How it started/How it's going

Greetings from what's known as the Upper Left Corner of the United States, known for rain, coffee, grunge, and whales.

A few years ago I wanted to watch movies and series, mostly French, that had not yet aired in the U.S.

I got the Subtitle Edit app and started messing around with it, first creating subs for films and shows in English, just to be able to learn the software without having to worry about translation.

Then after awhile I really got down to business, creating subs for the first episode of Haut Potentiel Intellectuel (HPI). And then it was off to the races, with episodes of Muertres A..., Les Rivieres Pourpres, Astrid et Raphaelle, and my absolute French favorite, Capitaine Marleau.  

Les Rivieres Pourpres S03E03. The direct translation
of the French was "He's in his thirty-ones."

Why French? I've been to France a couple of times, but don't speak the language. I read it fairly well, but have wanted to develop an ear for it, as well as build vocabulary, as a way to edge toward becoming somewhat verbally fluent.  Subtitling seemed to be a way to learn at my own pace, without the pressure of taking a class. At the same time I can get kind of obsessed, kind of like doing a crossword or jigsaw puzzle that I can't put aside until it's Done.  

A typical translation starts when I find a video file in the wild, such as YouTube, and acquire it before it gets taken down. I try to get existing subs in French, Dutch, or German, that I can machine translate to English, and then work out the detailed translation-- including, especially, the idioms. However, as I've become a lot better at understanding spoken French, I've done more and more subs by translating audio from scratch, such as all the HPI and Marleaus.

Capitaine Marleau. Above: S03E07, "Ice Queen";
below: S04E04. "The Burning Man." 

Below: HPI, S02E03, "Made In France"

In the future, I'll be posting updates about shows/movies I'm translating to English, technical notes about subtitling, Subtitle Edit, and formatting, and interesting trivia I encounter in translating.