Translation Workflows
If all you want out of Imaginary Captions is to create captions in your video's native language, then you can safely ignore this section. If, on the other hand, you are creating subtitles in many languages or translating captions into other languages, the Imaginary Captions translation support should meet all your needs.
Translation Basics
Imaginary Captions has the concept of a media language and translation targets. Your media language is the primary language of your video. Basically, it's whatever language most of the dialog or spoken content is in. Your minimum "translation target" is your media language. It's the main language in which you work.
The Captions Panel has a drop down that lists all translation targets, including the media language. You select the language you want to work with and begin captioning for viewers of that language. A video is considered complete when it has been fully captioned in its media language with complete translations in all translation targets.
When you are done with all translations, you can export the captions for an asset in all languages to a target directory. Each individual language will have an extension matching its language code in addition to the export format extension.
Manual Translation
Manual translation isn't much different from the main captioning workflow. You simply switch the language in which you're working to the target language and begin entering captions. Typically, you might export the finished captions from your media language and then import them into the target language so that you have the time codes all set up and can just focus on translation.
If you have a third-party translation vendor, you can export your media language captions into one of the supported industry formats or provide them with your Imaginary Captions project file (it's simply a JSON file). They will then take that file, do their magic, and then provide you with a translated file that you can then re-import into Imaginary Captions.
If your translation vendor has specific file format requirements we do not meet (either for import or export), reach out to us and we can work with you on adding support for those requirements.
Automated Translation
Support for automated translation is a premium feature of Imaginary Captions that requires an in-app purchase.
With automated translation, Imaginary Captions takes your media language captions and performs machine translation on those captions. You quickly receive fully translated captions in all supported target languages.
Sounds magical, right? Well, it is, if you use it wisely. But your workflow should NEVER end with automated translation. While 99%, 98%, or even 95% accuracy vastly speeds up your translation efforts and eliminates the tedium of translation, that 1% inaccuracy can turn your drama into a comedy. An individual competent in the target language should always review the results of automated translation and have the ability to correct the few errors that will certainly be in place.
For details on configuring Imaginary Captions to do machine translation, see Cloud Service Options.
Operation
Setup is the hardest part of the process. Imaginary Captions lets you translate:
- Individual captions
- Individual assets
- All assets in a folder
- All assets in a project
Each individual menu item will be greyed out when:
- You are working in a language other than the media language.
- The asset or assets in question have already been translated to all languages.
- The context doesn't make sense (no asset is currently selected)
Whatever menu item you use, Imaginary Captions will determine which languages lack translations and submit the captions/asset/folder/project to the translation service for translation. The translations generally come back pretty quickly. Simply select one of the target languages to see the translations.
At this point, someone who speaks the target language should review the translations and fix any errors. As noted above, THERE WILL BE ERRORS. Do not rely on automated translation as your sole approach to providing subtitles across many languages.
Troubleshooting
If you are using the Imaginary Captions credit systems (in other words, not BYOC), you are charged credits only when Imaginary Captions successfully translates your captions. This guide should help you understand the errors you might encounter, but you aren't being charged credits by us when they happen.
No Translations
If no translations come back, that's because that language isn't supported by the vendor in question. Not all languages are supported by any translation vendor and some languages have no automated translation support.