theamericans | Episode Transcripts

wendelah1 posting in

I'm a fanfiction writer who's mostly written for The X-Files, Fringe, and various small fandoms. There are transcripts available for every episode of both shows, which is a resource I've found invaluable. Does anyone here know if there is someone already doing The Americans episode transcripts? If not, is anyone interested in doing it?

I've recently started writing fanfic for The Americans. It would be so helpful to be able to just pull up the transcript whenever I wanted to fact-check something, or make sure I've heard a bit of dialogue correctly. It's also much faster and easier (and less painful emotionally) to read the transcript rather than have to re-watch an episode.

Is it unrealistic of me to want this, given how small a fandom we still are? Probably. But I still want it.

As long as I'm asking for the moon, wouldn't it be wonderful to have an up-to-date wiki devoted solely to The Americans, with articles about all of the characters, and links to resources pertinent to the time period, spycraft, etc.?

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

quantumreality

As your next best bet, have you tried grabbing the hearing impaired subs from addic7ed? One requirement of HI subs is that the speaker be identified if they're not clear.

From:

wendelah1

No, I haven't. How does that work?

From:

quantumreality

http://www.addic7ed.com/show/3311

Look in the column with the blue ear with a sort of slash through it. :) That will help you with episodes, although they're not as good as full transcripts.

(there may be multiple HI English releases; that is not critical for you, since they just have different timestamps.)

Edited Date: 2014-05-15 04:14 am (UTC)

From:

treonb

I was hoping this post was offering some transcripts :-)

I rely heavily on subtitle files, but the problem is that the Russian scenes are not subtitled.

Personally I don't care if it's hearing impaired or not. I think the hearing impaired ones just add notes on music and other audible noises.

From:

treonb

I found this: http://theamericans.wikia.com/

Not the most updated, but that's what fans are for :-) Maybe we can put some effort into it as a community?

From:

apolla_savre

I would love it if I could find a transcript of the Russian in Russian. Mostly for spelling purposes (particularly for o's and a's and the palatalization effect, which can make spelling sometimes difficult. And sh vs sch, and i, y, and i kratkoe - but the last three are easier what with spelling rules and all.)

From:

wendelah1

"I was hoping this post was offering some transcripts :-)"

Sorry about that. I know we got transcripts in The X-Files fandom because some wonderful individual named Tiny Dancer took it upon themselves to create them and another person put up a still to this day maintained website for--all of them--plus the Lonegunmen series--plus both movies. I don't know who did the transcripts for Fringe but finding them changed my life.

The scenes in Russian aren't subtitled I imagine because they're already subtitled--in English for the American audience. I'd be curious to know how accurate the Russian speakers among us find the translation.

I haven't looked but I'm pretty sure I already have subtitles on my Blurays that I can turn on. So I'm not sure how downloading subtitles would help me as a hearing person anyway. I must sound really stupid but aren't the files meant to be synched with watching on a computer?

From:

treonb

I used those X-Files transcripts quite a lot in the past, for my vids (and general 'watching without watching' :-)

The subtitle files are simple text files that you can open with any text editor. I use Notepad++, which allows me to search through multiple files.

So, for example, if I want to know Clark's name, I search all the subtitle files, and find that in "The Oath" they mention his full name: Clark Herbert Westerfeld. If I'm looking for a certain scene, I'll search the subtitle files for whatever quote I remember. It's much faster than looking through the video files.

The Russian is subtitled in the show, so it doesn't appear in the subtitle files, and it's not easy to search all the shows for a certain scene.

Edited Date: 2014-05-15 05:13 pm (UTC)

From:

wendelah1

That's what we would have to do. That site looks--abandoned--like someone put it together and then moved on to another fandom. And I'm no expert but it doesn't look fan-owned to me. If that's the case, it would probably get taken down when the show goes off the air. It looks pretty slick. Compare it to this Fringe wiki: Fringepedia.

I can create content--I'm a writer so that's kind of what I do in fandom--but I have no wiki-editing/creating skills at all. I can't even figure out how to edit at Fanlore, let alone put up pages. Maybe we need a volunteer thread in this post?

No, I take it back.

Maybe we need a separate post? LOOKING FOR VOLUNTEERS FOR A FAN-CREATED THE AMERICANS WIKI Something like that?

From:

wendelah1

Okay, I don't have a text editor (at least I don't think so) so I'd have to download Notepad++ and then figure out how to use it first. But that doesn't sound impossible, even for non-technological me. OT: I hate downloading stuff onto my computer. I know I sound paranoid but I'm always afraid I'll get a virus or a Trojan or the program will make the computer turn my brain into mush...

From:

treonb

Wikia is a web-hosting service. It's not fan-owned, but it belongs to the fans in the sense that it's up to whoever wants to update. Fringepedia, on the other hand, does seem to be fan owned.

After I looked it up earlier, I signed up and started adding info. There's a lot to add there! Mainly I focused on adding basic info on all the episodes, and starting to give info on the characters. It wasn't completely abandoned, but it's in a very sorry state.

It's pretty simple to add content, you can sign up, but you don't have to. I can explain the basics. However, just like Wikipedia, you need to take into account that what you write can be updated later by any other user.

To update a page: Click on the "Edit" button next to the page name. Type in your info - you have a toolbar on top for formatting and you can link to any other page on the wiki (or anywhere, actually). When you finish, click the "publish" button on the far right. If you want, you can first click "preview" to see what it would look like.

From:

wendelah1

Thanks. That sounds pretty easy.

"However, just like Wikipedia, you need to take into account that what you write can be updated later by any other user."

Yeah, I know. I have given up on editing Wikipedia for that very reason. I've corrected obvious misinformation--like the wrong birth year for Dana Scully on her page--and had a complete idiot put the wrong date back five seconds later, rinse, repeat. Ugh. I'll try not to get too attached to my content.

From:

treonb

You can also categorize: When you edit the page, there's a box on the right-hand side to add categories. Or you can go to the bottom of the page and click "add category".

But if it's too much, it's not necessary. With projects like this, there will always be somebody else who enjoys doing the things you don't :-)

I contacted the administrator, since there are things that only he can do (like fixing up the toolbar bar on top). Once we have access to everything, I'll post something about it.