Translating Subtitles

This page explains the overview of the translation process of tutorial video captions (subtitles). You may want to also read the Tutorial Captions and Transcripts page of this handbook if you are new to captioning.

Adding Translated Subtitles to an English Video

When you have an English video that is already subtitled (see this documentation for more information on adding English subtitles) and wants to add translations in your language, follow these steps:

1. Export the English subtitle file from WordPress.tv
2. Upload it to Amara.org
3. Make edits
4. Export and change the file extension to ttml
5. Upload to wptv
6. Have someone approve it
7. Add the subtitle information to the Learn WordPress Tutorial

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Adding Original Language Subtitles to a non-English Video

When you have a non-English video you want to subtitle in its original spoken language, follow these steps:

1. Upload the video to Sonix.ai (ask the Training Team for access)
   1. Sonix.ai supports 37 languages. If your language is not listed, you may need to manually add subtitles using Amara  
2. Either edit it there or export and use Amara.org
   1. If you are familiar with Amara, it may be faster to use it. Also, some languages may not work well with Sonix.ai editor
3. Export and change the file extension to ttml
4. Upload to wptv
5. Have someone approve
6. Add the subtitle information to the Learn WordPress Tutorial

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Updating Existing Subtitle Translations

If you find any mistakes in an existing subtitle file, you can fix them by updating the file and replacing it with the old one: 

1. Search the video on Amara.org
   1. The original may be on Sonix.ai or Otter.ai only, if the first editor did all edits on those platforms.
   2. If you are comfortable handling an XML file, you can make edits on the translation subtitle file exported from WPTV (*1)
2. Make edits
3. Export and change the file extension to ttml
4. Ask someone with WPTV access to replace the old one (*2)

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Notes*

1. When you download a subtitles.ttml file from WordPress.tv, non-ascii characters in subtitle files get converted to entities (e.g. HTMLHTML HTML is an acronym for Hyper Text Markup Language. It is a markup language that is used in the development of web pages and websites. code like <br> turns into <br />). Editing this file and replacing it with the current one will work ok, but using Amara/Otter.ai/Sonix.ai may be easier if a contributor wants to make major changes.
2. The old subtitle file must be unapproved and removed first (there’s a known bug that prevents new file upload if you delete the old file without unapproving)

Last updated: July 15, 2022