Most efficient way to translate audio to subtitles
January 23, 2015 7:23 AM Subscribe
I've volunteered to translate a few talks, from English to Spanish, so the translation can be included in video as subtitles. I was just given the audio to work with. I've only ever done text-to-text translation before, so I have no idea how to start on working with audio-to-subtitles. Please help.
I was expecting to be given the videos to work with, but I only got the audios, so that's an extra difficulty. I was present at the actual talks (a series of conferences about education and child development), so that helps.
I don't know if it's better to transcribe the audio first, then translate the text, or if I should just listen bits by bits and translate as I go.
(I have no idea how they're going to match the subtitles to the relevant parts of the video but that's someone else's job to worry about.
Any ideas and practical tips are welcome.
I was expecting to be given the videos to work with, but I only got the audios, so that's an extra difficulty. I was present at the actual talks (a series of conferences about education and child development), so that helps.
I don't know if it's better to transcribe the audio first, then translate the text, or if I should just listen bits by bits and translate as I go.
(I have no idea how they're going to match the subtitles to the relevant parts of the video but that's someone else's job to worry about.
Any ideas and practical tips are welcome.
You'll need time codes for the subtitles, for one thing. You also need to work out how many entries/letters you have and how you are going to space them out at which rate. Try googling "subtitling conventions" or "subtitle guidelines". Watch out for guidelines for closed captioning which is slightly different to subtitling.
I wouldn't waste time transcribing first.
posted by kariebookish at 7:55 AM on January 23, 2015
I wouldn't waste time transcribing first.
posted by kariebookish at 7:55 AM on January 23, 2015
I have done subtitling work with a transcription, and that was hard enough.
I would start by creating a table of time codes and Spanish transcriptions. You might want to get a pedal switch that you can program to control your audio playback (when I did subtitling, I used custom keyboard commands, which are OK, but a pedal would have been better). I'd only start the translation after.
posted by adamrice at 2:15 PM on January 23, 2015
I would start by creating a table of time codes and Spanish transcriptions. You might want to get a pedal switch that you can program to control your audio playback (when I did subtitling, I used custom keyboard commands, which are OK, but a pedal would have been better). I'd only start the translation after.
posted by adamrice at 2:15 PM on January 23, 2015
amara.org has tools you can try for free, as well as other folks in your situation.
posted by Jesse the K at 4:11 PM on January 23, 2015
posted by Jesse the K at 4:11 PM on January 23, 2015
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by empath at 7:26 AM on January 23, 2015