{"id":8425,"date":"2018-04-24T10:42:20","date_gmt":"2018-04-24T09:42:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cpsl.com\/2018\/04\/24\/the-long-and-short-of-subtitling\/"},"modified":"2023-09-27T12:24:34","modified_gmt":"2023-09-27T12:24:34","slug":"the-long-and-short-of-subtitling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cpsl.com\/en-GB\/the-long-and-short-of-subtitling\/","title":{"rendered":"The Long and Short of Subtitling"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>These days, everyone\u2019s making videos. Whether you\u2019re producing <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cpsl.com\/en-GB\/services\/audiovisual\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">audio-visual content<\/a> to sell, explain, train staff or expand the reach of your product or service, you\u2019ve probably wondered about whether or not to subtitle it. Here\u2019s a quick overview of what, when and how to subtitle your video.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h4><strong>1. To sub, or to dub?<\/strong><\/h4>\n<p>Social media has kick-started a meteoric video boom. Tech advances have democratized audiovisuals and these days, nobody needs a full ENG crew, orchestra and herd of camels to carry their film camera gear around. Making a corporate sales, training or how-to video (and making it look good) doesn\u2019t take an age or cost the earth, but when it comes to quality, it is worth ensuring your message gets across properly. Subtitles can be a more resource-effective way of producing multilingual video content than voiceover. \u201cSubs\u201d are also the preferred choice for social media, as viewers often watch videos at low volume on smartphones. What\u2019s more, they can make videos accessible to people with hearing difficulties.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h4><strong>2. \u201cThere must be a YouTube video for that\u2026\u201d<\/strong><\/h4>\n<p>There are dozens of subtitling programs available, but the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cpsl.com\/en-GB\/lsp-perspective-applying-human-touch-mt-qualitative-feedback-mt-evaluation-part-1\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>human touch<\/strong><\/a> is indispensable. Turn to a specialized language service provider to guarantee that your message and values are conveyed in a seamless, accurate and culturally appropriate way.<\/p>\n<p>An experienced multimedia and language provider will take you through the process, which typically goes like this:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Transcription<\/li>\n<li>Translation<\/li>\n<li>Spotting (cutting the subtitles into lines)<\/li>\n<li>Upload and adjustment<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>A competent multilingual service provider will also know which font and point size to use, and how to tackle visibility issues if, say, your subtitles and your speaker\u2019s shirt are the same color, or if you need to add a subtitle and a name-tag on the same screen. They can guide you on color-coding for visually impaired viewers and advise on whether to use embedded subtitles or software that layers on subtitles for a specific purpose (such as web streaming).<\/p>\n<h3><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cpsl.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/digital-marketing-2258364_1920-e1524563145344.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-7033\" src=\"http:\/\/www.cpsl.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/digital-marketing-2258364_1920-e1524563145344.jpg\" alt=\"micro CPSL voice-over\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.cpsl.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/digital-marketing-2258364_1920-e1524563145344.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.cpsl.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/digital-marketing-2258364_1920-e1524563145344-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/a><\/strong><\/h3>\n<h4><strong>3. Let your voice be read<\/strong><\/h4>\n<p>Ensuring accurate transcription and translation are essential if you want to get great results. And when it comes to the spotting and adjustment, the <a href=\"http:\/\/bbc.github.io\/subtitle-guidelines\/#presentation\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">BBC<\/a> offers a few golden rules:<\/p>\n<p>Go verbatim, don\u2019t paraphrase, omit or shorten spoken text<\/p>\n<p>Subtitle in one or two lines, never three or more.<\/p>\n<p>Follow the flow and pace of speech, and make natural pauses for the eye, e.g.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cpsl.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/The-Long-and-Short-of-Subtitling.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-7031\" src=\"http:\/\/www.cpsl.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/The-Long-and-Short-of-Subtitling.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"612\" height=\"538\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Ensure that each phrase can be read at a comfortable pace, even if this means leaving it on a second after the speaker has finished.<\/p>\n<p>You may also wish to consider subtitling a same language version. This is becoming standard practice, especially for social media videos. In addition to making your audio-visual content accessible to those that want to watch it discretely, well-executed same-language subtitling can clarify things for a non-native speaker, or reiterate key messages.<\/p>\n<p>Your multilingual service provider can also help you produce <a href=\"https:\/\/www.3playmedia.com\/2017\/06\/19\/whats-the-difference-subtitles-for-the-deaf-and-hard-of-hearing-sdh-v-closed-captions\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a closed caption or SDH<\/a>\u00a0 (Subtitled for the Deaf and Hard-of-hearing) version of your video. These subtitles appear in the source language of the video alongside non-dialogue audio sound effects and speaker identification.<\/p>\n<p>Do you have a subtitle horror story in your multimedia projects? Needing tips on how to get the best out of on-screen text?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cpsl.com\/en-GB\/contact-us\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Let us know !<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>These days, everyone\u2019s making videos. Whether you\u2019re producing audio-visual content to sell, explain, train staff or expand the reach of your product or service, you\u2019ve probably wondered about whether or not to subtitle it. Here\u2019s a quick overview of what, when and how to subtitle your video. &nbsp; 1. To sub, or to dub? Social [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7032,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[144,203],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-multimedia-gb","category-subtitling-en-GB"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cpsl.com\/en-GB\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cpsl.com\/en-GB\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cpsl.com\/en-GB\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cpsl.com\/en-GB\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cpsl.com\/en-GB\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8425"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.cpsl.com\/en-GB\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21692,"href":"https:\/\/www.cpsl.com\/en-GB\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8425\/revisions\/21692"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cpsl.com\/en-GB\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cpsl.com\/en-GB\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cpsl.com\/en-GB\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cpsl.com\/en-GB\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}