re-authoring with different subs

[Lev]

there are a lot of great asian movies of which the only decent dvd is the french release..

that's why i'm thinking about getting those french discs and re-authoring them with english subtitles..

what would be the easiest way to do this?

would converting the subtitles to a plain text format and running them through a translater work?

in most cases an american or english disc is available so thats another way to get an english subtitlescript.. timing is probably more of a problem in that case..

maybe it's an idea to first run the french script through a translater and compare it sentence to sentence with the english script from another dvd but keep the french timing?

[three_dee]

I don't think there'd be any 'really' easy way to do what you want, if you consider translating the subs by hand - or even by some translater. Don't get me wrong, some translaters are very good, and can translate even pretty complicated sentences, but it'll always be sub-par result you'll end up with. I'm no french expert, but I recall they don't destinguese between 'he, she and it', and imagine what problems that can cause..
The best solution would be, if you some how could get hold of an already translated subtitle file - weather it's vobsup format or txt based, as you can always turn one format in to the other.

From own experience I might add, I once added an extra subtitle to a movie, which did not have any - but I was so fortunate to find it in my native language on one of them fance subtitle sites. The timing was, however, wrong but I used SubAdjust to fix the timing and previewed in zoomplayer to test if it was synced. Then used sub2stl so I could import the subtitle directly in Maestro DVD.
The result was fine, and the subs looked 'professionel' - only downside would be, if you're going to re-create the menus to match the original's it might not be something you do while boiling some eggs - it takes time doing that in Maestro DVD.

[auenf]

Originally posted by Lev
would converting the subtitles to a plain text format and running them through a translater work?

subrip has an OCR option, which would help you.

in most cases an american or english disc is available so thats another way to get an english subtitlescript.. timing is probably more of a problem in that case..

2 problems with using american over british english:

- you get real english with the british one
- the timing of the PAL R2 english should be similar to the french PAL (SECAM).

Enf...