Subtitles for a TV Show

Creating subtitles for the French soap opera "Demain nous appartient"
Bob Ponterio
SUNY Cortland

Background for the teacher

In my course on Modern Communications in French, we developed language skills by focusing on a number of authentic projects using modern communications technologies. We worked with "authentic" language in a popular current French soap opera. "Demain nous appartient," TF1 (https://www.tf1.fr/tf1/demain-nous-appartient). Using free subtitling software, Subtitle Edit, we (1.) developed titles in French (transcription to improve listening comprehension) giving the students the 1st word of each line of text (2.) practiced pronunciation, intonation, delivery, & emotion by imitation as a whole class and in groups (3.) converted subtitles to English (translation & vocabulary development) (4.) created subtitle glosses for difficult vocabulary. We did this for several scenes from a particular current episode. Here is a link to the Subtitle Edit software, version 3.5.7 : https://github.com/SubtitleEdit/subtitleedit/releases/download/3.5.7/SubtitleEdit-3.5.7-Setup.zip Subtitle Edit works well with VLC video player, so I recommend you use this as well. For my course on Technology in the Language Classroom, I wrote a lesson on the Subtitle Edit software and how to use it. (http://web.cortland.edu/flteach/mm-course/subtitles.html )

Get video

Video can often be found on Youtube or on the site of a particular TV show. If downloading is not easy, there are many web sites that help you download Youtube (or other) video. Here is a link to my lesson on how to do this:
http://web.cortland.edu/flteach/mm-course/youtube.html

The software can handle many video types, but I prefer mp4. If your video is very long, you may want to use a video editor to make a file with only the part you want students to work with.

Put your video in its own folder

Putting your video in its own folder along with any subtitle files you create makes it easier to find what you are looking for in the future.

Decide what the class will do with the language

In my class, we followed these step-by-step instructions:

- Students began by making a transcription of a scene in French. I often give students the first word in each character's line to help them find their place and to get them started. They can use Word to write their transcriptions with spell-check support.

- Next, they used the subtitle software to create the French captions. To get started, select the audio portion of the video to be subtitled, right-click, and select "Add text here." They can copy/paste the text from Word into the subtitle program if they wish.

- The subtitle file has to be in the same folder as the video, and it should have the same name, except for the .srt file extension. I add the letters ".fr" to indicate French language titles, ".en" for English, and ".vocab" for vocabulary. This makes it possible to have several subtitle "languages" available and slect the one you want when viewing the video.

- Once the French titles were finished, we worked on pronunciation, line by line, as a group, to improve their oral language skills. Then students practiced in groups and presented the scene to the class.

- For the translation step, we copied the .srt file and changed the .fr to .en to indicate English language subtitles. Next, the students opened this new file and translated each subtitle from inside the software. This gave us the opportunity to discuss nuances of meaning to help decide on the best translation.

- Finally, we created a new .vocab.srt file for vocabulary help, placing each vocabulary gloss right before a difficult word was spoken in the video.

If you prefer to follow Youtube tutorials, here are a few. Some are in a series of tutorials, so you might wish to look up subsequent lessons in Youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRT2s_hutzg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5RRWmyHqTk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQbkz9wp0HA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-NOMLjyBCE

 

Putting the video online

It is also possible to put your subtitled videos online for students to view from home. However, this is in my online lesson but is far beyond what we can do here.

http://web.cortland.edu/ponterior/FRE329/demain/web-demain.html