component focusing on subtitling. 

As part of these sessions, six student translators have translated and produced subtitles in English, French and Italian for the short film Dritt għall-Punt, directed by Matt Stroud. As the winning entry of the 2017 Malta Literary Short-Film Contest, Dritt għall-Punt has been adapted from the short story of the same name as it appears in Prof. Joe Friggieri’s short story collection Nismagħhom Jgħidu (Kite Publishing, 2016). The short film featuring the additional subtitles can be viewed on the National Book Council’s YouTube channel and facebook page.

Tradutech takes places within the framework of the OTCT (Optimising Translator Training through Collaborative Technical Translation) European project and is composed of intensive collaborative technical translation sessions organised in simulated professional conditions involving seven European universities, including the University of Malta. They are designed to confront students with real-life translation industry situations and problem-solving. The multilingual subtitles have been produced by Amina Baldacchino, Martina Caruana, Martina Cremona, Ilaria Alice Feltre, Nathlin Johnson, and Paola Pagano Mariano. Prof. A. Aquilina was the coordinator of this project on behalf of the Department of Translation.

The Malta Literary Short-Film Contest organised by the National Book Council is running for the fifth consecutive year and aims to strengthen filmic adaptations of local literary works. The contest is open to film-making teams interested in adapting published Maltese short stories into films of 15 to 20 minutes in duration. Funds for the 2019 Malta Literary Short Film Contest have been awarded to Mr. Peter Sant and his company Hereonin Ltd. for the adaption of the short-story Ġulina by Alfred Sant, published in Pupu fil-Baħar – Rakkonti u Divertimenti (SKS, 2009). The short-film will be first screened on Saturday 9 November during the 2019 edition of the Malta Book Festival.