However, with the mass production of videos, there is a growing need for accurate and accessible subtitling services, especially as these videos aim to engage diverse and global audiences. Subtitles improve reach and understanding while also enhancing video performance to connect with a broader audience.

To better understand this shift, we will explore the factors driving the popularity of formats like Reels and the benefits of incorporating subtitles into such media.

5 Reasons for the popularity and acceptance of Short-Form Video format.

1. Quick Consumption: In the face of a declining attention span, short videos satisfy the need for instant gratification, offering impactful content in 60 seconds or less. As a result, platforms have adapted by giving priority to this format.

2. Engaging Format: The mix of visuals, sound, and storytelling makes short videos captivating. Interactive features like likes, comments, and shares boost audience participation, while editing and subtitles enhance their appeal.

3. Algorithm Priority: Social media platforms favor short videos, often placing them at the top of feeds. This visibility helps creators expand their reach and grow their audience effectively.

4. Creative Freedom: Short videos allow creators to experiment with trends, music, filters, and editing to suit specific audiences and purposes, such as comedy, storytelling, or educational content.

5. Mobile-Friendly Design: Designed for vertical viewing, short videos fit the natural way people use smartphones, making them easy to watch anytime, anywhere.

As you can see, short-form videos have become a versatile medium, reaching audiences in various contexts and settings. This adaptability brings with it the challenge of ensuring that the content remains impactful and accessible to all viewers.

In this context, subtitles are a critical element in addressing this challenge, making them an indispensable part of short-form videos. Next, we will discuss this topic in more detail.

Why Subtitles Are Crucial for Short-Form Videos.

1. Silent Viewing: Many viewers watch videos on mute, especially in public or work settings. Subtitles ensure they can understand your content, keeping it effective even without sound.

2. Improved Accessibility: Subtitles make videos accessible to people with hearing impairments and meet growing accessibility expectations, broadening your audience and showing social responsibility.

3. Global Reach: Subtitles help your videos resonate with viewers who speak different languages, enhancing global engagement and fostering cross-cultural connections.

4. Enhanced Comprehension: Subtitles clarify fast-paced dialogue, heavy accents, or background noise, ensuring your message is quickly and effectively understood.

5. Increased Engagement Rates: Subtitles boost viewer retention and completion rates by making content easier to follow, increasing the likelihood of interactions like sharing or following.

Ways to Add Subtitles to Short-Form Videos.

When it comes to subtitling, creators will typically choose between automatic or professional subtitles.

Automatic subtitles are available on most social media platforms. This method is free and fast, making it convenient for quick content creation. However, automatic subtitles can sometimes contain errors, which may impact the accuracy and professionalism of the message you’re trying to convey.

On the other hand, professional subtitling services provides a more reliable and polished result. Professional subtitle services ensure your captions are accurate and easy to read, eliminating any errors that could distract viewers or diminish the impact of your message.

At Australis, we offer professional subtitling services that are both simple and cost-effective, helping you create accessible content that resonates with a broader audience, showing your true commitment to non-English speakers.

For detailed information about our subtitling services, visit our website. To explore our video editing and localization solutions, check out the following page.

However, translations are not only a way to expedite the transmission of valuable information, but also a vital aid for people to access content which they wouldn’t be able to otherwise.

For an agency like Australis, committed to its clients, translations should always be convenient, accessible, for people who require it. The perfect example is creating subtitles for the hearing-impaired (also known as closed-captions), where accessibility is achieved thanks to written language.

Here, we’re able to enlarge the concept of linguistic solution through the use of specific tools which enable accessibility.

Another good example is Braille translation. Although the Braille alphabet may be the same between two languages, grammar and punctuation change radically, not to mention Japanese Braille, which instead of letters describes syllables. Therefore, the integration of both specialists and industry-appropriate tools is mandatory.

At Australis, we are currently in the process of becoming more engaged in accessibility, and that is why our translation and production teams are constantly training to bring about our main goal: delivering quality, no matter the solution needed.

Stay tuned! Be part of our new accessibility projects and remember that choosing quality means choosing Australis as your partner in specialized translations.

Dubbing (the process of replacing the original voices in a video with lip-synched voices recorded in another language) is not only expensive but also time-consuming. On the other hand, subtitles (plain text at the bottom of the screen) cut down on costs and time, as they are less demanding at a technical level at the same time that they are incredibly effective. Using Subtitles allows for video presentations and campaigns to be distributed in many languages with minimum cost and in a short time.

Classification

Subtitles come in different shapes, and the right one for your videos will depend on your technical requirements and the desired subtitle language. It’s important to remember that Subtitles are not only useful for those that are not fluent in the original language in the video, but also for people with hearing loss.

Depending on the subtitle language and the way the subtitles are displayed, they can be classified as follows:

Captioning

When the subtitles are in the same language as the language spoken in the video, they are called “Captions”. Captions are primarily used to allow those with hearing impairments to understand what is being said, but they can also help people who are not native speakers of the source language, or people that are watching the video in a noisy environment.

Creating captions starts with the process of writing down the exact words that are spoken in the video. This step is known as “Transcription”. The output of a transcription process is a plain text document containing all the dialogues that can be heard on the video.

Once the transcription process is complete, it is required that a caption specialist fragments the text and synchronizes it with the video, so that the text that is going to be displayed on-screen reflects what is being spoken at any given time.

Closed or Open Captions?

Captions are either Open or Closed. Open captions are embedded in the video file, so they always are in view and cannot be turned off. On the other hand, Closed captions are stored in a separate file and can be turned on and off by the viewer.

Open captions are always there, so they allow for a non-tech-savvy audience to always have access to the captions. Also, open captions make it easier for you to distribute your content as you’re dealing with a single file.

On the other hand, closed captions are always displayed with better quality than open captions (as they do not lose quality when the videos are compressed), and they are more flexible as they allow for quick modifications without the need of re-rendering the entire video.

Subtitling Videos for a Foreign language

When you need subtitles in another language, it’s best to perform the Captioning of the source language first. It makes much more sense to segment and synchronizes the original text with the original video than to perform these steps with the translated text. This facilitates the translator’s work and reduces the overall project time substantially.

However, since translations from English usually require more space than the original text, it is important to emphasize that the intention of subtitling in a foreign language is to maintain the meaning of what is said, and not about Translating word by word. A good subtitle translation will allow the viewer to understand what is being said without deviating from what is happening visually, at the same time that it will keep the length of the text within the standard parameters.

Soft Subtitles & Hard Subtitles

Just like we have “Closed” and “Open” captions, we have “Soft” and “Hard” subtitles. Hard- Subtitles refers to subtitles that are embedded within the video and therefore modify the visual content of the video, while Soft Subtitles are those subtitles that are added by means of an external file (usually *.SRT or *.VTT) that enable the visualization of the subtitles but are not embedded within the video.

Soft Subtitles are the most frequently used, especially if the intention is to reach speakers of different languages. For example, consider an international Company that wants to upload a promotional video to YouTube so that it reaches their customers in Europe and SE Asia. Using soft subtitles, they can upload a single video together with many subtitles, and let the viewer choose which subtitle to use. If this company used Hard Subtitles, they’d need to upload a different video for each language, and this is not only expensive and time-consuming, but it also makes it harder to distribute the video as the company needs to deal with several video URLs instead of just one.

The most used types of subtitles: SRT & VTT

SRT and VTT are the subtitle formats that are the most widely used. SRT files only allow for the design of the words in the subtitles to be quite simple (for example making text bold or italic). On the other hand, the VTT format puts a wider variety of design options at its disposal, like adding color, shapes, shadows, and depth.

It’s important to note that all subtitle formats (SRT, VTT, or any other) can be either used as a separate file (Closed Captions/Soft Subtitles) or burned in the video (Open Captions/Hard Subtitles), so choose what subtitle format to use based only on how would you like them to be displayed.

Should you use subtitles for your videos?

If you use promotional or informational videos and you want to reach new audiences, subtitles are a great way to do that in a very efficient manner.

By using subtitles, any production, whether small or large, can be prepared in a very short time to be distributed without delay in other countries. In addition to being more affordable, captioned or subtitled videos also have the advantage of being a great tool for people with hearing loss, who make up for 5% of the American population. Overall, it is a great and powerful tool that brings a lot in terms of convenience, accessibility, and usability for the viewers.

Do you want to reach new audiences with your videos and make your message accessible to all? Are you ready to show your content to the world? Contact us today at production@australis-localization.com to discuss how we can help you.

Please visit the following website for more information about our Subtitling Services.

SOURCES: 

https://bbc.github.io/subtitle-guidelines/

https://www.washington.edu/doit/what-difference-between-open-and-closed-captioning