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!