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Translating Screenplays

 Hello alltogether,


to me: I'm Motte and work in Berlin Germany for a Dubbing Company. And now I have the possibility to translate the screenplays for our series.
The problem is that these screenplays are always an PDF. And I can't get a good workflow for it to translate. Please see a example of a screenplay at the attachment.

I just have to translate the character who is speaking and of course his dialogue line.

I tried to convert the PDF to a table with two rows for the role and the dialogue line, but it happens of course that the format of the imported PDF is somehowd messed up.

Do you have any idea to get it work?

pdf

With SolidPDF I've created two MS Word documents: one with continuous reconstruction mode and one with exact reconstruction.


You can hide all text that doesn't need to be translated (select and assign the font attribute 'Hidden').


Does this help?


Alternatively, you can use the PDF workflow: https://cafetran.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/6000109979-translation-of-pdf-documents

docx
(429 KB)
docx

Here's a link to the converter software: https://www.soliddocuments.com

First: thank you for your effort!

OK. I see. I think my top notch problem is, that I like to keep the correlation between the role and his line, like in a table. Let's say: the client expects a table :)
Do you see any possibility for this in CafeTran? Sorry, I am really new to this CAT-Softwarethingy and I have no idea at all, what it can do and what not...

Can you post an example of the desired result?

Something like this. I just translated some lines from the second page of the script.

xlsx

Thanks! I think the PDF workflow: https://cafetran.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/6000109979-translation-of-pdf-documents will be the easiest. The rest is overkill.


After you've translated all parts that you need to translate, you'll get a German target file–which isn't of much use for you. However, you could export the translation memory to a bilingual file. Alas, it doesn't have to be linear with the script (e.g. sentences that occur multiple times, will occur only once in the memory). And then there is this problem of assigning the name of the speaker.


Others will chime in with better ideas, I reckon.

I just figured a good way for importing and exporting excel sheets. But for this I need a well converted PDF-file. Most of the time it is working with the convertion from writerduet.com, but sometimes it's just garbage :/

Thank you for your time so far, really!

I hope there's someone who has experience with these kind of screenplays :)

How about this approach: use a clipboard collecting util and copy all text to be translated. Paste everything in Excel, column B. Translate to column C

Yeah, this would be possible. I am just hoping for a automated processing for the PDF-File. Because the Characters and Lines have their own specific format.

Yeah, this would be possible. I am just hoping for a automated processing for the PDF-File. Because the Characters and Lines have their own specific format.

Copy the whole content to BBEdit. Run Text > Process lines with.... and collect all lines that start with the correct indentation to a new document.

Sounds like a nice approach. Unfortenately BBEditfor Mac, but I'm sure there is a way with Notepad++ or something like that. Thank you!

I think, there is :). https://youtu.be/SiPLZzRqEwM Select Copy instead of Delete bookmarked lines.
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