Day: August 6, 2021

As the world becomes more globalized, the demand for high-quality subtitling and captioning services continues to grow. While captions and subtitles may seem straightforward — translating speech to text, or text to speech — they are in fact vital tools for entertainment, education, and accessibility.

Why You Should Think About Subtitling And Captioning Services

Visual storytelling is a powerful promotional tool that can greatly help a business draw attention from potential clients. If you’re going to the trouble of crafting high-quality videos and neglecting to caption or subtitle them properly, you’re leaving money on the table.

With all the videos we consume today — from eLearning content to news coverage to anime, entertainment, and TV shows — it is essential to have an accurate, consistent way of conveying language that benefits everyone.

Subtitling Vs Captioning: What’s The Difference?

While subtitles and captions are essentially the same things, they are two different forms of translation that require a different skill set. Captions are primarily for live video or audio, while subtitles are for movies, television shows, or recorded videos.

Because subtitles are meant to be read by a person (not necessarily heard) they are much more detailed than captions.

As a business owner, you must know how important it is to get your message across to the customers in the most efficient manner. The right subtitling and captioning services will help you in effectively delivering your message.

7 Reasons Why You Need To Use Subtitling and Captioning Services

Today we’re going to look at the top 7 benefits subtitling and captioning services can provide to your business.

1. Accessibility

The most obvious and arguably most important benefit is that captions and subtitles are a way to give hearing-impaired individuals an opportunity to watch and enjoy your content. 

But captions are not only for the deaf and hard of hearing. They are critical for understanding for those with learning disabilities and for those who are in areas with a lot of background noise.

Being able to understand what people are saying in a video is important for several reasons. Captions and subtitles can help clarify the meaning of a video when it’s not possible to hear the audio clearly. Ever struggle to understand a particular tricky accent? Subtitling and captioning can help there too.

Subtitling and captioning also help people enjoy videos without volume, which is important when 69% of Internet users watch videos in public places without sound.

2. Improve SEO

The importance of subtitles and captions is not limited to accessibility.

Subtitling and captioning can also increase SEO.  Videos, unlike blogs posts, cannot be crawled or indexed by search engines. This is why closed captions are so important for online video content — they allow search engines to crawl and classify your content, making them much easier to find by potential customers.

3. Global Reach

Video is the most persuasive medium on the planet. It’s also the most global, too!

In fact, on YouTube alone, we consume over 1 billion hours of video each day. That means that your audience isn’t limited to your neighbourhood or city — they can be visiting from halfway across the globe. And if you want them to understand what you’re saying in your video, then captions translated into multiple languages are a must.

4. Include Additional Information

Subtitling and captioning services include additional information such as the speaker’s name, a sound effect, or a musical cue. This allows deaf and hard-of-hearing people to enjoy video content with a similar experience to that of other viewers. It also enriches the experience for users watching without sound.

5. Legal Requirement

Depending on where your business operates, providing subtitles and captions may even be a legal requirement.

In America, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires subtitles and captions on television, in movie theatres, and on the Internet.  Over in the UK, the Communications Act 2003 requires that all programmes except news, current affairs, sport and advertising use subtitles or sign language for deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers.

While we appreciate not all of our customers will be producing content for television, adopting subtitles and captions is a good practice we recommend to all.

6. Strengthen Brand Identity

You might think that subtitles and captions are just for movies and TV shows, but they can be a great way to strengthen your brand. 

When you have subtitles or captions, you can control how your brand is represented and how it is positioned in the marketplace. You can also use subtitles and captions to creatively convey your company’s message clearly and concisely.

7. Increase Engagement Rates

People who watch videos and listen to audio files with subtitles and captions have a higher engagement rate than those who don’t. In a recent study by Verizon, 80% of consumers were more likely to watch an entire video when captions are available.

They also found that marketers who create captivating videos that tell a story that customers can relate to are 20 % more likely to receive word-of-mouth marketing, and in turn drive up their profits.

Videos and audio files with subtitles or captions are more accessible because they’re easier to understand. This means your customers are more likely to hit the share button.

How Our Subtitling and  Captioning Services Can Help

Wordsburg is the leading Singapore-based translation and interpretation service provider. We understand that communication works best when paired with a personal touch. That’s why we pride ourselves on our community of wordsmiths. We take the time to translate your content into the target language but also choose the right wording for it. It’s the tiny details that make all the difference.

With our affordable video subtitling and captioning services, you can ensure that your video content has maximum impact. And not just at home. Our expert translators will translate your English subtitles into more than 100 languages — making it possible to reach audiences worldwide and work around language barriers.

Conclusion

Video is a great way to get your message across to a larger audience, but not everyone gets to hear what you’re saying. This is why it’s so important to have your content subtitled and/or captioned. Well executed subtitles can make a world of difference to the reach of your content.