Interlinking Translation, Voiceovers and Subtitles

Capital Captions provide video to text and translation services including subtitling, closed captioning, voiceovers and dubbing. In this article we’ll take a look at how interlinking Translation, Voiceovers and Subtitles can work to benefit your videos.

What is VO?

A voiceover is an audio track, usually of one person, speaking over a video. Voiceovers can be in English, or whatever the source language is of the video, where the purpose is to provide instruction or narration essential to understanding the video. Audio can also be translated for foreign audiences, with the purpose of ensuring video accessibility without the need for foreign subtitles or closed captions. In terms of translating sound, voiceovers differ from video dubbing, in the sense that dubbing is used to translation spoken dialogue of onscreen speakers and actors, often attempting to lip-sync as much as possible with original content. Voiceovers are provided as narration.

What are subtitles?

Subtitles are onscreen text that displays in sync with video audio to allow accessibility for viewers who are deaf and/or hard of hearing. Subtitle translation is also a common method for translating video for foreign audiences.

What Steps are involved in creating a voiceover?

In order to create a voiceover, subtitles need to be created first.

The steps for translating a video and adding voiceover are typically as follows:

Which is best for your video, Voiceover or Subtitles?

Producing video content can be a time consuming process so making sure that your videos are fully accessible to your target audience is essential for you to make the most of your time. When it comes to text versus audio, we usually make the below recommendations for translating your videos.

Voiceover Services – The Benefits

There are a few scenarios in which translating the sound in your video may be the best option. The first is if your video features a lot of onscreen text or graphics for viewers. In this case, translating using a voiceover can mean that audiences can keep their eyes on graphics that they should be watching. In this case, concentrating on subtitles may visually detract from other important onscreen information.

Voiceovers can also be a good option where there rate of speech is very fast in a video. Languages differ in terms of their wordiness. In order to give audiences sufficient reading time, subtitles should only ever display up to a particular rate. For example, when translating English to German, character numbers may increase even as much as 30%. Where speech is already fast, this may not leave viewers time to read subtitles. In contrast, as long as speech is intelligible, there is far more flexibility in terms of how fast and wordy a voiceover can become before the message is lost.

Subtitling Services – The Benefits

Subtitles can be a preferable option to voiceover in a number of cases. The first benefit of subtitling over voiceover is that, especially since voiceover work often involves transcription, translation and timing of text anyway, subtitles are invariably cheaper.

Translated subtitles are proven to be highly beneficial for SEO, as Google and other search engines are able to index and pick up the text included within subtitle files. The same benefit, unfortunately, doesn’t yet exist when it comes to picking up audio.

Another case where subtitles should be prioritised over voiceovers is where there are other speakers in a video. Consistency is important in video production, so it’s best avoided to mix subtitles and voiceover, and rather where there are other speakers onscreen, voiceover and dubbing are a better combination.

So there you have it, a little bit more about interlinking translation, voiceovers and subtitles. If you’d like to know more about our translation services, voiceover services or enquire about a subtitling project you require, why not get in touch with us today!