I am on staff with Cru (Campus Crusade for Christ) on the Jesus Film digital team.
I’m sure you’ve heard of the JESUS film. We have it dubbed in over 1,850 languages!
But here is our problem. The goal of the Jesus Film has always been to get JESUS’ voice into the heart language of the viewer. And they have been doing dubbing work long before YouTube has been in existence. There has never been a significant need for closed captions, since the voice is in the viewer’s language.
Fast forward to the digital age, where most media is now consumed online with the volume muted where the viewer reads the closed captions while the video plays. Then, if they are hooked, they may turn the audio on.
I am overseeing the Jesus Film YouTube channel: youtube com/jesusfilm . When we upload a new language to our YouTube channel, I upload the full feature film (2hr), and also 61 clips/episodes (of the exact same film/language, but cut into 61 shorter chapters/scenes).
GOAL: I want to have a closed caption file for every language that we upload to YouTube.
It is hard for me to believe, but we do not have digital transcripts of the majority of the languages we have dubbed. As of now, I only have closed caption/subtitle files for 29 languages.
So, here is where I need help:
- Transcribing the full 2 hour JESUS movie in each language that we upload to YouTube.
- Convert the transcriptions into subtitle files where the timecodes match exactly with the master English subtitle file. So the transcription will need to be split into matching phrases within the fixed timecodes.
- There is additional text that needs to be translated for each dubbing language, which would include, but not be limited to: video clip’s title, video clip’s short description, video clip’s long description, discussion questions, video tags/keywords, YouTube cards text, endscreen text, Facebook ad campaign text, follow-up landing page text, etc
I am needing to start with: Bengali (India), Bangla (Muslim), Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu.
(I am not able to include more than 2 url’s in this post, so replace DOT with “.” if you want to visit the url)
Bangla Muslim বাংলা youtu DOT be/C27XkKz4saM
Tamil தமிழ் youtu DOT be/aIJgVn1FKs8
Bengali (Indian) বাংলা youtu DOT be/FOAmF9HhAyY
Telugu తెలుగు youtu DOT be/Cknmq34vh88
Here is a link to the English JESUS video which includes the closed captions: https://youtu.be/o-o2JHhHXys
Here it is in Hindi with Hindi closed captions: https://youtu.be/3rcjJMnImXo
What tools do you recommend using?
Who has experience in mass transcriptions?
Are any of the machine transcription companies any good? (ie: sonix ai , happyscribe com , maestrasuite com , veed io )
I’d be grateful for any advice/tips/solutions,
Howard