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Where do I see if another's youtube channel is linked to Amara?

Hey there,

I'm pretty new to Amara. After reading the FAQs there is one question remaining.

Is there a way to see, if another's Youtube channel is linked to Amara? Personally I'd like to know if my subtitles appear on Youtube itself - before translating.

Can you help me?
Thanks
Fredze

PS: My mothertongue is German, not English. Sorry for any mistakes.

Best Answer

Thank you for this important  question, Fredze. The theoretical answer is in the Syncing to YouTube tutorial of this Amara support, which says:


"Amara invites your viewers to subtitle by adding your [Amara] video's URL to its YouTube description and appending a final subtitle (if space allows)."


followed by a screenshot of a YT video where the last subtitle says: "Subtitles by the Amara.org Community" and the description says "Help us caption and translate this video on Amara.org" + a universalsubtitles.org URL because universalsubtitles.org was the URL of Amara when the screenshot was made in February 2012 (now the message in the description mentions the amara.org URL of the subtitling page).


So in theory, you can go to the "URLs" tab of the Amara page, open the YT URL mentioned there and see if the "Help us caption and translate this video on Amara.org ...." message shows in the description of the YT original.


It often works: a Google video search for these words yields "About 3,030,000 results" presently. However:

  • The owner of the video can delete the message in the description and, now that YT has enabled subtitle editing, also the one in the last subtitle. Many do because they did the syncing without realizing they would be added.
  • As Jules Rincon, who was in charge of this support forum before me, explained in another topic, there is also a different syncing to YouTube for Amara teams, which doesn't add these messages to the original videos.
  • Lastly, owners of a YT channel can also create Amara subtitling pages for single videos without doing the syncing, then manually download the Amara subtitles and add them to the original, and this, of course, does not add these messages either.


So there is no 100% sure way to know if subtitles made on Amara are being reused in the original video but still, checking the original video's description is worth trying.


Update: I've now created a ticket #73637 from your topic, Fredze: you should have received a notification about it. I did that because tickets go to Amara staff, who can give you a more authoritative reply than me.


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Answer

Thank you for this important  question, Fredze. The theoretical answer is in the Syncing to YouTube tutorial of this Amara support, which says:


"Amara invites your viewers to subtitle by adding your [Amara] video's URL to its YouTube description and appending a final subtitle (if space allows)."


followed by a screenshot of a YT video where the last subtitle says: "Subtitles by the Amara.org Community" and the description says "Help us caption and translate this video on Amara.org" + a universalsubtitles.org URL because universalsubtitles.org was the URL of Amara when the screenshot was made in February 2012 (now the message in the description mentions the amara.org URL of the subtitling page).


So in theory, you can go to the "URLs" tab of the Amara page, open the YT URL mentioned there and see if the "Help us caption and translate this video on Amara.org ...." message shows in the description of the YT original.


It often works: a Google video search for these words yields "About 3,030,000 results" presently. However:

  • The owner of the video can delete the message in the description and, now that YT has enabled subtitle editing, also the one in the last subtitle. Many do because they did the syncing without realizing they would be added.
  • As Jules Rincon, who was in charge of this support forum before me, explained in another topic, there is also a different syncing to YouTube for Amara teams, which doesn't add these messages to the original videos.
  • Lastly, owners of a YT channel can also create Amara subtitling pages for single videos without doing the syncing, then manually download the Amara subtitles and add them to the original, and this, of course, does not add these messages either.


So there is no 100% sure way to know if subtitles made on Amara are being reused in the original video but still, checking the original video's description is worth trying.


Update: I've now created a ticket #73637 from your topic, Fredze: you should have received a notification about it. I did that because tickets go to Amara staff, who can give you a more authoritative reply than me.


Hello Claude,

thanks for your detailed information!
Your answer helped a lot :)


I watched out for the ""Help us caption and translate this video on Amara.org"-phrase but also noticed, that the syncing worked with videos, that didn't mentioned Amara in the description.
Thank you also for creating a ticket, I recieved the notification-mail.

Have a nice Sunday
Fredze

You can view if another's YouTube channel is linked to Amara by going to the "URLs" tab of the Amara page, opening the YT URL mentioned there and seeing if the "Help us caption and translate this video on Amara.org" message shows in the description of the YT original. Additionally, the owner of the video can delete the message in the description and, now that YT has enabled subtitle editing, also the one in the last subtitle, so there is no 100% sure way to know if subtitles made on Amara are being reused in the original video but still, checking the original video's description is worth trying. wordle

Thank you for this accurate and detailed explanation, Otis. 

thank you

If a YouTube video doesn't have the note "Help us caption and translate this video on Amara.org" in the hours calculator description, is there any way to know that the video's captions can still be generated from Amara?

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