Foreign language subtitling services

Foreign language subtitling needs expert linguists

In many languages, word order in sentences can change dramatically – so can sentence length. That matters if your subtitles have to align with key events onscreen! But, low-cost translators don’t really “get” subtitling. They’ll translate what they hear so the translation of the sentence fits over the length it has to – but they’ll totally ignore the fact that THIS word needs to match THAT onscreen event.

The result is predictable: Lost impact, and lost engagement, meaning lost audiences and lost customers.

There’s a better way.

We’re different. We’ll start with a careful and accurate timecoded transcript, which we’ll assess for these key moments which we’ll then mark-up for the translator with the required timepoints – let’s say that content is “THING“. The translator will be briefed to translate so as to place the translated THING as closely as possible to the original timing.

The devil’s in the detail… That’s already better than most “foreign language subtitling” providers. But there’s more that can be done if you know what you’re doing. So we will then engineer the subtitles, tweaking the detailed timings to fine-tune that appearance of THING to the onscreen events. While this isn’t always possible in some languages, in many it can be done surprisingly well with a skilled translator and engineer.

But there’s even more that can be done. While there’s limited scope with onscreen talking heads, where speed cannot really be manipulated, there’s greater scope to play with animation or inanimate object video to really align accurately.

The result?

Subtitling that’s aligned the best it possibly can be with your original video. It isn’t magic – but it is hard to find.