Your Comprehensive Subtitling Checklist [6 Essential Points]

Video is taking a bigger part in content production. In comparison to text-based content, video mostly has much expressive power to convey your company’s technical or marketing message. When your company is operating in a global context, video translation is the next hurdle you need to face. Making your video production available to an international audience can be done in two different ways: by including a voice-over or by subtitling your video content. While there are surely good reasons to go for voice-overs, subtitles have a number of benefits. The complexity of delivering good subtitles is that you have to maintain the original meaning of the video content in your subtitling while keeping in mind the time and space restrictions. For instance, for reasons of readability, it is essential not to place many words or characters in a line while subtitling.

Today, in this article, we will discuss a comprehensive subtitling checklist for helping you create proper subtitles and know wrong subtitling signs.

Learn The Checklist For Comprehensive Subtitling

1. Punctuation

In Hindi, People do not generally end a sentence with a period, but instead, they use a “Purnaviram”. “Puran” means complete and “viram means stop. It seems like this “I”. Commas are well-known as “Alpviram”, or say short stops. One rule in Hindi is that you do not use comma before “and”. Most people don’t know this and they write commas where they are not required, which affects the flow of the dialogue and includes an extra character that might exceed the characters every second permitted. To add subtitling with professional guidance you should hire budget-friendly subtitling in Mumbai.

2. Readability

Subtitles must be readable and, apart from visibility ( font choice, text size, text color, placement, contrast, and so on), the pacing is the biggest challenge with subtitling. Your audience can only read so fast and making sure subtitles remain on screen for long enough can be specifically complicated with fast-paced dialogue or numerous people speaking at the same time.

3. Engagement

More than 40% of the public accepts that their skills are below average. The majority of them prefer viewing subtitled videos not only to understand the content but also to utilize it as a learning method for language proficiency.

Other native speakers still consider subtitles with effective content translation to retain the information visually. Attract the audience by satisfying their subtitling requirements.

4. Timing

Subtitles should meet the pace of speaking as closely as possible because otherwise, it can be complicated for the audience. However, this is conveniently said than done. Mainly do rapid speakers, it can be difficult for translators to fit it all into a single frame. Another factor that harms subtitling work is the amount of time required to read the subtitle. You will require to ask yourself whether audiences will be able to read your subtitles in the given 1 to 6-second time frame.

When you are dealing with speakers, you might have to edit some words to fit it all and to offer more time for the audiences to read it. If that is not possible, you might prefer carrying over subtitles to the next scene, although with a complicated shot or scene changes, this is not always a great idea. It is good to make your subtitling as short as you can.

But do that with professional subtitling help and without missing any of the original emotion and meaning takes practice.

5. Grammar

Grammatical errors mostly make changes in dialogues. Thus, you need to make sure that nothing goes amiss in gender, number, tense, etc. People often come around words incorrectly translated like “इस” (this) is translated as “इन” (these). The same goes for “उस” (that) and “उन” (those). This might look like small mistakes and may not be noticed while speaking, but they are clearly visible in subtitles as they end up changing the structure of the subtitle.

6. Synchronization

The number of words occurring on the display screen at a time and the synchronization of title text as per the timestamp of the audio speech moments must be harmonized as well as accurate. The text alignment should be appropriate and to avoid any possible offset that may disturb the audiences.

There are different reasons for hiring a subtitling agency yet there are also major reasons for manually inserting subtitles yourself. How you select to approach this, may rely on a wide range of factors like your own video editing and language experience, subtitles style choice, time constrictions, language and file, and editing preferences.

The pros of hiring a known local subtitling company are having a trusted professional complete all the technical work (syncing, time-coding, encoding, etc.) and they can also customize the subtitles in different styles (color, font, placement). Not only can this save a lot of time, but their expertise will decrease errors you may face personally- saving your time, money, and hassle.

Wrapping It Up:

Professionals of Tridindia are expert in subtitling solutions and we understand the need for accurate and professional subtitling solutions in around 80 languages. Our high-quality, affordable solution means we are a credible subtitling company, trusted by professionals. We also recognize the need for choice and flexibility and we are delighted to provide options and that fit any budget and project.

To talk to our professionals call us now at +91-8527599201 or mail us at [email protected]