Subtitling or captioning
From OLPC
This page is for Subtitling or captioning; adding single-language or bi-lingual sub-titles to videos.
At the moment, this is just my idea of how I see it working. Feel free to add your own ideas. --Ricardo 03:12, 24 August 2007 (EDT)
[edit] The terms 'Sub-titles' and 'Captions'
The public tends to use the term 'Sub-titles' for the text version of the on-screen dialog. In the United States, television subtitling for the deaf and hard-of-hearing is usually called 'closed captioning'. In the video/movie/TV industries, they use the term 'Captions'. The process of adding them is called 'Captioning'.
[edit] Overview of sub-titles or captions
See Wikipedia: Captioning and Wikipedia: Closed captioning.
[edit] Uses for sub-titles or captions
- Single language (original language) - For the hard of hearing.
- Single language (original language) - To help people who speak English as a second language.
- Single language (original language) - For interviews with people with strong accents.
- Single language (different language) - For people who don't speak the original language (instead of dubbing the speech).
- Dual-language - For people learning a second language, such as English, French, etc.
[edit] Adding sub-titles or captions
This is done by a language expert on a computer using specialized captioning software. See Wikipedia: Captioning
[edit] Open-source software
All the software used to add captions must be open-source. Some software applications currently available are:
If you know of any others, please add them.
[edit] When to add sub-titles
Sub-titles can be added at the time the video is made or later. The person doing the sub-titles needs all the help and information they can get. For OLPC, it would be good to have a website where scripts are stored, for those videos that are scripted. It could also store pre-production notes for both scripted and non-scripted videos.
[edit] Translating the sub-titles into another language
It would be useful to find/write some software to extract the original-language sub-titles from a video (or seperate file), together with the time-code giving the time-position and frame-number in the video where each sentence occurs. The software could also create an auto-translated version of each sentence, which can then be added to the video pictures and checked and corrected manually.
[edit] Notes to aid translators
The translator may not be fluent in the original-language of the video, or it may use a lot of colloqialisms, slang and cultural references that they are not familiar with. For this reason, there should be a guide-book for video producers, asking them to write some notes to aid translators and overseas viewers and add them to the script/notes website. The viewers may also wish to read any cultural notes. If a producer didn't write notes at the time the video was produced, then someone from the same country and language could write some later. It may be useful to have a section of the website to request someone to do it.
[edit] Schools without internet-access
These schools won't have access to the script/notes website. When videos are distributed, the sub-titles or captions should ideally be embedded in the video-file, so they don't get seperated. If not, then a seperate captions-file should be included. Any notes for viewers and translators should also be included. The whole lot could be in a self-extracting ZIP file to keep them together.
[edit] Video-list with sub-title status
The script/notes website should have a list/database of all videos produced and their sub-title/caption status (any sub-titles at all Yes/No, languages, embedded or seperate, list of caption files, note files, etc).
The same information would be sent out to schools without internet-access on every CD/DVD-ROM/Video DVD containing videos or seperately, perhaps once a month.
