Television Subtitling

Tips & Advice to help you make your decision on Television Subtitling

Television subtitling is used primarily to provide a way for deaf or hard-of-hearing viewers to understand the dialogue of a show. Language learners and individuals who have trouble understanding accents may also benefit from reading the subtitles. Television subtitles do not appear automatically, but must be turned on by the viewer.

For prerecorded shows, subtitling is usually done using specialized software before the show is aired. The subtitler needs to not only provide an accurate transcription of the words on the screen, but must also determine exactly when the words will appear and disappear based upon when the words are spoken aloud. Live television broadcasts are more difficult to subtitle because there is no inherent preparation time involved. For some programs, such as news broadcasts, some of the subtitles are prepared beforehand based on what the broadcaster plans to say. Real-time translation can be performed using speech recognition software or by a Communication Access Real-Time Translation, or CART, stenographer. CART stenographers can subtitle a broadcast within seconds, allowing viewers to read the spoken words right after they are said. The broadcasting station decides which method to use to subtitle a given show, so captioning may not be consistent across different networks in the same country or region. You can learn more about television subtitling by following the links on this page provided by Business.com.

Purchasing Resources for Television Subtitling

Captioning and Subtitling

Video captioning and subtitling Fast, accurate, Free Trial

LNS Captioning

Nationally-Certified Captioners Post-Production & Live Broadcast CC

Closed Captioning for TV

enCaption does Automated Captioning Live and Breaking Event Coverage

Global subtitling

Professional subtitling into 40+ languages

TV Subtitles

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