Translating video

For your video to reach the maximum number of people, it needs to be accessible to people from other parts of the world and to people who who are hard of hearing. You should therefore transcribe it, and, if you can, have it translated into the languages of your target audiences.

Original Language Transcript

The first and most important step in translating video is to create an accurate digital transcript of all the words in the final edit of the film. This should contain all the spoken audio, plus any text titles on screen, written out in a text document in the original language.

Each phrase or sentence should be written on a separate line, with the start and end time code (hour:minute:second:frame) at the start of the line, like this:

00:01:10 to 00:01:20 This is a film about people resisting water privatisation in Bolivia

00:01:23 to 00:01:32 and the repression that they suffered

You can create such a document easily using free software such as Jubler, an Open Source program for creating video subtitles, and save it as a .SRT file (Read more).

Using/Sharing the Transcript or Subtitle File

Your original-language transcript can be uploaded with your film, and included for distribution on any DVD or other offline format. It can also be attached, using the VLC player, to digital copies of the film, even in its original language, as closed captions for the hard of hearing and for screening in noisy environments (Read more). You can also upload it to dotSUB to allow anyone to translate it.

Your transcript can be sent as a text file to translators for easy translation – even those who cannot watch the film can help. The translator simply replaces the original language phrases on each line with a direct written translation, keeping the timecode in place to ensure the right phrase goes in the right place. This new file can then be used as a subtitle file in the same way as the original-language file.

Even if you don’t have funds for translation, you should still create an original-language transcript and share it when you publish the video; people may autonomously translate your film into their language.

For more, see our tools for creating video (Read more) and Subtitle Workshop.