TVM NEWS TO START FEATURING MALTESE SUBTITLES IN PILOT PROJECT

TVM News will begin featuring Maltese subtitles in a pilot project aimed at strengthening the use of the Maltese language in digital media and improving accessibility for viewers.

The initiative is part of SaqWI, a question and answer corpus project funded by Microsoft’s AI for Good Lab. It is being developed by the Ċentru tal-Ilsien Malti in collaboration with the University of Malta’s Department of Artificial Intelligence. The project focuses on building a high quality dataset that supports Maltese language technology and artificial intelligence systems.

As part of the pilot, automatically generated Maltese subtitles will first be introduced during the 6:00pm news bulletin. These subtitles will then be checked, corrected, and refined before being used in the 8:00pm broadcast. This process is intended to ensure both accuracy and reliability while testing the system in a real newsroom environment.

The corpus will be developed using between 100 and 150 hours of transcribed audio and audiovisual material from PBS archives. This ensures that the dataset is fully localised and reflects Maltese culture, history, and context rather than relying on foreign sources or direct translations.

A formal agreement between TVM and the Ċentru tal-Ilsien Malti was signed in the presence of Minister Owen Bonnici. The project aligns with Malta Vision 2050 and aims to strengthen Maltese language skills while ensuring the language remains present in modern digital and artificial intelligence technologies.

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