Subtitles play an extremely important role
in helping to convey the message of a video to viewers especially when the
language spoken in the video is incomprehensive to the viewer. Writing
subtitles not only requires good listening comprehension but you can also pick
up skills such as storyboard conceptualization and summarization. These are the
important points to keep in mind when writing subtitles:
- Make sure the first letter is capital and the sentence ends with a full stop (or ? /!).
- Always be meticulous about grammar and punctuation.
- Avoid lengthy sentences in a frame that stretches across the screen or takes up two lines.
- Break a sentence into frames if it is too long.
You can break a sentence in one frame into two and connect the
sentences with “... ...”.
- Use a simple and clean font and a clearly visible font colour.
- Delete unnecessary words. Subtitles should be concise without deviating from the actual meaning.
- Do not translate utterings that do not contribute to the the meaning of the sentence like ‘lah’, “umm”, “I see” etc. Make the translation concise.
In this interview, Jenny Pong spoke in Cantonese. She said, “Saying sorry isn’t that difficult”. In fact, ‘not that difficult’ can be shortened to ‘quite easy’.
- Condense proverbs or sayings of other languages to just their meaning. The other alternative is to translate the proverb/saying concisely and explain its meaning within brackets.
- Allow longer subtitles to remain on the screen longer to allow more time for reading.
