hi everyone.

I'll get right to it. Esperanto isn't so well known. The reason ? most of the people use their native language and learn others during their lifetime, they want a language which they can practice. not a language wich you need to go on the net for practising...


So it's pretty usual to see people suprised when you tell them there's a languague invented more then a hundred years ago. They just go, "Hu, what is this ? and who talk it?..."
So we all see that esperanto isn't as popular as it should actually be.

I can come up with the usual lame advices, like talk it as much as you can on the net and in real life, or when you leave a comment on youtube or other forum groups, leave it in esperanto to let know that there's a living language out there !

But after this little chit-chat talking I have tought that since sitcoms and weekly tv shows have an astonishing boom ( thinking of prison break, desperate houswifes, heroes,lost,south park, friday night lights, my name is Earl,grey's anatomy,...)
So when I see all the subtitle languagues aivable, esperanto is no where to be found, what is this ? should we consider esperanto as an living language ( at least on the net ) when there's no even subtitles for it?!

*sigh*

eric489:So when I see all the subtitle languagues aivable, esperanto is no where to be found, what is this?

Speaking as someone who has created subtitles and translated many subtitle files from English to Italian, I can tell you that it is a lot of work. When you already have a source file with all the timing set up correctly, then it takes at least 150-180 minutes for a 40 minutes film. If you do not have the timings, then it's 1 hour's work for every 10-15 minutes of movie time. Esperanto speakers are relatively few; even fewer have the necessary language skills to write good subtitles and an even tinier percentage of those has the necessary computer skills to actually produce them.

I know there are some subtitles around (I've seen them) but I'm not surprised if they are just a handful and hard to find. Also, unlike other projects, I do not think they would be useful for anyone outside the Esperanto community. As of now, it is easier - and perhaps better for the image that Esperanto projects outside of its community - to write books or maintain good quality web sites, IMHO.

I agree with mnlg's comment, and will add that even for some of these well-known TV shows, it can be hard to find subtitles in certain languages. French, Spanish, and German aren't usually too hard to find, but I would imagine that not all of the TV shows you mention would have subtitles available in languages like Polish, Italian, Hungarian, Russian, etc - and these languages have millions more speakers than Esperanto.