What makes AI subtitle translation difficult? How does BaoCut align English and Chinese when their word order differs?
When watching translated videos, you’ve probably seen subtitles like these:
The subtitles appear before anyone starts speaking;
A sentence is split into several chunks, so the translation doesn’t match what’s actually being said;
Two or three lines pile up on screen, covering half the picture.
These are all challenges I’ve run into while translating subtitles.
In this video, I’ll use my open-source project BaoCut as an example and compare it with the traditional subtitling workflow. I’ll explain how to create a word list with timestamps, then cover five common pitfalls: speech recognition getting words wrong, misidentifying speakers, choosing what unit to translate, differences in English and Chinese word order, and how many lines to show on screen.
Finally, a bonus: once you have timestamps for every word, you can highlight words one by one and create KTV-style and falling-duck animations. The examples come from real projects on my computer.
This is Part 1. In Part 2, I’ll explain why you shouldn’t just hand your subtitles to ChatGPT.
Video 1 is in English
Video 2 is in Chinese
Project: http://github.com/jimliu/baocut
Download: http://baocut.com
When watching translated videos, you’ve probably seen subtitles like these:
The subtitles appear before anyone starts speaking;
A sentence is split into several chunks, so the translation doesn’t match what’s actually being said;
Two or three lines pile up on screen, covering half the picture.
These are all challenges I’ve run into while translating subtitles.
In this video, I’ll use my open-source project BaoCut as an example and compare it with the traditional subtitling workflow. I’ll explain how to create a word list with timestamps, then cover five common pitfalls: speech recognition getting words wrong, misidentifying speakers, choosing what unit to translate, differences in English and Chinese word order, and how many lines to show on screen.
Finally, a bonus: once you have timestamps for every word, you can highlight words one by one and create KTV-style and falling-duck animations. The examples come from real projects on my computer.
This is Part 1. In Part 2, I’ll explain why you shouldn’t just hand your subtitles to ChatGPT.
Video 1 is in English
Video 2 is in Chinese
Project: http://github.com/jimliu/baocut
Download: http://baocut.com