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Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles) — Page 66

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Could you send me a PM with the latest version of Project Threepio? Thanks!

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Hello Catbus thanks a lot for this amazing work can you please PM me the DL to the latest release ?

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it’s a very nice project. Can you send me the download link ?

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Hey CatBus, have you heard about Bronan’s sub2bd GUI? Not sure if it will be any different for any of your subtitles, but it works great for converting .ass files to .sup, and even eliminates the flashing/disappearing subtitles whenever there are overlapping timings, unlike EasySup!

https://forum.fanres.com/thread-2075.html

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I don’t use EasySup anymore, and I’m pretty happy with the replacement scripts I’ve got now. Especially because they are fully scriptable/unattended for large file batches. There’s a lot of custom P3PO-specific stuff in there that would be pretty much impossible to replicate without some similarly purpose-made software.

But in other news, I’m in the process of considering switching Japanese translations, and IIRC I think you have some sort of experience with Japanese? Basically the versions we have now are the original theatrical subtitles (1977, 1980, 1983), which were a little rushed and maybe not the most accurate translations. But we successfully got them in text format, so we ran with it. Later, a new dub and subtitles were made in 93 (before the SE’s) which I believe are more accurate to the spoken English. I now have a text copy of the SE subtitles, which are mostly the same as the 93 ones, and with a little work I think I can do this.

I found a website where someone is comparing the subs (the original ones we have) to the dubs (which more-or-less match the later 93 subs), and it seems a significant improvement in a few places.

http://nihonshock.com/2009/12/star-wars-quotes-in-japanese/

If you know some Japanese, would you agree this seems like a good change?

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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Yeah, the old subtitles are probably much less accurate, the dubs too. I remembered how off some of them were when watching that anime style trailer recently. As bad as English subtitles can be for anime, I dunno what translators were thinking for some Japanese subtitles. It’s like sometimes they get bored and decide to just rewrite lines for the heck of it, assuming they understood the original dialogue in the first place.

For posterity, I think that the theatrical subtitles should be preserved and always kept as an option, but if you want to also make the newer ones available, those would probably be appreciated as well.

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I suppose I should say that the first home video subtitles were not necessarily the same as the theatrical subs. i.e. if you look at the Italian theatrical subs for Greedo/Jabba dialogue, it doesn’t match any home video release (this is apparently a good thing, because as I understand it, the theatrical translation was pretty crap). Nevertheless, Project Threepio does have theatrical reconstructions for those crap Italian 35mm subs, for those who want to see them.

So the first Japanese home video subs may just be exclusively home video subs, I just don’t know. We don’t have any 35mm reels to confirm. But if we did, I’d preserve at least the Greedo/Jabba lines, matching font and placement as well as translation.

But for translations of the whole film, I maintain only one translation, the one that most closely matches the English dialogue. I will try to make very certain that’s the case for Japanese, though, before switching. If you or anyone else want to help confirm this, let me know.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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Yeah, if you use the subtitle set that matches the more accurate ones on that website then you should be fine if accuracy is your main concern. But not sure why you’d want to purposely give people less options, as subtitles don’t take up that much data, right? Even if some translations are less accurate, some people might have a lot of nostalgia for them. But it’s your project.

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I think the goal of this project is less about preserving existing subtitles and more to provide accurately translated subtitles in as many languages as possible so the original films can be enjoyed as closely to their original intention as possible by (nearly) anyone around the world.

Any “preservation of the original translation” type subtitles are just a bonus to accurately translated ones.

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Pretty much what Ash said. Certainly I recognize there’s some artistic and creative value in any translation, but ultimately what we’re preserving is the films, not the translations. If one translation is clearly superior to another, then I use the superior one. If the preferred translation contains flaws, I feel no need to preserve those flaws, and will edit an official Lucasfilm-blessed translation without any regrets. Yes, there is absolutely some historical value lost–a goofy old translation with misspelled words and occasional bad translations can have some novelty and nostalgic appeal. But that’s not for this project.

There’s even the issue of the duelling roles of subtitles–is it to translate the English dialogue, or to transcribe the dubbed dialogue in another language? I always go with the former wherever the dub does not provide the most accurate translation (the translation choices for dubs can be governed by other factors such as matching lip movements, so they can sometimes be off).

Once we get to the point where it’s actually not clear one translation is better than the other, and it’s more of a matter of opinion or taste (and I’m still open to the possibility we’re already there with Japanese), then I’m more resistant to the change. There’s absolutely value in consistency between films (so if you change one translation, you should change all three to match), and in not introducing a new translation when the familiar one was just as good. Also, to be clear, the Japanese subtitles we have right now are based on the original home video dubs, but they’re already not a perfect match. Those Japanese subs contained Furigana, which I couldn’t find a way to reliably reproduce, so I asked one of our members to go through and re-translate those words as needed, or just remove the Furigana if it wasn’t needed. The newer translations don’t use Furigana at all, so they’d be more faithfully converted.

As for maintaining multiple versions, long ago I made some pretty hard-and-fast limits on what this project would support, to preserve my own sanity as well as those who try to sort through the project themselves. For example, I do not provide subtitle variations for the 1981, 1985, or 1993 variations of the films–just the theatrical versions. Multiple translations per language is another.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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That’s certainly your prerogative, but if it were me I’d at least put think the original theatrical subtitles (or what’s assumed to be them) in an alternative subtitles folder or something for those that want them, and then just not manage this folder as thoroughly as the main subtitles. Seems a waste to just delete them from the project completely.

Edit: oh, and furigana can be done in AegiSub by making a new line, changing the font size, then dragging the line into place in the video preview pane.

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Buster D said:

Edit: oh, and furigana can be done in AegiSub by making a new line, changing the font size, then dragging the line into place in the video preview pane.

When I looked at this problem earlier, I considered something very much like that (but using SRT and scripting because I like to keep content and style separate, similar to HTML and CSS). I was never satisfied with the appearance of the Furigana unless I was able to customize the tracking (inter-character spacing) and positioning, so that they would better align with the words they applied to, and that was really hard (not impossible, I’m sure) to automate. So when I found out I didn’t need to bother with Furigana, I happily dropped all attempts to make it happen. Similar to my short, doomed experiment with vertical Japanese subtitles.

There’s a lot of things I try out for this project that never see the light of day. But the only one I feel regret about not doing is the Malayalam subtitles. Most of the time it’s more like: I came, I saw, I decided that wasn’t a very good idea after all. But Malayalam… I’m probably going to revisit that and fail another four or five times before I give up.

But back to the original topic. I do maintain theatrical subtitles for the burnt-in Jabba and Greedo subs, but only if I know those were on the original 35mm prints and I know their font/size/placement (what’s the point of just text?). For these Japanese subtitles, I don’t know any of that.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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I sent you a PM!
If its possible to get the link for the DL

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Hey Catbus, could you please send me a link to the latest version ? Thanks a lot for everything 😃 !

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Hi CatBus, can you sent me a download link with the latest version of the subtitles?
Thank you so much for the effort!!!