Editing Subtitles in Other Languages

[johner26]

Hi,

I live in a country that speak european language, like spanish.

Well, our alphabet generally use latim or greek characters.

But, if I wanna work /edit subtitles in other languages, like chinese, japanese or another non-latim / greek languages based, how can I do this?

Example: I have my own dvd with japanese subtitles and I really wanna edit some things in it.

What should I do to edit and create new japanese characters and save them in another working dvd ?

Creating a dvd with new subtitles is not the main problem: I have found many topics teaching how to do it in this forum. :p

The problem is HOW to work in my PC using different non-occidental characters that are NOT usally used in our alphabet. And save them in the original language too !!

I will need to use Unicode System to edit those kind os subtitles ? Or have an special keyboard to work in those different non-occidental characters?

In this site I sent another message that says about some professional subtitling tools that can handle with all ( or almost ) kind of alphabet in the world. Example: chinese, arabic, hebrew, cirillic, etc.

---> http://www.cavena.com/

---> http://www.softni.com/

Those tools must be very expensive ( I guess ) and I really wanna know if it will have a way to create, edit, timing and syncronize subtitles using alternatives ( freewares, if it's possible ) programs.

I know that VobSub can SHOW any kind of letter in the videos. But HOW can I create it, IS the question.

Any help will be very apreciate.

Thanks in advance !!

johner

[Liisachan]

It's possible, but not easy (mainly because OCR is difficult for a language such as Chinese) and there're quite a few things to learn.

The first thing to do is go to your Control Panel -> Regional and Language Options -> Languages -> "Install files for complex script..." and "Install files for East Asian langauges."

The orthodox method to type in chinese or japanese should be using what is called IME. Do some google and read a page like Microsoft Global Input Method Editors (IMEs) (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/downloads/recommended/ime/default.mspx). there're other methods too. Check Unicode and Multilingual Programs and Utilities (http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/utilities.html). Also, there's an editor like Kajero, where you can type Korean 'directly' (2-beolsik) without using IME. Yet another way is a "clickable keyboard"...Hebrew (http://www.faireal.net/matroska/unicode/hebrew.php.utf8) ...Unicode Thaana Click Keyboard (http://www.faireal.net/matroska/unicode/thaana.php.utf8) etc.

SSA can be in unicode, but you might have to save it using a specific charset (Shift_JIS for Japanese, EUC-JP for Korean , etc.) because some tools, like MaestroSBT, doesnt accept Unicode. This means, it could be extremely difficult to handle 'unicode-only languages' such as Tatar, Khmer, etc.

[johner26]

Very Interesting !!! :p

I was wondering HOW other people around the world could edit and create their subtitles, considering that many alphabets are very different than occidental ones.

I really apreciate study other languages and really wanna know how to work with different languages and alphabets, like hebrew, arabic, chinese and different ones.

Their language are very different and recquires some specific methods of editing, timing, etc.

Your explanation above is working for all kind languages too or only for chinese, japanese, korean and similars East Asian languages ?

Thanks very much for helping, Liisachan !! ;)

If you have any more explanation to add this thread, please, fell free to post it, ok ?

Best regards.

johner