HRWiki:Subtitles

From Homestar Runner Wiki

Revision as of 07:17, 30 August 2006

SUBTiTLE'd!

Purpose

Some of us have started working on subtitling Homestar Runner Flash cartoons to make them accessible to a wider audience. Some non-native speakers sometimes need to go over the wiki transcript just to see what a word or two means. This way, it's already inside the toon window itself. Also, we could open the door for people with hearing problems who still want to experience Homestar Runner like the rest of us.

Some flash artists like Weebl from Weebl and Bob and the people behind Too Much Spare Time Animation have already added subtitles to some of their toons. Apparently, The Brothers Chaps have thought about subtitles already.

How to Watch

The recommended way to watch the subtitles is using the Greasemonkey All-in-one script. You need to install Firefox and Greasemonkey for this. This script uses the latest version of the subtitles from the wiki.

As an alternative for those without Firefox, we have a beta version up and running here. The subtitles are tested for the latest Firefox and Internet Explorer 6. Go check it out! Click on "watch" to watch the toon with subtitles. These subtitle files will only be updated every few days.

How to Write Your Own

• To write your own subtitles, you need to watch the toons with a seekbar. The best way to do this is with the same Greasemonkey All-in-one script.
• Then open the sample subtitle file (link will follow). The root element should look something like this:

 <transcript xml:lang="en-us" file="flashfile.swf" width="550" height="400">

Make sure that every value is set correctly. The language should be set to "en-us" if you make English subtitles. The width and height values must be taken from the homestarrunner.com HTML page for your toon. In Firefox, right-click on the page (not the Flash toon), and choose "View Page Source" to find the values. For most toons, this will be 550 and 400.

• Now copy the transcript from the toon into it. Go through the transcript and put each sentence on one line (or a few sentences, if they are said together). Also, delete the "CHARACTER:" instances as they occur, they are unneeded for the XML.
  • Consider a few factors as you break up the text: readability (more than two displayed lines might be better split into two subtitles), humor (a good punchline might be better put in a separate subtitle for maximum effect), and pacing (if the character uses an exaggerated pause, it might be better to use a new subtitle for the part after the pause).
• For each of your little chunks of transcript, use the seekbar to find the number of the frame when the chunk starts, and the number of the frame when it ends.
• Now you turn all this information into XML like this:

Assume that Strong Bad says "I have my very own a-The Cheat!" from frame number 348 to 372. You would write it like this:

  <line start="348" end="372" speaker="strongbad">I have my very own a-The Cheat!</line>

Every line that you define like this will be displayed as one subtitle between the frames 348 and 372. The text will be red, because that is Strong Bad's color for the subtitles. If the viewer has colored text turned off, then it will say "Strong Bad:" before the line.

Here is a more complicated example from cheatar:

  <line start="512" end="529">
    <strongbad>Then what good are you?</strongbad>
    <thecheat>The Cheat noises</thecheat>
    <sfx>Pop!</sfx>
  </line>

Three things happen between frames 512 and 529, and they are all displayed as one subtitle. Strong Bad's text will be red, and the Cheat noises will be yellow. Both the sound effect "Pop!" the The Cheat noises will be displayed in parentheses to show that they are not actually spoken.

In the first example, the <line> tag has an attribute speaker="strongbad" that indicates that the whole subtitle text is spoken by Strong Bad. In the second example, this attribute is missing, and each speaker has it's own element.

• Now, how do you know that it's "strongbad" and not "Strong Bad"? These IDs are defined here. Every character has his or her (or its) own ID that you can use to indicate who is saying what. You have to use one of the IDs listed in that file. Of course, new characters will be added over time.
• In addition to these character IDs, you can also use "sfx" for sound effects such as "Preeeeow!". These are shown only if the viewer has the "captions" option turned on.
• You can also add another couple of attributes to lines:

 <homestar sfx="sfx">sigh</homestar>

sfx="sfx" acts the same as using "sfx" as the speaker name (italics and parentheses, hidden if "captions" is turned off), but is spoken by a particular character.

 <marzipan voiceover="voiceover">Hi, this is Marzipan. Please leave me a message.</marzipan>

voiceover="voiceover" indicates that the speaker can't be seen – either off-stage, or speaking through a telephone or television, or similar,

 <homestar volume="0.8">I'm at the bottom of a giant piiiiit...</homestar>

volume="number" makes the text bigger or smaller, to represent the speaking being louder or softer – 1.0 is normal-size.

All three of these can be used in the <line> elements, or the nested speaker elements.

How To Test Your Subtitles

• Open the All-in-one script's preferences window (click the icon in the top left), turn on the "Test subtitles script" option, and copy your XML code into the box. Click "Save and apply". it will then play the movie using your subtitles.

Standards

• The subtitles should match the transcript. Don't make up words that aren't in the transcript. Fix the transcript if you find mistakes, but make sure to read the toon's Talk page before you change disputed pronounciations.
• Make sure that subtitles appear on screen long enough to be read comfortably. Always assume that your audience cannot actually hear what is being said.
• Subtitle everything that is being said. Even if, for example, Strong Bad is typing what he says. One way to test this is to view the subtitled toon with the sound muted. If you cannot easily follow the action, something needs to be changed.
• As with any transcript, don't put words in The Cheat's mouth. He only says "The Cheat noises" or "Angry The Cheat noises" etc. Don't put "meh". Similarly for Pom Pom, just put "bubbles".
• If you're super-cool, you will also make subtitles for relevant sound effects. Examples are

 <sfx>The Geddup Noise</sfx>
 <sfx>Preeeeeow!</sfx>
 <sfx>chainsaw noises</sfx>
 <sfx>buzzing noise</sfx>

• You can put HTML formatting in the subtitles, but it is discouraged. The subtitle system will display everything in standardized, great-looking ways. Exceptions are for example when spatial layout makes it much clearer what is going on, or <em> and <strong> for emphasis.
• Do not put JavaScript in the subtitles. Never. Ever. <embed>, <object>, <img>, and <a> tags are also a no-no.

Translating Subtitles

Creating international subtitles is a great way of making the Flash toons more accessible to a wider audience. Plus, it's fun!

• Always start from the English subtitles. This saves a lot of time and work.
• Use the same start and end values for all languages whever possible.
• The language code in the article name must match the language code in Subtitles:Languages, and should be the 2-letter language code for your language (such as "en" for English). The language code in the transcript XML itself can be a more specific XML language code (such as "en-us" for American English).
• Translate the character names in the character file into your language.
• If your language is written from the right to the left, put dir="rtl" in the opening <transcript> tag.
• Do not use automatic translation tools, they usually output gibberish. Only translate subtitles if you know what you are doing.

See also

• See the Subtitles namespace.
• See subtitles in:
  • English
  • German
  • Hebrew
  • Spanish
• The list of character ids and names
• The list of languages