I got it, thanks. I'm about halfway through my first pass on ROTJ. God, that was a mess.
I am uploading changes now. Incidentally, it appears tehparadox has become a terrible place to post links. Does anyone have any other suggestions? Otherwise I'll just rely on PM's.
Project files have been updated to version 1.3, incorporating many suggestions from IronMagus and greatly improved Portuguese subtitles thanks to bttfbrasilfan (original post has been updated as well). The new download links are NOT the same as before, and tehparadox is being problematic, so please just PM me for the links.
Rough summary of changes:
Minor improvements to English subtitles for ROTJ and Portuguese subtitles for ESB. Enormous improvements to Portuguese subtitles for ROTJ. I am now much more confident that all foreign subtitles are more-or-less of the same good quality.
Okay, I'm putting together a laundry list for 2.0. Basically I think there's not much more to be done in the way of text changes, so I'm working on a major overhaul of appearance.
Here's the current list:
- Ensure a minimum gap (a couple frames) between subtitles. This will prevent the appearance of subtitles "melting" into the next subtitle, which can be very bad from a readability perspective, esp when the subtitles look alike and you might not know to even read the second one. Basically just the duration of an eyeblink between adjacent subtitles, to clearly indicate to the viewer, "Hey, the subtitle is changing"
- All subtitles in all languages will be CIH-safe, at least in the 720p version. The means all subtitles will be entirely within the frame of the movie, which will make it projector-friendly. Individual subtitles will be moved to the top of the frame to avoid overlap with onscreen text (e.g. crawl text, alien language subs)
- If the DVD subs are not made CIH-safe, at least make them text-safe for overscan. This means one line of text in the frame and one line of text out of the frame, like a lot of commercial subs. It turns out more displays have insane amounts of overscan than I thought, and I don't want overscan to be an issue for anyone anymore.
- Because all subtitles may now be CIH-safe, the subtitles that match the theatrical subs will just be called "matching" instead of "CIH".
- SDH subs will be displayed with a black rectangular background for better readability, at least in the 720p version. There will no longer be "matching" SDH subs for this reason.
- Improve timing for subtitles of alien subtitles. Previously I had timed these pretty closely to dark_jedi's V3 (these vary from one preservation to another, I just picked my favorite one). But now that V3 is soon-to-be-obsolete, and accurate theatrical references exist for all SW and some ROTJ subtitles, I've timed them to match Harmy's V2 workprint for SW and Harmy's V1 for ROTJ. The ROTJ timing may need to be changed yet again once we get completely accurate timing for all Jedi subs from Puggo.
I think that's about it. The end result should be subtitles that more closely resemble professional commercial subtitles in their appearance. The only real difference between my subs and professional subs will be that, in English, mine will contain accurate dialogue rather than approximate dialogue, and I won't be changing that.
Project files have been updated to version 2.0 (original post has been updated as well). The new download links are NOT the same as before, and tehparadox is being problematic, so please just PM me for the links.
Rough summary of changes:
No text changes in any language. All subtitles now have a minimum gap of a couple frames between them to improve readability. SDH subs now have a black rectangular background. Alien subtitle timing has been adjusted to better align with Harmy's Despecialized Editions. I've also attempted "matching" subs for dark_jedi's and You_Too's upcoming Blu v2 project, which I extrapolated from the still image posted in that project thread. I haven't seen them in action, of course, so they may not be quite perfect.
Most significantly, all subs, both 720p and DVD, are now CIH-safe and text-safe for overscan. I know there's a bit of a disagreement between those who like their subs down in the black bars and those who like them CIH-safe, but I'm firmly in the CIH camp and this project allows anyone to make subs down in the black bars if they want to.
Also, the instructions have been greatly improved. DVD users please take note--the process for muxing DVD subs has changed slightly. You must import a palette file for the subtitles or the subtitles will end up all splotchy and pink. You have been warned!
This is a long shot, but is there anyone reading this thread that can proofread (mostly just fix obvious OCR errors, nothing fancy) for any of the following languages?
Finnish, Danish, Norwegian
If so, PM me.
EDIT: Never mind, I think I found a way to correct the OCR errors. The files were actually quite good to start with and just needed some minor fix-ups.
Project files have been updated to version 3.0 (original post has been updated as well). The new download links are NOT the same as before, so please PM me for the links.
Rough summary of changes:
Added five(!) new languages: Italian, Swedish, Finnish, Danish, and Norwegian. Huge thanks to You_Too for making the Nordic languages possible, and for doing manual corrections on the Swedish subtitles.
This version marks a change in the philosophy behind Project Threepio. The Nordic languages do not translate every single line of dialogue, so I was not able to do my traditional "match the English timing" adjustment on them (I was able to give the Italian subtitles my full traditional treatment). I did make some minor formatting changes and OCR corrections to the Nordic subs, but the timing and text is pretty much unaltered from the GOUT--I only changed the timing around the alien subtitles to avoid weird-looking overlaps. This philosophical change will hopefully allow me to more easily include completely indecipherable (to me) languages in the future.
I am now extremely pleased with the current state of Project Threepio. I consider the 2012 Blu-ray of Casablanca to be the gold standard for how a classic film should be treated, and it offers the very same ten language options (edit: it looks like it doesn't have German...weird). Knowing that fan preservations of the Star Wars trilogy can be in this same league makes me very, very proud.
That doesn't mean I won't add more languages later, though...
Okay, I'm working on the Finnish subs and noticed one thing so far. Does Owen say south ridge or south range twice? I've always thought it's ridge, the script says ridge and even Wookieepedia has South Ridge there. CatBus begs to differ. :D What do you guys think?
And in the time of greatest despair, there shall come a savior, and he shall be known as the Son of the Suns.
I'm working on another big "language pack" update (also includes some misc fixes), but it may take a while. If you are a maintainer of a major preservation, you can let me know if you want me to make a special point release of what I've got now (one more language plus misc fixes at the moment), if that would be useful for your next release. The longer you wait, the more languages will be included, potentially looking like four at the moment if I can get them done before the next round of preservation releases.
If you are not a maintainer of a major preservation, I guess you will have to wait ;)
Project files have been updated to version 4.0 (original post has been updated as well). The new download links are NOT the same as before, so please PM me for the links.
Rough summary of changes:
Added six new languages: Simplified Chinese, Russian, Arabic, Turkish, Dutch, and Czech. All scripts and utilities updated to better support Unicode and RTL languages. All SRT files changed to UTF-8 encoding. Minor text/typo changes in many languages, including English, German, and Italian.
This release marks the biggest change yet in Project Threepio. Now with improved Unicode support, it can theoretically accommodate any language. Also, after some hand-wringing, I decided that although I still prefer official or otherwise verified subs, I was okay using fan-created subtitles if there were no alternatives. Dutch is the only language in this group based on the official subs--all others are from essentially unverified Internet sources.
Chinese, Russian, Arabic, and Turkish subs were hand-resynced from SE subtitles, so they've had the extra dialogue removed, but altered dialogue may still be present. I used Google translate to more-or-less verify where I was in each film, which yielded occasionally hilarious results (my favorite: "The enemy is in your behind!"). There are also dropped lines here and there, but nothing too critical.
I went back to the English subs and changed a few subs that were needlessly taking up two lines to one-liners (i.e. "I find your lack of faith disturbing.") Since my subs are CIH-safe, covering less vertical area is important. I also fixed some minor errors in ESB and ROTJ that nobody had caught yet. Also, ROTJ subs for all languages were adjusted to better match video derived from PAL sources (Harmy and DJ/U2).
A word of warning for those who use my SRT files directly: First, they are now UTF-8 encoded, and that may cause some problems. If so, it's pretty trivial to change encodings with something like Notepad++. Secondly, watch out for Arabic. If your software doesn't handle RTL languages right, this can get really screwed up, with punctuation moving to the wrong side of the text, etc. I really had to do a lot of work to get this working with my software. Last, use a real Unicode font for Chinese. If you try to render it with a typical font, it will find maybe half of the characters in that font, then fall back to another font for the other half, and they will look terribly inconsistent. I used Arial Unicode and thought the results looked pretty nice.
Project Threepio now covers a very respectable percentage of the planet. The problem with this is that it makes the gaps even more apparent, and the biggest gaps might not change any time soon. Hindi/Urdu and Bengali are a complete black hole--I can literally find nothing for these languages. Japanese and Korean I can't find subtitles for the complete trilogy (someone with a copy of the Japanese GOUT would be my BFF). And Indonesian appears to have the same issues as Nordic languages--the words are so long that a direct translation would fill up the whole screen with words, so some sort of trimming/summarization is required. It's certainly the most doable of the bunch, but it's still problematic. The only languages that seem really feasible are more European languages, and I may get to that--after a long break.
Fantastic work, wonderful resource!
I've sent an e-mail to a SW fan asking about the Hindi version. Might as well send your questions over too. The author wrote several articles around TPM about SW in India: http://www.galaxyfaraway.com/gfa/2006/04/star-wars-in-india-the-newspapers/
Thanks. I figured in about a week's time it's going to get a lot harder to get anyone's attention around here, so I'd better post now! ;)
^ On the other hand, there maybe more attention from new eyeballs who may have information relevant to all the other stuff going down, like this thread.
Oh yeah, one more thing. There are now English SRT files for the mono mix, for those who want them. I did not render them for fear of confusing people with too many versions.
none said:
I've sent an e-mail to a SW fan asking about the Hindi version. Might as well send your questions over too. The author wrote several articles around TPM about SW in India: http://www.galaxyfaraway.com/gfa/2006/04/star-wars-in-india-the-newspapers/
Thanks for the tip. It sounds like subtitling is not popular in Hindi/Urdu/Bengali-speaking areas, and all SW releases to date have been dubbed-only. So unless some industrious fan-subber comes along, this gap will likely remain.
I would just like to say that Hungarian, in addition to appearing to be an awesome language in its own right, has officially earned my "Best Language Ever" designation.
Q: How do you say "Right" (as in, affirmative), in Hungarian?
A: "Helyes."
I kid you not. I'm renouncing my citizenship and moving there, entirely on account of this.
As you may be able to tell, I'm trying to squeeze in as many other languages as I can under the wire before whatever cutoff Harmy has. These will be Star Wars-only for now, I'll fill in the rest of the trilogy when I can. Polish, Hungarian, and Croatian are pretty much in the bag. I'll probably try Greek or Romanian next.
^ What languages are you missing? Which ones do you think exist but are not sure and need some assistance finding? Which ones do you have but haven't processed enough?
I have a whole shedload of fansubs that appear to be complete but are Special Edition so need retiming. More languages than I know what to do with. The exception is Croatian, where I managed to find a GOUT sub for SW, but not for the other films.
Really it's a matter of prioritization more than anything. From the languages I have, I'm prioritizing languages with lots of speakers and languages without similarities to other languages. For example, I have Bulgarian and Macedonian, but since anyone who can read Macedonian can also read Bulgarian, I only really need to do one of them--that sort of thing.
Indonesian and Vietnamese both appear to have the "too many words" problem, where they need special attention, most likely from someone who speaks the language, in order to fit onscreen nicely, so those subs are "on the shelf" pending expert advice.
So Polish and Romanian are at the top of the population pile, and Hungarian and Greek are at the top of my language isolates pile. If I actually get through them all, I've got others. Estonian, Slovenian, etc. Hell, if I weren't so badly scarred by my last encounter with an RTL language, I could try Farsi and Hebrew, but those are in a totally separate "scary languages" pile.
The only thing I could really use from the outside would be if someone had usable subs for my big 5: Hindi/Urdu, Bengali, Japanese, Korean, or Indonesian. I can find Japanese subs for ROTJ and Korean subs for ESB, but no entire trilogies. Certainly a Japanese GOUT exists, with both subtitles and dubs.
EDIT: Incidentally, I'm finding signs of OCR errors in my Hungarian sub, which likely means it's an official sub. Hooray (except for the errors)!
To answer the question more directly, there are just too many languages out there to have a list of what's missing. The best I can do is maintain a "5 most wanted list", and I always keep that updated and tacked onto the end of my OP.
I mean, at some point I really am just going to throw up my hands and stop. The job of Wolof subtitles for Star Wars will fall into someone else's hands...
I know that CatBus is the organizer of the international subtitles, but who is carrying on the dubbings? I made some updates on my VHS audio and I would like to upload it. Anyway, it would be good if we had an virtual 4shared HDD, where any member of the forum could download the subtitle or dubbing that he wanted to, to make his own preservation.
-Sorry for bad English and thank you CatBus for this project. It means so much for international audiences.
There is no organized dub repository AFAIK. The newsgroups have most of the official GOUT dubs, and then there's Portuguese, Czech, and incomplete Japanese dubs (maybe others?) floating around somewhat aimlessly. And then there's the matter of improved dubs, such as the improved German dub.
IMO, at this point, more dubs will do more to help Star Wars than more subtitles. In particular, the Hindi dub.
What are your improvements? I'm interested to hear about it!
There's no similar preservation effort for the dubs, yet. drive.google.com seems like a viable option if you want a file host. As several dubs have been lost when the releases went digital, there's a good case for a more open discussion. The threads for specific languages (Latin American, French, German), the versions of GOUT and International Audio threads are beginning to piece together the history of these things. I've been pleasantly surprised by the versions found in online video hosters, although not complete (typically one or two parts have been C&D), at least it's some concrete evidence. (who knew they made the Read Along Storybook in Finnish.)
Catbus, on the Hindi, i've found evidence (not sure if it's official) of the prequels, but were the first three dubbed? It's odd tracking these mixes and finding when new ones were created and others abandoned. Catalan didn't get a DVD version, the original SW and ESB in Japanese were redone for the SEs, the blu-rays have Cantonese and Thai, the TPM 3D was the first Swedish dub. One country may have gotten the dubs for the prequels but not the others. We're going to need more local experts.
Well, my Hindi source just said that no release of Star Wars in India had ever been subtitled, and I possibly inferred too much. I suppose it's possible it hadn't been dubbed OR subtitled in India and was just counting on people knowing English.
I suppose it's worth mentioning that if anyone is sitting on any complete trilogy dubs other than the ones mentioned above, I'd love to hear about it. Right now I'm especially interested in a complete set of Japanese dubs...
Okay, the next language pack is decided, Star Wars is complete for all of the languages, and the rest of the trilogy is now being translated.
The new languages will be: Polish, Hungarian, Croatian, Greek, Romanian, and Bulgarian. This provides a much-needed improvement in coverage for Central Europe and Southeast Europe. I will also include Japanese forced subtitles (but no full subtitles), to accompany Japanese dubs. No leads on complete Japanese subtitles, though, I'm afraid.
If anyone can tell me if Jabba is dubbed over in the Japanese GOUT dub, that would be greatly appreciated. I'll include Huttese subtitles in the Japanese forced subs unless I get an indication they're not needed.
If anyone needs the Star Wars subs for the new languages in advance, let me know. Otherwise they'll be released with everything else.
I also added a little map to my signature, showing the project's global language coverage (including this next update). Red marks official/majority language, or completely intelligible with an included language, pink marks secondary/significant minority language, or partially intelligible with an included language. White means no significant coverage.