How to use Googledocs as an English editing assistant.
I’ve put all the steps in the below pdf.
Essentially, the process involves using Bulk Translation to copy the subs. They are then pasted into a Googledoc as unformatted text. Google then proceeds to analyze the spelling and grammar and highlights those areas that need checking.
Please keep in mind that this is only a tool to help streamline the subbing process. It is not a substitute for meticulously working through the subs.
I hope this is useful.
–Manganese
P.S. Word or LibreOffice Writer, or any other word processing software, could also be used as above. All that is needed is the ability for the software to check grammar and American spelling.
Thank you so much for sharing this with everyone. This is so very thoughtful on your part. I will be paying a lot of attention to this, and I might even get the courage to do some Editing work around here. I am dreading the fact that my writing skills are not as sharp as they used to be, and I would hate to loose that for lack of dedication on my part.
I have to keep my mind busy so I don’t end up worrying too much about my aches and pains and become a painkiller addict. (joking)
I was using Googledocs earlier today when I started thinking about how I could get it to help me with fixing my subtitles. While I try very hard not to make mistakes, I’m what I would call a fallible person! I haven’t yet succeeded in writing subs that are mistake-free for a whole series. Now though, with Googledocs (or LibreOffice Writer – the free-version equivalent of Microsoft Word), I might be able to manage it.
It really is a great feeling to load the subs into the document and just scroll through looking for the blue and red underlines. This makes a final check heaps quicker. The beauty of Googledocs is that it suggests corrections.
In about 4 hours, I’m hoping to load Ep 15 of One The Woman into Googledocs and get it to help me find my errors. I’ll report back to this thread and let everyone know how I went
Oh, great. I have [ONE THE WOMAN] on hold until all episodes are edited. Like I told you before I already finished up to episode 13, and I realized that having good subtitles makes all the difference in the world in order for us to really enjoy the drama/movie/show, we are watching.
The subtitles flow with no guesswork on my head, and I thank you so much for making it happen like that bc is all your effort combined with your team also, that is making all this wonders possible in the drama [OTW].
Well, Good Night/Afternoon/Morning, I’m so sleepy. Whatever time is on your end, may it be a blessed and joyful one.
As promised, I’m reporting back to this thread…
I’ve just finished GE and Acting CE of Episode 15 of One The Woman (OTW). As the final step in checking my work. I transferred the subs—using Bulk Translation, as described in this thread’s first post—to a new Googledoc. Prior to this, I had already been through the entire episode four times looking for errors and inconsistencies. After I loaded the subs into a Googledoc, Google found another half a dozen errors that had slipped past me. Google also identified three or four subs that were not in error but different from usual English usage.
So after this exercise, I’m a fan of using Googledocs to help me polish my subs. It’s easy and it’s very quick to scan through the document and identify those words and phrases that Google marks as needing attention. I highly recommend this process.
Personally, I would recommend add-ons such as https://languagetool.org/ Still it might not be 100% accurate due to cut phrases etc., but I consider it helpful. In some other languages as well.
Surely using software that includes a spellchecker etc. is a very good idea! The only thing is that, if the text has a lot of foreign words/names, it can be a bit bothersome to have to tell it “skip, skip, ignore this” all the time, when it stumbles on them.
I’ve experienced this when doing translations of yoga theory articles - all the Sanscrit terms, you can imagine!
And we do have lots of foreign names in our dramas.
Irmar, you’re one of the very best proofreaders I’ve come across here on Viki. I doubt that Googledocs would help you at all. Quite honestly, I suspect that you’d help Googledocs more!
By comparison to you, I’m a very ordinary proofreader and I need all the help I can get. In Googledocs, I just paste the subs as unformatted text (CTRL+SHFT+V) and then scroll through them. Spelling mistakes are underlined in red and grammar errors are underlined in blue. For this reason, foreign words are often underlined in red. I don’t mind this because it draws my attention to them and makes me double-check them. It’s take me about 15 minutes to scroll through a 50-minute episode of something. Googledocs isn’t perfect but it helps me enormously. I always check my work three times: twice with just me and my brain, and once with Googledocs. Googledocs is the final step.
Oh, don’t say that! My eyesight is not the best anymore, and when I’m tired I miss stuff. Whenever I look at my old work, I always, always find lots of things I missed the first time(s). When my mother was alive, we always made it a point to look at each other’s writings and translations, because a second, fresh pair of eyes is always needed.
And I’ve learned that, no matter how many pairs of eyes go through something, if you bring in a new person, they will find out something all the others had missed (and I’m talking of obvious typos, not things which depend on personal style). Because of what we have already discussed elsewhere, the tendency of the human brain to “auto-correct”.
So no, I am grateful for spellchecker in Word and often use it when it’s a professional job. I would feel mortified to give a paying customer something with a typo.
And, even if to a lesser extent, I also want to be decent here on Viki. I won’t look at it three or four times, but I will carefully look twice. And if there’s someone after me to have a last look, so much the better!
