Did you know that the main advantage of creating subtitles for video content is saving money and time? We all know that time is a very expensive investment in today’s fast-paced world. Even companies such as Netflix or HBO carefully assess whether it is worth investing in dubbing high-quality video content or opting for subtitles instead. According to the subtitling specialists from the Skrivanek translation agency, this brings a number of additional benefits!
We have collected 9 significant reasons why you should and even recommend adding subtitles to your company’s video content – even if they are only in Polish and for Polish audience.
- Various studies have shown that our brains are designed in such a way that most of us remember far less of what we hear than what we read. This means that creating subtitles for video content is a great way to reach different audiences – young people, seniors, new foreign customers and business partners. A video that includes an audiovisual solution with subtitles helps the viewer to more easily perceive complex solutions as well as remember the name of a product or brand. This kind of video just stays in the memory longer.
- Whether people are at the library, coffee shop or work, or even at home with their family, many prefer to watch movies without sound. According to META, 85% of social media users watch video content without sound, and in 37% of cases, subtitles motivate them to watch videos with sound. Isn’t that interesting?
- Many people prefer to watch video content with the original audio for educational purposes, especially when it comes to content in English, German, French and other very popular languages.
- When a film is watched in a country where it was not shot, then subtitles – unlike dubbing – have less impact on the nuances and mood of the original content.
- Subtitling is less likely to produce the kind of cultural errors that often occur in dubbing, especially when it comes to choosing the wrong voice, not reflecting the emotion or the peculiarity of the utterance. Subtitles help prevent us from having difficulties in understanding what someone is saying, which often occurs when the volume of the soundtrack, background noise or music changes. The modulation of the speakers’ voices, the gradation, the dynamics and finally the accent can make it difficult to understand. The English language itself has a lot of different accents, something that is also true for many other languages.
- There are tens of millions of people in the world who are deaf or hard of hearing, people with perceptual difficulties or just with intellectual disabilities who will be very happy if you subtitle your video content and use simple language for it. The statistics vary, but on average 15-25% of the population in each country have difficulty understanding complex information. Think about it!
- Professionally designed subtitles improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO), which means that videos with custom subtitles will appear in the Google search results, instead of the real-time subtitles generated by automatic captioning tools, which are available for free on some sites.
- According to a study by an American media group, Verizon Media, 80% of people only watch a video to the end if it has subtitles.
Have we managed to convince you yet?
- It is also worth mentioning that if the video content has been subtitled in one language, it is very easy and convenient to translate it and adapt it to other languages, because the translated text already has timecodes that indicate when each line of text is displayed. You can also choose open or closed captions (OCR) – but what does this mean? Open captions are always visible in the video, while closed captions can be turned on or off at any time.
Sounds complicated? The Subtitling specialists at Skrivanek can help dispel any doubts you may have and help you find the right solution. Feel free to contact us – we are always happy to help!