Translators and professional subtitlers take note: Netflix is looking for the best around the globe for their content localization efforts.
To help with the search, the company launched HERMES, the “first online subtitling and translation test and indexing system by a major content creator.” The HERMES platform allows Netflix to find the best resources to translate media across different languages at a massive scale.
Since the company’s global launch, Netflix now supports over 20 different languages including Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, Chinese and Polish. With the content streaming platform’s aggressive expansion, Netflix aims to deliver localized content as fast as possible to more and more people with the highest quality possible.
To achieve this, the company designed the HERMES to sieve through candidates, evaluating their ability to understand English, translate idiomatic phrases into a target language, identify linguistic and technical errors, and subtitle proficiently.
Netflix aims to provide quality subtitles free from errors, as well as capturing the linguistic nuances present in different languages, avoiding any awkward translation.
Since the unveiling of HERMES, thousands of candidates around the world have already completed the test.
“We’re quickly approaching an inflection point where English won’t be the primary viewing experience on Netflix, and HERMES allows us to better vet the individuals doing this very important work so members can enjoy their favorite TV shows and movies in their language,” according to an official blog post from Netflix Director of Media Engineering and Partnerships Chris Fetner and Director of Content Localization and Quality Control Denny Sheehan.
Interested translators may take the test here.