#still working on German subtitles

[eosonera]

New video!

[yeah-thats-probably-it]

>trying the dutch duolingo because i heard dutch is easier than german and i want to see if that’s true >skip ahead a section bc i’m bored with de vrouw de man de kinderen and so on >asked for the dutch word for water >start to guess wasser because knowing german has gotten me this far >remember that the netherlands didn’t go through the high german consonant shift >type “water” >correct >i’m a language genius (i am not a language genius i still don’t know the correct german word order at least 50% of the time)

[tardis--dreams]

I'm currently going through one of the most severe depressive episodes I've experienced in the last few years. Of Course I'm going to rewatch beyond evil now

[ganondoodle]

askign this just bc polls are neat and just in case, im not promising anything (i dont even own an editing software ..)

also while we are at it, even if im not making a video in the end, i might write a big document of all my gripes with totk to which i will slowly add everything when it comes to mind to bc i know i always forget half my points when writing something

maybe its a little old by now, but i am still very interested in hearing what others who didnt like the game think- so if you want to just let out what bothers you the most about it, or what disappointed you etc feel free to add it to this post (be it replies, tags or directly adding to reblogs- just so its all in one place and easier to find for me later on bc asks get buried fast .. or if youd rather put it in an ask add to it 'totk rant doc' or soemthing at the start so i can find them later and dont lose their context) bc maybe you have found something i havent yet thought of!

(you dont have to, obviously, but im thanking those who do in advance bc my brain is a mess and likes to forget points as im writing it lol)

watching totk rant videos really makes me want to do one too, just to get it all finally off my chest in one go, but i dont have the best talking voice (especially not in english ..) that also doesnt last long (no one time recording all either lol) and i lack the patience to edit it all for hundreds of hours so its not just some dude with a thick german accent ranting about the game with footage that has nothign to do with what is talked about (tbh id just use my stream footage ... but dont wanna comb through 180 hours of that ndjkbndf)

the thought of talking about both my rewrites is also tempting, its probably just bc im not familiar with making videos- but i feel like it has more ... 'merit' than some text posts floating around on my tumblr with 10 likes and one reblog .. alas all that will likely stay a thought i wish i could do just like i still dream of impossible gamedev :^))))

[partial-prints]

If you love vampires, listen up!

Do you enjoy vampires, 80’s music, a healthy dose of homoeroticism - all with a theatrical flair? Well look no further, for I submit to you Dance of the Vampires.

(More cool pictures at the very bottom)

What is it you may ask? It’s a musical about a vampire who seduces a girl and invites her to his midnight ball - an offer she simply cannot turn down. The whole thing sorta gives Phantom of the Opera vibes, but like, wayyy less creepy (despite it being a literal vampire). I will say now that yes, Tanz der Vampire (the original title of Dance of the Vampires), is in German, but there is a full recording with English subtitles on youtube, so please don’t let that prevent you from watching it. Now if you’re still reading, allow me to elaborate on the 80’s music and homoeroticism that I previously mentioned.

Let’s start with the tragic gay romance, because I’m sure that’s what you want to hear about first. While not a main part of the musical, the main vampire’s son falls in love with - gasp! - the vampire hunter’s apprentice. They dance together, and with stage magic involving a mesh screen and an actor on the other side dressed identically to the apprentice, it appears as though the vampire has no reflection in the “mirror”. Of course, the feeling is not mutual, as the apprentice is only at the castle to rescue the girl, who he is in love with.

Now, onto the 80’s music. Surely you’ve heard of the song Total Eclipse of the Heart, or the singer Meatloaf (even if it was just his role as Eddie in Rocky Horror Picture Show). Well, the man who wrote that song and a majority if not all of Meatloaf’s work, was Jim Steinman, who composed the musical. The soundtrack contains a decent amount of electric guitar, even a bit of synth at parts, and all around just sounds awesome. However, he only had about a month and a half to compose it all, so he reused some stuff he previously wrote, including a couple Meatloaf songs and Total Eclipse of the Heart, a song he originally wrote for a Nosferatu musical that ended up not getting produced. It was actually originally titled “Vampires in Love,” so what better song is there to fill the place of a big love duet between the girl and the Count?

Tanz der Vampire is my favorite musical ever. I’ve loved it ever since Count von Krolock appeared on the screen and first began to sing, and you may love it too. So I implore you. Please do yourself a favor and check it out. I’ll provide a link of a full recording with English subtitles here, but it should also be the first result on youtube when you search “tanz der vampire english subtitles.” (That production also has Drew Sarich as the Count, my personal favorite.) I should add though, do not watch the broadway production because it’s terrible.

If you’re still not sold, I’m not sure what else I could say to convince you, but hopefully you at least found this interesting and learned something new. If you want to know more about Tanz der Vampire or would like to hear about other musicals about vampires, please let me know and I can answer any questions. (If even one person watches it because of this I’ll consider this a success, and if you do watch it please let me know because it would really make my day.)

And now I’ll leave you with some pictures of Tanz der Vampire as a last resort to convince you how awesome it is and that you should watch it. (I also put in the alt text the song each picture is from for anyone interested)

*ooo the set design and costuming have hypnotized you… you want to watch it now… do it for the vampires…*

[ramons-elevator]

I think that makes the QSMP so special is the love that surrounds it, in game and irl.

Obviously, the QSMP server is about love. From the admins making the egg event longer to islanders ready to do whatever to protect the eggs to the team being just as excited as everyone for this and always listening to everyone.

But the fact that everyone, CCs and community, gets excited about things happening is so special. Whether thats a CC that hasnt been on in a while logging on or next mods and updates or new people and languages being added. And even people who have left, like Spreen and DanTDM, are still kept alive in the story and by the islanders.

Like everyone is valued and loved and I love seeing the ingame chat and my dashboard explode whenever someone who hasnt logged on in a bit logs on.

And with the theory of japanese/ asian speaking languages joining soon and how for a while we thought (and still hoping) that we would get german speaking creators, everyone is just excited to meet new people and show them how awesome the QSMP is.

Plus the CCs on the server talking about how much it changed their lives. Etoiles talking about how it made him fall back in love with streaming, Foolish flying out of the country for the first time to go to Brazil, and just people would probably never talk to each other becoming such close friends (Cellbit and Roier, Pac and Fit, Phil and Missa, Bagi and Bad, etc)

Like gOD I LOVE THIS SERVER AND THE PEOPLE WHO WORK ON IT AND THE CCS WHO POUR THEIR HEART INTO IT AND THE COMMUNITY WHO TRANSLATES AND DRAWS AND SUBTITLES AND JUST GETTING HYPED FOR STUFF IS SO COOL

[what-even-is-thiss]

Hey I saw you talk about comprehensible input for Spanish, and you said it was easy and it seems effective. I'm learning German, and I wanna ask what comprehensible input is and how I could do some of that

Comprehensible input means watching or listening to stuff in the language where you understand 90% or more of what’s going on. If you’re reading it’s more like 98%. Early on this usually means either watching stuff for babies or watching stuff made for adult learners if that exists. Watching stuff for adult learners is generally better because it works better if you’re interested in what’s going on. Once easier stuff is too boring for you then you move on to slightly harder stuff etc etc. it’s supposed to take about a thousand hours of good quality input for you to be able to understand native speakers with no issues give or take depending on your native language and the language you’re studying. Right now I’m at like 50-ish hours in Spanish which means I’m watching slightly harder videos that still have a lot of visual cues but it’s not piss easy either. I can also understand most quick things I overhear people say on the street to each other but I don’t really know how to talk yet. My brain hasn’t pieced that part together.

For German specifically resources for this are YouTube channels like Comprehensible German and Natürlich German. And Deutsch Welle’s learn German section of their website has a couple series like Nico’s Weg that follow a similar idea.

The key is to not translate in your head or assign meaning to specific words or try to figure out the grammar when you watch videos or read but just try to understand what’s going on.

Some people supplement this with flash cards strictly doing vocabulary and no grammar. Especially if good comprehensible input resources aren’t available for the language you’re studying. Doing vocabulary drills and watching tv with subtitles in the language you’re learning can also be effective.

Another way to do this if you can’t afford a special class or there’s no good videos available but you do have native speakers on hand who are willing to be a “language parent” for you is for them to sit down with you and only teach you the words for yes and no and then they pick up something like a kids picture book and start pointing at things and slowly explaining it to you and asking you questions like you’re a baby for an hour or two every day. Most people do not have a native speaker on hand willing to do this though. But if you do then this video where a guy documents learning Arabic with this method should give both you and the native speaker an idea of how this works.

If you want resources googling “comprehensible input (language)” should get you started. There’s also a lot of different communities for language learners of different languages or language learning generally on Reddit like r/French, r/Portuguese, r/swahili or r/languagelearning for example. Most of those places have a dedicated page for compiling resources from the community and you can also ask questions to the community and in my experience they’re usually pretty helpful people.

Right now I’m mostly using Dreaming Spanish for Spanish but also other channels like Easy Spanish and Español con Juan. I’m also dabbling a bit in the channels Comprehendible Japanese and Nihongo-Learning for Japanese but Spanish is my main priority right now.

[hesgomorrah]

Trapper John, M.D. Masterpost

TL;DR, Trapper John, M.D. is a criminally underrated M*A*S*H spin-off that I'd love to see given a shot at redemption. Links to watch it are under the cut.

Since I've been talking about this show a lot recently, I thought it would probably be a good idea to make it easier to find, since it's fairly obscure nowadays.

If you've never heard of it, I don't blame you. TJMD is a M*A*S*H spin-off that ran from 1979 to 1986, with a contemporary setting and generally more dramatic tone but the same irreverent sense of humor and at times surprisingly progressive writing as its predecessor. It follows Trapper John McIntyre thirty-ish years after the Korean War, contending with medical mysteries and changing times as Chief Surgeon of a major hospital in San Francisco.

The series has few direct references to the events of M*A*S*H (in any of its previous forms), but it features a compelling ensemble cast of original characters that take many tropes M*A*S*H fans will be familiar with in new directions. Especially if you enjoyed the first three seasons of M*A*S*H, I highly recommend giving at least a handful of episodes a shot. The quality of said episodes varies wildly, but there are some true gems in there. (IMDb and Wikipedia links for more information!)

The only catch is, to date, the series has never been officially released to home media or any streaming platform, and I haven't found any evidence that it's still in syndication, so it's not the easiest show to track down. Luckily, all 151 episodes were recorded by dedicated fans, so the series is watchable in (very nearly) its entirety if you know where to look. I did the looking so you don't have to!

This Google Drive contains every episode of the series (with the exceptions listed below) in standard definition, plus my work-in-progress episode guide, highlighting episodes that are relevant to longer story arcs and offering a non-exhaustive list of content warnings for especially heavy episodes. (I'm looking for another place to host them but Google is the platform I'm most familiar with.)

Episodes 1x01 through 3x02 can be found in better quality here, remastered by a fan by combining footage from separate English- and German-language recordings of the series. It occasionally lapses into German audio with English subtitles as the German dub contains some scenes for which the corresponding English audio has been lost. Here is an alternate YouTube link with lower video quality but exclusively English audio, containing roughly 2/3 of the episodes.

If you speak German, you can find that dub here with slightly cleaner visuals.

If you prefer to torrent, you can find those here:

Season 1

Season 2

Season 3

Season 4 (the second half of 4x20 is corrupted, repeating the same ~2 minutes of footage for the rest of the duration)

Season 5 (5x11 is missing roughly the last 10 minutes of the episode)

Season 6 (the video is frozen for most of 6x23 but the audio is fully intact)

Season 7

[a-memory-a-distant-echo]

it's time for the long-threatened post about how to get subtitles (including translated ones) for videos that don't have subtitles.

in my experience, the methods in this post can probably get you solidly 75% or more of the content of many videos (caveats inside). i've tested this on videos that are originally in chinese, english, french, german, hindi, japanese, korean, spanish, and honestly probably some languages that i'm forgetting. my experience is that it works adequately in all of them. not great, necessarily, but well enough that you can probably follow along.

this is a very long post because this is the overexplaining things website, and because i talk about several different ways to get the captions. this isn't actually difficult, though, or even especially time consuming—the worst of it is pushing a button and ignoring things for a while. actual hands-on work is probably five minutes tops, no matter how long the video is.

i've attempted to format this post understandably, and i hope it's useful to someone.

first up, some disclaimers.

this is just my experience with things, and your experience might be different. the tools used for (and available for) this kind of thing change all the time, and if you're reading this six months after i wrote it, your options might be different. this post is probably still a decent starting place.

background about my biases in this: i work in the creative industries. mostly i'm a fiction editor. i've also been a writer, a technical editor and writer, a transcriptionist, a copyeditor, and something i've seen called a 'translation facilitator' or 'rewrite editor', where something is translated fairly literally (by a person or a machine) and then a native speaker of the target language goes through and rewrites/restructures as needed to make the piece read more naturally in the target language. i've needed to get information out of business meetings that were conducted in a language i didn't speak, and have done a lot of work on things that were written in (or translated into) the writer's second or sixth language, but needed to be presented in natural english.

so to start, most importantly: machine translation is never going to be as good as a translation done by an actual human. human translators can reflect cultural context and nuanced meanings and the artistry of the work in a way that machines will never be able to emulate. that said, if machine translation is your only option, it's better than nothing. i also find it really useful for videos in languages where i have enough knowledge that i'm like, 75% sure that i'm mostly following, and just want something that i can glance at to confirm that.

creating subs like this relies heavily on voice-to-text, which—unfortunately—works a lot better in some situations than it does in others. you'll get the best, cleanest results from videos that have slow, clear speech in a 'neutral' accent, and only one person speaking at a time. (most scripted programs fall into this category, as do many vlogs and single-person interviews.) the results will get worse as voices speed up, overlap more, and vary in volume. that said, i've used this to get captions for cast concerts, reality shows, and variety shows, and the results are imperfect but solidly readable, especially if you have an idea of what's happening in the plot and/or can follow along even a little in the broadcast language.

this also works best when most of the video is in a single language, and you select that language first. the auto detect option sometimes works totally fine, but in my experience there's a nonzero chance that it'll at least occasionally start 'detecting' random other languages in correctly, or someone will say a few words in spanish or whatever, but the automatic detection engine will keep trying to translate from spanish for another three minutes, even tho everything's actually in korean. if there's any way to do so, select the primary language, even if it means that you miss a couple sentences that are in a different language.

two places where these techniques don't work, or don't work without a lot of manual effort on your part: translating words that appear on the screen (introductions, captions, little textual asides, etc), and music. if you're incredibly dedicated, you can do this and add it manually yourself, but honestly, i'm not usually this dedicated. getting captions for the words on the screen will involve either actually editing the video or adding manually translated content to the subs, which is annoying, and lyrics are...complicated. it's possible, and i'm happy to talk about it in another post if anyone is interested, but for the sake of this post, let's call it out of scope, ok? ok. bring up the lyrics on your phone and call it good enough.

places where these techniques are not great: names. it's bad with names. names are going to be mangled. resign yourself to it now. also, in languages that don't have strongly gendered speech, you're going to learn some real fun stuff about the way that the algorithms gender things. (spoiler: not actually fun.) bengali, chinese, and turkish are at least moderately well supported for voice-to-text, but you will get weird pronouns about it.

obligatory caveat about ai and voice-to-text functionality. as far as i'm aware, basically every voice-to-text function is ~ai powered~. i, a person who has spent twenty years working in the creative industries, have a lot of hate for generative ai, and i'm sure that many of you do, too. however, if voice-to-text (or machine translation software) that doesn't rely on it exists anymore, i'm not aware of it.

what we're doing here is the same as what douyin/tiktok/your phone's voice-to-text does, using the same sorts of technology. i mention this because if you look at the tools mentioned in this post, at least some of them will be like 'our great ai stuff lets you transcribe things accurately', and i want you to know why. chat gpt (etc) are basically glorified predictive text, right? so for questions, they're fucking useless, but for things like machine transcription and machine translation, those predictions make it more likely that you get the correct words for things that could have multiple translations, or for words that the software can only partially make out. it's what enables 'he has muscles' vs 'he has mussels', even though muscles and mussels are generally pronounced the same way. i am old enough to have used voice to text back when it was called dictation software, and must grudgingly admit that this is, in fact, much better.

ok! disclaimers over.

let's talk about getting videos

for the most part, this post will assume that you have a video file and nothing else. cobalt.tools is the easiest way i'm aware of to download videos from most sources, though there are other (more robust) options if you're happy to do it from the command line. i assume most people are not, and if you are, you probably don't need this guide anyhow.

i'm going to use 'youtube' as the default 'get a video from' place, but generally speaking, most of this works with basically any source that you can figure out how to download from—your bilibili downloads and torrents and whatever else will work the same way. i'm shorthanding things because this post is already so so long.

if the video you're using has any official (not autogenerated) subtitles that aren't burned in, grab that file, too, regardless of the language. starting from something that a human eye has looked over at some point is always going to give you better results. cobalt.tools doesn't pull subtitles, but plugging the video url into downsub or getsubs and then downloading the srt option is an easy way to get them for most places. (if you use downsub, it'll suggest that you download the full video with subtitles. that's a link to some other software, and i've never used it, so i'm not recommending it one way or the other. the srts are legit, tho.)

the subtitle downloaders also have auto translation options, and they're often (not always) no worse than anything else that we're going to do here—try them and see if they're good enough for your purposes. unfortunately, this only works for things that already have subtitles, which is…not that many things, honestly. so let's move on.

force-translating, lowest stress mode.

this first option is kind of a cheat, but who cares. youtube will auto-caption things in some languages (not you, chinese) assuming that the uploader has enabled it. as ever, the quality is kinda variable, and the likelihood that it's enabled at all seems to vary widely, but if it is, you're in for a much easier time of things, because you turn it on, select whatever language you want it translated to, and youtube…does its best, anyhow.

if you're a weird media hoarder like me and you want to download the autogenerated captions, the best tool that i've found for this is hyprscribr. plug in the video url, select 'download captions via caption grabber', then go to the .srt data tab, copy it out, and paste it into a text file. save this as [name of downloaded video].[language code].srt, and now you have captions! …that you need to translate, which is actually easy. if it's a short video, just grab the text, throw it in google translate (timestamps and all), and then paste the output into a new text file. so if you downloaded cooking.mp4, which is in french, you'll have three files: cooking.mp4, cooking.fr.srt, and cooking.en.srt. this one's done! it's easy! you're free!

but yeah, ok, most stuff isn't quite that easy, and auto-captioning has to be enabled, and it has some very obvious gaps in the langauges it supports. which is sort of weird, because my phone actually has pretty great multilingual support, even for things that youtube does not. which brings us to low-stress force translation option two.

use your phone

this seems a little obvious, but i've surprised several people with this information recently, so just in case. for this option, you don't even need to have downloaded the video—if it's a video you can play on your phone, the phone will almost definitely attempt real-time translation for you. i'm sure iphones have this ability, but i'm an android person, so can only provide directions for that: go into settings and search for (and enable) live translation. the phone will do its best to pick up what's being said and translate it on the fly for you, and if 'what's being said' is a random video on the internet, your phone isn't gonna ask questions. somewhat inexplicably, this works even if the video is muted. i do this a lot at like four a.m. when i'm too lazy to grab earbuds but don't want to wake up my wife.

this is the single least efficient way to force sub/translate things, in my opinion, but it's fast and easy, and really useful for those videos that are like a minute long and probably not that interesting, but like…what if it is, you know? sometimes i'll do this to decide if i'm going to bother more complicated ways of translating things.

similarly—and i feel silly even mentioning this, but that i didn't think of it for an embarrassingly long time—if you're watching something on a device with speakers, you can try just…opening the 'translate' app on your phone. they all accept voice input. like before, it'll translate whatever it picks up.

neither of these methods are especially useful for longer videos, and in my experience, the phone-translation option generally gives the least accurate translation, because in attempting to do things in real time, you lose some of the predicative ability that i was talking about earlier. (filling in the blank for 'he has [muscles/mussels]' is a lot harder if you don't know if the next sentence is about the gym or about dinner.)

one more lazy way

this is more work than the last few options, but often gives better results. with not much effort, you can feed a video playing on your computer directly into google translate. there's a youtube video by yosef k that explains it very quickly and clearly. this will probably give you better translation output than any of the on-the-fly phone things described above, but it won't give you something that you can use as actual subs—it just produces text output that you can read while you watch the video. again, though, really useful for things that you're not totally convinced you care about, or for things where there aren't a lot of visuals, or for stuff where you don't care about keeping your eyes glued to the screen.

but probably you want to watch stuff on the screen at the same time.

let's talk about capcut!

this is probably not a new one for most people, but using it like this is a little weird, so here we go. ahead of time: i'm doing this on an actual computer. i think you probably can do it on your phone, but i have no idea how, and honestly this is already a really long guide so i'm not going to figure it out right now. download capcut and put it on an actual computer. i'm sorry.

anyhow. open up capcut, click new project. import the file that you downloaded, and then drag it down to the editing area. go over to captions, auto captions, and select the spoken language. if you want bilingual captions, pick the language for that, as well, and the captions will be auto-translated into whatever the second language you choose is. (more notes on this later.)

if i remember right, this is the point at which you get told that you can't caption a video that's more than an hour long. however. you have video editing software, and it is open. split the video in two pieces and caption them separately. problem solved.

now the complicated part: saving these subs. (don't panic; it's not actually that complicated.) as everyone is probably aware, exporting captions is a premium feature, and i dunno about the rest of you, but i'm unemployed, so let's assume that's not gonna happen.

the good news is that since you've generated the captions, they're already saved to your computer, they're just kinda secret right now. there are a couple ways to dig them out, but the easiest i'm aware of is the biyaoyun srt generator. you'll have to select the draft file of your project, which is auto-saved once a minute or something. the website tells you where the file is saved by default on your computer. (i realised after writing this entire post that they also have a step-by-step tutorial on how to generate the subtitles, with pictures, so if you're feeling lost, you can check that out here.)

select the project file titled 'draft_content', then click generate. you want the file name to be the same as the video name, and again, i'd suggest srt format, because it seems to be more broadly compatible with media players. click 'save to local' and you now have a subtitle file!

translating your subtitles

you probably still need to translate the subtitles. there are plenty of auto-translation options out there. many of them are fee- or subscription-based, or allow a very limited number of characters, or are like 'we provide amazing free translations' and then in the fine print it says that they provide these translations through the magic of uhhhh google translate. so we're just going to skip to google translate, which has the bonus of being widely available and free.

for shorter video, or one that doesn't have a ton of spoken stuff, you can just copy/paste the contents of the .srt file into the translation software of your choice. the web version of google translate will do 5000 characters in one go, as will systran. that's the most generous allocation that i'm aware of, and will usually get you a couple minutes of video.

the timestamps eat up a ton of characters, though, so for anything longer than a couple minutes, it's easier to upload the whole thing, and google translate is the best for that, because it is, to my knowledge, the only service that allows you to do it. to upload the whole file, you need a .doc or .rtf file.

an .srt file is basically just a text file, so you can just open it in word (or gdocs or whatever), save it as a .doc, and then feed it through google translate. download the output, open it, and save it as an .srt.

you're done! you now have your video and a subtitle file in the language of your choice.

time for vibe, the last option in this post.

vibe is a transcription app (not a sex thing, even tho it sounds like one), and it will also auto-translate the transcribed words to english, if you want.

open vibe and select your file, then select the language. if you want it translated to english, hit advanced and toggle 'translate to english'. click translate and wait a while. after a few minutes (or longer, depending on how long the file is), you'll get the text. the save icon is a folder with a down arrow on it, and i understand why people are moving away from tiny floppy disks, but also: i hate it. anyhow, save the output, and now you have your subs file, which you can translate or edit or whatever, as desired.

vibe and capcom sometimes get very different results. vibe seems to be a little bit better at picking up overlapping speech, or speech when there are other noises happening; capcom seems to be better at getting all the worlds in a sentence. i feel like capcom maybe has a slightly better translation engine, of the two of them, but i usually end up just doing the translation separately. again, it can be worth trying both ways and seeing which gives better results.

special notes about dual/bilingual subs

first: i know that bilingual subs are controversial. if you think they're bad, you don't have to use them! just skip this section.

as with everything else, automatically generating gives mixed results. sometimes the translations are great, and sometimes they're not. i like having dual subs, but for stuff that Matters To Me, for whatever reason, i'll usually generate both just the original and a bilingual version, and then try some other translation methods on the original or parts thereof to see what works best.

not everything displays bilingual subs very well. plex and windows media player both work great, vlc and the default video handler on ubuntu only display whatever the first language is, etc. i'm guessing that if you want dual subbed stuff you already have a system for it.

i'll also point out that if you want dual subs and have gone a route other than capcom, you can create dual subs by pasting the translated version and the untranslated version into a single file. leave the timestamps as they are, delete the line numbers if there are any (sometimes they seem to cause problems when you have dual subs, and i haven't figured out why) and then literally just paste the whole sub file for the first language into a new file. then paste in the whole sub file for the second language. yes, as a single chunk, the whole thing, right under the first language's subs. save the file as [video name].[zh-en].srt (or whatever), and use it like any other sub file.

notes on translation, especially since we're talking about lengthy machine-translations of things.

i default to translation options that allow for translating in large chunks, mostly because i'm lazy. but since an .srt is, again, literally just a text file, they're easy to edit, and if you feel like some of the lines are weird or questionable or whatever, it's easy to change them if you can find a better translation.

so: some fast notes on machine translation options, because i don't know how much time most people spend thinking about this kind of stuff.

one sort of interesting thing to check out is the bing translator. it'll only do 1000 characters at once, but offers the rather interesting option of picking a level of formality. i can't always get it to work, mind, but it's useful especially for times when you're like 'this one line sounds weird'—sometimes the difference between what the translator feels is standard vs formal vs casual english will make a big difference.

very fast illustration of the difference in translations. the random video that i used to make sure i didn't miss any steps explaining things starts with '所以你第二季来'. here's how it got translated:

google: So you come to season 2

google's top alternative: So you come in the second season

bing's standard tone: So here you come for the second season

bing set to casual: So you're coming for the second season, huh?

reverso default guess: So you come in season two

reverso alternate guess: You'll be participating in season two

capcom: So you come in season two

yandex: So you come in the second season

systran: That's why you come in season two

deepl: That's why you're here in season two

vibe: So your second season is here

technically all conveying the same information, but the vibes are very different. sometimes one translator or another will give you a clearly superior translation, so if you feel like the results you're getting are kinda crap, try running a handful of lines through another option and see if it's better.

ok! this was an incredibly long post, and i've almost definitely explained something poorly. again, there are almost certainly better ways to do this, but these ways are free and mostly effective, and they work most of the time, and are better than nothing.

feel free to ask questions and i'll answer as best i can. (the answer to any questions about macs or iphones is 'i'm so sorry, i have no idea tho.' please do not ask those questions.)

[risestarkiss]

So this is my newest video, of which has been subtitled into six different languages: Chinese, English, French, German, Korean, and Spanish!

I'm so happy about that because I wanted to make it a point for my videos to be inclusive: English subtitles for the hearing impaired, and cc'ed in different languages for people from all backgrounds to enjoy.

I'm still working on subtitling this and my other videos into more languages...but I just wanted to give that little update! 😌

💜💜💜

○○○○ 💜 RiseStarKiss Studios on Youtube | My Kofi Tip Jar 💜

[darkimpala1897]

The Cleven twins Masters Of Air Au headcanons.

1. Gale's twin is name Ruth Thomas Cleven, he's the youngest by ten minutes, everyone calls him Ruthy, Bucky calls him Bucket, because he's Bucky, Buck is Buck, and Ruth is Bucket.

2. His dark hair comes from his mother, well Bucks blonde hair comes from his father.

3. Ruth teases Buck anytime he brings Marge up, he goes "Marge this, Marge that, we get it."

4. Is there for Bucky when he realizes he's in love with Buck.

5. He awkwardly kissed Bucky to test a theory that maybe he's attracted to him and not Buck, but Bucky immediately reacted by going "That was like kissing my sister, no definitely in love with Buck not you" and Ruth was like "Jeez thanks."

6. Does drunk karaoke with Bucky, you would think he was Buckys twin not Bucks.

7. When Buck goes missing, he insisted his brother was still alive actually he yelled at anyone who said he was dead, "it's a twin thing" Bucky would say.

8. When they are reunited with Buck in the prison camp he straight up went "I told you so." And Bucky just glared at him.

9. Ruth is the polar opposite of Buck, he keeps Buck on his toes that's for sure.

10. Anytime anyone picks on Buck for his name being Gale, Ruth makes sure to let them know that only he can pick on Buck for being called Gale.

11. Will straight up punch someone when they ask why he's named Ruth.

12. His accent is thicker than Bucks, Bubbles one time joked he needed subtitles.

13. One of the biggest pranks Bucky pulled on the newest airmen was when they asked where Major Gale Clevens was, he'd point him in the direction of Ruth who always plays along.

14. Ham somtimes somehow gets them confused with the other, Ruth finds it hilarious and doesn't correct him, Buck does because he feels bad.

15. Major flirt and playboy Ruth is, he always says "I'll write you." With a smile and a smirk, and then Buck is like "You're aren't going to write her will you?" And then Ruth is like "Do I look like you and Marge?" And then Buck is like "Sometimes I'm ashamed that you have my face."

16. Ruth will eat anything, Buck is a peaky eater.

17. Ruth can pretty much mimic any accent, he isn't great at mimicking people but accents he's amazing at, he enjoyed scaring everyone in the prison camp by randomly yelling in a German accent, worked everytime.

18. Ruth can't ride a bike, I mean he can but not amazingly. He runs into everything.

19. Ruth does his brothers hair, he cuts it and styles it, but he refuses to let Buck touch his hair because it's already "perfect."

20. Terrible dancer, he enjoys embarrassing his twin at any chance he gets. That's why everyone jokes he's Buckys twin and not Bucks.

21. Biggest Bucky and Buck shipper ever.

Add onto this AU if you wanted! Write a fic if you wanted, do whatever!

Thanks for reading!

[angesaurus]

I am pretty proud of myself for getting up at 5ish every morning before work to exercise. I’ve basically given up on ever being able to do it after work so this works. Getting up early sucks (I could probably sleep until 6:30 if I wanted to) but I just feel like it’s a positive thing to get it done.

Also I did a TTPD peloton class today and didn’t realize the instructor speaking in German 💀 subtitles were in German too 😂 but it was still a good workout!!!!

I was trying to not drink as much Diet Coke but realizing I need a lil pick me up in the afternoon!!!! Otherwise I am grumpy af. Oh well can’t win them all.

[serinemisc]

@youzicha trimming a bunch of reblogs from Pointlessly Nonliteral Translation.

But I still don't like the two examples in my post above. It's admirable when somebody solves a difficult problem in a creative way, but producing "could mankind really be on the verge" is not difficult, you just look at the words in front of you. What made Woolsey so sure that what he writes is better than what the original author wrote? I guess what bugs me about this is that it is disrespectful, in the sense that he only does this because he doesn't respect the source text. If he was given a highbrow novel to translate he surely would not rewrite it, but he thinks this is schlock that doesn't matter. And yet, the game sold millions of copies, and we are still talking about it 30 years later—maybe it was not so insignificant after all.

I think the thing is the thing where you gotta unfocus your eyes and look at the big picture and not the sentences and words, you know?

I just got to a point in Honkai Star Rail where a guy is like "as a senior in the field, I'll give you some free advice" where something like "as the more experienced one" would have worked a lot better. This is the sort of thing that happens when you get too fixated on how to translate sempai (technically the Chinese xianbei but same thing).

I do understand that your point is "you can do a translation without adding in your own interpretation" but my point is that it's actually really hard to do that without making it sound awkward.

Speaking of Honkai Star Rail, it just translated " 'Kindness' is my pronoun" to " 'Kindness' is my middle name". I actually really like that one (Chinese doesn't have middle names). Uh, that wasn't relevant, I'm just playing Honkai Star Rail right now.

To be clear this was just an exercise for learning Japanese, it's not advice about how to do professional translation. But if you try, for most prose text I think it's quite possible to follow these rules and produce something that still sounds like natural English. I think that's a realistic standard to compare other translations against.

I presume you've read a translated light novel? Those read noticeably more awkwardly because they're usually closer or more literal translations. I would assume that avoiding that is the main reason most other translations take more liberties.

I think translated light novels are probably somewhere around the amount of literalism you prefer, so I just want to point out that I at least find them annoying to read in English, and that probably says something about general preferences.

(Why is a translated light novel more literal? My guess is because in a game, the thing you want to preserve is the plot, while in a book, )

To be clear, I definitely don't think that translating literally is obligatory or is an end in itself. I post about the virtues of literalism, but that's because I think the overall discourse is too one-sided and everyone takes it for granted that "literal is bad".

When I watch anime with friends, I like to infodump about the differences between the Japanese and the English subtitles, but usually, if I dislike something, it's usually an attempt to translate a word that could have better been done with a rephrase ("sempai" to "senior", very commonly). So while I agree that both extremes are bad, that informs which side I'm generally pushing for.

I think you sometimes overestimate how much impact the lack of a common ancestor language has, when something is maybe explained by a particular grammatical feature in isolation.

I mean, this is just my experience, finding sentence-for-sentence translations flow a lot better between Spanish and English, than between Japanese and English.

But yeah I dunno, it's not out of the question that my highest fluencies being in English/Japanese/Chinese makes me assume that something like English/German are more similar than they actually are. But I still feel like I'm right. Like, what PIE language would have a chart like this?

[ganondoodle]

(redone this post bc of bad wording in the poll, sorry xD)

dont want to spam with this but i realized something about the poll i made about me kinda wanting to do a rant video about totk- and its that me calling my accent in english 'thick' might not be accurate bc that is my own perception of it, when i streamed i have been told that my english is pretty good, even if its still hearable that im not a native speaker, i dont know if that is still a thick accent?

while im not as fast in talking in english as i am in german its still fluent, i can have full discussions in english without needing any help and i rarely encounter a word i dont know for example, just soemtimes a little pause to think but even that might be skewed bc i talk incredibly fast in german; so i dont know how to judge it myself bc my own view of it is very biased :V

so let me do another poll bc everyone loves polls

(edit: if i end up doing it there would be english subtitles no matter what; im more leaning to doing it all in english bc if i did the voice over in german id have to translate the script for the subtitles which would be even more work :O )

[zhuzhudushu]

Lingopie — Chinese Review ★★

So I did 3 months of Lingopie (stylized as Liñgöpie) so you don't have to (unless you want to lol).

I mention a Chrome extension, the Zhongwen dictionary, quite a bit in this review. It is here, I highly recommend it (click)! It's also available for Firefox (click).

What is Lingopie?

Lingopie is an app and desktop extension/website that allows you to watch tv shows and cartoons with interactive subtitles for language learning. It currently has Spanish, German, Russian, Italian, Portuguese, French, Korean, Japanese, and Chinese. It claims to improve your language learning by 80% (compared to Duolingo which is around 20%).

Here is their website. (click)

Pricing: (March 2024)

3 months $36

1 year $71 "on sale" (normally $144)

Lifetime $199 "on sale" (normally $663)

Please note: I have never seen these full prices. It appears that the "sale" is permanent.

My Review / TL;DR Version

Extremely disappointed both in functionality and content for Chinese. Maybe this is a good program for other languages, but for Chinese there is extremely limited content with pinyin subtitles only available for the non-Netflix shows. All the best learning features are available for non-Netflix shows, yet those tended to have significantly worse translations than Netflix. I would not recommend this product for Chinese. While it had a few good features and I enjoyed it for 6-7 episodes of one show, it then had a glitch where an entire episode was subtitled wrong, so I gave up.

See below the cut for full breakdown.

Strengths:

Has access to Netflix shows and films including some popular ones (e.g. Meteor Garden, Dear Ex, Nezha Reborn)

This is nice and I enjoyed rewatching the ones I was familiar with and getting a better grasp of listening and vocab. I appreciate that they try to incorporate kid-friendly along with more serious/adult content with animated and live action tv shows and films. I also liked that it specified if the show was from Taiwan or China, and also included shows that had some Cantonese influence (e.g. Scissor Seven)

Allows you to have English and Chinese subtitles simultaneously or alone, and you can easily click them on an off while watching.

This is pretty standard for all video/subtitle based educational apps, but it was nice to easily click them on and off in case I wanted to double check my understanding, and to compare the direct translation of the words to the full translation of the sentence.

Allows you to pause automatically after each subtitle. Can also loop subtitles over and over. There are also AI-produced explanations of grammar.

This hands down was the best part about the entire experience for me, and why I ended up using Lingopie for 3 months. While it was sometimes clunky (see below), this made singling out specific lines/words for listening practice so easy. Once I got in the groove, I was able to get through episodes fairly quickly and was starting to be able to listen and hear new words in sentences later.

Click on the words in the subtitle to make flashcard sets

This was a nice feature, but I do wish the flashcards were a bit more functional, see below. It was easy enough to use and a quick way to remind yourself of the new words you learned before you jump into the next episode.

Weaknesses:

Pinyin subtitles available on desktop only, with no pinyin subtitles for Netflix shows (as of May 2024)

This is a HUGE flaw, and I was 100% dependent on using another chrome extension for hover-over dictionary while using Lingopie. I know they are working on pinyin subtitles for Netflix and mobile, but I used this for 3 months and it still was not implemented when I ended. To me, if I have to use another app in conjunction with this one in order to fully learn, then what's the point? Especially since I watched Taiwanese and Cantonese-influenced shows with very non-standard pronunciations, comparing standard pinyin to accented productions is necessary for me. Even with the pinyin subtitles for the non-Netflix shows, it left a lot to be desire because they're tiny above the Chinese characters, and sometimes difficult to read. More than once I thought a ǒ was ō because of how tiny it was.

Not enough content, especially cartoons/beginner level

The one above and this bullet are the main reasons why I don't recommend this app for Chinese specifically. Maybe other languages are fine, but there is simply not enough content for the price. I was hoping for more beginner/lower intermediate content like children's cartoons, however there are none for Chinese. All the animated options are more teenager/adult oriented. There also weren't many light-hearted or comedy options, meaning you would have to watch a lot of serious dramas, thrillers, and violent shows if you wanted to get your money's worth. For my personal taste, I don't want to have to pause every dialogue line for an adult thriller. That would ruin my experience of the show and the suspense. For the non-Netflix options, most shows were incomplete with only 1-5 episodes available out of 10+. They also tended to be lower quality productions, with significantly worse English translations. The majority of what is available outside of Netflix are short films (~5 mins) and cooking shows (10-20 mins) which aren't bad for beginners. I personally have no interest in cooking, though lol. Essentially, there is no TRUE beginner fictional content in Chinese available.

The dictionary is... rough

Again, I was fully dependent on the Zhongwen extension. While the English subtitles themselves are good, the individual definitions of words that you hover over are definitely rough. They weren't actually that helpful for breaking down meanings of things like slang and characters' names. For example, in Scissor Seven there were quite a few animal puns, e.g. 汪星人 which is internet slang for "dog" Lingopie translated as "Woofer" which was... awkward and strange. Without the Zhongwen extension I would have had no idea what this was actually referring to. It would been nice if it functioned more like the Zhongwen extension, where it would highlight individual characters or phrases/combos depending on your mouse placement. Particularly on the non-Netflix shows, the translations even in the English subtitles were incredibly rough and at times I couldn't understand the context in either language. There was also one instance of an entire episode (Netflix) that had incorrect subtitles, I suspect subtitles from a different episode? That was the final straw for me.

It chooses whether or not to highlight single words or phrases so you have no control over your flashcards

This made the flashcards not as functional to me. Sometimes, I wanted just the specific noun/verb in the sentence, but it would make me highlight the entire sentence. Other times, I wanted a really functional phase, but it would only let me highlight the individual words. I barely used the flashcard feature because of this.

Clunky interface (Chrome & Firefox)

I can't speak for mobile or Safari because I didn't use them. Since I was relying on the Zhongwen hover-dictionary, I only used Chrome. You can only use Chrome or Safari if you want Netflix shows. Sometimes the auto-pause after each subtitle would be too early or too late, meaning I would have to actually click things pretty persistently throughout each episode. Using the spacebar to pause/unpause hardly ever worked, and using the arrow keys to flip between subtitles also never worked for me. Sometimes the hover-definitions of words would linger even after I clicked away, and would not disappear until the next subtitle appeared. This was super annoying and would block a good portion of the screen. Sometimes I would have to click things 2-3 times before it registered in both Chrome and Firefox.

Overall, I think it's a great idea, but needs some pretty major improvements in order to be worth the price.

In my opinion, if they were to add significantly more shows, including kid's cartoons, and improved their subtitles, dictionary, & interface function, it would be worth the price.

Maybe in a few years as Lingopie grows, it will be worth it. But for now, it's not. For now, it's clunky and limited. If you were to watch it for an hour a day, you would probably get through all the shows that interested in you in about 3-6 months. It wouldn't take longer than a year to go through all of the Chinese content, as of right now. So why would you pay for a year or lifetime price for that?

(divider credit here)

[emeraldskulblaka]

What makes a stage adaptation of Tolkien's works relevant?

The big Tolkien websites/blogs/influencers care about many adaptations of Tolkien's works, but not all. I'm not overly familiar with non-stage adaptations beyond the Really Popular ones, so I don't really know what's going on there, but I AM noticing significant patterns and omissions when it comes to stage shows.

Only select productions are reported on, and what is reported on does not depend on the specific adaptation. I'm asking questions I can't answer myself; they're meant to help structure my thoughts.

Question: Are only productions by well-known, highly professional theatres relevant?

The answer seems to be a clear YES. While the size of the theatres varies, only notable regional, state, and commercial theatre productions are seen as relevant. It makes sense - they're better documented and widely promoted, not least because of their budget.

However, Kentucky Opera's Hobbit last month went by unnoticed. It was a children's opera, which brings me to the next question:

Question: Are Hobbit plays less relevant when they're performed by and for kids?

It looks like it. Strange, is it not? The Hobbit is a children's book. Let me elaborate on this:

Not only the Kentucky Opera's Hobbit, but also the National Children's Theatre of South Africa's Hobbit, and Wilde & Vogel's puppetry Hobbit (touring in German-speaking countries) barely rouse interest from Tolkien Societies or local fans. Is there no value in children's theatre to be found for adults?

Question: Are parodies not legitimate adaptations?

If the Hobbit is less interesting because it's for kids, and proper adaptations must be performed at renowned theatres, you'd think LotR-inspired plays aimed at fans of all ages would be interesting, but... no. Some of them are parodies.

Charles Ross' One Man Lord of the Rings played at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival for two weeks, no one batted an eye. Fellowship! even has an official cast album, but 'the' Lord of the Rings musical is the only one, right? And The Wizard of the Rings in Arizona may have played a popular local theatre, but it's also... a parody! While memes and fun edits are popular, parodies are not.

Question: Is there a bias towards English-language adaptations?

Also a clear YES. Popular Tolkien bloggers/websites/influencers often write in English for an English-speaking audience, which however DOES NOT always live in English-speaking countries. I found the Tolkien Society before the German 'branch', and I've met Russians who found out about the rock operas through me, who is running a blog in English.

Non-English language productions sometimes offer surtitles during performances, subtitles for official recordings, and live broadcasts to overcome language and spatial barriers. The interest for these is still remarkably small.

Question: Does official licensing play a role?

Apparently, yes. Maybe it's the same motivation that makes people ask for 'book-accurate' adaptations, the desire to see your favourite characters and stories represented as true to Tolkien as possible, and the trust in the rights owners to ensure that. Maybe.

What makes me think that? The fact that people are asking for Silmarillion adaptations even though multiple Czech musicals, a Spanish musical, and multiple Russian rock operas and musicals already exist! Of course, those aren't English, and they're also comparatively small productions, but they're written by fans with lots of love for Tolkien's writings in their hearts, and that should be worth something..?

Ultimately, I think, it's always a combination of multiple factors, and I haven't even mentioned the most important one yet: The majority is quite simply not interested in theatre. Or not in all of Tolkien's works. And it's always easier to love what's popular: as a creator, you get more attention for your works, and as a consumer, you have a bigger variety of things to choose from.