Common Craft Blog
Are You Bilingual? Subtitle Translators Needed
By leelefever on April 29, 2007 - 9:42pm
As we had hoped, the RSS in Plain English video has been a learning experience. One important lesson has been a better recognition of the needs of non-English speakers and the hearing impaired when it comes to video.
We want the video to be useful for everyone. Thankfully, (sorry I can't remember who) Darran pointed me to the Rocketboom episode where they reveal how they are using a service called DotSub to add user-generated subtitles in multiple languages to their videos. How cool.
So, I had to give it a try. I've loaded the RSS Video to DotSub and transcribed each line. Now that it is transcribed, any friendly bilingual person with the time (and DotSub membership) can create subtitles in their native language and share the video on their web site.
Updated: Here is the subtitled from DotSub, you can click the up/down arrow buttons in the footer of the player to change languages.
If you would like to translate subtitles for the RSS Video, sign up at DotSub and then go here.
Check out the subtitled version of the video with English subtitles.
The transcription process is slick and I'll use it again, but DotSub has some issues. The embedded player is too big and the interface is a bit confusing - "My Films" doesn't include films you've uploaded by default.
Updated: It's been great to see DotSub react to feedback. The first player I tried was too big for my blog. Since then, I have been in contact with Michael Smolen, the founder of DotSub and he said that others reported the same problem and today they rolled out an option for a smaller player.
Can't remember me?!
I'm going for a cry now! :*-( I can't remember me either :-P
Of Course!
I kept looking for the comment in the original video entry and didn't see it there, so I thought it was in one of the other sites where comments happen (Digg, YouTube, etc.). I've been a bit overloaded on info lately. :) Thank you Darran! I hope I never make you cry again!
No Worries :-)
Congrats! I see that your video is one of the most viewed films on the dotSUB website!! http://dotsub.com/home/mostviewed/ :-)
Translation/localization
I own a translations company if your interested in translating/localizing any rss feeds blogs etc..... feel free to email me at omar @ globallytranslted dot com
hello
dear mr omar, i saw your comment, and i am really interested to work with you since i am a translator. if you care, please contact me on hoffnung_1984@yahoo.com. thank you so much
Arabic translation done!
I loved the episode so much I had to do this ! However, there are Right-To-Left issues with dotSub, especially when embedding English terms such as The Craft Show or Techronati. Well anyways, I did my best. I'll be distributing this out to my friends. Thanks for a useful show!
your comment about right to left issues with dotSUB in Arabic
AL The dotSUB transcript properly renderes RTL languages on our imput form, but when re-rendered as the subtitle in flash, as you see, flash does not respect RTL grammar and punctuation. We have been in touch with Adobe about this, but they said they have thousands of minor fixes to deal with and this is not at the top of their list. That to us is very interesting - and we would love to have an important person write a NY Times Op Ed piece about that. Feel free to contact me directly with any questions. Michael L. Smolens Founder & CEO dotSUB llc - Any Film Any Language 360 East 72nd St. #C3104 New York, NY 10021 USA michael@dotsub.com - email 1-917-742-0158 - tel 1-646-403-9944 - fax mlsmolens - Skype http://dotsub.com - website
Oh I see. Well thanks for
Oh I see. Well thanks for clearing that up. I'm actually aware of this deficiency in flash since long time ago. I just thought with its popularity and all they would have fixed this by now. It'd be interesting to see how things shape up once Microsoft's Silverlight gains mainstream adoption. We hope little bugs like that do actually make it to the "top of their list".
Portuguese (Brazil) Translation!
Hi, This video is very cool and instructive, and i did my best for translation. I hope you forgive my mistakes. Congratulations!
Yay! Translations
Pedro and AL, Thanks so much for taking the time for the translations! I'm really excited to see this happen and I hope others will jump in. Cheers!
Norwegian translation
Thanks for a brilliant and simple explanation! I've added a Norwegian translation, which is also posted to our company blog: http://www.iallenkelhet.no/rss-forklart-enkelt
Simple RSS Aggregators
Thanks for the video guys, I found it in a link from Dave Terrar and have linked it to my blog which is largely for teachers... thank you.
Subtitles are much appreciated!
Thanks for the English subtitles for the Deaf. I blogged about it: http://jarednevans.typepad.com/blog/2007/05/echoing_noesis_.html
Danish translation is done
This was fun. Maybe I can do some more of this later. Thanks for a great explanation.
largely for teachers...
largely for teachers... thank you. Andy from msn indir