Janina Wittmann

Can you share the first few lines of the SRT file itself?

Sorry, do you mean like this:

Ah, now I see what you mean.

The client has sent me a word-file with times codes like: 0,14.

I've then converted it to a txt.-file and opened it in subtitile edit to edit the lines (split or merge them) and convert it to .srt.

I had to split the respecitve "line 1" into two to create "line 2". I did it with subtitle edit, though.

Is it not possible in the Subtitle Data tab of the SDL Trados Subtitling App to split a line?

Many thanks in advance and best wishes,

Janina

Janina Wittmann

there’s a lot that can wrong with this process. If you can share the first few lines as I asked we might be able to suggest a way to resolve your problem. You can change the text to be exactly what I wrote, the important thing is to see what the ids are, what the time codes are and how the text is formatted. So when you replace text to show us (if you really need to replace it) please make sure you put something for each sentence as it’s formatted in your file.

the question you are asking is the wrong one. We can’t fix the software to accommodate files that are prepared incorrectly.

OK, here you go:

Janina Wittmann

ok... I’m not at my computer right now, but based on this I’d take a look at the line breaks. It could be that copy pasting from word has brought in Chars that are not being picked up correctly. If you put them on one line for a test it’ll validate the problem. Then you can try using a different type of line break. If you show the line break chars in your text editor you’ll be able to see what they are.

I’ll try to reproduce later on. If you can anonymise the file and provide a sample with just a few lines it would be easier to test as I’d be starting with the real problem and won’t have to try and find a way to recreate it.

Hope that helps.

Many thanks in advance.

Can you see an attachement?

1
00:00:10,000 --> 00:00:12,539
Welcome to this short introduction video for -.

2
00:00:12,563 --> 00:00:15,900
- can be accessed using the link displayed on the screen now

3
00:00:22,000 --> 00:00:25,900
Please note that - best works using Google chrome and the scaling set to 80%

4
00:00:28,000 --> 00:00:35,816
If at any time you have problems logging in or the information is incorrectly displayed please ensure that the browsers cache has been emptied on a regular basis.

5
00:00:38,000 --> 00:00:42,602
Log I using the details provided by -.

6
00:00:44,000 --> 00:00:48,000
When the - homepage loads, you can see that
there are 6 options on the left hand side.

Janina Wittmann

Like that it works:

But that isn't the file you have problems with because you've removed the break.  If you can do this I can investigate this more easily:

1. take a copy of the original srt you have created
2. delete everything in the file apart from the first 6 subtitles
3. remove the words that are private
4. zip the file and attach it to this thread

Login Ver3_anonym.zip

Thanks for the instructions.

I didn't know I have to zip it.

There you go.

Hi Janina Wittmann

ok - now I can reproduce your problem.  But it is correct:

If you arrange the preview columns like the above and include the "Text" it's a bit easier to understand what's happening.  Segment #1 and #2 in Studio are actually subtitle ID 1 but Studio will segment them because of the full stop.  So this:

becomes this:

But i the preview it's this:

I think the reason you think the second one is missing is because the numbers you are looking at reflect the Studio segment numbering and not the subtitle ID.  So in this case the subtitle starts on segment #1.  The # column is showing you which segment each subtitle starts on.

The same thing occurs on segment #8 where the subtitle ID#6 starts on segment #7.

There is one problem I can see, in that when you add the ID column to the preview it should display the ID of the subtitle, but it doesn't.  That might have made it a bit easier to follow.  So it's currently blank like this:

It should be like this:

Hopefully this explains the problem for you and I'll log the issue of the missing ID numbers for resolution.

Hi Janina Wittmann

ok - now I can reproduce your problem.  But it is correct:

If you arrange the preview columns like the above and include the "Text" it's a bit easier to understand what's happening.  Segment #1 and #2 in Studio are actually subtitle ID 1 but Studio will segment them because of the full stop.  So this:

becomes this:

But i the preview it's this:

I think the reason you think the second one is missing is because the numbers you are looking at reflect the Studio segment numbering and not the subtitle ID.  So in this case the subtitle starts on segment #1.  The # column is showing you which segment each subtitle starts on.

The same thing occurs on segment #8 where the subtitle ID#6 starts on segment #7.

There is one problem I can see, in that when you add the ID column to the preview it should display the ID of the subtitle, but it doesn't.  That might have made it a bit easier to follow.  So it's currently blank like this:

It should be like this:

Hopefully this explains the problem for you and I'll log the issue of the missing ID numbers for resolution.

Janina Wittmann

The missing ID value is now logged as our reference SDLCOM-2385.  Just to make it easier to come back to later.

Hi Paul,

Thank you so much, this was very helpful.

So one last question is left: Is it possible to split a subtitle ID into two with SDL Trados?

In this case, I'd like to have subtitle ID#1 split into ID#1 and ID#2 at the full stop.

Thanks in advance and best regards,

Janina

Janina Wittmann

It is possible, but be very careful with this because Studio itself will not let you undo!  This is a problem that needs to be resolved as test splitting as part of a normal spotting process should be a given.

In the case of your file if you want to split it then you would split the segments in Studio and this will split the time codes and create the additional subtitle with the new timecodes if this is really what you want?

Given you already have the segmentation because of the full stop I think the easiest way to work with this is to use paragraph segmentation on your TM instead of the default.  This way when you open the file you'll have this effect instead of what you have now:

Note that now you have one Studio segment for each subtitle.  If you split the segment you get this:

Now you have seven subtitles instead of six and seven segments instead of six,  But note that the numbering is still different.  Please excuse me for saying this again (I just want to be sure you don't make a mistake), but you really should be sure you understand what is happening here because when you do this your subtitle file will now look like this:

Note that the structure of the file is changed as you now have these sentences being shown after each other as opposed to both being on the screen at the same time.

OK, but why is the first segment: "Welcome to this short introduction video of FUN. FUN can be accessed using the link displayed on the screen now" still in the same line, respectively, still has the same ID in the subtitle data preview?

I'd need it like:

subtilte ID#1 "Welcome to this short introduction video of FUN."

subtitle ID#2: "FUN can be accessed using the link displayed on the screen now"

Janina Wittmann

Your original file does not look like this.  The structure is like this:

So why do you need it to be different?  Is it because you need to have two separate subtitles or because you just want them to be the same when you are working with the segment number in Studio matching the ID of the subtitle?

I need to have two separate subtitles.

I think this is too long for one subtitle, so I'd like to break it for better readability while watching the video.

Janina Wittmann

ok.  In my opinion you should change your process and do this:

1. copy the content from the word file into an srt file
2. open the srt file in subtitle edit
3. go through the subtitles and complete a thorough spotting exercise to make sure the source is as you would like to see it, splitting merging as needed
4. only then add the file to Trados Studio and translate as required

That will make it a lot easier for you and will ensure you can use normal segmentation rules which will be better for re-use longer term on more projects.

Perfect, thanks Paul. :)