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Comment by superasn | Hacker News Reader

Being a non-native english speaker I often like to use subtitles for watching movies. While there are some very good sites like podnapisi, subtitlesource, etc unfortunately it is sometimes still hard to find matching subtitles and the sync is usually out.

So to fix this problem I wrote a Perl script for my weekend project and it was surprisingly easy to port to the web thanks to Twitter's bootstrap CSS. So here is the site. Even the domain name is merely 1-hour old!

Your questions / comments are welcome. I hope this is useful to people like me who have had trouble finding movie subtitles and also people who are hearing-impaired.

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I have used dvds with foreign subtitles to learn languages. One thing I don't like is that the spoken translation is usually different than the subtitled one. I think it would be a nice learning aide if the two translations could be made to match. Or to at least have the option to put in alternate subtitled translations.

I'm not sure if you're using "translation for "transcription" here but I think I'm in the same position.

I've been using foreign movies subtitled in the same language as is spoken, as a method for studying languages for years as well and really hate it when the transcription is different from the dialogue. Problem seems to be that the transcription is taken directly from the movie/show script, but when filmed, actors rarely go with the script word-for-word. Unless the movies has been fanSubbed by native speakers, it quite hard to find subs with the exact transcription.

I initially thought fixmysubs addressed this somehow, but i guess not. Cool project none the less.

Translated words and phrases often have to be very different than the literal translation. For example: "sack" in english can also mean firing a worker, or plundering a city. The word for "a large bag" in most languages will not have these same extra meanings.

Also, you may even need 3 subtitles:

- transcription of the spoken language: les jeux sont faits

- literal translation: the games are made/done

- correct/useful translation: the chips are down

I'm not 100% sure since I'm not the guy you responded to, but I think his situation is that he's listening to the audio in the same language as the subtitles, and they are different.

I've seen this happen when English subtitles were enabled for an English language movie I've been watching. Sometimes what is transcribed in the subtitles is different than what people are actually saying (though the gist is the same) even though both are in English.

In any case, this is clearly not something easily fixable by a website script.

Good catch. That looks right now you've pointed it out. I was thrown off by the word "translation".

I use subtitles most of the time. It helps a lot with strange accents and noisy movies. I can watch most things without subs, but I have to turn up the volume and it can get annoying.

I've used some desktop apps that do the same thing your website does. It was really hit or miss and a lot of work. These days if I can't find matching subs, I either wait or watch without.

Instead of searching a dozen websites manually, I highly recommend SubtitleSeeker. It indexes all major subtitle sites and it lets you drill down by language, release, episode, etc.

http://www.subtitleseeker.com/

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