[Matching 2 subtitles files] Copy and Paste ?

[Hayholten]

Hello everyone,

I'm sorry if the topic title isn't clear, but I'm not sure how to approach the issue.

I have a first SRT file with French subtitles. It's perfectly synchronized, everything's fine.

I need to create a new SRT file, this time with the English translation. So far, so good.

And just as well, because I have the English text in question in an existing SRT file.

Unfortunately, the file containing the English text is not formatted at all like the French one. However, it's imperative that the two files have the same TCs, the same number of lines, and so on.

For example, in the screenshot below, the first line of the French text splits into two in the English version.

Would the only solution be to create a new SRT file from the French file and copy and paste the English text, line by line?

Isn't there a faster way?

Thank you very much for your help.

[niksedk]

You can try auto-translation via DeepL or Google, but that will of course give new issues. I'm not sure which is faster.

[Hayholten]

You can try auto-translation via DeepL or Google, but that will of course give new issues. I'm not sure which is faster.

Thanks for you answer !

At first, I thought of automatic translation by copy and paste, after extracting the English text on its own, but that's not efficient and doesn't save any time.

As for a new automatic translation via DeepL or similar, unfortunately that's not possible. I'm working on a movie in the original Chinese language, and the English subtitles have already been created by another company. And for copyright reasons, I can't touch them...

I need to align the lines of these two languages, French and English, but I'm afraid I'll end up spending my weekend copying and pasting manually :/.

[DarremMolko]

If you want to synchronize the English subtitles with the French subtitles and you don't mind using a different app, I would recommend using either alass or ffsubsync. If you have the video file you could even use autosubsync.

[darnn]

What I do in this situation is pretty simple (though it can be time-consuming, depending on how different the subtitles are):
Open the subtitles you want to sync to in Subtitle Edit. Then go to Tools->Make new empty translation from current subtitle. You are now in translator mode. Now, open the second subtitle file in a text editor (or another instance of Subtitle Edit) and copy its contents to the clipboard. Now go back to the Subtitle Edit window where you're in translator mode, right-click on the first subtitle in list view, and there go to Column->Paste from clipboard. Here select Text only and Overwrite. Now you have your second set of subtitles in the translation field. Save this new file, and now you can start adjusting the text of the translation subtitles to that of the original subtitles.
To make this easier, I would suggest setting up keyboard shortcuts (in Options->Settings->Shortcuts) for the following:
List view->Column, delete text and shift up
List view->Column, insert text
Text box->Move last word to next subtitle
Text box->Fetch first word from next subtitle
Text box->Move last word from first line down (current subtitle)
Text box->Move first word from next line up (current subtitle)
And experimenting with them until you get the hang of using them.