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jonny
Posts: 2
Joined: Mon Jul 18, 2011 8:31 pm

same-words-than-synchronisation-subs

Mon Jul 18, 2011 8:44 pm

Hello there,

I am trying to improve the foreign languages i learned at school
by watching films with subtitles. Anyway, the problem is that
all sub-files i found yet are not word-to-word the same as the spoken language.
they are just explaining the scense.

Anybody knows where i find subtitel-files that are exactly the same
words like f.e. a movie in spanish synchronisation?

greets j

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scooby007
Site Admin
Posts: 837
Joined: Thu Mar 05, 2009 10:49 pm
Location: Scandalous

Re: same-words-than-synchronisation-subs

Mon Jul 18, 2011 11:11 pm

Hi,

If they are not verbatim, that means they are machine translations.

Machine translations should be deleted. The only way you can get your hands on a verbatim subtitle is if someone edits that subtitle, gets it from a sub-pack (even though they can sometimes have different words) or the subtitle is from a retail DVD. You can get retail subtitles by ripping them from the DVD and the others come in a sub-pack with the movie as you download them, but not all the movies contain sub-packs.

Hope this helps!

jonny
Posts: 2
Joined: Mon Jul 18, 2011 8:31 pm

Re: same-words-than-synchronisation-subs

Fri Jul 22, 2011 10:29 am

Hi,
thx for the reply.
I tryed to take your advice, and looked for dvd ripped subs (what they said in the file-name) on a lot of pages.
I tryed it with the pixar films cars in spanish and ratatouille in french (which i tought are having simple words)
but non of this subtitles i found had more than 50percent similar to the spoken languages!!
greets

srtpal
Posts: 59
Joined: Sun Jun 21, 2009 5:28 pm

Re: same-words-than-synchronisation-subs

Tue Jul 17, 2012 11:15 pm

Anyway, the problem is that all sub-files i found yet are not word-to-word the same as the spoken language.
That is a fairly standard practice, especially when the actors are talking too fast.

See the Code of Good Subtitling Practice (a pdf file), which says:
The number of lines in any subtitle must be limited to two.
It also says:
When it is necessary to condense dialogue, the text must be coherent.
That means that, whenever the dialog is too long to fit to two lines, the subtitler will shorten the dialog. In other words, the subtitles do not always just write down the exact text of the dialog as spoken by the actors, because that is simply not always possible.

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jcdr
Posts: 540
Joined: Sun Apr 08, 2012 9:49 am

Re: same-words-than-synchronisation-subs

Sun Sep 30, 2012 11:52 am

I missed this interesting post.

srtpal is correct. The standard practice for many syndication parties, is that reading speed should be around 140 words/min, with a strict maximum of 180 words/min. Even slower for children movies.

In some movies -and most of TV series-, it is not uncommon for spoken dialogs to be above 250 words/min. So the written caption has to be shortened. Especially nowadays when distributors send timecode templates to professional translators, to have the subs translated into up to 50 different languages with various reading velocities. Also this prevents the subs to overlap the scene changes -which is considered bad practice.

A Verbatim sub is generally not professionally made; rather created by a fan who does not have the same care about children/deficient people reading speeds, or scene changes.

Also see this Wikipedia link for difference between subtitling and captioning http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subtitle_%28captioning%29.

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