The rise of social media and streaming video in South Africa has brought a new focus on the importance of accessibility and how language barriers can limit the reach of viewers in Africa. Captions and subtitles are two key tools that South African content creators can use to increase the reach of their video content, but many creators don’t know the difference between the two.
At first glance, captions and subtitles look almost identical, but the differences between them aren’t as subtle as they first appear, and many South African content creators believe that all video captions are created equal, when there are key differences between each type that make them ideal for different types of content and audiences. Choosing between the two can have a drastic impact on how audiences understand video projects – and the decision of which to use could say more about a brand than you realise.
Let’s explore the key differences between captions and subtitles in South Africa.
What are Subtitles?
In simple terms, subtitles are a transcription or translation of the video dialogue when sound is available but not understood by the viewer. They do not include sound effects or other audio elements. Subtitles can either be embedded in the file itself or turned on or off at the user’s discretion. For example, a South African training video could be subtitled in French for a Congolese audience. Although subtitles look similar to closed captions, the former provide a text form of the video dialogue, assuming the viewer can hear. They are categorised as intralingual subtitles (same language) and interlingual subtitles (different language).
There are several benefits to subtitles, including:
- Clarifying heavily accented or otherwise inaudible speech
- Translation of English audio into multilingual speech
- Enable the listener or viewer to engage with the media in an environment where noise is not permitted.
What are Captions?
Captions is the textual representation of the audio content of a video, television programme, live event or corporate production, such as a promotional video for a South African company or e-commerce content. The dialogue and any associated sound effects are displayed on screen alongside the video in real time. Closed captioning helps people who are deaf or hard of hearing to get the full essence of what is happening in the video. There are generally two types of captions, open captions and closed captions.
Closed captions: The main purpose of closed captions is to give viewers the option of switching them on or off while watching a video. By far the most common type of captioning available, used by major content platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Vimeo by default. They are the most common form of captioning and you will see in the player a small logo identified by the [CC] symbol in the bar below the video, clicking on this allows to choose various options depending upon the media players settings.
The benefits of Closed Captions are:
- They can be turned on and off by the viewer.
- Generally, they can easily be edited and have changes made to them.
- You can create in a range of file formats, making them suitable for the variety of media players that are now used for video.
Open captions: Open captions are similar to closed captions with one important difference: they are always visible in movies, TV and online video. Like closed captions or subtitles, they display important audio information and dialogue on the screen. But unlike subtitles, they can’t be turned on or off. This is because they’re burned into the video track rather than added later as an external file, such as an .srt. Open captions are most commonly used for films shown in cinemas during special scheduled screenings for the deaf and hard of hearing.
The benefits of Open Captions are:
- Viewers don’t need to work out how to turn them on
- Open captions do not require any special functionality for media players to be able to display on the screen
- Captions will be automatic for short clips e.g. social media videos
Benefits of using a subtitling company
There are many reasons to use the services of a subtitling company to provide professional subtitles or closed captions for your project.
The advantages of using a subtitling company are that all the technical work (time-coding, syncing, encoding, etc.) is done by a trusted professional, and they can also customise the subtitles in a variety of styles (font, colour, placement). Not only can this save you a lot of time, but their expertise will eliminate any mistakes you might make yourself – saving you time, money and trouble.
Professional subtitling companies such as ours offer a range of subtitling and captioning styles and have a dedicated project management team who will review each project carefully to determine and advise on the best approach for each individual project.
Frenchside provides professional translation, subtitling, captioning and audio/video transcription services in Pretoria, Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town. We offer services in all major African languages, including French, Portuguese, Spanish and English voiceovers and subtitling.To find out how we can help your business with professional subtitling, translation and voiceover services, please contact us today.
