Just an idea I had, one could take videos in the public domain (there are quite a few in the US, various episodes of Bonanza, Lone Ranger, Sherlock Holmes etc etc, check out archive.org) and put them up with Esperanto subtitles. I hope to work on it someday myself, but my esperanto is still in the early stages, so you guys can feel free to beat me to the punch if you like the idea!

There used to be a website with a ton of old Soviet films with Esperanto subtitles, streaming online, but I am not finding it now (or else it may possibly have been audvide.blogspot.ru and the interface may have changed since I looked at it long ago). I quite enjoyed "La skarlata floreto", an animated Russian Beauty and the Beast story from the early 50's.

Spokane89:Just an idea I had, one could take videos in the public domain (there are quite a few in the US, various episodes of Bonanza, Lone Ranger, Sherlock Holmes etc etc, check out archive.org) and put them up with Esperanto subtitles. I hope to work on it someday myself, but my esperanto is still in the early stages, so you guys can feel free to beat me to the punch if you like the idea!

Hmm... this would have some interesting consequences. If the film is in your native language, there's going to be a lot of interference; you're going to be simultaneously interpreting what's spoken, and what's written; and both in different languages with different phrasings! Doing that at the speed of normal dialogue could be quite difficult. That sounds like a good task only for the quite advanced.

But if you can't understand what's being said (because it's a Portuguese movie or something), you won't have the ability to check your understanding, unless the context makes it pretty clear what's being said. However, this might be a good exercise for someone with a pretty decent knowledge of Esperanto who could use some practice.

Another idea would be to subtitle movies that are in Esperanto to begin with. This way, you hear and read the same thing at the same time. The problem here is finding suitable movies in Esperanto that are also in the public domain.

Another way to use this for less experienced Esperantists would be to take old silent movies and insert cards with Esperanto before the cards with English. This way, you get practice understanding the Esperanto alone, but then you get to check your understanding.

eshapard:Hmm... this would have some interesting consequences. If the film is in your native language, there's going to be a lot of interference; you're going to be simultaneously interpreting what's spoken, and what's written; and both in different languages with different phrasings! Doing that at the speed of normal dialogue could be quite difficult. That sounds like a good task only for the quite advanced.

Obviously you would not do it at normal speed. You would make a lot of use of the pause button, probably sentence by sentence or even phrase by phrase. In most cases it would probably not be worth doing this work unless you already had a subtitle file in the source language, because that file would already have the text and the correct timing of the text to the film.

I believe someone already has a project to crowdsource translations like this. I believe the work was done at Dotsub.

There are also a bunch of links at Filmoj.net regarding places where you can work on adding Esperanto subtitles to films. They include a link to DotSub as well.

Lernu user KienLi seems to have been involved in projects of this nature, anyone interested in this kind of work could perhaps contact him.

But it's true that your Esperanto level needs to be pretty good before doing it. A lot more useful work would get done in the Esperanto world if people worked on improving their language level, because in the Esperanto world there are generally a lot more good ideas for great projects than there are people with the language ability to make these projects happen. In most cases we need skilled speakers with the inclination to work on projects more than we need new ideas for great things to do with Esperanto.

erinja:
Obviously you would not do it at normal speed. You would make a lot of use of the pause button, probably sentence by sentence or even phrase by phrase.

Well that doesn't sound like any fun. I'd rather just use a book or flashcards or something.

eshapard:

erinja:
Obviously you would not do it at normal speed. You would make a lot of use of the pause button, probably sentence by sentence or even phrase by phrase.

Well that doesn't sound like any fun. I'd rather just use a book or flashcards or something.

I think we must be talking past each other. I was talking about the process of translating the film, not the process of watching the film once it has already been subtitled with the completed Esperanto translations.

Someone who needs a book and flashcards probably doesn't have a high enough language level to be translating a film anyway, but such a person may enjoy watching a film that someone else has translated with Esperanto subtitles (even if they can't understand it all the first time).

Personally I think it'd be pretty helpful and fun to watch an English show or video, and have Esperanto captions. That's one way I enjoy to go about learning a new language.

erinja:
I think we must be talking past each other. I was talking about the process of translating the film, not the process of watching the film once it has already been subtitled with the completed Esperanto translations.

Yep, I was talking about the end user experience.

erinja:
Such a person may enjoy watching a film that someone else has translated with Esperanto subtitles (even if they can't understand it all the first time).

Which is when the interference from the spoken language might kick in...

erinja:
Someone who needs a book and flashcards probably doesn't have a high enough language level to be translating a film anyway

So true... once I became fluent in English, I stopped reading books completely... stupid filthy things!

Spokane89:Just an idea I had, one could take videos in the public domain (there are quite a few in the US, various episodes of Bonanza, Lone Ranger, Sherlock Holmes etc etc, check out archive.org) and put them up with Esperanto subtitles.

I think it's a good idea! I'd find it very interesting to watch videos in foreign languages (especially those I don't understand) with Esperanto subtitles.

Good idea but it would be nice to have them dubbed instead of simply subtitled.

Here is a youtube channel with subtitles if you want:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2efqRZ4iAj3xLHwQ...