A VC - Latest Comments in Open Subtitles

Re: Open Subtitles

fredwilson — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 18:07:20 -0000

I agree with you. Content owners need to embrace the open subtitles movement or its one more reason for someone to pirate content

Re: Open Subtitles

J. Pablo Fernández — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 13:53:36 -0000

I think Spanish doesn't have the capacity of English to take new or foreign words and has absolutely no word-buliding capacity. Like I've just did in english, creating a word out of two: word-building (of course English is no panacea if you compare it to a truly versatile language, like Esperanto). That makes translating shows like Star Trek harder, but not impossible.

"Warp" should be "warp", like "Ohm" is, well, "Ohm". Now, some Spanish speakers prefer more spanish sounding words, like turning "Volt" into "Voltio". Should it then be "Warpo"? "Warpio"? The translation is not one to one, but doable:

warp speed = velocidad warp
let's go to warp = saltemos a velocidad warp
warp 2 = warp 2
warp bubble = burbuja warp

Now, the other one is not that hard: core breach = rotura de nucleo, fisura de nucleo.

The phrase I quoted can be translated: "Si saltamos a velocidad warp puede que tengamos una fisura de nucleo y la camara de dilitio explotaria".

Re: Open Subtitles

Adrian Palacios — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 13:03:09 -0000

Wow, so much is lost in translation. Do you have anything in mind of how would you translate "warp" and "core breach" in Spanish?

Re: Open Subtitles

J. Pablo Fernández — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 04:18:14 -0000

By the way, in Switzerland (where I live), it is legal to download content, any content. I suppose that the RIAA and the MPAA are not match for a country that managed not to fall under the third reich (Godwin's law!!!). What is illegal is to upload, which means, torrents. Oh well.

Re: Open Subtitles

J. Pablo Fernández — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 04:13:50 -0000

The same happens on the other direction. I've recently watched Star Trek TNG with my wife with Spanish subtitles. I mean, the official ones in the DVD and it's actually insulting. They say "If we go to warp we may have a core breach and the dilithium chamber will explode" and they translate "We can't move, something is broken."

Re: Open Subtitles

J. Pablo Fernández — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 04:06:41 -0000

I know a guy in Buenos Aires who is a great fan of Robotech and he either actively participates or leads (or used to) the Robotech fan group there. It seems they are a lot of guys and are very active. Around 2000 or so when Robotech was re-released in DVDs they called the publishers and said they would make the Spanish subtitles for Robotech, they would do all the production to have them DVD ready, for free, as volunteers. The publishers of course decided it was better to release without subtitles.

I not buying those or any DVDs that I cannot share with my wife and other spanish and non-english speaking friends.

In Europe something weird happens. DVDs are released with subtitles in many, many languages except Spanish. I think in Spain they prefer the sound to be in Spanish, or are they using subtitles to divide zones? Spain is Zone 2, but maybe it gets movies after UK, France, Germany, etc.

I don't think people will pay for any entertainment unless it's optimal, and if you have to rip a DVD and find the subtitles, it's easier and faster to torrent it.

Re: Open Subtitles

curiouslypersistent — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 17:51:52 -0000

I was doing some research in Hong Kong earlier this year around online "piracy" and watching show "illegally" among native English speakers. I was surprised to find out that the main reason for this and the popularity of Tudou isn't an unwillingness to pay (though that will factor with some), but a discomfort with keeping up with character's fast talking on US shows. The user generated subtitles may be imperfect, but they gave them a comfort blanket to follow the plot while they tried to follow the characters. If the networks were more quick to embrace this, I'm confident the levels of unofficial viewing would drop off...

Re: Open Subtitles

mlsmolens — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 17:01:18 -0000

Ouriel

Thanks for the kind words. The open subtitle world is certainly full of unanswered copyright and questions of how best to create the subtitles and time coded captions. We think that at dotSUB, we have created an easy to browser based functionality to allow anyone, anywhere, of course with permission of the rights holder, to create time coded captions and subtitles, and have that video rendered anywhere on the web with those multiple languages.

Would be glad to speak with you further about it.

Re: Open Subtitles

Neil Wehrle — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:12:12 -0000

I haven't asked my Swedish friends about this, but while I loved both books, I wondered about the quality of the English translations. I can't put my finger on it, but in addition to some odd phrasing and what I think are made-up words, at times I felt there must have been some subtlety missing. This could a shortcoming of any crowd-sourced translation (I'm sure Hollywood has ruined a few good movies too). Alternately, alternate "expert" translations would available as well.

Re: Open Subtitles

valto — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 06:51:06 -0000

I have a friend that is obsessed with this stuff, he knows who are the best translator's from English to Finnish for each type of film he want to watch :)

I think even something like google translation could work in movies, because of the type of language (and having video), sure it would work better between some two languages and not so good with some more difficult translations with more challenging structural differences. But I think with what google is doing with their human assisted translation machine, it will continue to get better.

If for nothing else it could be used to do the first version of titles and then continued by human.

Re: Open Subtitles

SpeedNY — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 18:06:24 -0000

Yup, boxee is great! Only other option I have is playon, which is not
my favourote.

Re: Open Subtitles

fredwilson — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 17:18:30 -0000

i hope that boxee will be available for ps3 soon

Re: Open Subtitles

SpeedNY — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 16:33:48 -0000

I use PS3 to play Blue Ray movies. any thoughts on running any other operating systems on it and using it as a media server?

Re: Open Subtitles

fredwilson — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 06:08:04 -0000

I know of a startup that's working on the latter problem

Re: Open Subtitles

Dorian Benkoil — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 18:32:03 -0000

Google is testing a Gmail and Gchat translation engine. in other words, real time machine translation. The big brains at Carnegie Mellon for years have been working on this for the spoken word. At some point, you won't even need the humans to open-source it.

Re: Open Subtitles

deancollins — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 18:26:35 -0000

yeh will if the viewer doesn't like it....they dont have to watch. let them go film their own tv shows/movies. the trasnfer of money is the cost you give up in order for someone to make that movie 'for' you. dont like it find soemthing else to do :)

Re: Open Subtitles

Adrian Palacios — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:17:01 -0000

Johann, funny you mention this! I've been thinking the same thing; there's opportunity in making video easily searchable by adding captions or subtitled translations. No more relying on IMDB quotes, etc. Just associate a searchable text file with a timeline to a specific video.

I know there's a lot of back and forth about in the YouTube debate (e.g., did Google really pay a $1b premium for that site?), or did Google understand that the ability to search video *well* is a possible goldmine...

Re: Open Subtitles

Adrian Bye — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 14:48:15 -0000

Boxee does an excellent job supporting subtitles and automatic download of them. I tried several applications and none of them had the auto subtitles capability like Boxee

Re: Open Subtitles

Guest — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 13:15:11 -0000

More than crowdsourcing benenfit. Have been thinking that Open Subtitles has chance to transform movie search. Netflix could use Open Subtitles to enhance similarity ranking. Or Apple could let us search quotes in movies and show a few minutes clip around that timeline.

Re: Open Subtitles

Adrian Palacios — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 11:34:20 -0000

On the flip side, there are important benefits that could come from crowd-sourcing subtitles.

For instance, I have a small grasp of Spanish because of my family's background. I am by no means conversational, but I know enough to at least realize that we are missing out on incredible subtleties of language/character because the translations for films like Motorcycle Diaries, Amores Perros, Maria Full of Grace, et. al., are somewhat lackluster. Issues like this make me wonder what I'm missing in translations from classic films like Bergman's or Truffaut's, let alone the more contemporary, lighter fare.

So, there may be very good reason filmmakers and writers will attempt to influence translation: better accuracy as far as character and dialogue. But controlling the translations? Perhaps... but I would imagine the crowds should eventually win out :-\

And, to your second point, I think that crowd-sourcing translations, even though they could be hijacked for propaganda, may also open the other door to allowing more subversive titles reach a wider audience.

Finally, it may be important to crowd-source translations as many nations become more globalized. Meaning, if we're already missing the subtleties for Spanish-language films from Mexico or Colombia, I wonder what is "lost in translation" in a French-language film from an Iranian director/writer that is subtitled in English...

Okay, I am done with my this-is-for-the-good-of-humanity speech and am now stepping down from the soapbox, hahaha

Re: Open Subtitles

fredwilson — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 09:03:37 -0000

Google avc.com bittorrent for that answer

Re: Open Subtitles

bombtune — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 05:27:01 -0000

The sames goes for Chinese and Japanese film. I don't understand either language but the day will come when the Internet speaks one language which is always converted into our native tongue.

Re: Open Subtitles

Name — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 04:21:22 -0000

Amusing. "Män som hatar kvinnor" roughly translates into "men that hate women". I guess the English title "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" was more marketable. ;-)

Re: Open Subtitles

Curious Anon — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 00:16:05 -0000

Just Curious. Wanted to know if a VC would download movies via bittorrent. Not sure whether this specific movie torrent is legal or illegal.

Re: Open Subtitles

ShanaC — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 23:10:51 -0000

It's a crowd with good taste in movies? (actually, I wouldn't know, I don't see enough movies to really comment...)