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subtitles in Chinese?
Hey guys,
Anybody ever had to do Chinese subtitles for an edit of an American video? I work for a university and some of my administrators are wanting to convert a video I previously produced about the institution into something that students in China can understand for recruitment. I think we’re going to have a staff member here re-record the video’s narration in Chinese and use it to replace the existing English narration but the video features testimonials from our students and they may want Chinese subtitles edited in. I’m trying to stay ahead of them in terms of anticipating what they may ask me to do next thus I want to know if it’s possible in Media 100. I’m running Media 100i v8.2.1 & Boris Graffiti 3.0 on a G4 running OS10.4.9.
The Chinese girl that will be working with me said she can create Word documents in Chinese but I don’t know if such text would be able to be copied and pasted into my CG.
I can say that it will be a bit painstaking for me not knowing the language, having to rely on her to tell me if things are making sense during the edit. -
3 Replies
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You should be able to cut and paste from Word to Graffiti text window with no trouble. You can also import RTF files via a special inport button at the bottom of Text window. Now, Graffiti 3 is pretti dated so I’can’t tell how well it will handle your choice of Chinese font. If version 3 is not working for you there is a trial of Graffiti 5 on borisfx.com, see if that works better.
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fwiw
i edited a documentary which was shot in kosovo and needed to be translated and sub titled for broadcast for an english language audience. it made life – easier – to make a timecode display copy of the final edit to ensure that the words match up with the sub-titles other wise you will spend hours doing it as a hit and miss operation with your translator.or if you need to translate before putting titles on, dub your sound grabs ex wild material to say dvd with a t/c display and add sub titles when putting required clips into timeline
hope that helpsand if your job and company depend upon the outcome, double check the translation before you commit to dvd duplication. chinese is a language of nuance and you need to be right 🙂
good luck
john -
Hi GSW,
In general I have found that when subtitling into a language I don’t speak, such as Chinese, the key is to get whoever does the translation to present it on a sentence by sentence basis with the English. That way you can easily match up the translated subtitle and its duration to the English soundtrack.
As John mentioned, get the translation checked by a number of different people, if possible in the intended country of distribution as languages evolve over time. And you’d be surprised how often slang and colloquialisms turn up in translations done by non-professional translators.
K
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