domingo, 27 de julio de 2014

Subtitling: Gnome Subtitles

Hi!

Translators can do also subtitle work for series, films or documentaries. The translator makes the transcription of the source language and then makes the translation in the target language having in mind the subtitles. Today I'm going to show you how to use a subtitling program made for Linux: Gnome Subtitles. Obviously, there are too programms for Windows, for example Subtitle Workshop, but I'm going to explain only the first one, because both are similar.

First of all, you have to open the program and open the file with the video that you want to subtitle (maybe not translate, according to the recipient of the video, for example deaf people or students from the original language). Click on “video”, “new” and select the video. I'm going to show you the example of a subtitle that I did for the university (fragment of the episode of a spanish serie named Los misterios de Laura. Translation spanish-german).



Now, you have to make a spotting list. The spotting list is the list of the intervention of every person or character in the video. You have to mark when the person starts to speak and when it stops. In every line is where you will have to write the subtitle. You will have to select “file” and “new” to start the spotting list. Then you will have to be concentrating in every intervention, because you will have to mark the beginnig and the end on the time indicator (below the spotting list). In the white box on the right side of the time indicator, is where you will write the subtitle. 


Here I show you the spotting list that I did, with the subtitles in german. Don't forget that it is possible that the subtitles are shorter that what the person in the video says, because the limit of characters in a subtitles it is 37 (including spaces and typographic signs. Roman alphabet). You will have to summarize the information, because the person who reads the subtitle must have time enough to read it calmly.


Once you have made all the subtitles, you have to click on “file” and “save as”. The format of the subtitles must be SRT or SSA. Then you will able to open the video with the subtitles in a video player.

And that's the result of my work.



Here you have another example, now from the subtitles of a direct translation german-spanish of an episode of the german serie Tatort



In following posts, I will show you how to edit videos and how to set the subtitles on the video.

See you soon!
 

viernes, 18 de julio de 2014

Microsoft Word: track changes


Hi!

I usually talk about programs for Linux or programs with open source. However, the track changes is an option of Microsoft Word in order to the text correction. I have already written about the corrections in Libreoffice, but with Word we have a lot of options to show our corrections (if we work in a group or for our client) .I’m going to show you a text with mistakes, and then I will explain how to correct it.


First of all, we have to select “Review” in the word processor, to select the complete text (with the mouse or Ctrl + Mayús + E), and then to activate the track changes. We have to select the name of the author/corrector in “change the user name” and then, the changes we want to show, and the different colors of every one, in the “change tracking options”. It will appear a table, in which you will have to select the type of correction and the color that the program will show. For example, I choose the red color for the words that I erase, and blue for the words that I write.



Of course, if in your text appear more things you have to correct, you can choose the colors in the menu; it will appear everything on the text. In addition, you, your colleagues or your client will see clearly every modification in the margins or under the text, if you click on “review panel“.



With the option “final” you will able to see how is the final version of the document without the track changes. With “final: show revisions” you will see again the text with the corrections, if you need to make more changes.


I hope you find it useful to make your corrections.


miércoles, 16 de julio de 2014

Translation mistakes (I): tourist brochure

Hi!

Today I'm going to show you, with an example, the importance of the translator's job. I'm going to show you only the introduction of a touristic guide of the Brocéliande forest, in France. I suppose that the source text was in french and this translation into spanish it wasn't made by a translator. I don't speak french, but I don't need it to know that this translation have no sense in spanish. Maybe some of you don't speak spanish, but I think that if some of you have some knowledges of my language, I'm sure that you will find the mistakes.




What do you think about it?

In this translation there are bad spelling (*ayuden nos, *respectar, *gravar en los árboles),
grammatical errors (*prohibido de fumar, *ser en vía de extinción),
morphosyntactic errors (*...no herir sus ocupantes),
and meaningless phrases (*el dominio privado del masivo está abierto a los peatones...)

A person who speak spanish wouldn't write this translation, and neither a person, because I think that is an automatic translation. And when I read this text I think too, that someone has accepted it and has printed it. And that's only the introduction, how many mistakes will be on the complete brochure?

When we faced with such a text, and we know what we are talking about, at first we laugh, because we understand it and we know that is misspelled, but it's really not funny. I, as a translator, what I see is one of the problems of the translation: is not always valued.

If you want to see my proposed translation into spanish, or rather, a correction, click here.

domingo, 13 de julio de 2014

Libreoffice Writer: Self correction and comments

Hi!

Today I'm going to write about the function in Libreoffice Writer to correct the texts. On the one hand we have the self correction option, and on the other hand we have the add comments option.

I'm sure that all of you know the self correction option, because when we make some mistakes when we write, the word processor automatically show us the words that we have misspelled.


You can change these options and select the mistakes and corrections that you want the program to show. You have only to click on the “format” menu, the option “self correction” and then “self correction options”. 



It will appear a menu where you can select what the program will correct. For example, if I type two consecutive capital letters, when I press the spacebar, the word processor will correct it and write only the first one.



Another example is when we write an URL and the word processor recognize it and it is marked in blue to create a shortcut.


The self correction is something that is made by the program automatically. However, you can show another corrections or simply comments about a text in margins. That can be useful, for example, if you work in a group and you want to explain or talk with a colleague of something that he has written. You can add the comments in “insert” and “comments”, or pressing Ctrl + Alt + C.



As you can see in the image above, it appears a yellow margin note with the author and the date of the comment. That way, you can make questions and answer it with your colleagues to improve your texts.


miércoles, 9 de julio de 2014

Why that name?

Why have I decided to title my blog “You are what you translate”? Well, I wanted to write in my blog about different programms or aplications that can be useful for translators or for anyone who use office software. Therefore I thought about the initials of word processors WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get). And “you are what you translate” is similar.

However, this title has another deeper meaning and related to the translation. As translator, possibly you will have to translate a lot of different texts. And over the years, maybe you become a specialist in the translation of one kind of text and subject.

In each translation always learn something new. And this new knowledge are not only useful professionally, it makes possible to know too about different subjects, on different disciplines that may have nothing to do with language or communication, but they are interesting for our personal development. Translating is more than knowing two languages: is to know understand and make understand.

As student of translation, I have translated different texts of different subjects. And I must put, as far as possible, in the place of the author of the source texts and in the reader of the target text, in order to translate it correctly. It could say, in a way, that I have been journalist, publicist, lawyer, engineer, cook, writer, actress, travel agent, librarian, interpreter...

viernes, 4 de julio de 2014

PDF Chain: how to join PDF files

Hi!

Working with PDF allows to make professional documents, because all that you have written will be fixed. It doesn't matter the text processor you have used before (Word or Writer), because with a PDF won't have format problems (images, tables, graphics...). However, I have always had problems to work on a PDF. Today i'm going to explain how to join different PDFs in one document.

With PDF Chain you will have to select all the files in PDF format that you want to join. This will help you, for example, for team works, in which every person of the group have made his own part and then you have to give it together, in one document. Here there are two documents that I prepared to explain OCR (I've been unable to get it work yet), in PDF, of course, that i'm going to join.



Once you have installed and open PDF Chain you have to open the files that you want to join, pressing on plus symbol.



It will appear both documents (or the number of documents you want to join). Don't forget to check that all the documents have been marked with a cross.


Then you have to press “create new ID” and click on “shuffle”. You must “save as” the document and you will know where the program have kept it, or select yourself where you want to keep it. And then you will have only one PDF, like this:


If you see at the left side of the document, you will check that now there are two pages in the document, that before were two different documents.

See you soon!