Mandarin?

[hfinkel]

Is it possible to generate a .srt file in traditional Mandarin?

If not, then is it possible to generate a .sub/.idx pair to do so?

A few years ago, I married someone who's first language is Mandarin and have been wondering if it is possible.

I download a lot of subtitle files from web sites on the net but have not yet seen any such files in Mandarin. Where might I find them?

Thanks.

[Cornucopia]

As per Wikipedia:

Unicode support
The SubRip .srt file format supports any text encoding including ANSI, Unicode Little Endian, Unicode Big Endian, UTF-8. Byte order mark can be used to define encoding unambiguously. Further Unicode support is up to media player.

So, YES, it could/should be able to support Mandarin. You of course have to have enabled the Mandarin keyboard settings (and/or use the Alt+ hotkeys) to enter the text, and like was mentioned you HAVE TO HAVE A PLAYER THAT SUPPORTS IT.

Scott

[jman98]

As Cornucopia says, you can make SRT files in traditional Chinese characters. This is the correct way to refer to it rather than saying "traditional Mandarin". You can also make SRT files in simplified Chinese characters. I've got SRT examples of each.

You can find Chinese subtitles at http://shooter.cn for various films. Sometimes they are in traditional characters, sometimes in simplified, sometimes in both. However, note that these are rips from releases in various Chinese speaking areas (ie. Hong Kong, Taiwan, China) and the timing may be slightly different from American films. I've got the Chinese (trad and simp) subtitles for Dumbo and they're 3 seconds off from the American release because apparently the release in Hong Kong had a slightly longer opening Disney logo sequence than the American release. Quickest way for me to deal with it was to use VideoReDo and pad the front of the video with 3 seconds of blank space to get them to synch up right. You may have similar issues.

If you convert the SRT files to Unicode UTF-8, you can easily use Xvid4PSP to generate an Xvid file with hardcoded Chinese subtitles. I use the term "conversion" but really it's just a case of cutting the SRT subtitles and pasting them into a Word or OpenOffice/LibreOffice document and saving them as text encoded UTF-8. Xvid4PSP can only work with Unicode subtitle files. And you will need Chinese language support on your PC to be able to read these SRT files and not have them look like garbage characters.

[lingyi]

Definitely can be done in .srt, Though .sub/.idx will probably be easier to play.

I believe with .srt, you have to set your player (standalone or software) to whichever type of encoding was used (as Cornucopia lists). This may differ depending on what type of encoding was used to great them.

With .sub, the subtitles are bitmap images so they display on screen correctly no matter the text setting.

The usual (i.e popular) subtitle sites, www.podnapisi.net, subscene.com, opensubtitles.org all have subtitles in Chinese (i.e. Mandarin).