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Can we have "Translate directly from the video" and a transcript-editing interface for uploaded translations back, please?
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Hi Claude.
At this moment Amara is focusing its energies on working on the new model and version which will include features to make it more powerful and flexible. What that means is that requests for new features to be added to the new version are being accepted (that's what the "suggestions to make Amara great" forum is for), but those changes will have to wait until the new version is brought out. "Convert to Timed Subtitles" is only meant as a short term fix: the new Amara will have no issues with independent timing for subtitles.
One of our goals is to bring out the new Amara as quickly as possible. To do that, developers need to focus on that: bringing back features on the current platform would take developers away from building a long term solution.
So please continue adding your suggestions to the forum and together we'll build the new Amara.
At this moment Amara is focusing its energies on working on the new model and version which will include features to make it more powerful and flexible. What that means is that requests for new features to be added to the new version are being accepted (that's what the "suggestions to make Amara great" forum is for), but those changes will have to wait until the new version is brought out. "Convert to Timed Subtitles" is only meant as a short term fix: the new Amara will have no issues with independent timing for subtitles.
One of our goals is to bring out the new Amara as quickly as possible. To do that, developers need to focus on that: bringing back features on the current platform would take developers away from building a long term solution.
So please continue adding your suggestions to the forum and together we'll build the new Amara.
Claude Almansi
I've been trying to translate into Italian the original English subs (downloaded as .sbv ) of The Lion King - Be Prepared - Tay Zonday outside Amara, then add the resulting new .sbv file to the main page as Italian subs, lest some change "in the number or IDs of lines" in the English subs.
When I uploaded the new subs, the software forced me to describe them as translated from English: no other option. They looked alright, but when I opened the edit interface, it was a translation interface. As I didn't want that, I used the "Convert to Timed Subtitles" option described in How do I translate subtitles?. Then I did Save and Exit.
The Italian subtitles stopped showing in the list on the left, though they still existed, but were reduced to the title and description of the video. I thought it might be due to my having unticked the ticked box for "These subtitles cover the entire video" in the saving dialog, so I asked Jules to delete these Italian subs in Reply here to request to Delete a video or Remove subtitles, as I wanted to try again.
She did.
I did again, as above. When I did Save and Exit, this time the box for "These subtitles cover the entire video" came unticked. I didn't change it. Same deletion as the first time.
Before, if you wanted to resync an existing translation made with the translation interface, all you had to do was to download the existing subs and reupload them, creating a second track for the same language that had a transcript editing interface where you could resync the subs.
That worked glitchlessly, and other subtitlers could choose which version of the subs they preferred to collaborate to: directly from the video or in the translation interface. Tthere are heaps of languages with several subtitle sets in Learn about Universal Subtitles, the video embedded in the Amara homepage, created by people who wanted to work directly from the video or with the translation interface, or in other different ways from existing ones. Whereas "Convert to Timed Subtitles" has glitches, and doesn't offer this possibility anymore.
Moreover, the unexplained present bee in the developers' bonnet about original language of videos - and about what you're translating from when you make other subs than the original ones - severely limits what could formerly be done with the great Amara software. E.g. creating a timed script for an audio description of a video is now impossible: you're not "translating from" any language when you do that, you're describing visual elements. Yet when you create a new track, the software forces you to indicate a language you're translating from.
So can we have "Translate directly from the video" and a transcript-editing (instead of translating) interface for uploaded translations back again, please?