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Best Practices for Subtitling Videos: Ensuring Clarity and Synchronisation
Many people don’t know that subtitling appeared with the birth of the early motion pictures “Cinema or Movies”, as the first movies were silent. At the time, directors used to insert separate frames with text in-between two moving scenes to elaborate on the film story. These texts were called “intertitles”.
The film industry took many years to reach the technical dexterity to transcribe “Subtitles” synchronised with the sound track and actor’s lines. Probably, the first film to implement such a companion subtitling is “Kameradschaft (1931)”, displaying German and French subtitles.
Now, decades from the first subtitled movies, making readable subtitles is still an uneasy task. So, what makes a subtitled film understandable and equally entertaining.
This article will give you an idea about the technical and editorial best practices for subtitling.
Choosing the Right Format
When you are preparing to subtitle your videos, choosing the right format is so important for ensuring compatibility and optimal performance across various platforms. You should select a format that aligns with your specific needs and the intended use of the video. For web-based content, WebVTT is a recommended choice due to its support for styling and positioning, making it ideal for online videos. For broadcast-quality videos, consider using an open subtitles file like EBU-STL, which supports multiple languages and advanced formatting, making it suitable for professional broadcasting. For general use, SRT (SubRip Text) is a reliable and widely supported option, compatible with most media players and video platforms.
Subtitle-Audio Synchronisation and Timing
Synchronising your subtitles with the video content is essential to ensure a seamless viewing experience. To achieve this, you need to align the subtitle timestamps with the corresponding audio or video content. Start by using a media player like VLC that supports subtitle synchronisation. If the subtitles are out of sync, you can adjust the subtitle delay in milliseconds using the player’s tools or a subtitle editor. It’s important to check for common issues such as incorrect frame rates or improper encoding, which can cause desynchronisation. Using the ‘time shift’ function in subtitle editors allows you to adjust the timestamps of the entire subtitle track or specific sections, ensuring perfect synchronisation. Additionally, some software offers automatic subtitle synchronisation by analysing the video’s audio track and adjusting the subtitle timings accordingly.
Line Breaks and Characters Per Line (CpL)
When it comes to line breaks and word clustering, you need to ensure that your subtitles are readable and logically structured. Divide your subtitle text into sense blocks at the highest syntactic nodes, such as sentences, clauses, and phrases. This approach helps maintain logical and readable subtitles, although you may need to make compromises due to time and space constraints. Use short natural pauses to decide on the best line breaks. For longer pauses, consider adding a new subtitle or using an ellipsis to indicate the pause. Avoid breaking continuous utterances across lines and ensure that you do not separate articles or adjectives from nouns. Keep line breaks relatively uniform and do not cram too much text into a single line; ideally, limit it to two lines at a time with about 40 characters per line.
Grammar and Punctuation Check
When it comes to punctuation and grammar in subtitling, it is important to ensure that your subtitles are clear, understandable, and respect the natural flow of the dialogue. You should use proper punctuation to signal the end of sentences, such as periods, question and exclamation marks, which should be placed immediately after the last character of the sentence. Start all your sentences with a capital letter, if applicable, to maintain consistency and readability. While you don’t need to use dots to mark the end of every sentence, using them to conclude ideas can be helpful. For significant pauses within a subtitle, use ellipses to indicate the break in speech. It’s also important to correct grammatical errors and avoid spelling mistakes to keep the subtitles understandable and professional. Additionally, you should respect the spoken character but avoid using a telegram or text message style.
Subtitles Visibility and Readability
To ensure your subtitles are legible and readable, you need to pay attention to several key factors. First, choose an appropriate font size and color that contrasts well with the background of your video. A clear, sans-serif font like Arial or Helvetica is recommended, and the text should be large enough to be read comfortably on various screen sizes. Follow the guideline of displaying about 21 characters per second to give viewers sufficient time to read and comprehend the content. Aim for subtitle lines that are about 40 characters long and limit the number of lines to two at a time to avoid cluttering the screen and making the text too difficult to follow quickly. Ensure that line breaks occur at natural linguistic breaks, such as at the end of clauses or sentences, and avoid splitting important phrases or names across lines. This helps maintain the flow of comprehension for viewers and prevents confusion.
Positioning of Subtitled Text
Proper placement of subtitles is essential to avoid obscuring important visual information and to ensure they are in the viewer’s natural line of sight. Generally, subtitles should be placed at the bottom of the screen, especially for long-form content like movies and TV shows. For short-form content such as Instagram Reels, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts, placing subtitles in the middle of the screen can be more effective as it draws the viewer into the video. Avoid placing subtitles at the top of the screen, as this can be distracting and less readable. Ensure that the subtitles do not overlap with key visual elements or action on the screen. Consistent placement throughout the video helps in maintaining viewer engagement and prevents distractions.
Customisation for Different Devices
When subtitling videos, it is essential to consider how your subtitles will appear on various devices, especially smaller screens like mobile phones and tablets. You need to customise the subtitles to ensure they remain readable and clear across different screen sizes. Adjust the font size, line breaks, and positioning to accommodate the limited space on mobile devices. For instance, you might need to use a slightly larger font size and adjust the line breaks to prevent the subtitles from taking up too much of the screen, which can be distracting and difficult to read. Additionally, ensure that the subtitles do not overlap with important visual elements or action on the screen, regardless of the device. Consistent placement throughout the video helps maintain viewer engagement and prevents distractions. Testing your subtitles on different devices and platforms before finalising them is crucial to ensure they display correctly and are fully synced across all environments.
Understanding the Broad Narrative & Cultural Traditions
Achieving contextual accuracy and cultural sensitivity in subtitling is vital, especially when working with multilingual content. You should ensure that your translations capture the hints of the original dialogue while being respectful and appropriate for the target audience. This involves understanding the cultural norms, regional dialects, and figurative expressions of both the source and target languages. Working with native speakers or cultural advisors can help you navigate these complexities and ensure that the translations are accurate and culturally relevant. It is also important to consider the target audience’s background and experience. Translations may need to be adapted based on the audience’s age, gender, ethnicity, or religion to avoid any potential offense or misinterpretation. Using neutral language that is free from bias or offensive connotations can help maintain sensitivity and respect for the audience. If there are elements that cannot be translated accurately or may be offensive, it is best to be transparent and explain the issue in the subtitles.
Technology at Your Service
Utilising technology can significantly streamline and enhance the subtitling process. You can leverage AI-powered speech recognition and Natural Language Processing (NLP) algorithms to automate the transcription of audio and video content. These tools can rapidly convert spoken words into text with a high degree of precision, reducing the need for manual transcription and speeding up the subtitling process. Professional software that allows frame-accurate timing is crucial for ensuring that subtitles sync perfectly with the audio. Tools like VLC Media Player and specialised subtitle editors enable you to adjust subtitle delays in milliseconds, preventing subtitles from appearing too early or late. Additionally, AI-based systems can continuously improve their accuracy by adapting to different speaking styles, background noise, and audio quality, making the subtitling process more efficient and reliable.
A Final Word
Subtitled films have quite a history. If we compare the use of intertitles in the first silent film to today’s onscreen subtitles, we can surely say that there has been development in the subtitling industry. Subtitles are still essential in increasing the audience of the audio-visual content and the prospects seem even more encouraging with better things to come. And we believe that with all this technological progress, the human translator will continue as the major factor in making beautiful subtitling.