Why is it important to have subtitles and captions translated professionally?
“Hey there, little chick,” is not the kind of statement you would expect during the swearing-in ceremony for a new federal government. But that’s exactly what happened in Austria, where the national public service broadcaster’s video-on-demand service accidentally added the subtitles from the previous hour’s soap opera to the solemn event. The swearing-in thus also included the question of whether someone’s panty hose were holding up. This cringeworthy error on the part of the TV station was great fun for the audience.
Subtitling fails happen again and again, especially with translations into other languages. Such as the time a BBC report claimed that the Queen of England was riding in a cabbage rather than a carriage.
Faulty subtitles may be entertaining. But for people who depend on them because they don’t speak the language of the original or need captions because they cannot hear, mistakes are frustrating. In many countries, it’s common for movies and TV series to be shown in the original language and add translated subtitles. So the subtitles need to be correct, or they won’t fulfill their purpose of helping viewers understand what’s going on.
Why are subtitles and translations of your video content so vital? How does subtitling work? And what do you need to look out for? Find out in our blog.
4 ways you benefit from subtitles
Videos are incredibly popular: YouTube videos, Instagram Reels and TikTok videos beat photos on social media hands down. Company websites, trade fair booths and education providers also use videos to provide informative content in an engaging way. High-quality subtitles are just as important as the original content itself. Why?
1. Subtitles make content accessible
In Deutschland gibt es rund 80.000 Gehörlose und etwa 16 Millionen Menschen, die an Schwerhörigkeit leiden. Menschen mit auditiven Beeinträchtigungen sind auf Untertitel angewiesen, da sie den gesprochenen Inhalt akustisch nicht oder nur begrenzt verstehen können. Für sie gehen die normalen Untertitel oft einen Schritt weiter: Sogenannte Closed Captions, auf Streaming-Plattformen mit einem „CC“ gekennzeichnet, transkribieren neben den Dialogen auch Soundeffekte, Sprecheridentifikationen und andere relevante, nicht-gesprochene Elemente. So wird für sie eine nahezu vollständige Barrierefreiheit geschaffen.
Even people who can hear well sometimes need help understanding the audio, such as when someone speaks with a thick accent or in a foreign language. In those cases, subtitles to enhance the spoken word are invaluable. Also, some people have an easier time understanding and processing content when they can read it, as opposed to just seeing the images. So subtitles get your message across to them more clearly.
2. Subtitles are standard on social media
Today’s social media world is muted. Twitter, Facebook and other providers always mute their videos when autoplay is on. Plus, people often watch videos in public, such as on trains and subways, where turning the sound on without using headphones would disturb others.
Nowadays, social-media users expect videos to feature subtitles, and the result is increased user engagement and social reach:: people watch 91% of videos with subtitles all the way to the end, but they stick around for a mere 66% of videos without subtitles. Plus, videos with text are shared 15% more often, get 17% more reactions and have a 26% higher click-through rate.
3. You can reach international audiences for less money
What do you do when you’ve made a fantastic image film or social media video but language barriers keep most of your customers from understanding it? To bring your content to international audiences, you have three options: (1) re-shoot the video in each language, which is very expensive and takes a long time, (2) add voiceovers to your video, or (3) have subtitles translated professionally and embed them in your video.
Translated subtitles are faster and more flexible than voiceovers of the translations. After all, with subtitles you only have to change the written lines—no need to hire actors to voice the entire text. So translated subtitles are the simplest and most budget-friendly way to make your content available in various languages and countries.
4. Subtitles make your content easier for search engines to find
Want to move up in the search engine rankings? When you put videos with good subtitles on your website, visitors stay on your site longer. Google and other engines will reward you with higher rankings in the search results.
Search engines can’t “read” videos that don’t contain subtitles. So subtitles don’t just help viewers understand your videos—they help the algorithm index them, too. In short, subtitles are an easy way to harness even visual content for search engine optimization.
Indexed subtitles increase the likelihood of your video landing in your target groups’ list of recommendations on platforms like YouTube and Facebook. Remember: that only applies to manually produced texts! The platforms don’t recognize automated subtitles—apart from the fact that they are much lower quality.
The sure-fire path to sales-boosting subtitles
Don’t risk subtitle fails. Instead, always trust your videos to a professional language service provider. That’s how you know your subtitles won’t be cut off, will match the spoken dialogue and are localized and adapted to prevent cultural glitches.
Figuring in subtitling early on in your video production is always a good idea. If you always bear the subtitles in mind, you won’t have important characters or logos in the lower third of the frame, which may be masked by the text.
To prepare your video for subtitling, our native speakers first make an audio transcription, i.e. they put the spoken content on paper if you haven’t already done that. Then they add time codes so the subtitles are displayed in the right places in the video. As they translate the subtitles, the translators adjust each line for length if necessary. These written lines need to be shorter because our eyes don’t process information as fast as our ears do. And they take cultural differences into account, too.
ACT Translations can provide you with subtitles in more than 50 languages.
What languages do you want audiences to understand your videos in?
