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Help Wanted: Looking for people who speak German, French, Spanish, or Brazilian Portuguese

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UPDATE: I now need help only for Portuguese.  German, French and Spanish are taken care of.

I am currently working on a GOUT-timed OT subtitle package for all of the above languages, and right now I have SRT (text+timing) files for all of the above languages for all three films, using misc Internet sources (which almost certainly have some problems).

I’m looking for people to read, correct, and mail back these text files. You don’t need anything more complicated than Notepad, although an SRT editor may be handy because it would allow you to play back the corresponding English audio. You don’t need to worry about the timing; only the text needs verification. There are some limitations regarding length of text that may make some lines difficult.

If you’re interested, PM me with your language(s) and e-mail address. I’m only really interested in working with one person per language. Also, I only plan to give credit in my project post–the subtitles themselves will be clean of credits. So, lots of work, not much glory, but not much technical skill required either.

I am hoping to release these subtitles as a single collection sometime soon. Thanks in advance.  Below are instructions for anyone helping with this project.  The SRT files themselves will be mailed to individuals.

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GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS

I like to use Gaupol to edit my subtitles; you’re welcome to use different software if you prefer.  Open the subtitles in your language, then “open translation” to open the English subtitles (or vice-versa) so you can see them side-by-side.

The subtitle timing is already good, so don’t make any changes there.  The text is where work needs to be done.  There may be bad translations, typos, bad grammar, missing subtitles, all sorts of problems.  I’m also hoping to improve some subtle things, like consistency between movies (e.g. if a certain word is translated two different ways in two different movies, make them more consistent).  I may have chosen bad places to break lines—feel free to fix that as long as it doesn’t impact timing.  Please translate things that don’t necessarily even need translating (i.e. “No” in the Spanish subtitles)—this text can still help the hearing impaired.  These subtitles are designed to accompany the English audio and video, so these subtitles also include the complete crawl text and alien language subtitles.

The limitations are: no more than two lines of text per subtitle, keep all lines shorter than 34 in length (Gaupol tells you the length), and try to keep consistent with the existing style.  For example, subtitles for partially intelligible alien languages (ROTJ) use a particular format I’d like to keep consistent.

Once you’re happy with what you have, mail them back to me.  I’m trying to time this release with Harmy’s and DarkJedi’s next releases, but I may not succeed there.

The French translation seems good but minimalist.  It could probably use more detailed translations in a number of places.  Many of the translations are missing character names (i.e. “Luke, help me” is trimmed to “Help me”).  To better match timing, and for the hearing impaired, I would like character names included.

The German translation seems very good to me, and may not need much work.

The Spanish and Portuguese translations are very uneven, and I suspect they need a lot of work, particularly in ROTJ.

There are a couple of quirks in Gaupol: to enter a linebreak into a subtitle, type Ctrl+Enter.  And be sure to hit Enter at the end, or changes are reverted.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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Hi, my name is darth_ender, and I like walks on the beach, especially when the sun is setting.  I need someone sensitive, but not afraid to be strong when necessary.  I'm looking for a committed person, so if you're looking for one person who speaks all those languages or lots of different people, it could make a difference in how willing I am to go to lunch with you.

Oh, wait, I thought this was the romance section of the online classifieds.  I speak Spanish pretty well, but you're probably looking for someone more fluent than I.

Sorry, I  just couldn't pass up such an easy joke. :)

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God, my post does read like a personal!  I am so embarrassed.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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I speak French.... Would like to help out.

What’s the internal temperature of a TaunTaun? Luke warm.

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OK, PM me your real e-mail and I'll send you the French subtitle files I have, along with some instructions that will either help or confuse you ;)  Please bear with me, you're the first volunteer.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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If you'd like to do other languages, websites like moviesubtitles.org have many versions.  My guess is this site and the ones like it pull down torrent and usenet feeds and pull out the .srt and other subtitle files and then add them to the library.  So there are problems periodically.  Once a good set is found, the problem will be adjusting the timing, but as the subs are mostly sourced from retail, they are accurate, when a good set is found. 

Even if we don't know the language, having multiple .srts with similar timing structures will let you know where to time them out, and can use google translate to get an approximation of what's being said to know where to place the sub.

What program are you using to do the subs?  I had considered something similar but on the Mac, DVDStudioPro doesn't allow you to move multiple subs at once, major problem.  Also finding a program which allows you to import different flavors/formats of subtitle files is also important.

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Don't you want also Slovak / Czech language ? :-)

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Mavimao and TheHutt, please PM me with your real e-mail.

More details: yes, I actually already have complete subtitles (from some of the places listed above, even) for all of these languages, and I've got them timed and formatted very nicely for the GOUT and specifically to match Harmy and DarkJedi's projects (i.e. alien subtitle timing).  I do not know if these subtitles are any good, however, and that's what this request is all about.  For example, I used Google translate to fill in some gaps, and some of the typos I fixed were clear signs of OCR, and that makes me very nervous.  In other words, I'd like to take what may be decent, intelligible subtitles and convert them into excellent, error-free subtitles.

pittrek, more languages are always welcome.  Your job would be harder because you would not be starting out with a complete subtitle set, but you could certainly help.  PM me if you're interested.

none, I used Gaupol+VLC to do the timing and text editing.  I have processes for getting them onto DVD and AVCHD/Blu Ray, but they're not fully documented yet, and they use some Windows-only software.  I plan to release complete workflow documents as part of this project so that anyone can make their own using my procedures.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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Well, the German was obviously ripped from the GOUT R2 DVD, so it should be quite optimal. Waiting for the subs!

PS: with Subtitle Workshop you can easily filter out all the "Hard of Hearing" subs (I do hate it when the only English subtitle option is the Hard of Hearing one - there should be two).

Also, for German subs, there should be two versions. One for when using Harmy's Edition (including Textcrawl and alien dialogues) and one for the upcoming Laserschwert German edition (excluding textcrawl and alien dialogs, as they already in the picture).

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Interesting comments, I'd like to hear a little more.  Here's why:

I actually started working on this project because I wanted to make a good hearing impaired option for GOUT projects.  In other words, I've been working in the reverse direction from where you seem to want to go, taking English language-only subs and adding audio cues.  That said, I didn't go all the way and ended up with a hybrid--I didn't compromise on the dialog, and I rarely identified the speaker (except when it was both very non-obvious and relevant).  Those are the two things I thought could annoy people about hearing impaired subs.  I personally don't mind the occasional [creature roars] showing up in the subtitles, but I wonder what you think.  Anyway, you should have a copy of the unfinished hearing-impaired subs, and you can let me know if a pure dialogue-only sub is warranted.

The other thing is that I'm already planning two English subs (same text, different placement), one standard and one CIH, so doubling the English subs would actually mean four sets.

I am trying to avoid any further scope creep (after all, my original scope included one language and look where I am now), so I will probably not create subs specifically for additional projects like Laserschwert's.  But I will make it easy for people to do this on their own, and I even may provide files outside the main project if people want them.  One big reason is the CIH thing--I think the CIH subtitles in my project are pretty neat, and I suspect if Laserschwert uses my subs, he may want to make CIH German subs, which take a little more work.  Images attached, I think ;)

EDIT--I think I should be able to provide SRT files to accomodate everyone.  I may not provide all the graphical overlays everyone wants, but I'll include instructions on how to create them, so I hope that works.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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Just a bump.  I'm still looking for French, Spanish, and Portuguese, and at this point I'm dropping my requirement for fluency and am just looking for someone with general understanding of basic grammar/vocabulary/spelling and a good dictionary (which is still more than I have on my own).

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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The quasi Frenchie here has sent you a PM. Sorry for the wait. I'm a teacher and between classes, prep work, real life... Kinda hard to juggle it all sometimes.

What’s the internal temperature of a TaunTaun? Luke warm.

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Thanks mavimao, that leaves us with Spanish and Portuguese.  non, I'll check that link and see if I can find a way to get some attention.  Feel free to canvas your friends and family too ;)

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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I could help with Spanish, though lately I'm a bit short on time. Also I'm from Mexico, and Mexico's spanish can be a bit different than Spain's, so I'm not sure how specific you want to get.

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Mexican Spanish is actually preferable.  It's all about making the greatest number of Star Wars fans happy.

PM me with your real e-mail if you think you can help--I certainly could use it!

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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Okay last call for Portuguese.  I did my best to post nonsense English posts on some Brazilian Star Wars forums, but it would probably help more if anyone just has friends or family in/from Brazil.

Thanks to everyone so far, this is going to be more successful than I thought.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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Just for curiosity's sake, are there good GOUT-timed foreign-language dubs out there that could be muxed with Harmy and DarkJedi's projects?

I imagine there's a German one being used in Laserschwert's project, and I thought I saw a post once about a French one, but I'm not finding anything.

EDIT: Nevermind, I've got what I need.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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Big problem, are there any Gaupol alternatives for Mac?

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I'm sure there are.  I'll take a look around and let you know.  In a pinch, SRT files are just text files, so a simple text editor would do (although it'd be a pain to do side-by-side)

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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It works, although right out of the box it doesn't show the lenght of each line which is important, I'll mess with it later to see if it's an option or something.

After a quick look at Star Wars, it seems the subtitles are from Spain, so some parts sound a bit off to me. For example, in Mexico we call computers "computadoras" but in Spain they call them "ordenadores", the subtitles use "ordenadores" so I'll probably change that.

A curious thing about spanish is that we have two different forms of the second person in singular "You", we use "Usted" which implies more respect or that you're talking to a superior or even for a not very close relationship and "Tú" which is more friendly or among equals. It is interesting that in these subtitles Vader uses "Tú" when talking to Tarkin, but I'm pretty sure in a dubbed version I once watched Vader used "Usted" when talking to Tarkin. Leia also used "Usted" when talking to Han. So I'll have to think about what's more appropiate between different characters.

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Diego said:

It works, although right out of the box it doesn't show the lenght of each line which is important, I'll mess with it later to see if it's an option or something.

After a quick look at Star Wars, it seems the subtitles are from Spain, so some parts sound a bit off to me. For example, in Mexico we call computers "computadoras" but in Spain they call them "ordenadores", the subtitles use "ordenadores" so I'll probably change that.

A curious thing about spanish is that we have two different forms of the second person in singular "You", we use "Usted" which implies more respect or that you're talking to a superior or even for a not very close relationship and "Tú" which is more friendly or among equals. It is interesting that in these subtitles Vader uses "Tú" when talking to Tarkin, but I'm pretty sure in a dubbed version I once watched Vader used "Usted" when talking to Tarkin. Leia also used "Usted" when talking to Han. So I'll have to think about what's more appropiate between different characters.

OK, if all else fails, you can ignore line length and I can check for length problems afterward.

Definitely go for Mexican variations wherever you like.  And the Usted/tu difference, whatever decision you come to is fine, just make sure it's consistent between movies if you can (i.e. don't have a relationship suddenly become more formal in a later movie).  Thanks so much!

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)