Sort-ordering is not preserved in CrowdIn's UI

[MattFaus]

When a .pot file is uploaded to CrowdIn, and everything is untranslated, the order of captions is displayed in the correct order, presumably because CrowdIn simply shows the order that is in the .pot file.

When, some of the string are translated, however, the sort-ordering switching to be by translated status, namely untranslated on top, translated on bottom.

Craig says that it'd be better to upload the captions as a .html file, so I plan to experiment with that.

[gonadarian]

Did you try uploading captions as an original SRT file? Crowdin can parse them and it understands timestamps. Maybe export of such file will always keep order intact, at least it did for me. I tried some of these on demo project I just created (had to create a new account, since demo is only 10 days which I used up already...).

[MattFaus]

I tried uploading a .srt file, but the sort ordering was still lost when I refreshed the page. But, now that I am taking a closer look at the supported formats, I see that they also accept the youtube .sbv format and understand those as YouTube captions with timestamps. The sort ordering is still lost, and it looks like YouTube's .sbv format is identical to the .sub format.

This gives me hope that Crowdin will support subtitle translations with more fully-featured functionality in the near future. I will reach out to them to see what their plans are.

[MattFaus]

Crowdin support already got back to me and the sort-ordering problem is as simple as this:

Here's the full exchange:

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Hello Crowdin Support,

I have started working on a project to connect YouTube and Crowdin to automatically sync translated subtitles. I have tried uploading the raw .srt or .sbv files, but am having some problems:

After translating a caption and refreshing the page, the strings are no longer sorted by timestamp, but by translation status, namely with untranslated on top and translated on bottom. I want to keep the ordering intact so translators can easily switch between the translation tool and the video itself. Of course, even better would be if your translation tool would display the YouTube video directly within the page so that the translators could have a great experience without having to switch between your tool and YouTube.

My next experiment was going to be transforming the captions into an HTML file, uploading that, and then transforming it back into a .sub or .sbv file before uploading to YouTube. But, if you plan on making improvements to the subtitling interface, I would much rather work in native subtitle formats.

So, my question for you is what are your plans to support subtitling translations with more fully-featured functionality? I am very interested in this problem and would love to be of assistance in any way I can.

• Matt Faus

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Hello Matt,

Kindly see my comments below:

1. Use "None" filter/sort order option. The button above source strings list (note that translators will also have to set this option. You may want to include this as a introduction/style guide for translators).
2. Good idea, we've thought about deeper YouTube integration. But for now we can not promise anything and recommend you to start with what we have. Since Crowdin improve the platform continuously the experience will get better and better.

Great idea with transforming subtitle to HTML. If you can automate this and this does not require too much effort it looks like great workaround.

Thank you for contacting Crowdin Support Team.

Please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions you might have.

Sincerely, Iryna Bilyk