Subtitle translation jobs are increasing nowadays since improvement on technology helps companies to use more various types of media including videos to promote their services and products. Understanding context of the video is a key for the quality translation and there is nothing better than watching the source video to understand the accurate context while translators are translating subtitles. dotSUB is a video website like Youtube but the big difference is that it provides very straightforward features to translate subtitles online.
Uploading videos
First you have to upload the video to transcribe or translate subtitles. Go to “www.dotsub.com” and simply sign up. It’s free. Click the down arrow button on the top right and click “Post a New video” in the first row.
It will take you to “Upload Your Video” page. You must enter the video title and the short description of the video and then select the language that is spoken in the video. Other text fields are not required fields so ignore them if you want.
Before you select the video file to upload, you will see the following option.
If you opt in this option, other dotSUB users can access your video to transcribe or translate subtitles on it. There is one more thing. The maximum length of the video you can upload is 25 minutes.
Browse the video file you want to upload and select it when you think everything is ready, then click the “Upload” button.
It will take some time to upload the video and get it processed on the dotSUB. The time for processing the uploaded video will be proportioned to the size of the video file.
Once the video is uploaded, you can see the video on the “My Videos” page. Simply click the down arrow button on the top right again and click “My Videos”.
When the video that you uploaded is processed, the thumb nail of the video will be displayed on the My Personal Videos page and you can click on it.
Now you can play the video on dotSUB. Please click Transcribe Video on right.
As you see in the screenshot below, you can do whatever you want about transcribing or translating the subtitle on the video as you watch the video in real time.
Let’s look at the each sections on the screen:
1 Transcription - All lines of subtitles that you add or the existing subtitle will be displayed here. You can also edit and delete the subtitle here.
2 Keyboard Shortcuts - This provides all information that is pretty useful to edit the subtitle though there are only five shortcuts.
3 Add a transcription line - You can add the new line of the subtitle here and you can also adjust the time code of the new line.
4 Other features
Click here to import existing subtitles - You can import the existing subtitle files in srt format.
Export Transcription - You can export the subtitle of the video in srt format.
Delete transcription - You can delete the entire subtitle.
Mark this transcription complete - You can confirm that the subtitle you made is the final by clicking this item.
Go Back to Video Page - You can go back to Video Page and check out if the subtitle you transcribed or translated is displayed correctly.
Benefits
One of the most strong benefit is that translators do not need any specific tools to translate or transcribe the subtitle of the video, and this web based environment of dotSUB is still providing most essential features to edit the subtitles like other traditional subtitle editors. In the perspective of a project manager who must manage the multiple subtitle translation jobs for many different languages, dotSUB can be a very helpful service to manage all the projects in real time.
Although I would say it’s not the perfect service to edit subtitles comparing with other subtitle editors, the simplicity of dotSUB must be the most attractive advantage for people who are seeking the simple, easy and free service for subtitle translation.
