To help your audience know the true meaning of your content, you stand in need of professional specification in subtitling solutions. So how can you make comprehensive subtitling services? A checklist below will give you the answer.
In content production, video is getting a bigger part when compared with text-based content. Video largely articulates the power to transfer your company’s marketing or technical message. Video translation is the obstacle you need to face when your company is functioning in a global context. There are two different ways to make your video production available to an international audience: by including narration or by subtitling. Through narrations are good to use, subtitles bring more benefits.
The complicatedness of giving good subtitles is that you need to keep the original meaning of the video content and care about the time and space restrictions at the same time. To give an example, you should not place many characters or words in one line while subtitling for reasons of readability.
In this article, we will take up a comprehensive subtitling checklist to help you create proper subtitles and identify wrong subtitling signs.
#1. Punctuation
In subtitling, one of the most popular errors people make is using wrong punctuation marks. Where you put the period, comma, colon, or question mark can change the meaning of the sentence completely. Many people are not aware of this and then the flow of dialogue or the number of characters per second can be exceeded. You should hire a professional subtitling agency in Vietnam to add subtitling with professional guidance.
#2. Readability
To be readable is very important in subtitling, and the biggest challenges are visibility (text size, text color, font choice, placement, contrast, and so on) and the pacing. Fast-paced dialogue or many people speaking at the same time can make it specifically complicated to ensure subtitles remain on screen for long enough for the audience to read.
#3. Engagement
Only about 60% of the public considers that their abilities are better than average. The remaining 40% choose subtitled videos to both understand the content and to use it as a learning method for language proficiency.
#4. Timing
Subtitles, as to be easier for the audience to follow, should meet the speed of speaking as closely as possible. However, in reality, this is quite hard to do. Rapid speakers make it difficult for translators to put all into one single frame. Besides that, the amount of time required to read the subtitle also harms subtitling work. Translators need to ask themselves whether the audience can read the subtitles in 1 to 6- second time frame.
When you subtitle, you might have to choose words to fit in and for the audience to read. Or otherwise, you might prefer bringing subtitles to the next scene, although with scene changes or a complicated shot, which is not a great idea generally. It is better to make the subtitles as short as you can.
But of course, practice is required to be able to do that with professional subtitling services help and not leaving behind any of the original meaning and emotion.
#5. Grammar
The meaning of dialogues can be changed mostly by grammatical errors. Thus, you have to make sure that you use tense, number, gender, etc in the right way. Some common errors people often make are “cái này” (this) is translated as “những cái này” (these), or “cái kia” (that) is translated as “những cái kia” (those).
These might be small mistakes and hardly noticed while speaking, but in subtitles, they are clearly visible and can change the structure of the subtitling services.
#6. Synchronization
It is compulsory to have the synchronization of the title text as per the timestamp of the audio speech moments and the number of words displayed on-screen at a time be unified and exact. The text adjustment should be applicable and no possible offset to avoid disturbing the audience.
It is reasonable to manually insert subtitles yourself yet there are also many reasons for hiring a subtitling agency. You can choose the right solution based on a range of factors like your subtitles style choice, your own experience, language and file, time constrictions, and editing preferences.
There are many benefits of hiring an experienced local subtitling company. They are trusted professionals who do all the technical work like syncing, time-coding, encoding, etc., and can customize the subtitles in different ways (font, placement, color). Moreover, this can help you save a lot of time, and also avoid errors that may cost you time and money.
Pick your Professional subtitling services
With a team of hundreds of experienced experts in subtitling solutions, GTE Media is being trusted by many B2B global clients.
We believe that with our audience-centred approach and high-quality, comprehensive end-to-end media localization solutions, we can provide you with the best subtitling solutions. As we understand the need for flexibility and choice, we are thrilled to provide options for any budget and project.
If you want to discover more localization services, see more here.
See more about our subtitling services or contact us for a free quote.
Tags: Subtitling, Subtitling Services
