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Simple Tips to Follow When Subtitling

From our previous post, “5 Ways to Become a Subtitle Translator”, we have given a list for you to follow on how you could be an effective subtitle translator. It says there that one of the most essential things to consider is your passion to do subtitling and your language. Anyways, whether you followed the list or not but still endup to be a professional subtitle translator, you will still need this guide especially if you are testing it out in the waters for the first time.

To get started, here are some useful tips you can use in subtitling:
           1. Time the captions exactly when a word is spoken and disappeared.
           2. Translate meaning not words – Do not directly translate word by word just make sure that the           point was given through your captions.
3. Sound effect - Sound effect captions should be shown in lowercase and enclosed in brackets. For music captioning, just use the music icon(♪), at the beginning of each line to denote lyrics.
4. When people are seen talking on the video, and there was no audio, caption it as [no audio] or [silence].
5. Always start in capital letters.
6. Do not emphasize a word using all capital letters except to indicate screaming.
7. Line Breaks –
·         Subtitle lines should end at natural linguistic breaks, ideally at clause or phrase boundaries. e.g.

                                INCORRECT:
                                “Mom said I could
                                have gone to the movies.”

                                CORRECT:
                                “Mom said I could have gone
                                to the movies.”

·         Do not break a person's name or title from within a line. e.g.

                                INCORRECT:
                                -Mike and Anna
                                Santos went to the park.

                                CORRECT:
                                Mike and Ana Santos
                                went to the park.

·            Do not break a line after a conjunction e.g

        INCORRECT:
                                My favorite sport is basketball
                                and tennis.
                                CORRECT:
                                My favorite sport is
                                basketball and tennis.
8. NUMBERS
                -Always spell out all numbers from one to ten.
                Use numerals for all numbers over ten.
                e.g. "Tom wants ten balloons." "Tom wants 54 balloons."

                -A decade should be captioned as "the 1980s" (not "the 1980's") and "the '50s" (not "the 50's").
                -Indicate time of day with numerals only.

                e.g. "I woke up at 5:17."
9. Important Reminders! Bold or underline is not permitted in subtitlng.

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