Verity Hartley , Marketing Specialist, LanguageWire || Reading Time: 3 minutes
If you have watched a movie or video with subtitles there is a good chance that you instinctively know what makes a good subtitle track over a bad one.
Good subtitling requires skill and practice and enhances your understanding of the action taking place on the screen.
Bad subtitling can actually reduce your comprehension of what is happening by confusing who is speaking, poorly translating what is being said or simply being difficult to read.
So, to help you get the best out of your subtitling efforts here are some useful dos and don'ts for giving your viewers the best experience.
Two lines is the maximum space a subtitle has to fit in the screen, hence the ability to be concise is a really valuable asset. Sometimes you will need to provide a translation close to the source and other times you will need to be creative and paraphrase!
Out-of-sync subtitles are immensely frustrating for the viewer and can only really be tolerated in live translation settings. Take the time to make sure your subtitles match the audio.
Resist the urge to make your subtitles fancy or flamboyant with garish colours or fonts. Choose a simple sans-serif font and use either black text or white text on a black background.
Poor spelling and grammar can lead to poor comprehension for your viewers. Also, remember that different languages use punctuation differently. Speak to a language expert to be sure.
Make it easier for your viewers to understand who is speaking when the person or the character is off-screen by indicating the speaker's name before their speech. Often this is done in capitals and sometimes placed in square brackets.
Captions help hard-of-hearing people understand actions and sounds that may be taking place off-screen. The sound is described and placed in brackets, usually on its own line.
If a speaker stops speaking before, they complete their thought or sentence, be sure to add an ellipsis (...) to show that the statement is incomplete and not your subtitle.
If a speaker is using a lot of stress in their speech to emphasise certain points you can highlight these using italics for the words carrying the stress. Also good for indicating when a word is intentionally untranslated.
The job of a subtitler is to faithfully capture the meaning of the spoken information. If you have some creative freedom to paraphrase, be careful in your choice of words and how they may be interpreted.
Make sure you always run your subtitles past a proofreader to catch any mistakes or to highlight any sentences that might not pass a sense check.
It takes the average viewer 4 seconds to read 12 words. So, try and keep your subtitles under this limit per subtitle. Any more and you risk viewers missing the end of sentences. This is usually 2 lines of text.
Try and end your sentences with one subtitle. If you are captioning a speaker, writing the same amount of words that they use, may prove more difficult (if not impossible) so, in this case, remain faithful to the audio, be concise and follow the flow of the speaker
Similar to choosing a good font and clear readable colour for your subtitles, do not use flashy effects on individual words or the subtitle as a whole. The goal is readability.
Unless a specific expression needs to be conveyed in the subtitles, translate the text in its simplest form. Not everyone understands all slang references and you shouldn’t try and save space by using a slang term that's not in the original audio.
As with all localization tasks you should make sure you are speaking the language of your target audience, including any idioms or colloquialisms. Use a native speaker to translate these naturally.
Faithful subtitling is the aim of any subtitler. You may have to make some creative choices but you should always try and remain as true as possible to the source.
As the subtitler, you decide which information is more essential. Include, while being concise, the most relevant information for the viewer to read and understand the caption.
Subtitles are essential and should be provided in all videos to reach the largest audiences, but there is also a place for fully dubbed voiceovers. Speak to an expert to decide what you need.
Subtitles should enhance comprehension of the video and not obscure it. So, if action is taking place in the bottom third of the screen temporarily move your subtitles to the top third. However, also work with your video editor to ensure the bottom third is kept as clear as possible.
Just like in other messaging mediums, all caps are used to emphasise a loud sound or someone shouting. Sentence case should be used for all other subtitles.
Hopefully, our list has given you some great tips for how to get started with your subtitling project. However, if you would like to work with a professional team of subtitlers experienced in localizing video content please fill out the form below and someone will be in touch soon.
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