Whatever you decide is best for your project, our expert team here at Matinée Multilingual will be ready to assist you with all your subtitling and closed captioning needs. It’s the digital equivalent of having wheelchair access to your business property, and there’s a case to argue every video should come with subtitles and closed captions, rather than choosing between the two. It’s not only a question of languages, but also the importance of web accessibility and ensuring nobody is excluded from your brand. However, both are becoming increasingly important as the internet connects your footage to the entire world. Whether you choose to use subtitles or closed captions depends on the audience you have in mind for your video projects. Should every video have subtitles and closed captions? Subtitles can make it accessible to audiences around the world, while captions mean hard of hearing audiences can also enjoy the film – and you’ll often see DVDs, Blu-rays and other releases with both for this very reason. The easiest example would be a foreign language film. These audiences may be slightly different, but your aim is to make your video accessible to everyone who has something to offer your brand. Now, audience is the key word here, because subtitles and captions have the same goal: to extend your footage to a wider audience. Even worse though, would be using subtitles when captions are needed, potentially alienating your audience altogether. On the one hand, CCs in situations where subtitles are sufficient can be distracting and potentially frustrating for viewers. Hopefully, you can see why the distinction between the two is so important. In this case viewers need more description – to help distinguish between different people talking, emotional changes in their voices or non-vocal audio, that’s relevant to the story, for example. You can probably guess by now that captioning is typically used for hearing impaired audiences, or situations where audio can’t be played. The original audio is preserved, but viewers can understand the dialogue and still hear the soundtrack as it was intended. The most common use for subtitles would be a form of translating video footage for audiences of another language. Meanwhile, closed captioning assumes an audience cannot hear the audio and needs a text description of what they would otherwise be hearing. Subtitles provide a text alternative for the dialogue of video footage – the spoken words of characters, narrators and other vocal participants.Ĭlosed captions, on the other hand, not only supplement for dialogue but other relevant parts of the soundtrack – describing background noises, phones ringing and other audio cues that need describing.Įssentially, subtitles assume an audience can hear the audio, but need the dialogue provided in text form as well. The difference between closed captions and subtitlesĪlthough closed captions (CCs) and subtitles look similar, they’re designed for two different purposes. Choose another language from 80+ options.Choose English in another language accent.In most cases, subtitles are not an appropriate accommodation for deaf or hard of hearing viewers because they don’t include the aforementioned non-speech sounds that provide a comprehensive, equitable viewing experience for people who cannot hear audio.
Still today, the primary purpose of subtitling is to translate spoken audio into a language the viewer will understand.
Subtitles were introduced in the 1930s, when silent film transitioned to film with spoken audio in order to accommodate foreign audiences who didn’t understand the language used in a film. In the United States and many other parts of the world, federal laws require captioning for video content across a number of industries.Ĭheck out the Beginner’s Guide to Captioning ➡️
Non-speech sounds that are necessary to a viewer’s understanding should be included in proper captioning and are normally shown in brackets, such as in these examples. Whether open or closed, captions differ from subtitles in that they’re designed to ensure that the viewer can understand all essential audio in a video – which may include more than just the spoken audio.
#CAPTION DEFINITION MOVIE#
Today, both open and closed captioning are widely available across movie theaters, cable networks, personal devices, streaming services, and most Internet-based video players like YouTube, Vimeo, and Brightcove. Soon after, however, closed captions were developed that allowed viewers to control whether captions were turned on or off. Initially, captions could not be turned off and were part of the video itself (referred to as open captions).
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