Video Subtitling or Captioning?

What is the difference between subtitles and captions? Well, they are almost the same. In essence, they are both texts derived from spoken audio or commentary in videos.

Subtitling is usually used as a way of translating voice to text for videos, films, etc., so people in other countries can understand the content. They are usually displayed at the bottom center of the screen, although can be moved so as not to overlay text already present within the video, for example, a person’s name and business title.

Captioning (also called closed captions) is usually used as a service to aid deaf and hearing-impaired people, and so we see this type of service requested more for medical-related videos. This is the same as subtitling but sometimes includes descriptions of non-speech elements like music, sounds, etc.

Here are a few considerations: 

Script

First, the spoken audio needs to be transcribed from the video to create the subtitle text. Then the transcription needs to be QA’ed to ensure that everything has been typed correctly. Then this transcription is sent for transcreation and correction by clients, who add the final touches to the transcribed and translated script.

Fonts

However, if you prefer to use a specific font, you can provide the font information for the project.

Text wrapping

For subtitle text to be clearly legible, the font size must be at least size 60. Therefore, it’s recommended that a maximum of two lines is used for each subtitle.

Having three or more lines for any subtitle would result in a large portion of the video being used for subtitle text which is not attractive. 

Hard v. Soft subtitles

Hard subtitles are those where the subtitle has been irreversibly merged to the video. Soft subtitles are freely editable.

Soft subtitles are those where the subtitle is stored in an SRT (or similar) file. 

In order for the subtitle text to appear in the video, both the video and subtitle file need to have the same file and be stored in the same folder. 

Subtitle text example

The screenshot above shows:

• Start – when the subtitle is to appear
• End – when the subtitle is to disappear
• Style – The font style of the subtitle text (font, size, format, background, position on screen)
• Text – The subtitle text

Based on the type of product and your target audience, whether you are going to localize videos as part of your overall website translation strategy or not, you might want to choose subtitling or captioning.

Which one do you need?

Our team offering subtitling in Dublin can help you!

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