What makes a good subtitle?
A subtitle file (SRT or VTT) is a list of short lines, each with its own number and start and end time, and the player shows each one for those few seconds. A good subtitle has three things:
- The right timing: each line appears when it is spoken, not earlier and not later.
- Short lines: usually no more than two lines of about forty characters, so viewers can read them in those few seconds.
- The right terms and figures: in a training video, button names, figures and units are what viewers see on the screen or the device.
That is also where translating subtitles gets hard. A sentence the original splits across two subtitles has to stay across the same two in the translation, and the translation, which isn't the same length, has to be broken into short lines again. Online translators translate each line on its own and know nothing about the timings.
Three steps, from the video to translated subtitles
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No subtitles yet? Turn the speech into text
In Goftito's voice studio, open the speech-to-text tool and upload the video or just its audio (up to 50 MB). The text comes back with the time of every word, and you download it as an SRT subtitle. If the video has several speakers, turn on telling the speakers apart.
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Translate the SRT file
Upload that file in "New translation" and choose the target language. Every subtitle is translated with the ones around it so the sentences come out right, each one's number and timing stay exactly as they were, and the lines are broken again, at most 42 characters each.
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Put the subtitles on the video
Most players pick up an SRT file next to the video when it has the video's name (lesson-1.mp4 and lesson-1.srt, say). Video sites and editing software usually accept SRT files too; to burn the subtitles into the picture, do it in your own editing software.
A real example: three subtitles of a technical training video
These subtitles come from the real file of a power-protection training video (192 subtitles), exactly as Goftito delivered them: the timings are the same, a long one-line sentence of the original is broken into short lines, and names like Isp and 3I0 stay where they were. The number beside each line is its length in characters.
Before publishing: a subtitle checklist
- Watch the subtitles on the video, not only in the file: a few minutes from the start, the middle and the end.
- Do button, menu and device names match what is on screen?
- Figures and units: check a few figures against what is said.
- Are terms the same throughout? For a course of several videos, build a glossary.
- A subtitle that comes too early or late: if the original file had it so, so does the translation, since timings don't change.
- In your own player, do right-to-left lines start on the right, with figures and units the right way round?