Subtitle text file doesn't seem to be formatted correctly, and advice?

[Recchia1138]

Hi! I have a copy of a Brazilian film Uma Onda No Ar (Something in the Air) and I was able to find a subtitle file after quite a bit of searching. It downloaded as a .txt file. After doing some research (I'm new to subtitle formats), I found that .srt subtitles are formatted as so:
00:05:36,000 --> 00:05:40,000
The phone biII, the new microphone,
the eIectricity biII's aIso overdue.

However, it looks like this in the .txt file:
00:05:36,000:The phone biII, the new microphone,|the eIectricity biII's aIso overdue.

[I'm not sure why the lowercase Ls look like Is, but it doesn't bother me much]

If I edit by hand the subtitle format so that the bottom looks like the top and make the file extension .srt, it works fine (at least until it goes through that section and and goes back to the unedited formatting). But I'd rather not have to go through and edit it for the whole film. Is there another file extension that will allow it to be read in the current format, or is there a program I can use to covert it? I'm using VLC as my media player if it makes a difference.

Thank you very much!
-Eric

[Baldrick]

You could try subtitle edit. You might have to use the custom import function.