Participatory Culture Foundation
How can we help you today?
How can I protect my translation from being modified someone else?
6 CommentsSorted by Oldest First
Indeed, more control is needed. I have tens of volunteers working on subtitling my documentary and is now way of how I can mark a subtitle as being completed so it is not edited anymore. This is a must. As administrator you should be able to edit permissions to files, close some subtitles for being edited, etc.
Hi Alexander Goida and Tio Trom,
I'm just a user like you. Amara works like Wikipedia, so subtitles can indeed be modified by any other users. So maybe you'd be better off using another platform, e.g. DotSUB.com where you can limit permissions, if you don't want that.
However, there are are ways in which you can prevent sabotage or just unwanted further editing on Amara:
I'm just a user like you. Amara works like Wikipedia, so subtitles can indeed be modified by any other users. So maybe you'd be better off using another platform, e.g. DotSUB.com where you can limit permissions, if you don't want that.
However, there are are ways in which you can prevent sabotage or just unwanted further editing on Amara:
- Write in a comment to the subs that you don't want other people to edit them and if people still do, roll back (revert) to the version you want (by going to the Revisions tab of the subs)
- Download the version of the subs you want as SRT or SBV file for safe keeping (I usually add the number of the revision to the file name)
- Create an Amara team for your subtitles: in Amara teams, you can decide who can make original subs and translations. See the Amara Enterprise services page for more info about teams.
Hi, have begun translating videos from engagemedia.org into Indonesian, and co-operating to translate again into Tetum.
Strongly agree with Alexander Goida and Tio Trom that it is essential that an administrator can accept or reject changes to subtitles. Given the nature of this particular project its really likely that people would want to sabotage our work. And in general the internet has a lot of saboteurs if given the easy opportunity.
Thanks Claude Almansi for the suggested workarounds, all could be good ideas, but;
Dotsub.com is less than ideal given that Amara is already embedded in engagemedia.org.
Commenting that you don't want changes is a good idea unless your dealing with potential saboteurs who would only be encouraged.
Downloading the subtitle files for safekeeping would be acceptable, if we were able to be notified whenever changes where made.
Amara Teams? would Amara provide its Enterprise Services freely to not-for-profits/social movements?
seems not that feasible to be paying to subtitle videos, not for Indonesian and Tetum translators and audiences,
more likely to return to the old fashion offline method of subtitling,
but we do love the multi-lingual capacity here in Timor Leste.
Strongly agree with Alexander Goida and Tio Trom that it is essential that an administrator can accept or reject changes to subtitles. Given the nature of this particular project its really likely that people would want to sabotage our work. And in general the internet has a lot of saboteurs if given the easy opportunity.
Thanks Claude Almansi for the suggested workarounds, all could be good ideas, but;
Dotsub.com is less than ideal given that Amara is already embedded in engagemedia.org.
Commenting that you don't want changes is a good idea unless your dealing with potential saboteurs who would only be encouraged.
Downloading the subtitle files for safekeeping would be acceptable, if we were able to be notified whenever changes where made.
Amara Teams? would Amara provide its Enterprise Services freely to not-for-profits/social movements?
seems not that feasible to be paying to subtitle videos, not for Indonesian and Tetum translators and audiences,
more likely to return to the old fashion offline method of subtitling,
but we do love the multi-lingual capacity here in Timor Leste.
Hi tr@verser11,
About the points you make, OK about DotSUB not being an option for engagemedia.org, but re:
Re:
Re:
About the points you make, OK about DotSUB not being an option for engagemedia.org, but re:
Commenting that you don't want changes is a good idea unless your dealing with potential saboteurs who would only be encouraged.Have you already met a genuine saboteur on Amara? I've seen people accidentally messing up subtitles, e.g. translating directly within the set of original subtitles, because they had not understood that there are two widgets. or using the cursed Bing translation unfortunately provided by Amara, on subtitles someone else wanted to finish translating humanly. But I've not yet seen a willful sabotage. And in both types of accidental issues I mentioned, saving the people's intervention for them and reverting to the former version only took a few seconds. And the same would obtain in a hypothetical case of sabotage - though I wouldn't bother saving the saboteur's intervention :D
Re:
Downloading the subtitle files for safekeeping would be acceptable, if we were able to be notified whenever changes where made.You can: it's possible to follow all subtitles for a video, or just one language set, by clicking the "Not Following" button that will turn to "Following".
Re:
Amara Teams? would Amara provide its Enterprise Services freely to not-for-profits/social movements?Excellent question: ask them. However, don't you already have an EngageMedia team, http://www.universalsubtitles.org/en/teams/EngageMedia/ ?
Hi Everyone,
I'd like to thank everyone for bringing up some important facets of Amara, and thanks to Claude for pointing out some helpful solutions to some of the obstacles that you have faced.
Perhaps there might be room to adjust the settings within the EngageMedia team (presuming your work is related to EngageMedia), although it would be necessary to discuss this with the team's administrators before doing so.
Right now, the best way to manage volunteers, create privacy, and control the workflow of how subtitles are published, etc. is through Amara Enterprise. We're currently looking into more affordable solutions for small to mid-size projects-- hopefully we'll have some more information on that in the future!
Best,
Darren
I'd like to thank everyone for bringing up some important facets of Amara, and thanks to Claude for pointing out some helpful solutions to some of the obstacles that you have faced.
Perhaps there might be room to adjust the settings within the EngageMedia team (presuming your work is related to EngageMedia), although it would be necessary to discuss this with the team's administrators before doing so.
Right now, the best way to manage volunteers, create privacy, and control the workflow of how subtitles are published, etc. is through Amara Enterprise. We're currently looking into more affordable solutions for small to mid-size projects-- hopefully we'll have some more information on that in the future!
Best,
Darren
Hi Darren,
I should have specified that the reference to the Amara Engage Media team only concerned the comment by tr@verser11, who specified he'd been translating Engage Media videos. There's one task showing in this team, which would suggest that its settings already include workflowed tasks, but some other videos seem to contradict that. Really, it would be better if permission settings for Amara teams were viewable by all (while of course remaining editable only by owners and admins). As Amara enterprise services leverage volunteers' work, volunteers should be able to know what they are in for if they join a team.
Update: I just got a message from Seelan Palay, co-owner of the Engage Media team:
***
But as this thread is in general about translations, there's something I forgot to mention. Actually, you don't need a subtitling app to translate subtitles. Subtitling apps are useful for creating subs from the video, and Amara is particularly good for that, because it's easy to add, remove and retime subs. However, once you have these original subtitles, you can translate their file with any text editing software/app.
(When Anna Veronese, Marietta Cathomas and I did the translated subs for the video in http://www.webmultimediale.org/barbara/2007/03/in_my_language.html, we just translated the time-coded .txt file of the English subs with Word (they) and OpenOffice (I). Then I banged our work in http://noimedia.wikispaces.com/Amanda+Baggs as an illustration, but we could just as well have done it directly in the wiki, or in Google docs, or - nowadays - in piratepad.eu)
Now of course, you have to be careful not to accidentally delete time-codes when you translate with a text editor, because if you do, the subs won't work. And to prevent that, the Google Translator Toolkit is particularly useful: once you've uploaded the original .srt file, the translation interface only lets you translate the text part, you can't act on the time codes accidentally. You can also decide whom to invite to collaborate in the translation, and with what privileges (editing - commenting - viewing).
Then whatever text editing solution you've chosen, once the translation is done, you save the translation in the same format as the original subs, and you can add it to the original video or to the Amara page for it.
I should have specified that the reference to the Amara Engage Media team only concerned the comment by tr@verser11, who specified he'd been translating Engage Media videos. There's one task showing in this team, which would suggest that its settings already include workflowed tasks, but some other videos seem to contradict that. Really, it would be better if permission settings for Amara teams were viewable by all (while of course remaining editable only by owners and admins). As Amara enterprise services leverage volunteers' work, volunteers should be able to know what they are in for if they join a team.
Update: I just got a message from Seelan Palay, co-owner of the Engage Media team:
We stopped the workflow moderation system to make it faster for people to complete/view/use their subtitles. (...)
Anyway, all the vids on our team page are from our website, so they are added by me. Therefore, whenever someone does some work on a video, I'll get a notification to check anyway.
Thankfully we haven't had any cases of sabotage so far, but I am on the lookout. ...
***
But as this thread is in general about translations, there's something I forgot to mention. Actually, you don't need a subtitling app to translate subtitles. Subtitling apps are useful for creating subs from the video, and Amara is particularly good for that, because it's easy to add, remove and retime subs. However, once you have these original subtitles, you can translate their file with any text editing software/app.
(When Anna Veronese, Marietta Cathomas and I did the translated subs for the video in http://www.webmultimediale.org/barbara/2007/03/in_my_language.html, we just translated the time-coded .txt file of the English subs with Word (they) and OpenOffice (I). Then I banged our work in http://noimedia.wikispaces.com/Amanda+Baggs as an illustration, but we could just as well have done it directly in the wiki, or in Google docs, or - nowadays - in piratepad.eu)
Now of course, you have to be careful not to accidentally delete time-codes when you translate with a text editor, because if you do, the subs won't work. And to prevent that, the Google Translator Toolkit is particularly useful: once you've uploaded the original .srt file, the translation interface only lets you translate the text part, you can't act on the time codes accidentally. You can also decide whom to invite to collaborate in the translation, and with what privileges (editing - commenting - viewing).
Then whatever text editing solution you've chosen, once the translation is done, you save the translation in the same format as the original subs, and you can add it to the original video or to the Amara page for it.
Alexander Goida
thanks
2 people have this question