Compare good subtitling with bad subtitling
The million dollar Bollywood production "Devdas"
Many nominations,
but spoilt by bad subtitling. For a few hundred dollars more, perfect subtitles would have been possible.
One reads, as always compulsorily, the text flying by,
but the time given is not enough.
There is simply too much text (apart from other shortcomings). The result: this fine movie cannot be enjoyed...
We added Closed Captions that come closer to what should be done by filmmakers, producers and studios - you can switch them of/on below right.
Several clips from Kannada movies:
Anisuthide yaako indu
Minchaagi neenu baralu
Mungaaru maleye
Kunidu, kunidu baare
subtitled in YouTube's closed captions: Kannada-alphabet, Kannada-phonetic, English and Dutch - you can choose which captions you want to see by clicking on the red button below right:
A documentary clip
Badly subtitled:
One is hardly able to watch the footage because as soon as we see text we involuntarily start to read it.
And reading these subtitles takes up almost all of your attention...
About the well-subtitled version on our YouTube Channel:
Here the viewer can gradually forget he is reading subtitles and watching footage.
An Othello fragment
Badly subtitled:
The first two subtitles are okay, but then it goes badly wrong: many incues are not right, the text
has not been condensed, the intervals are wrong, groups of words belonging together are separated.
To be able to get all the text into the subtitles, it's been chopped up into many,
short subtitles. The viewer can just about read the subtitles, but barely has time to watch the actual film.
Unfortunately, this kind of subtitling is on the increase because it is cheaper than quality subtitling.
About the properly subtitled version on our YouTube Channel:
Here the art of subtitling has been at work. The text has been condensed and as a result the viewer gets the essential information and can also watch the actual film.
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TyphoonWe produced the subtitling of this clip of Dutch rapper/poet Typhoon, text by Typhoon:
http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=PMt8LCPdy1A
Fragment inauguration speech Obama
The burned-in subtitles are made live, with half a minute delay, so certainly not state-of-the-art subtitling.
You can switch off the closed captions that are state-of-the-art, even though only about 31 characters per line are possible (for TV and DVD this normally is 39 characters) .
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