A Call for Subtitles
/ by Matt
Well, the time has come to ask you all for some help for the DVD. While the timing is not final, the script has been locked down for a while, the voices have been recorded and selected, and it’s a good time now to start doing some translations. The Blender and wider open source community is a very multinational one, and we’d all really love to have a subtitle menu on the DVD packed full of all kinds of languages.
Joeri Kassenaar will be working on producing the DVD and has very nicely volunteered to co-ordinate the subtitles. If you’re interested in contributing a translation for the DVD, please email Joeri at:
and mention who you are, what language you’d like to translate, and perhaps if you have it, examples of things you might have translated before.
Right now, we have the English script, for which translation can be started immediately. When we have final dialogue timing throughout the movie, we can also provide translators with a low-res preview video, in order to do a timed subtitle file. We can probably also provide a rough timed transcribed English subtitle file, to use as reference.
We don’t want to distribute the script (or a preview video) widely before the DVD is released, so we will have to be selective with only a few translators. Maybe one to translate, and one to doublecheck if possible, I don’t know. We’d also like to be able to trust translators to keep things secret too, as to not reveal any spoilers, and of course translators will be credited on the DVD. Anyway, let’s start from here and see how we go!
« A Call for Textures! | New Mini Production report »
1st pwned ^^
what about a kind of wiki where anybody can translate and correct the subtitles? I’d love to do a bit of translation (Englisch -> German)
buergi: To avoid spoilers I think this is the best. There should be one people translating it all and as they said, possibly one more to do a check on it.
Matt: Are there many lines to translate ? I can translate to Portuguese, but depends on the amount of lines to translate.
— Rui —
@Rui Campos: It’s just because i don’t want do translate too much, so if there would be a kind of wiki everybody could translate as much as he want to, and if there is a better way to translate sth. or, in the worst case, it’s wrong then anybody could correct it.
The wiki could be closed at the end, so all of the subtitles could be checked a last time.
Don’t think there would be to much spoilers, just look at wikipedia it works well, too. Even if nobody had tought that such a system would be possible a few years ago, and now it’s the almost best encyclopedia.
PS: Could anybody post the subtitle texts be published in the www? Would be cool to get an idea of what to translate and how much it is. Additionally you could choose the part you’d like to translate.
THX
Rui, I can help you with the Portuguese translation :)
Matt, I think it’s a good idea to have a time transcribed subtitle to be the reference for all the translations, instead of each language having its own timed lines. Just a suggestion…
Hi, guys! =D
I´m available for the Brazilian Portuguese translation… =D
Although Rui is from our brother country Portugal, we have a pretty different language =D
By the way… guys, you´re the best!! You´re (Tom, all the developers, the Orange crew) making history, showing that good ideas, a lot of effort and talent are the keys for producing high-quality cg work.
Congrats,
Rui: The script is about 82 rather short lines long. Total word count of all the dialogue is 313 words.
buergi: We don’t want to distribute the script much before the release of the movie. Therefore, it will not be on the web openly, but given personally to the translators. We prefer one person (or one small group) to do the translation, so that the lines hopefully retain a bit of personality and poetry. A wiki for these sorts of things might be a fun thing after the release, for things to be tweaked and argued over :).
Giovani: Yes, we can probably provide a timed English subtitle file eventually, but we still don’t have the final timing of the movie set in stone right now. At least people can start thinking about translations now.
By the way everyone, to make things clear: If you are interested in translating, don’t just post comments here. Please follow the directions in the original post and send an email to Joeri.
Just sent the e-mail.
Also, it just occured to me that if enough people see this, you might not have enough room for listing all the subtitle languages on the back of the DVD ;)
So… You guys need anyone to translate to American English? (Kidding.)
The wiki would have been a good idea if the script was total open.
For this production the script will be open on release of the movie, and not sooner. This is to not complicate things. (We want translations, not “improvements” :) )
So for now people can volenteer. If you only want to do a part then state that in your email. If someone else in your language wants to do the whole thing then we can use your help in checking the text, instead of creating it. And,… I rather know what languages people dedicate themselfs to then have a wiki filled with half finished languages. :) So we can start making the menu entry for it.
Another thing I’ll be doing is coordinate contact with the director… The text might not be as clear as to what it means.
Thank you.
Hello everybody, and project orange’s members !
I want to know if you will put subtitles for ALL dvd’s BONUS too !??? :-))) i wrote yesterday (28 janv-message 34).
How many lines for dvd’s BONUS !??
For the movie there are about 80 lines.
When will you finish the first subtitles’s version ? (the date?)
If nobody wants to translate in french i can try (i would ask to Rui Campos if i could use his protuguese translation + english script)
I will write one email at Joeri : [email protected]
Thank you,
Giovani: Send mail to Joeri, so he can make decisions and coordinate things.
Joeri: Mail sent.
Matt: Thanks, I can manage that amount.
— Rui —
joeri: Good point. That might actually be another good reason for providing a low-res preview to the translators at some point. Some things may be easier to translate when you know the context of it. Even knowing how the voices sound may have some significance. As we all know, stuff like irony and sarcasm doesn’t always show very well on text. And subtle things like that could have an impact on how it should be translated to other languages.
severino:
Yes, good point.
The “Making of” will probably not have subtitles…
I propose Malefico to do the Spanish translation :-P
About the Spanish translation….
In my personal experience i believe the difference between the South/Central-American Spanish and the traditional Spanish can affect the perception of the movie according to the hearing…
Is something that must be consider… i guess… :)
I think that I can do Hebrew translation.
I agree with GreenDog… traditional Spanish and South/Central-American Spanish are diferent.
Just to keep things on a professional level, have you all considered requiring the translators to digitally sign a non-disclosure agreement. Simply releasing a script and a low-res version of the movie to those who ask (even if they are “screened” in some fashion) could possibly result in a small-scaled disaster for any surprises that may be in the movie. It would only take one misguided individual for such a thing to happen.
Anyone willing to traslate into Latin? I heard that it’s the language of the future…
Plus, kids taking latin deserve a chance to enjoy the language by watching a modern film with Latin subtitles.
Or, to preserve Secrecy- do it yourselves: http://babelfish.altavista.com/
I’d be willing, personally, to translate it into the mysterious language of “Reverse” if anyone cares…
Hold on Tight,
Ongnissim
Hi,
will there be some poll which subtitles to include? Because I believe there is a limit of 32 subtitle tracks in one VTS and it certainly looks like blender community can come up with more than that :-).
If there is a problem with a limited number of subtitles that can be available on the DVD, there is a freeware utility (DVD Subber) that allows you to
“display additional subtitles during DVD or Media files playback. The subtitles are overlayed on top of the video, no modification is done to the file and no reauthoring is necessary.”
I am in no way affiliated with the author of the software. I just saw ondrew’s post and wondered if there were ways to view additional translations of an existing DVD’s subtitling script. I’m sure there are other programs that can do the same thing. Anyway, this may be a solution to the many requested translations without having to create extra DVDs.
Hi,
French and Guadeloupean Créole are my mother tongue languages. I am willing to translate to these languages.
For those who wonder where is Guadeloupe, it is an archipelago in the Caribean.
Cheers.
Please make sure (for us English speakers who are deaf/hard-of-hearing) that as much content is subtitled as possible. I can’t tell you the frustration I have of watching a movie on DVD and then going to view the supplemental material only to find out that no closed-captioning or subtitling was included in them – makes the disc worth only half the money I paid for it. Not to mention all the commentary tracks to which I’ll never have access. Let’s set an example! Thanks – can’t wait to see this project!!
I can do the South/Central-American Spanish
Is there a need for Japanese translations. I can help.
I´m available for the Spanish (Argentina – Uruguay) translation!!
If these translations are going to be on the DVD, Is the free Version going to have them?
Ondrew: We are not limited to put only one VTS on the disc.
Joseph Jolton: The production time of the “making of” does not permit subtitling. I’m sure the bf will give you your money back if you are not happy with the product.
Myster_EE: As far as I know all files will be available online.
But the movie and the dvd are two different projects. Orange is making a movie partly financed by the dvd. The movie is going to be in english with no subtitles. The dvd will have subtitled versions and a making of. Nobody here is going to make sure the subtitles will play back on your computer media player, but both will be available and I’m sure that’s an easy thing to do.
This looks pretty good- exciting to see this happening. I’m keen to do an Afrikaans translation, also put translate.org.za in touch to volunteer for more African languages.
One question- do you think the characters will have different names in different languages?
Peter: That’s a nice question.
We will provide with a character discription. But it’s best if they keep there names.
I can translate to Dutch.. :)
Hello everybody,
Joeri: I see you already have many people translating to portuguese so I don’t will send you a mail, but I’m OK to help translating or in checking the result; this is particulary true if you choose Rui_Campos for the portugueses translation since we have been in contact from the beginning of the ‘Orange Project’.
Bella Italia will read subtitles too.
Francais pour moi! I can translate/double check the translation from english to french!
– Jan
I think exporting the XML to a WIKI is a good idea, this way many people (talking non-techs here) can make changes to the translation. This way you won’t have an individual style I know, but it will be correct.
If all the dialogues are in the WIKI as in:
-original sentence-
-translated sentence-
We can have translators at least take a look at it.
P
And i can do the Bulgarian translation
The current plan is to assign one person to do the translation per language and have the rest (who wants to) check it. Ofcourse it will be hard to apoint/select somebody from multiple submissions. Not always the first submission is the best, and if we choose someone else then you, that does not mean you would not be a good candidate to do it, it’s just that someone else wrote a more suitable email.
Also I don’t want to turn it into a translation party :) so I’m handing out as less scripts as possible (1 per language). The translators should keep the script a secret, so I don’t see how they can work in a team…
The submissions are going very fast so we will pick suitable persons soon.
I could participate in translating the script to german. At least parts of it.
Hmmm, need any help translating the script in to the universal language, music?
maybee the best way could bo to only give one script per language with no checkers for now; then, 3 or 4 days before the online release of the short-movie, you can post the translations so anyone who want to help in the checking could help.
I don’t really now your planning and when you have to deliver the finales subtitles to DVD production, but I supose the online release will be first, so you should have time to deliver the public-checked subs
I agree Davide, because I would love to support this great project, but I don’t want to be responsible for the whole translation (eng2ger) and i think (or at least i hope i’m not the only one ^^) there are many others who were discourage by this responsibility, but would nevertheless like to support the project.
If you do such a project again, it would be very cool if the community would be more included in the project, even if it’s just modeling background objects or something like that.
My friend is excelent at translating english to japanese.
Grafixsuz, if we work together or at least proof read each other’s work, we could get a no-error translation.
When should one except an answer on wether or not one is accepted as a translator?
I can help translating to Russain
joeri: DVD’s use a format for video that includes the Subtitles IN the Video file.
As far as I know, this DVD Format is unique in this aspect.
Soo, Unless we’re going to be downloading the DVD files, (.VOB’s, which would be incredibly in-effecient bandwidth-wise) I’m thinking that you’re going to need to have a separate downloadable version for every language…
Please correct me if I am wrong on any information, but that is what I believe…
Hi!
I’d like to volunteer to do the Swedish translation. I have unfortunately not contributed fansubs before, but I hope my command of English should be good enough.
I think that due to the didactic nature this DVD could have, even the “making of” should have subtitles. What do you think?
I’d like to translate the script into Ukrainian and Russian languages.
The e-mail was already sent to Joeri.
Richard Olsson:
I think mails will go out this weekend. I need to speak to the producer to appoint chief-translators.
Myster_EE:
I think you are wrong.
The dvd is the *Extended* version of the movie…
Nobody said you could download the movie in mpeg format with the subtitles rendered in that mpeg. But,… All language files will be available for download, and I’m sure there are media players that can superimpose the subtitle file over the video. (If not then it’s about time somebody wrote one).
Epsilorn:
I think that subtitling the making of is a nice idea and I have to discuss this with the producer. But, I don’t think there is money to do this. The editing of the making-of will start after the premiere of the movie,… so the longer this takes, the longer the dvd buyers need to wait to see the movie. This makes me think that it’s not a good idea to let it be done by the community. On the other hand we could go for English only and have a group go at it… As I said; it’s under discussion.
O,… I’m not sure what the didactic value of the making-of will be,… It’s not going to be a marketing making-of like we see to much, but it will be hard to explain 8men * 6months of work in a 30min featurette :)
Davide:
That’s the plan as I see it now.
1 chief who gets the script, a discription of the characters, and a (short)list of others that could help him if he wants.
I think it could/should be translated in 2 weeks time (it’s really not much more then an evening of work) and then I collect all the translated versions. Then I’ll call on the (confirmed) backup to check.
Then when final movie timing is locked the chief gets the checked version, an english timed file and the animatic/audio to sync upon. This I suspect is about the same amount of work. And would like to see that done within 2 weeks.
The chief gets credits in the dvd credits (not in the movie).
How does that sound as a plan?
I will gladly do the Hungarian translation of the subs/script/whatever.
B]
(Sorry for the double post)
Rather than “without having seen” the original text, I meant “without consulting” the original text. Otherwise, you’d have to get a different proofreader for each iteration (ick).
Joeri: Okay, so you can put subtitles in separate files…That’s good.
I wasn’t sure that anything outside of the DVD standard could do that. (Lack of need, really).
Well, this is good news! What standard are the downloadable version going to be encoded in?
Hi there! Congratulations for the progress and for the quality you are geting!
Hey, Rui Campos, I live in Brazil and I can can translate to Brazilian Portuguese after you finish the portuguese one. (if you need some help just contact me), thanks! obrigado!
ENGLISH => HINDI
Hey there, my name’s Afan, and I can do a translation from English to Hindi, since I speak the language fluently.
I hope i’ll get the russian or german part!!!
or both!!! ;)
ENGLISH => PIG LATIN…
Iway illway anslatay ethay olehay ilmfay!!!!
just kidding..
Lovin it.. loving it…
What format is the downloadable version going to be? Containers like Matroska can easily handle multiple audio / video / subtitle streams. As for external subtitles, I know mplayer and vlc at least can play autio/video from one file and subtitles from another, so you could release the plain audio / video file straight away and extra translations will come later.
knowsnuttin : Nice scheme but the risk is you might be too much focused on the words when translation is about the message. It seems to me that it is too automatical a system, because you separate too radically text and context, the latter being as important as the text. Do not forget that the images and grammatical structures used in cultures and languages that differ (whatever the degree of difference) differ too. Just a little example : an expression to say that when you experience something nasty you don’t want to do it again; in German you litterally say that a burnt child is afraid of fire when, in French, you say that a cat boiled with hot water will be afraid even of cold water…
Oops. Sorry for taking so much room… :-)
I’m getting an overwelming amount of mails, thank you very much.
I’ll be sending all mailers a reply this weekend and I’d like to close the following languages for submission :
Afrikaans
Bulgarian
Chinese Mandarin
Estonian
French
German
Hungarian
Italian
Japanese
Polish
Portoguese
Portoguese(Brazil)
Spanish
Spanish(Americas)
Swedish
The rest can keep them coming, This is not the complete list of languages I’ve received, it’s just the list of languages I’m going to close the call for submission for now. The rest is still under evaluation. I’ll publish a list of all languages later.
Thank you again for your overwelming response.
@ Deathguppie :
You should first buy a spellchecker for pig latin (-;.
The right translation is:
“Iway illway ansla_r_tay ethay ole_w_hay ilmfay!!!!”
You forgot the “r” and the “w”- ts ts ts…
Your version translates to some unspeakable insultings about blender and orange and the like…
(-;
Hi to everybody! This is a fantastic project so I’d like to do all my best translating this film to spanish, catalan and german. Of course there are a lot of people who’d like to do it but I’d like to try it for at least a part of it. Thank you all.
Visca Catalunya!
I sincerely hope the “translate – translate back” method to verify translations is *NOT* used.
Due to technical limitations in subtitle translations and the way translating works in general this is doomed to fail as a proofing mechanism.
Some pointers for those who are going to do subtitles and have never done that before (and also haven’t had proper training in translation for that matter):
* Font size
Don’t ever use small fonts because you’re running out of space. This is one of the technical limitations of subtitling you’ll have to cope with. A word-for-word translation is often impossible, esp. in this case, so be resourceful, try to think of ways to fit it all on screen by paraprasing the original text. But keep focus on the essence of the message at all times.
* Timing
On average nine words can be shown in one subtitle. 5 seconds is an absolute minimum for a subtitle to be visible to allow the viewer to read the subtitles.
And for you all who translate, keep in mind that the endresult must be fluent and natural. A word-to-word translation is absolutely *NOT* what is wanted. What you want is to have an immersive experience for the viewer. Be resourceful within the confines of the TV screen – 9 words per subtitle, large font, 5 seconds per line minimum.
BTW, this means that translators should see the entire short movie to be able to see that their translations are correct for the scenes and that the timing is correct too.
If at all possible, go to a local university and see if they have a translation departement. I imagine students being helpful :)
Good luck to you all and thanks for your efforts! :)
/Nathan
ps. yes, I studied translation theories and I am a linguist, my current girlfriend is writing her master thesis on subtitling.
Hey GuiFF!!
I have proposed to make the catalan subtitles too!! XD
A veure si com a mínim es tradueix al català. Estaria molt, però que molt bé.
Bye!!
I Visca Catalunya! ;)
Nathan: Thanks, your knowledge is surely valuable and welcome.
— Rui —
Hey,
I’m also for the catalan translation. Catalonia is a very active country in Open Source, associationism (is in english like this? XD) and democratization of digital resources, so catalan cannot remain away from Elephants Dream!
Congrats to Orange. Sorry for the theft :(
Glaurung
Thank you Nathan.
I’ll give a full discription of what I expect from the translators to the translators.
For instance; I’m sure that the Thai subtitle is different from the Swedish one. So a wordcount is not sufficient, it needs to be a character count. And we also have a line count. In Dutch a 3 line translation is seen as ugly, but for English it is often used. Some languages use center subtitling and other left-aligned.
Again I’ll brief all the subtitlers myself and personaly…
And assist any non professional (although we’ve got many professionals, even people who’ve translated/subtitled LOTR. ) that might need help.
The first task is to translate the script, so everbody that has the dvd can read what the animators used to create their visual to.
Thank you.
I could still use some more help on asian and (north)african languages.
I would like to do a translation in Afrikaans and represent South Africa!!!!!!!!!!
Hi joeri,
I’ve already emailed you a few days ago and wonder now if you’ve got my message since I’m a north african ;).
Well north africain simply means arabic. Do you mean some dialect rather than standard langauage ?
Proofreaded version :D
Hi joeri,
I’ve already emailed you a few days ago and wonder now if you’ve got my message since I’m a north african ;).
Well, north african simply means arabic.
Do you mean some dialect rather than the standard language ?
my english is few, but i cant traduction to latin america Spanish (castellano), from the traduction of malefico in spanish.
my english is few, but i CAN traduction to latin america Spanish (castellano), from the traduction of malefico in spanish.
Reda: Yes, thank you, you are on my list.
@joeri: I’ve also emailed you about slovenian translation but I got no replay.
Have you recieved my email?
Nice day
T
Before the end of this week everybody will get an email.
And I’ll post more news here this weekend.
I submitted a mail for a Danish translation, as I know there are quite a few Danish Blender users around. Plus, if you’ve got Swedish, please consider Danish!
(I’m not exactly proud of my nationality given the current politics situation, but anyway…)
I can translate into Norwegian.
I call dibbs on english ===> Korean!!!
HA HA
This is a call for my catalan colleagues. First of all, excuses cos i can’t writte properly. My keyword is not running as it used in my Mac.
Ara toca parlar amb vosaltres, Glaurung i Troler. Podem enraonar per mail, [email protected], i discutir, si ens deixen fer la traduccio, com es fa, si es reparteix, si ho fa un i es passa per corregir o el que sigui. A mi encara no m’han enviat cap mail o sigui que segurament alg’u de vosaltres ja el te. La meva opinio es, doncs, que compartim aquesta traduccio.
Hi GuiFF!
Jo tampoc he rebut encara cap correu. Bé, t’escric al teu correu electrònic.
Fins ara!
I’ve found time to send all the people I want as a translator an email. So didn’t you get an email? Well, then the translator did not reply to me yet if he/she really wants todo it.
There are now 38 languages in the making. What I personaly find very cool. I’m looking into forum software to let the help of the proof readers be possible.
So everybody who didn’t get your email won’t translate.
Can you list all languages which the movie will be translated to?
Nice day
T
Hi, I can help translating it into spanish (Central/South America), i have time and no problems to help. Just email me and you will have my answer soon.
I get known about the project because i was looking like a “free-movie-project” where all have an oportunity to participate, and i would be happy helping at least in this.
Have a nice day!
NAcho
tomy:
As far as I know I wrote *everybody* an email back.
i can give the trnslation in hindi language for the indian subcontinent distribution.
i can give the translation in hindi language for the indian subcontinent distribution.
I didn´t get any answer :( . see you
Many DVD’s (some with full 4 languages (EN,FR,ES,GL) audio and subtitles) in our portfolio (look at the mail domain : http://www.domain).
We would like to traduce subtitles to Galician (GL).
Also , we could translate it to Spanish(Spain) too, but we saw many and sufficient volunteers for that.
Rubén:
visit http://orange.excellentWhale.com for details.
Hi, if there is nobody else, i can do the italian translation.
I can do the translation into Romanian. Please send the file.
I would like to translate the movie to Serbian. It would be a great thing for promoting Blender and Open Source in my country. I’m looking forward to that.
Hi,
Keep up the the good work.
Any help in english to hindi translation ?
Regards.
Sunil
I am willing to do Hindi translations. If it is not too late for it.
regards
Ankur
I have some time for the Brazilian Porugues translation if its needed…
[]’s to all
Hi there,
I am a Galician translator and I am also very interested in free software initiatives. I will be very pleased to translate the film into my mother tongue if it is possible.
Regards,
María
I found out about the project a bit late, but if you need translation to Indonesian for elephants dream or any future movie. I would be happy to do it.
cheers,
Alia
Hi, if you need help with Spanish i can help, by the way how can i get subtitles in spanish for the movie? i want to show it at my school but not everyone knows english