Digital Biz Found in translation: China's volunteer online army

Dozens of subfans exist in China. They are voluntary and are translating a mix of media, from books and magazines to games, TV shows and movies. The translated products are for an audience whose primary means of accessing foreign entertainment is the Internet. CNN reports.

The members of these online translations groups participate out of a desire to improve their English. For many there is also a passionate interest in overseas content and a desire to make it accessible to other Chinese people.

Translation team members download TV shows through different methods: watching directly from a Web site or downloading from a translation group Web site. Clips can also be downloaded through BitTorrent -- file-sharing sites such as Xunlei. Through this method, groups post their "seeds" on these sites, and people can download them.

The translation teams acknowledge that what they are doing is less than legal and say they do worry that someday they may be forced to quit (so far there are no reports of a group being shut down).

"We are living in this grey zone," said Deping Wang, a former member of a team called 1000fr. "It is not legal, but at the same time, nobody can live without it. This is the dilemma."

Many international media companies are concerned the groups are eroding their potential profit margins in China by illegally making the content available for free. Some, however, see the translation groups' efforts as a conduit for cultivating a market that will be willing to buy content if it is allowed to be distributed through official avenues in the future.

Read full article.

Related articles on subfans:

-- Subfans - US TV series, uploaded onto video sharing sites right after their broadcast, are often translated into another language with subtitles within hours.

-- TF1 Vision: Yesterday on US TV, Today on TF1 Vision - In September 2007, French network TFI1, launched a special section on their website called TFI Vision, which enables French (only) viewers to purchase episodes of US TV series that aired just 24 hours before on American television.

-- Fansubbers Are Not Thieves, But Avid Consumers - Another prominent subbing community has closed its doors - and has launched a campaign to show the movie industry that they are not thieves, but avid consumers.

-- Anti-Piracy Action Closes Yet More Subfan Sites - Recent months have seen fresh efforts to silence sites that provide fan-created translations of movies and TV shows for their home countries. The latest targets for shutdown - Israel and France.

-- Subfans - Who are these people, who spend hours translating entire episodes for the benefit of others.

-- Subfans: the tools they use - Keskidi is a new tool for subfans - non US TV fans who translate entire episodes for the benefit of others - as well as anyone else who want their videos to reach an international audience.

Major Research Report Expected To Explode TV Viewing Myths

A group of the biggest names in TV research are set to explode some commonly held myths about how consumers watch TV. Their findings about what’s really going on in the world of video consumption will be unveiled next week. The survey is expected to reveal such things as which age groups do the most media multi-tasking; whether younger viewers are really shifting away from traditional TV and how much commercial time viewers are exposed to.
[via Broadcasting & Cable]

The Council for Research Excellence, a cross-industry think tank of top executives from agencies and TV networks, has spent the past year executing a $3.5 million project called the “Video Consumer Mapping Study.” The initiative is described as, “the largest and most significant observational study of media activity ever undertaken.”

I'm hoping this study will include Europe, but it's not likely. If the industry really wants to see how "TV viewing myths have exploded", they should spend their money in Europe and Asia. Where I live, we love US TV series and watch them online from video streaming sites exclusively. French friends who don't speak English download from subfan sites to benefit from the subtitles. We will not be watching them on television when the networks here air them months or years from now. I don't understand why there is no professional coverage of this. No progress reports on copyright agreements with foreign networks. I'm so tired of my own voice.

Related:

-- TF1 Vision: Yesterday on US TV, Today on TF1 Vision - In September 2007, French network TFI1, launched a special section on their website called TFI Vision, which enables French (only) viewers to purchase episodes of US TV series that aired just 24 hours before on American television.

-- Fansubbers Are Not Thieves, But Avid Consumers - Another prominent subbing community has closed its doors - and has launched a campaign to show the movie industry that they are not thieves, but avid consumers.

-- Anti-Piracy Action Closes Yet More Subfan Sites - Recent months have seen fresh efforts to silence sites that provide fan-created translations of movies and TV shows for their home countries. The latest targets for shutdown - Israel and France.

-- Subfans - Who are these people, who spend hours translating entire episodes for the benefit of others.

-- Subfans: the tools they use - Keskidi is a new tool for subfans - non US TV fans who translate entire episodes for the benefit of others - as well as anyone else who want their videos to reach an international audience.

Fansubbers Are Not Thieves, But Avid Consumers

Last month the Legendas fansub site (fansubs or subfans are fan-created translators of movies and TV shows) was taken down by anti-piracy action, only to return a short time later. Now, another prominent subbing community has closed its doors - and has launched a campaign to show the movie industry that they are not thieves, but avid consumers. From TorrentFreak

The campaign is called “Queremos Cultura” (translated “We Want Culture”) and is linked from the InSUBS site, which is not currently engaged in subbing activities, largely to avoid the same fate suffered by Legendas.tv in February.

Those running the campaign are asking fansubbers and those that use fansubs to upload pictures of their original DVD and Blu-Ray collections to this flickr album to show that they are far from being thieves or criminals. On the contrary, they are enthusiastic consumers who pay their way.

At the time of writing there are already 570+ photographs showcasing some pretty healthy collections totaling some 10,000 products - everyone is encouraged to upload their own.

This campaign is trying to show that the problem lies with Hollywood. In some countries, people have to wait months, sometimes even years, before their favorite TV-show or movie becomes available. Some of the most dedicated fans can’t be tortured this long - it’s unethical.

The campaign video (above) is in Portuguese, but TorrentFreak added their own ‘fansubs’ here:

We could be killing, we could be stealing. But no. We choose to disseminate culture. The subtitles we make are not what makes DVD sales fall, it’s their abusive high prices.

The long delay between the airing of a series in its country of origin and the rest of the world is the number one reason why people choose to download - the wait for the series to reach non-cable TV can take years!

Years to find out what happened with: The island people! Jack Bauer! Hiro Nakamura! Michael Scofield! True fans always try to buy the original products and many series owners got to know about these through the Internet. Today they are collectors.

Related articles:

-- Anti-Piracy Action Closes Yet More Subfan Sites - Recent months have seen fresh efforts to silence sites that provide fan-created translations of movies and TV shows for their home countries. The latest targets for shutdown - Israel and France.

-- Subfans - Who are these people, who spend hours translating entire episodes for the benefit of others.

-- Subfans: the tools they use - Keskidi is a new tool for subfans - non US TV fans who translate entire episodes for the benefit of others - as well as anyone else who want their videos to reach an international audience.

Anti-Piracy Action Closes Yet More Subfan Sites

Once thought to be operating well under the radar, recent months have seen fresh efforts to silence sites that provide fan-created translations of movies and TV shows for their home countries. The latest targets for shutdown - Israel and France. TorrentFreak reports.

With the assistance of ALIS (Israel’s answer to the MPAA), in late 2007 raids were conducted on the homes of the admins of three sites known as ‘xvoom’, ‘MYakuza’ and ‘Donkey‘ which carried Hebrew subtitles for US movies.

Last Wednesday, the district court in Haifa, Israel, ordered the permanent closure of the movie and TV subtitling sites donkey.co.il and sratim.co.il.

The court decided that the sites infringed copyrights by offering links to unauthorized subtitles and Judge Gideon Ginat ruled that the defendant, Effi Teva, should pay compensation of 160,000 shekels ($38,000) to ALIS and various filmmakers, which includes the lawyers’ fee of 60,000 shekels ($14,000).

In France this week, Warner has been taking action of its own against subtitling sites.

One site under threat is ‘Frigorifix’, which appears to be taking the threat seriously. “Never, until now have we had threats from rights holders that are as real and immediate as the ones we received yesterday.

Related:

-- Subfans - Who are these people, who spend hours translating entire episodes for the benefit of others?

-- Keskidi. A subtitling tool for video sharing platforms - A new tool for subfans - non US TV fans who translate entire episodes for the benefit of others - as well as anyone else who want their videos to reach an international audience.

Keskidi. A subtitling tool for video sharing platforms

A new tool for subfans - non US TV fans who translate entire episodes for the benefit of others - as well as anyone else who want their videos to reach an international audience.

Keskidi ("what did he say" in French slang) is a subtitling tool for five video sharing platforms: YouTube, Dailymotion, MySpaceTV, Blip.tv and Metacafe.

Self-hosted videos can be translated as well. For each video, you can type in texts in fifteen languages including French, Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese or Turkish.

[via Tubbydev]

Subfans

US TV series, uploaded onto video sharing sites right after their broadcast, are often translated into another language with subtitles within hours.

I've tried to find out who are these people, who spend hours translating entire episodes for the benefit of others. Here's what I found about the French language translators.

According to an October article from Sud Ouest, they are called "subfans" and for the most part are students, college kids, or TV series fans. They work in a group to subtitle all the episodes of an entire season using the Teletext transcripts which are available in English. The French translation is then synched with the original episode, taking into account commercials if there are any.

Apparently, subfans are very critical of the official translations done by French TV channels. They claim translations are "water downed" versions" of the original. As their dubbing is not endorsed by the networks, their work is considered rogue and counterfeit.

Amongst themselves and their faithful viewers, they are a subculture and enjoy a somewhat celebrity status online. Too much publicity can hurt them, as was the case for the Perfect Life team, which dissolved and shut down their website following too much media attention of their activity.

If you speak French, you can watch a video of Swiss TSR nouvo's special report aired last year, where they interviewed several people who dub TV series.

One Parisian woman using editing software subtitle workshop said it takes about 8 hours to translate one episode. On why she spends her time doing this? Because of the networks' poor quality of translation, she replied.

Nouvo also interviewed a copyright lawyer who blamed rogue translators for inciting people to watch copyright material on video sharing websites.

Interesting, last year, immensely popular American TV series represented 31% of TSR's programming. That's how popular they are.