Three Things to Look for in a Subtitling Agency

Posted by vicaps on August 2nd, 2018

Video content is essential to both your website and social media strategy. Customers want to see what your company is up to, what products you are launching, events you are a part of, and more. As video content has become increasingly necessary for companies to produce regularly, the need for subtitling has also increased. In order to best reach your global audience, it is important that your videos have subtitles so that they can understand what is happening in your video, and read it in their own language. It is important that people from around the world, and even those within the United States, can have a way to interact with your company. 

Not all subtitling agencies are created equal. There are some specific integrations and services that you should look into as you select a subtitling agency to partner with. 

Here are three things to look for in a subtitling agency.

1. Localization

The concept of localization with subtitling services may not be familiar to you. While many services are able to translate a transcript verbatim, it is actually vital that the translation is more of a summary, catered to a specific location's fluency and appropriate dialects. Another benefit of localization is that your transcript will not be too long. There are recommendations of the average words people can read in a given amount of time, so having a summary can help make sure that the word speed is not too quick. 

Finding subtitling agencies that have the capability to translate to specific dialects and localize speech can be helpful and necessary for your company's social media and website strategy. Oftentimes, these professional agencies have employees that are native speakers of each language that they translate so the dialects are understood perfectly each time.  

2. Efficiency 

As you search for subtitling agencies, another thing to look for is their track record with turnaround on projects. If you are looking for a long-term agency to service your videos, it is important to know how quickly they are able to get your project back to you so that you can plan accordingly. Keep in mind that subtitling rates often are determined by the length of your program, the languages needed to be subtitled, and the turnaround itself.

3. Quality 

Finally, when you search for subtitling agencies, be sure that they produce high-quality work. You want to be sure that your videos reach global audiences with the culturally-relevant language.