Amara Support Center

It would be great if someone from the Amara developers could write something - in the FAQs? - explaining what the software does with empty subs, even though your Arabic ones in the video you mention now appear 100% complete, as though the software had "crunched away" the empty lines of the editing interface when processing it to produce the actual subs. I mean there are no empty subs in the transcript of the Arabic subs.

But it's something that has puzzled me too when subtitling in English some videos from the Irish Deaf archives where the content is conveyed  partly in Irish Sign Language, partly in written texts within the video. On the one hand there must be a set of subs that includes these texts, in case people want to translate them, and on the other hand, a set of subs without these texts, to be re-added to the original YT video.

So I first make the subs with the texts, then I either "translate" them in another set, deleting those for the texts, or I produce the textless set by downloading the first, reuploading them as another set, where I delete content of the text subs. Sometimes I can submit the textless set as complete, sometimes the software refuses. I think it mainly refuses when I "translate", but I'm not sure.

Err Darren, if you look at the history of revisions for the English subs, you'll see that the empty subs come from  brettle's revision 3, which was uploaded, not done with Amara. They all correspond to passages without spoken speech, except the first 0:00-0:00 one and the last 9:17 – 9:18 one, which  rodrigolq deleted because they really had no function and no effect on the general sync'ing.

But  rodrigolq didn't delete the intermediate empty ones that mark silences.  As the subs work correctly with these empty ones, there was no point in deleting them and risking having to re-sync the following ones.

Darren,

If the Amara developers have made the software accept uploading a file with empty subtitles as complete, then they should not make the software interfere when a subtitler declares that the translation of these subtitles is complete. Actually, the software shouldn't meddle in that at all.

It didn't use to. Check with the developers, but my perception is that this "You have untraslated captions, you must translate all captions in order to submit" interference started in June, during the  imposed moderation on teams that didn't want it. It was a way to prevent users from freeing collaboration on subs they'd started from the moderation-caused paralysis, by declaring them complete.
But as they have removed this moderation imposition on July 3, calling it "mistaken", there's no reason why they should go on making the software interfere with users' decision to declare subs as complete.

The decision to declare a set of subs as complete must rest with its subtitler, not with the software.

HI Darren,

Re your "...I think that the blank subtitles could still be deleted by revising the English subtitles, and deleting the empty subtitle lines. This would help cure this "You have untranslated captions. . . " error for other translations." comment:

Most of the subtitles that got automatically transfered from YouTube when you created Amara pages for videos you added to the Google Team also have empty subtitle lines, at the beginning and at the end. And the Google people who made the original YT subs know their turf as to correct subtitling.

So, do you really want to go suppress these empty lines in all their subtitles in  the videos you add? Wouldn't it make more sense to ask Amara developers to let users declare a translation complete if they leave these empty subtitles empty, as was possible before they added that requirement during the imposed moderation havoc in June?

Wow Esther!

That's really bad. I hadn't paid attention because not being  very good at sync'ing, I prefer to reuse the sync'ing done in the original language when I translate, especially for long videos.

However creating translated subtitles directly from the video as you do is the professional way to go at it, because of length differences between languages. So that option is really essential. Could developers please restore it?

Update Aug. 25, 2012
Moreover, the http://support.universalsubtitles.org/solution/articles/8152-how-do-i-translate-subtitles-page still says:

...You can also choose to type a new translation directly from the video as described in section [Create and Sync a transcript][3], but that will mean more work for you. ...

(The note [3] says: "https://universalsubtitles.tenderapp.com/kb/creating-managing-subtitles/creating-and-syncing-transcripts" but the link does not work).
One more reason why Amara should give us back this possibility.

And now, even uploading subs in another language than the original one forces them into a translation interface where you cannot modify the timing anymore.
In Krister Linder : World Humanitarian Day 2012, I first made the English subtitles with Amara, including transcripts of the written words appearing in the video, as these will have to be translated too if the "audio" subtitles are. To make the "text transcript" subs and "audio" subs sync correctly, I had to repeat the text of the audio in some cases, with the in-video text under it in the same sub.
I wanted to then download these "English" subs and reupload them a "English, British", then remove the transcripts of the in-video text, for easier watching by English speakers.
It didn't work, because when I reuploaded the file, the editing interface for the  produced English, British subtitles was a translation interface. As a result:

• I had to insert periods (".") when I deleted subs that only contained in-video texts, otherwise the software didn't let me submit the subs as complete
• I was unable to regroup in one sub / verse the subs I had originally repeated because the in-video text part changed during one verse.

This means that both sets of subs work OKish in the Amara player, but that the transcript produced by the "English, British" subs looks darned silly with all these periods and repeated subs.

 

So as long as Amara does not allow us to produce different subtitles for translation and for accessibility, can we pretty please have again the possibilities:

• to translate directly from the video (see Esther's message above)
• to upload a translated transcript and edit its sync'ing and sub grouping as before, without being forced into a translation interface?

Moreover, what about uploaded translated subs made with another software, whose sync'ing might be very different from the sync'ing of existing subs in the original language? How would the software cope with that?

Many people do use another software and then upload the result.

 

Update:

 

OK, I tried to upload a revised version of the above mentioned subs, where I eliminated the text transcripts and retimed the subs, by editing the downloaded .sbv file, into my Long Blank Video (created to experiment with Amara software possibilities and their increasing limitations). I had to upload the edited .sbv as "Esperanto" subtitles as the software now prevents me to reupload a file for existing subtitles.

 

Result: http://www.universalsubtitles.org/en/videos/xHZzawTR9MLF/eo/381244, i.e. completely empty subs. With the mention"translated from None" although I indicated French as the source language.

 

This means that people who prefer to edit subs with something else than Amara aren't able anymore to collaborate in the subtitling of Amara videos by uploading, unless they stick to the sync'ing of the "original" subs. Big pity.

Hi Claude,

Subtitles created directly from the video in different languages were bringing up serious issues in our system. To fix these problems, the ability to create these subtitles was disabled. We are working on a way in which to have the possibility to create subtitles directly from the videos regardless of existing languages (and their completion) without causing the serious problems we were trying to fix in the first place.

We do not intend this to be a permanent solution. Our developers are working full time on an Amara upgrade that will bring back these and many other features (the ability to change timing in translated subtitles, for example).   We hope you'll be patient with us while we come up with these solutions. I know it makes it hard to work on subtitles independently, but be reassured this is not a permanent change.

Hi Mcmoucheronh

Please give a link to the subtitles where you have this issue: normally, the new editor should have solved it.

Best,

Claude