The subtitling process consists of the synchronised creation and insertion of subtitles in videos. The subtitle is an abbreviated, and in many cases translated, transcription of the speech that appears in an audiovisual recording.

In today’s globalised world, with a strong predominance of audiovisual communication, the subtitle is a quick and efficient resource for spreading a message to a higher number of recipients, overcoming language barriers and the obstacles stemming from hearing impairment.

At textinnova we offer you the following subtitling services:

Subtitling for informative and commercial videos

This type of subtitling, which serves to make advertising and informative audiovisual communications more accessible, has two main variants depending on the type of obstacle that the use of subtitling is attempting to overcome:

• Subtitling in the same language used in the video (for the hearing impaired, also called captioning); or
• Subtitling translated into one or more languages (to overcome language barriers).

Both forms can be combined in the same video. Subtitling corporate videos is the best way to disseminate them to a wider audience and make them more accessible. Try our fast, flexible quality subtitling service in Spanish, English, French, Italian and Portuguese.

Film subtitling

This form of subtitling is generally produced from the script or from previous subtitling in another language. Even so, it’s always necessary to check the match between the script and the actual content of the dialogues.

This subtitling has a clear artistic component. The same as for literary translation, film subtitles must reflect the creative aspects of the cinematographic work, word play, sound and depth, despite the limitations on space that force the message to be summarised. We provide a complete multilingual subtitling service for film festivals. Ask us!

Captions in silent videos

It’s becoming increasingly common for videos, mainly news items, to be produced and disseminated with no sound. Producing these kinds of audiovisual materials is faster than making traditional video, as it consists of combining a series of images supported with captions that summarise the content of a news item.

When there’s no sound, the caption must be synchronised with the images, although more loosely than the subtitles in a video with sound. Captions, which make up for the lack of a sound message, can be placed at the bottom of the screen, like any subtitle, or they can cover a larger area.

The urgency of this type of video requires captions to be prepared and inserted quickly, but without sacrificing quality.

Post-edited machine subtitling

As we’ve already seen for transcription, speech recognition allows you to convert speech into text. Machine subtitling is based on this technique. Its immediacy means that subtitling in real time has a great advantage when it comes to streaming broadcasts in which speed prevails over quality.

However, machine subtitling systems only achieve a sufficient level of quality when the voices in the video are perfectly intelligible. In many other cases the message is distorted. If the video is intended to last, it’s not advisable to publish it with automatic subtitles that haven’t been edited.

Don’t let a bad subtitle spoil your video. At textinnova we offer you a fast machine subtitle editing service. So the message is always correct.

What makes a quality subtitle stand out

Like bad dubbing, subtitling that’s full of mistakes detracts from even the best film. A misspelling, a misunderstanding, an obvious mismatch of the text with the shot, a broken line of text, the total disappearance of the subtitles for several seconds, and so on. If you’ve ever come across these problems in subtitling, you’ll know perfectly well the terrible impression a bad subtitle makes. The quality of a subtitle depends on the following aspects:

• Correct language use. The subtitle must be correct at all levels, from spelling to grammar to vocabulary.
• Suitable lenght. The subtitle mustn’t be very long, so there’s time to read it comfortably.
• Correct synchronisation. The subtitle must coincide with the shot it refers to, without any mismatches.
• Good summarising. The subtitle should say everything that’s essential in as few words as possible, without losing key information.
• Display. Font type and size, plus a suitable format, which allows for highlighting, improve the way subtitles are displayed.
• Accuracy, reliability and cultural localisation. The subtitle must reflect a proper understanding of the meaning of the speech to which it refers, with a correct adaptation of linguistic word plays and other cultural divergences into the target language.

Always entrust your subtitles to expert professionals. Trust textinnova.