Here’s an email received this week by SBS head honcho Shaun Brown:

From: Shaun Brown (Alexandra Surplice)
To: Shaun Brown
Date: Tuesday – November 13, 2007 9:54am

Subject: Award for Subtitling Unit

Dear Staff,

Please join me in congratulating the Subtitling Unit for winning the inaugural National Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Translation and Interpreting Industry. Presented by the Australian Institute of Interpreters and Translators, the national association for the translating and interpreting profession, the jury made special reference to the Subtitling Unit’s work on Dateline.

SBS favours subtitling over voice-dubbing in order to preserve the linguistic and cultural integrity of the multilingual programs we broadcast. The SBS subtitling model enables collaboration between the original language speaker and a native English-speaking editor and is highly regarded in the media translation industry. This award is a tribute to the commitment of the Subtitling staff, the quality of work they produce and the valuable role they play in delivering SBS’s charter.

Regards, Shaun Brown

What a joke! Shaun Brown has decimated SBS’s subtitling department and intends to annihilate it completely by outsourcing the work to an outside company. The company he intends to outsource to is a subsidiary of Macquarie Bank.

What a coincidence. Redbee, the company SBS has outsourced its’ on-air presentation to is also a subsidiary of Macquarie Bank.

What is going on?