How to become subtitler of a Chinese show without knowing any Chinese
For the last half year I have been on a very interesting journey, which I record here to serve as a warning to others.
1. Fall in love with Chinese show
2. Notice show has very very bad English subtitles
3. Decide to make the English in the subtitles just a bit more grammatical.
4. Notice that some of the English in the subtitles makes no sense at all
5. Use knowledge of kanji to recreate some hanzi to put in an online Chinese dictionary to find out what might be meant
6. Use hanzi generator inefficiently to create hanzi without kanji parallels, to put in an online Chinese dictionary to find out what might be meant
7. Download file with the Chinese version of like, half the dialogue in the show (oh thank fuck!)
8. Decide somewhere along the line that you want the subs not just grammatical but also NICE.
9. Employ Google translate, Bing translate, and Systran to offer their interpretations and try to figure out which compromise translation might be right
10. Photograph Chinese subtitles off the computer screen with Google translate OCR, send to self by email to put into all of said translation services
11. Post on forums with questions
12. Continue the above to deal with most manageable things
13. Find the totally unmanageable things
14. Put into anything at all, despair
15. Be a nuisance on forums with ever more hysterical questions
16. Offer personal services to passing Chinese people in return for accurate translations
This doesn't cover timing. If anyone is looking for personal services in return for timing, hit me up at willdoanythingfortiming@desperate.com [There are currently
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