I had just read that the TV series Yo Soy Betty, La Fea from Columbia resulted in 20 different countries’ versions. We had one in the U.S., also. The critics said that the Columbian original was still the best. I discovered there were no captions for it in English, only Spanish. However, those Spanish captions were excellent, not like some English captions these days which seemed garbled/broken, etc. (perhaps they no longer hired people to do correct dialog texting but instead stations/studios used different audio transcriptions with no quality or consistency etc?) At first I typed a few episodes using Excel transcription but it took a lot of time. Also, I thought maybe I needed official permission from the owners of the series, first, etc.
Then I stumbled on using a tool combination I wanted to share since it gave me the general gist of what was happening in the story, enough that I was able to enjoy the series episodes’ acting and writing.
Those critics were right. There was genius at work with the series. I finished episode 38 with 100 more to go. Since many people from many different countries use Dramatica, I thought this patched together system might open up more possibilities for all to watch things in other languages. I know a little Spanish and though not a lot, this usage helped me understand the episodes.
I used my iPhone app for xfinity stream to watch an episode. I placed the phone horizontally. I heard it via various bluetooth ear options. I happened to have an older 9.5 pro iPad and used the new Google translate app. I chose camera. I propped up and positioned the iPad to capture the iPhone screen and did any necessary enlargement via screen/finger manipulating to focus on the iPhone screen-caption texting. As the sentences popped up on the iPhone screen, I flashed my palm or a card over the iPad camera. I found the covering action that took only a second primed the translator to move onto the next sentence quickly, making capturing it as a still shot unnecessary. It kept it from getting stuck. I watched the TV and used this system, but it did not go as smoothly as using the iphone for the watching. (if that makes sense)
[an interesting note: when I glanced at the last episode of the series, it seemed to have had an unresolved point which brought to mind an interesting Dramatica observation; and after watching it all, I will be able to ask about it to see if I had understood clearly.]