Automatically translate subtitles as last resort

15 votes

I really like the option to google translate subtitles, if nothing else is availible then as a last resort it works and its better then nothing.

It would be a very nice option to automatically translate subtitles and then mark them so that any other option when availible is considered an upgrade.

Under consideration Suggested by: JoeBlack2k (02 Mar, '22) • Upvoted: 12 Jan • Comments: 5

Comments: 5

02 Mar, '22
Topper Admin
What would be the trigger to tell "nothing else is available"? On day one there could be no subtitles available so does it means we should start translating right now?

I wasn't confortable to implement this earlier and it doesn't have changed.
03 Mar, '22
JoeBlack2k
For starter we need at least one subtitle to make it work so my process would be like this:

- Searching for subtitles for language Dutch
- No subtitles found
- Searching for external subtitles (subtitles that are already there)
- English SRT found
- Translating.
- Marking Translation as LR (last resort)

This way the enormous backlog would be filled with temp subs until a better one is found.

*I might add this also creates a flow of better subs for the scene as now after you watch a show you only have to fix a few words before uploading it to a sub website*
28 May, '22
SweetMnM Merged
I was adding 2 old, fairly unpopular, tv shows and it could not find subtitles (Hebrew nor English) for the show. I manually opened the show on opensubtitles. One show had Spanish subtitles for the entire show and the other show had Dutch subtitles. I don't know Spanish nor Dutch but I added them to my language list in bazarr, bazarr grabbed them and then I translated them manually to hebrew, it worked surprisingly well.

My suggestion is to automate this process, search all providers for subtitles, if none found in the user's selected languages, broaden the search to all languages and select the best subtitles (regardless of the language). Store the foreign language subtitles some place temporary, translate to the user's selected languages and then remove the temporary foreign subtitles.

The entire thing can be optional of course. If this sounds interesting to you (the dev) I don't mind looking a bit into the source code and seeing if I can try and implement it.
28 May, '22
Topper Admin
"Fallback to translating subtitles from whatever language when no subtitles found" (suggested by SweetMnM on 2022-05-28), including upvotes (1) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.
06 Apr, '23
IntentionallyBoring
I am from a small country to which does get subs to even major movies and TV shows, so my family can not enjoy them.
There are a couple of secondary languages but they are very limiting.

I agree that the work flow would be that if not subs there found any available would be pulled and sent to Google translate/Yandex/Baidu etc.
I would suggest making into a 'special' provider(s) this would allow to use existing priority system and control for users to add it only if they need it. For example 'Google Translate' Auto sub translator. In the provider's settings you could set source language that provider would pull using other providers (default: any) and if needed API keys.