Friday 1 March 2019
Victoria University of Wellington First to Offer Latest Media Technology
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 localization. Localizing 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.”
ABOUT VOICEQ:
VoiceQ is a systemised software solution that automates dialogue replacement in the post-production stage of film,
television and gaming production. Locally, it was used to dub the Disney film Moana to te reo Māori and also recognised
in the 2018 Māori Language Awards for its dubbing of Cartoon Network series We Bare Bears. For more, www.voiceq.com and Pro Tools Expert review.
VOICEQ IN ACTION See We Bare Bears speak te reo Māori for first time..
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