How to Create Translated Video Subtitles and Descriptions

Overview

There are 4 steps to create new subtitles or video descriptions in a new language:

Initial step: Declare your intent

In accordance with the WAI Translations process, please always declare your intent and wait for reply from WAI team before starting a translation.

Step 1: Find the related video identifier

If you want to create new subtitles/translated descriptions for a video, you have probably seen the video in a W3C WAI resource.

You now need to find the video identifier.

Look for the embedded video player in the code of the English version of the page. It looks similar to this:

The value of video-id is the video identifier you need.

Step 2: Edit video-metadata.yml

WAI videos captions, subtitles and descriptions metadata are stored in “video-metadata.yml” in “wai-website-data” repository

Video-metadata.yml example

Show example

- id: keyboard
  name:
    en: "Web Accessibility Perspectives: Keyboard Compatibility"
    fr: "L'accessibilité Web illustrée : Compatibilité avec le clavier"
  main-page: /perspective-videos/keyboard/
  path: perspective-videos
  lang-folder: true
  captions:
    - en
  captions-ad:
    - en
  subtitles:
    - fr
    - zh-hans
  subtitles-ad:
    - fr
    - zh-hans
  descriptions-ad:
    - en
    - fr
    - zh-hans

Navigate to the wai-website-data repository .
In “video-metadata.yml”, look for the id that matches the video-id found in previous step.
Update the following video attributes
- name: name of the video.
  Add your translated version to the list.
- subtitles: available subtitles languages.
  Add your language tag to the list.
- subtitles-ad: available subtitles languages for the audio-described version of the video.
  Add your language tag to the list.
- descriptions-ad: available descriptions languages for the audio-described version of the video.
  Add your language tag to the list.
Do not change the following attributes
- main-page
- path
- lang-folder
- captions
- captions-ad

Step 3: Create the subtitles/descriptions file(s)

Captions, subtitles and descriptions are stored in WebVTT (.vtt) files. VTT files are located in “wai-videos” folder, in “wai-website-data” repository .

To find the path to the VTT files to translate, look at path and lang-folder attributes in “video-metadata.yml”.
- path: path to VTT files, from “wai-videos” folder.
- lang-folder (not always present): when set to true, means VTT files for a language are located in a subfolder named after the language shortcode.
Example
In this example, English VTT files are located into “/wai-videos/perspective-videos/en/”
- id: keyboard (...) path: perspective-videos lang-folder: true
Duplicate the English VTT file, with language shortcode added to the middle of the filename.
Example for a translation into Arabic
- Original English files:
  - Captions: keyboard.en.vtt
  - Captions (audio-described version): keyboard_ad.en.vtt
  - Description (audio-described version): keyboard_ad_desc.en.vtt
- New files translated into Arabic:
  - Subtitles: keyboard.ar.vtt
  - Subtitles (audio-described version): keyboard_ad.ar.vtt
  - Description (audio-described version): keyboard_ad_desc.ar.vtt
If files are stored into lang subfolders, create a subfolder for your language.

Step 4: Translate the VTT file(s)

Translate all text segments
Keep the first line (WEBVTT)
Do not edit time-intervals

VTT file example

WEBVTT

00:00:01.000 --> 00:00:04.340
Tools for evaluating web accessibility.

00:00:04.640 --> 00:00:10.880
There are software programs and online services
to help you identify accessibility barriers.

00:00:11.340 --> 00:00:14.380
They can save you lots of time and effort
on evauation,

00:00:14.540 --> 00:00:18.120
and can help you avoid creating
new accessibility barriers.

Step 5: Commit your changes and open a Pull Request

Include the updated “video-metadata.yml” and the new translated VTT files.