Easily readable subtitles – they do exist

By Solveig Rose-Mollard

Translated by Colin Rae

Imagine you sit down to watch a film only to discover it’s in a foreign language. No problem, just turn on the subtitles. Two hours later, your head is buzzing from all that reading and you’re even grateful for those cheesy kissing scenes because at least they gave you a few wordless moments. You go to bed still thinking about those lines of dialogue that flashed up so briefly, but you can’t remember much about the film itself. Sound familiar? But hold on: in the same way that badly executed subtitles can ruin the experience, high-quality subtitles can enhance it.

So what constitutes good subtitles? To answer this question, we must first have a look, or perhaps a listen, under the bonnet of human cognitive abilities. Our brain is able to process language faster when we hear it than when we read it. Consequently, when we watch a film, we take in dialogue much more easily when it’s spoken than when it’s written down. The job of the subtitler is therefore not to simply transcribe exactly what is said or to translate it more or less word for word into another language. Instead, they must adapt the text to make it readable to the viewer. Since the human eye can comfortably read and understand at best 12 to 14 characters a second, what ends up on the screen must be rephrased and shortened while still containing all pertinent information. Ultimately, the viewer – or reader – should be able to relax without ever losing the thread. Although it’s easy to trim a line down by getting rid of redundancies and repeats, it can often be tricky to boil complex content down and still get the point across. Subtitling calls for creative people with the analytical skills to craft a cohesive message that also flows.

Another crucial aspect is getting the timing right. Picture it: our hero pops the question and the audience holds its breath while the leading lady considers her answer. But before he’s even down on one knee, the subtitles have already told you that she’s going to turn him down – turning what should have been a pregnant pause into an emotional slap in the face. So once the text has been trimmed to a length that can be read comfortably, the words must also appear on the screen at exactly the right time, which leaves very little margin for error.

For successful corporate communications, use quality subtitles

Incidentally, the use of subtitles is by no means limited to the film and TV industry. In an age of globalisation and digitalisation, many international companies are harnessing the potential of information films and video messages to present a new product or process in a vivid, appealing, and memorable format. The addition of subtitles in various languages makes the content accessible to a much wider audience – be they customers or employees. It follows that the information must be presented in a dynamic and easily digestible way, and subtitles in the appropriate language play a major part in this – provided they are of the quality described above.

At Klein Wolf Peters, we’re set up to master these challenges together with our customers. We help and advise them in creating subtitles, providing them with content that will dovetail perfectly with their video material. That way, they can be sure to offer their target audience a relaxing and highly informative viewer experience free of eye strain and exasperation.