This week we published our first Latin redubs of the ZDF videos we have been talking about for a long time. We have a further six or so in the pipeline, and a team of five volunteers working on new translations and audio, building on work already done by translators at Vicipaedia. We hope to publish at least one or two a week until Christmas.
If you want to see these videos as they are released, please subscribe to our Youtube channel.
We are releasing the videos simultaneously on Wikimedia Commons, with Latin and English subtitles, to help learners to use the videos, and to ensure they are published on Vicipaedia and in some cases English Wikipedia, as English redubs are not available.
We have a lot of these to work through, so will be busy for a few months doing recording, editing, publishing and promoting. Once we are underway, we have some ideas for further uses of the content:
- A Wikibooks edition, with pages for the videos giving help with the vocabulary and idioms;
- Simple Latin versions; for beginner learners;
- Encouraging other language communities to redub the same content
Do get in touch if any of these ideas appeal to you and you want to help out.
If you are thinking about redubbing the videos into another language, we can help with a bit advice on how to do it, and collaboration on preparing more ZDF or other videos for redubbing. Finding and creating content, ensuring initial subtitling and an English translation is where we can collaborate.
Once subtitling is done, multiple translations are possible. The ZDF videos for instance have been redubbed into Dutch, Welsh and Esperanto so far; but it would be great to see more done in other lesser used languages, such as, Breton, Cornish, Gaelic, Sanskrit and Ancient Greek, just to give a few examples.
Our vision is to work with animators and videographers to create reusable content, once we are done with the ZDF videos. The key factor is that the video needs to be at a high standard and interesting to multiple language communities. If we can get that right, then we have the means to create compelling educational content on low budgets for a vast array of under-supported languages.