TVM news bulletin to feature subtitles in Maltese
Initiative is part of a pilot project
The TVM news bulletin will start featuring automated subtitles in Maltese as part of a pilot project.
The initiative forms part of the SaqWI project, a corpus of questions and answers funded by the Microsoft AI for Good Lab at the Maltese Language Centre in collaboration with the Department of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Malta.
They will be developing an innovative dataset that further strengthens the presence of the Maltese language in the digital domain.
The automated news subtitles will initially be used on a pilot basis during the 6pm news bulletin on TVM, where automatically generated subtitles will be verified and refined before the 8pm broadcast.
This corpus will be built on around 100 to 150 hours of transcription, using audio and audiovisual data from PBS archives, ensuring that the data is fully localized and connected to the Maltese context, including the country’s culture, history, and realities, rather than being a simple translation from foreign datasets.
An agreement signed between TVM and the Maltese Language Centre will further reinforce the commitment to ensure that Maltese, both spoken and written, is “maintained and promoted to the highest standards of quality, the Culture Ministry said in a statement on Thursday.
“This project is another important step to ensure that the Maltese language remains relevant and present in today’s and tomorrow’s technological developments. Through artificial intelligence, we continue to give a voice to Maltese in new domains while enhancing accessibility and inclusion for everyone. This initiative clearly demonstrates how our linguistic heritage can go hand in hand with innovation,” Culture Minister Owen Bonnici said.
To convert this data into written text, Microsoft’s Speech-to-Text technology will be used, which, through artificial intelligence, converts spoken discourse into writing. This process will not only create a valuable corpus but also contribute to the continuous improvement of the same technology for the Maltese language.