There are plenty of excellent TV shows and movies out there, and quite a few of them are not in English, which means that sometimes when watching such shows, subtitles are necessary. However given that there are many subtleties when it comes to language, sometimes the quality of subtitles aren’t always great.

However that’s something that Netflix wants to fix as they have announced HERMES, a subtitling and translation test and indexing system meant to help improve the overall quality of subtitles in the future. Essentially this is a test for those who are interested in helping create subtitles for shows, and HERMES will test candidates on their ability to understand English and whether they are capable of translating “idiomatic phrases into their target language”.

According to Netflix, “There are approximately 4,000 idioms in the English language and being able to translate them in a culturally accurate way is critical to preserving the creative intent for a piece of content.” Basically it sounds like this test is meant to see whether subtitlers are capable of translating the subtleties of the English language into their native language, which will result in more accurate subtitles at the end of the day.

At the end of the test, candidates will be given a H-number which tells Netflix their skill level. “Much like we recommend titles to our members, we aim to match our subtitlers in a similar way.  Perhaps they consider themselves a horror aficionado, but they excel at subtitling romantic comedies – theoretically, we can make this match so they’re able to do their best quality work.”

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