May 12, 2008

User Generated Subtitling in China

User generated subtitling has already become a worldwide phenomenon as passionate fans add local language subtitles to their favorite movies and TV shows almost as soon as the media is released. In China, virtually every American TV show can easily be found on the major video sharing sites with a simple search. Videos are on-demand and available without ever having to download or even go to the local pirated DVD store.

To create the subtitled videos, media is typically downloaded via Bit Torrent and subtitles are crowdsourced online via BBS forums. It can take as short as 6 hours for movies to be subtitlted and put online.

Below is a snapshot from an episode of Lost’s season four with both Chinese and English subtitles (full video link here). At the beginning of the show, the subtitlers state their subtitling group name and the usernames of the individual subtitlers as they are just performing the service as a hobby and looking for recognition among their peers.