hebrew

How to install interSubs on mpv to learn Hebrew

Sat Jun 11, 2022

Table of Contents

Setup
Usage
Troubleshooting errors
- Error of black screen
- Reversed subs
Video examples to watch that have hebrew subtitles

Back in the early 2000, I used to use Babylon software a lot for translating words (before I switched to Linux). It was very cool, it allowed to click on any word in combination with a keystroke to get a popup with the translation of that word.

I miss that feature much to be honest, specially with Hebrew. The interSubs plugin allows to do exactly that, but for the mpv video player and using several webservices.

Here is an example:

You can hover the mouse over different words and you will automagically get the translation of that word.

Best of all, it integrates really well with my mpv configs, so I can open a youtube video url on my notes system and it will automatically open with mpv and have that feature enabled. The only caveat is that the video needs to have Hebrew subtitles uploaded on Youtube.

Setup #

Install packages

sudo pacman -S python-httpx python-lxml python-requests python-beautifulsoup4 python-numpy python-pyqt5 xcompmgr

Start the composite manager

xcompmgr -c

For extra documentation, check: https://github.com/oltodosel/interSubs

Usage #

Start video with mpv & select subtitles.
F5 to start/stop interSubs.
Point cursor over the word to get popup with translation.
F6 to hide/show without exiting.

Looping helps, use:

l: to enable looping (toggle)
r: to mark the start
t: to mark the end

You need to stop and play back within the loop interval (if I am not mistaken)

Then you can stop looping:

R: to remove the start mark
T: to remove the end mark

Troubleshooting errors #

Error of black screen #

Symptoms: Black regions on text, so no subs are displayed

Solution: Start the composite manager with

xcompmgr -c

Alternatively you could use xcompmgr -c -C -t-5 -l-5 -r4.2 -o.55 &

Reversed subs #

Symptoms: The word translated does not match the word highlighted

Solution: Change the R2L_from_B flag to True.

# translated language is written right-to-left, e.g Hebrew/Arabic
R2L_from_B = True
# translation is written right-to-left, e.g Hebrew/Arabic
R2L_to_B = False

Video examples to watch that have hebrew subtitles #

Setup #

Usage #

Troubleshooting errors #

Error of black screen #

Reversed subs #

Video examples to watch that have hebrew subtitles #

Music #

Day to day modern hebrew #

Tanakh in hebrew #