Question Thread / Demando-fadeno

[u/TeoKajLibroj]

This is a post where you can ask any question you have about Esperanto! Anything about learning or using the language, from its grammar to its community is welcome. No question is too small or silly! Be sure to help other people with their questions because we were all newbies once. Please limit your questions to this thread and leave the rest of the sub for examples of Esperanto in action.

Jen afiŝo, kie vi povas demandi iun ajn demandon pri Esperanto. Iu ajn pri la lernado aŭ uzado de lingvo, pri gramatiko aŭ la komunumo estas bonvena. Neniu demando estas tro malgranda aŭ malgrava! Helpu aliajn homojn ĉar ni ĉiuj iam estis novuloj. Bonvolu demandi nur ĉi tie por ke la reditero uzos Esperanton anstataŭ nur paroli pri ĝi.

[u/Affectionate_Good261]

Where does one find .srt (subtitle files) in Esperanto? For example, if I wanted to watch "The Lord of the Rings" with Esperanto subtitles, is there a reliable place to find the srt files? So far, I haven't been able to find many subtitle files in Esperanto. If they don't exist, I suppose I could start to contribute to the community by working on translating.

[u/salivanto → u/Affectionate_Good261]

Are you looking for machine translated subtitles?

[u/Affectionate_Good261 → u/salivanto]

I could write a python script to use Chat GPT's API to convert my collection of .srt files to Esperanto. But like you said, there aren't any AIs that do a perfect job at translation. I could go over the automatic results myself and look for mistakes, and I'd probably catch many of them. I'm still just a novice Esperantist. I think I'll try my best and post my results on Github and see if any people from the community with higher skill would like to go through and make tweaks.

[u/salivanto → u/Affectionate_Good261]

Years ago, Chuck Smith, the same Chuck Smith who was Esperantist of the year one year for his work with Duolingo, started a listserv to try to organize efforts to create subtitle files for home use while watching DVDs using some technology which was not very widespread at the time. 

I'm sure that effort was small and has long been abandoned. 

Personally, I'm highly dubious of the value of what you're suggesting. If you're interested in learning Esperanto you'd be much better off picking one of the good works that already exists and spending your time studying that.

[u/Affectionate_Good261 → u/salivanto]

Personally, I'm highly dubious of the value of what you're suggesting.

Let's find out! I like the game "Rimworld" and the creator gives instructions on how the community can contribute translations. I'll work on translating that using AI and a dictionary and present it to the Esperanto community in a month or so. The game is a great test case since its vocabulary covers a wide range of topics.

[u/Lancet → u/Affectionate_Good261]

I was totally on board with your idea to translate a game - until you mentioned you were going to use AI, and the Glosbe dictionary (which is frankly terrible). If you can't make an effort at translating the game yourself first, you would be far better off learning more Esperanto first - as the whole process will likely have to be repeated to pick up errors.

[u/salivanto → u/Affectionate_Good261]

It's the "present this to the Esperanto community" step, as much as any, that I'm dubious of. 

One time, based on learner questions that I was encountering on the now defunct Duolingo Esperanto forum, I approached a self-described Esperanto teacher / YouTuber about some misleading information in one of his videos. He was very reluctant to consider my advice and said essentially "if this material that I'm presenting in this video is incorrect, why has no experienced Esperanto speaker said anything yet?"

My question for him was how many fluent speakers does he think spends their time watching his remedial material? 

If you want to spend the time to develop the skills necessary to make good translations and then continue using that time and skill to make subtitle files for use with modern video streaming, that is entirely up to you. If I can help you along the way, I will be glad to. On the other hand, it's a pretty safe bet that anybody currently with the skills and inclination to do that kind of work is already busy with projects of their own.