I have gotten hooked... on subtitling (transcribing)


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I'm a big fan of subtitles. From living with my mother and her being a light sleeper, I would watch movies with the subtitles turned on. When I moved to digital, sometimes you have to track them down. And sometimes they're a little off and I've learned how to correct them. Well, if they're plain text (SRT). Even though I'm moved out and living with my wife, we watch with the subtitles on. She's never objected, and I believe the dual impact of hearing and reading causes the mind to retain more.

 

Ironically, I don't like anime in Japanese subtitled in English. I prefer English spoken with no subtitles to Japanese spoken with English subtitles. Japanese is a beautiful language, but I feel I'm missing something in translation. Also, I can't look away from the TV if the spoken language is Japanese. Fortunately for me, anime has really taken off in the last few years, and just about anything that is good is available in English or will be soon. Some shows and characters are associated primarily with their English voice actor. Like Edward Elric of Fullmetal Alchemist. Who could imagine Ed without Vic Mignogna's iconic voice? Vic is Ed and Ed is Vic and anyone who says otherwise can pound sand.

 

Anyway, last week I got the inclination to make subtitles from scratch. After a very short amount of Googling, I discovered Aegisub. It hasn't been updated in 2 and a half years, and the learning curve is a little steep, but I decided I was going to transcribe the Dark Tower trailer, and that's exactly what I did. I actually didn't use Aegisub for this one. I used my knowledge of the SRT format and guessed the time codes and revised them as necessary. As such, it took me about an hour and a half, but I did it and I'm proud of what I did. This link — if you download the YouTube video I linked and the subtitle I also linked and give them the same name, and open the video in VLC, it will automatically load the subtitle file. Probably MPC-HC, Quicktime, and whatever else you use to play videos. You may have to enable the subtitle; my video players are set to load them by default if present.

 

I've since done other trailers, starting in Aegisub. Next I did the Skyrim trailer (the extended one with the voice over and then the music). I'm particularly proud of this one, as I got the translations to the Dovah (dragon language) music and included them in the subs. So you can follow along in Dovah, and also understand what is being said. Then I did the Deus Ex Mankind Divided trailer, the Fallout 4 E3 trailer (and I got the transitions between the Ink Spots' lyrics and Ron Perlman's TV broadcaster perfect), and most recently, the 5 minute extended Deus Ex Human Revolution trailer and the 2011 Cartoon Network ThunderCats revival trailer.

 

Of course, these videos are copyrighted, so I can't go sharing them, but I'm pretty sure I can share the subtitles. I don't think SubScene (a site I use to get subs others have made) has a section for video clips. And I don't think the fans of these games (and that show) give much of a crap about subtitles for game (and show) trailers. Really, I'm just training myself to work with Aegisub. And I still don't know a lot about it. For example, the video plays at like 200% volume, so I have to turn it way down. There's no reason for it to do that, but I can't find a control to control the volume, so I just lowered the system volume.

 

I tried to do a music video, but I got frustrated. The idea was that I'd do ONE OK ROCK videos — a band that sings in both English and Japanese. And I'd translate the Japanese stuff, so, like the Skyrim video, you could see what was being said. Only, the words don't translate so cleanly, and it was kind of a mess. Might go back to it, but I don't think I really want subtitled music videos. Ironically, what I consider their strongest song, Be the light, has a video that is subtitled into many languages. it's their only video they've done that to. There is a clean copy with no subs, and there are like half a dozen in different languages. Linked, the one subtitled in English. This particular song is all in English; no Japanese lyrics. I guess the band really wanted their fans around the world to know exactly what they were saying here. Trying to listen to a born and raised Japanese man speak English is taxing at best, but his English is very good. On some of their new songs, though, if you didn't know better, you might think you were listening to a native born American guy.

 

I think a movie would be too much work to transcribe, but it might be an interesting challenge. Fortunately there are a crap ton of people who are already doing that. Just about any movie that was ever popular, I can get subs for it. I don't think it pays either, unless you're the guy doing them for the studio, and that's got to be boring as hell, to do as a job all day. So, I don't really know what I'll do with it, but it sure is fun.

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Nice hobby :) but I must say that from my understanding the situation with Anime translations is opposite to Your concerns. Fan translations are far more accurate as they do not need to conform to USTV PG ratings and usually, people translating them are deeply entrenched in the anime/manga/Japan culture. There have been cases where dubbed dialogues had nothing to do with the originals. Keep it going :)

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12 hours ago, Yogurth said:

Nice hobby :) but I must say that from my understanding the situation with Anime translations is opposite to Your concerns. Fan translations are far more accurate as they do not need to conform to USTV PG ratings and usually, people translating them are deeply entrenched in the anime/manga/Japan culture. There have been cases where dubbed dialogues had nothing to do with the originals. Keep it going :)

Yeah, looking at the Google translations, I realized I was in way over my head with that. And I don't know Japanese so it doesn't help. With the Dragonborn song, the artist had provided translations that made sense, so that worked. I would need a resource like that to successfully transcribe Japanese songs, since I can't make that on my own.

12 hours ago, yxz said:

well my goto place for tv, movie subtitles is addic7ed.com

That group came up when I was Googling a problem with Aegisub (specifically the volume thing). Apparently they are looking for transcribers, and they said they will teach, so maybe I could learn something, but I got the impression they were part of the piracy scene, and that's not something I'm ready to jump right into. Though it would be an interesting challenge and relevant to my interests. And my demand for perfection. I require my subtitles to be as accurate as possible to what is being said, including mistakes and stammering/stuttering. For example in the Fallout 4 trailer, when the news broadcaster is announcing the confirmed nuclear detonations, he's saying we have some breaking news, but it reads (and says) "We— we've— we've got some breaking news" or something like that. I see in Aegisub they give you the characters per second (CPS), which is the number of characters in your line, divided by the total seconds the line is on the screen. So you want to keep that low for audience recognition, and a lesser subtitle would just say "We've got some breaking news" to lower the CPS. But, I prefer accuracy over what I guess is readability? I see a line and it's not exactly what is being said, my first instinct is to pause the video and rip into the SRT file. Even have them opening in Notepad.

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