Subtitling: Things to Avoid When Translating Subtitles

1. Subtitling: Things To Avoid When Translating Subtitles

2. SUBTITLES Subtitles, a form of audio-visual translation that helps people understand and enjoy foreign dialogues in their own language. While subtitles enable understanding, the work that goes behind subtitling is meticulously long and precise. Due to this, translators sometimes don’t follow the optimum translation methods when translating conversations into subtitles. We have pulled together a few things you must avoid in order to improve your translation quality This way you can offer best subtitles to viewers and make the video more efficient. In order to provide quality translation service in the form of subtitling to viewers, avoid these factors at any cost.

3. DOING LITERAL TRANSLATION OF MOST OF THE CONTENT: Though translation is meant to be accurate but, in some cases, it may not be considered as the best choice. For example, it won’t be a good idea to literally translate idioms phrases. Sometimes, certain language requires more words to express the idea. However, economising the original content provide better sentences, which literal translation fails to do.

4. LOADED WITH TOO MANY CHARACTERS ON A LINE: This one goes hand in hand with literal translation. Too many characters on a single line reduce viewers’ chances to read the dialogue/ content. Therefore, reducing the number of words in a translation is essential as there is insufficient space on the screen.

5. USING MACHINE SUBTITLES TRANSLATION: Machine translation tool like Google translate can be used for basic translations but using machine translation for subtitling is definitely not a good idea because it does not provide meaningful translation, plus machines fail to identify certain idiomatic expressions. That’s why it is best left to humans only, as human translators are highly professional and experienced.

6. CONVEYING THE WRONG SPEECH STYLE: By means of subtitling, you are giving a voice and personality to speakers in other language. So, failure to use the appropriate style changes the essence of the speaker’s voice and result in lack of consistency between what we see, listen and read. For an instance, if you are listening to an aged woman speaking then obviously subtitles should not reflect a teen talking. Subtitling should be done as per the speaker’s age, gender and personality.

7. INCORRECT TIMING: Subtitles should only appear when the particular speaker begins talking. Because if subtitles appear before or after that, it creates confusion, and lose the concentration of viewers.

8. INPUTTING MORE THAN 2 LINES: One thing which should be avoided at any cost is to use more than 2 lines for translation. Because already viewers half mind is on the visual and half on the subtitles and if you provide them with long paragraph subtitling, it will create nothing but a problem to read.

9. GET IN TOUCH WITH THE PROFESSIONALS Though, sometimes it’s not possible to focus on all these factors but common sense, good judgement and complete analysis of the content are essential to create impactful subtitling. Get in touch with the professionals who possess experience in linguistics abilities and are capable enough to translate any document easily. Moreover, ensures that document translation is delivered in an impactful way to the targeted audience. Besides, if you do not want to limit yourself in document translation only, then hire leading agency in Sydney that offers quality translation as well as interpreting services and make your "impress the client game on point.

10. REACH US Address : PO Box 3422 Liverpool Westfield NSW 2170 Phone No. : 1300 882 972 ios@interpretersonsite.com.au Email : Website : www.interpretersonsite.com.au