state of the art: automatic subtitle translation
Thread poster: Wandpappe
Wandpappe
Wandpappe
Germany
Oct 28, 2020

I like to translate lot of subtitles. Generally I have to say, I am satisfied with the translations of google or even better deepl. I also found out, there are several tools which use automatic translation services (for example https://translatesubtitles.com or Subtitleedit). Both using google translate and the results are horrible. The problem is, that these tools translating directly the chunks of the su... See more
I like to translate lot of subtitles. Generally I have to say, I am satisfied with the translations of google or even better deepl. I also found out, there are several tools which use automatic translation services (for example https://translatesubtitles.com or Subtitleedit). Both using google translate and the results are horrible. The problem is, that these tools translating directly the chunks of the subtitles and not the full sentences. This has the advantage, that the timecode alignment of the translated chunks are correct all the time, but the translation result is horrible, because the automatic translation services prefer full sentences.

In 2017 there was a google code challenge exactly addresing this problem: ( https://codein.withgoogle.com/archive/2017/organization/5637337312657408/task/6104526406811648/ ):
Things to watch for: You will need to pass complete sentences to deepl, and of course sentences can take more than one subtitle frame, so it's not as easy as read line by line, or frame by frame. You will need to buffer a bit, and well, be a bit clever.

Additionally I found out that there is going on a lot of scientific work for professional subtitle translation...I found a lot of academic papers which describe sophisticated approaches, but I can't find any suitable softwares doing so.

So here is the question:
Do you know any software (free or paid) which can really handle translations in a proper automatic way (and passing/splitting full sentences) ?
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Thayenga
Thayenga  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 21:03
Member (2009)
English to German
+ ...
Just wondering Oct 29, 2020

Which real translator would even consider using Google translate?

Kang Seok Lee
Woodstock (X)
Barbara Carrara
 
Kang Seok Lee
Kang Seok Lee
South Korea
Local time: 05:03
Member (2018)
English to Korean
+ ...
I wonder which can really handle translations in a proper automatic way Oct 29, 2020

Subtitling is changing speech(vocal discussion, talking, and conversation) into readable sentences or words.
As you well know, speech always accompanies a gesture, facial expression, and some other visible way of delivering ideas.
But when you convert them into written form(sentences, clauses, and words), there is almost no way to contain those non-vocal points. So you should make clauses or single words(as well as the whole sentence) that can describe each video scene's situation an
... See more
Subtitling is changing speech(vocal discussion, talking, and conversation) into readable sentences or words.
As you well know, speech always accompanies a gesture, facial expression, and some other visible way of delivering ideas.
But when you convert them into written form(sentences, clauses, and words), there is almost no way to contain those non-vocal points. So you should make clauses or single words(as well as the whole sentence) that can describe each video scene's situation and speeches(vocal points).
Besides, to meet humans' comfortable eyecatching speed of written sentences(=subtitles), synchronization is the most critical condition for subtitle translation.
Therefore, I wonder, "which can really handle translations in a proper automatic way."
You also noted that :
"Things to watch for: You will need to pass complete sentences to deepl, and of course, sentences can take more than one subtitle frame, so it's not as easy as read line by line, or frame by frame. You will need to buffer a bit, and well, be a bit clever."

All of the above jobs are time-taking as a matter of fact.
So if I were you (and if I have an SRT file or any written subtitle format, not only voices), I would translate the subtitles directly into the target language.
Still, there is no program or software which can make "professional subtitle translation."You don't need to take a long way deliberately.
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Woodstock (X)
 
Wandpappe
Wandpappe
Germany
TOPIC STARTER
maybe my initial post was not clear... Oct 29, 2020

@Thayenga
In our project VERY MUCH video material is created (due to corona online communication). At the moment the audio gets subtitles automatically (with microsoft stream). The subtitling-results are quite good, we only correct some major mistakes and grammer. Later we use automatic translation. At the moment the quality of the results vary, but at the moment it is better than nothing. So we are no "real translators", but we have to challenge these task in some way and looking for impr
... See more
@Thayenga
In our project VERY MUCH video material is created (due to corona online communication). At the moment the audio gets subtitles automatically (with microsoft stream). The subtitling-results are quite good, we only correct some major mistakes and grammer. Later we use automatic translation. At the moment the quality of the results vary, but at the moment it is better than nothing. So we are no "real translators", but we have to challenge these task in some way and looking for improvement all the time.

@Kang Seok Lee
thanks for your thoughts. I do not doubt all your clarifications, I completly agree that subtitle translation is a complex process. But maybe my initial post was not clear: I am not searching for a "human-like (automatic) professional translation" (I know it does not exist yet). I am looking for "professional translation technology" which takes into account recent research achievements. On the one hand there IS a great progress in (subtitle) machine translation research. I found A LOT OF scientific papers describing approaches for improvements. Nobody can deny this fact. On the other hand the available softwares I found (for example https://translatesubtitles.com or Subtitleedit) are doing the task so clumsy. I can't really believe that there is no software outside which can't do better than these. And looking on the proz community, I thought there are some people involved who can help me with some software recommendations.

By the way, if someone else is interrested. In the meantime I found this software: https://github.com/mepeichun/SubtitleTranslate (the google-api is broken, you have to work around it). It allows the described sentence-merging/splitting feature. First tests looking promising.
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Nina Michael
Nina Michael
United States
Local time: 16:03
Member (2010)
Italian to English
+ ...
Hire a professional translator Oct 29, 2020

If you are willing to pay for software that automatically translates subtitles, why not just pay a professional translator? This is what we do for a living. Automatic translation is never going to be accurate, especially with fragmented sentences.

Kristopher Brame
Tradupro17
 


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state of the art: automatic subtitle translation







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