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Transcripts

As an optional feature, translators can provide transcripts of Pepper&Carrot episodes to the website. What is a transcript? In short, it's a text file that contain the content of the speechbubbles.

Gunchleoc has created some scripts to automate this as much as possible. However, you will still need to check the results and do some manual edits where the number and order of text objects doesn't match the original.

What you need

• Python 3 for running the scripts. If this is too complicated for you, we also have a CI pipeline job that you can run instead.
• A good plain-text editor for editing the transcripts. For example, Geany is available for all desktop computers. For Windows, Notepad++ is also quite popular.

Workflow

These are the steps for generating and curating transcripts:

1. Extract an episode's translations to Markdown (*.md file)
2. Generate html files for the episode's translation
3. Check html in browser and compare with webcomic page. If something's wrong, edit the Markdown manually and continue at 2.
4. If you are satisfied, git commit the Markdown files only. HTML snippets are a temporary resource and are hidden from Git.

Extracting Text from SVG Files to Markdown

In this step, you will generate a Markdown file with annotated text for an episode's translations. The translations will be enriched with information about who is speaking, and there will also be some formatting controls available to you.

Run the following Python command from the webcomics base folder:

0_transcripts/extract_text.py <episode> <locale>

For example,

0_transcripts/extract_text.py ep01_Potion-of-Flight fr

will generate an annotated transcript for the French translation of Episode 1.

If you don't have Python available, see Generating Files with GitLab on generating the files.

Generating HTML Snippets from Markdown

In this step, you will turn the annotated translations in the Markdown file for an episode's translation into HTML snippets that will be integrated into the website.

Run the following Python command from the webcomics base folder:

0_transcripts/extract_to_html.py <episode> <locale>

For example,

0_transcripts/extract_to_html.py ep01_Potion-of-Flight fr

will generate all HTML snippets for the French translation of Episode 1.

If you don't have Python available, see Generating Files with GitLab on generating the files.

Curating the Transcripts

Process

Open the episode that you are working on in your browser, then open the generated HTML files one by one in a separate browser tab and compare their contents with the webcomic's pages. If something's wrong, open the episode's Markdown file, edit it as explained below, Generate the html again and reload the HTML snippet in your browser to check the updated version.

The first time you generate the Markdown, we use the en locale's files for reference. So, if your number and order of text objects is identical to the English version, you will not need to fix anything. Once you have generated your translation's file, it will become the new reference for the text extraction instead.

We also use translation-names-references.fods for translating Speaker's names. If you see any English for a Speaker's name in the result, it means that you are missing a translation in translation-names-references.fods. Add your translation there, then run the extraction script again to get the names translated automatically.

File Format

File Header

The Markdown files start with a title and a Notes section, followed by a Pages section, like this:

# Transcript of Pepper&Carrot Episode 01 [en]

## Notes

Any text you like.

In as many paragraphs as you like.

## Pages

### P00

Name|Position|Concatenate|Text|Whitespace (Optional)
----|--------|-----------|----|---------------------
Title|1|False|Episode 1: The Potion of Flight

### P01
...

Do not edit any of the titles! You can make any change you like within the Notes section though, it will be remembered as long as you don't change the title.

Pages

For every text object found in the SVG, there will be a line in the Markdown file. It is very important that you do not change the order or number of lines in the Markdown file, because we need to keep this stable in case you want to enhance your translation at a later point in time.

Each entry in a page's table has 4-5 columns, separated by |:

For example, if we have a Markdown table like this:

Sound|4|True|Glup
Sound|5|True|Glup
Sound|6|False|Glup
Writing|1|True|WARNING
Writing|3|False|PROPERTY
Writing|2|True|WITCH

The 3 "Writing" segments on the bottom will be combined in the correct order, and the 3 "Sound" segments are also combined:

Writing
    WARNING WITCH PROPERTY
Sound
    Glup Glup Glup

And this is how to get rid of unwanted whitespace:

Sound|1|True|s
Sound|2|True|pl|nowhitespace
Sound|3|True|up|nowhitespace
Sound|4|True|g
Sound|5|True|l|nowhitespace
Sound|6|False|up ! !|nowhitespace
Sound|7|False|B Z Z Z I IO O|nowhitespace

Will result in:

Sound
    splup glup!!
    BZZZIIOO

If your text contains any |, it will be escaped using \|.

Generating Files with GitLab

We recommend generating the files yourself with Python, because it will save you time. If you can't do that, you can let GitLab generate the files for you:

1. In the webcomics GitLab repository, click on CI / CD.
2. Find the entry for your branch that has the "latest" label. If you don't have a branch yet, use the "master" branch.
3. Click on the number in the "Pipeline" column to select this run. You can now see the individual jobs that make up the pipeline.
4. Click on the the "all-transcripts" job in the "Generate" stage (the whole pill-shaped button, not the play button).
5. On the next page you can specify your locale to speed up the build. Write lang in the "Key" field and your locale in the "Value" field.
6. You should now be seeing an execution log. Once the job has finished running, you can download or browse the generated files from the "Job artifacts" on the right-hand side.
7. Find the *.md file for the episode you're working on and edit it as you see fit. Once you're done, commit it to the directory of the language you're working on, either with the Git method or using your web browser.

If there is already a markdown file committed and you want to have your changes to it rendered as HTML to more easily see your edits, there's no need to manually start the job generating all transcripts. Once you've made the changes you want to verify to your branch, stop at step 3 and click on the "transcripts" job of the "Test1" stage instead. You'll be able to access the transcripts as described in step 6 from there.

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