Translation of video subtitles of promo team

[Karl Ove Hufthammer]

Johnny Jazeix skreiv 02.08.2023 17:38:
> I've been discussing with promo on how to help them translate the
> subtitles in their videos (for example
> https://tube.kockatoo.org/w/symxHCzUj9TA7LZoZagD9c).
> In order to not change the process of translators, I told them I can
> create a script that will convert the srt files (subtitle file) to po
> files. […]

In case you’re not aware, the Translate Toolkit has a tool for this:
https://docs.translatehouse.org/projects/translate-toolkit/en/latest/commands/sub2po.html


> I have a few questions regarding the translation process:
> * should there be only one po file containing all the translations for
> all subtitles files, or one po file per subtitle file?

That depends. If different videos contain many of the same strings, I 
think it’s better to lump all of the strings into one file (but sort the 
strings by video + timepoint). This will reduce the translators’ work 
and ensure consistent translations across videos. But if the different 
videos contain mostly unique strings, I would prefer a separate file for 
each video. Then it’s easier to choose which videos to translate. 
Translating one giant file easily feels like unsurmountable work …


> * There could be issue with display time of texts. Basically, in the
> subtitle file, for each line, you tell when the text appears and when
> it hides. If a translated text takes more time to be read, the user
> might have to pause the video in order to read it which is a bad
> experience. To solve this potential issue, I propose to also add in
> the messages to translate the timestamp of begin and end, so
> translators can also update them if needed.

Yes, that’s a good idea, at least as long as the video part is not 
changed in the future (so that the subtitles get of of sync). It’s of 
course more work for the translators. But it’s *optional* work; you can 
choose to just use the original timestamps.

Are the videos supposed to have spoken (subtitled) dialogue? Or are the 
subtitles just translations of the English on-screen text?

I have some experience translating subtitles (for Scratch video 
tutorials). It wasn’t possible to change the timestamps. One solution 
was to split the text at a different place in the translation, to limit 
the number of words in each string (and the number of lines to two). 
Then each translated string didn’t correspond exactly to its English 
counterpart (but instead to a neighbouring English string). That worked OK.

Also, one problem I often see, is people mistaking subtitles for 
transcripts. For *natural* speech, real subtitles are *highly condensed* 
versions of the words spoken. If you don’t condense the text, you will 
get subtitles that are too long (to read) and that are shown on the 
screen for just a very short duration. Not very user friendly.

Oh, and one more thing. It must be possible to manually choose the 
placement of the line breaks (using normal ‘\n’ characters).

-- 
Karl Ove Hufthammer