Subtitling is the act of placing written dialogue on-screen at the exact time when it is being spoken. Subtitling generally appears in the lower 4th of the screen, in white or yellow letters, outlined for clarity.
There is a fundamental decision to be made regarding the approach desired for subtitling:

1. "FULL TRANSLATION"
Full translation offers a much higher quality translation of the spoken word. It is the preferred style of persons who speak basic English, are trying to learn English, or when the video content is vitally important. An advantage to "full translation" is that it upholds almost the entire full content of the original. On the down side, the text is fairly long, and requires more concentration to read, and, quite frankly, may be impossible to read at subtitling speed.

2. "PARAPHRASED TRANSLATION"
For Paraphrased translation the original English script will be "simplified" and condensed to cut down to the smallest number of words on-screen. A phrase such as "I feel awful, horrible and down-right terrible", can become "I feel bad." Paraphrasing shortens the text, and makes reading easier, but obviously looses much of the flair of the dialogue. This style annoys persons who speak some English, but is fully acceptable to those who do not speak English (who do not know anything is missing). Paraphrasing is particularly applicable to persons who do not read quickly, or to a video where the value of the activity or visuals on-screen carries the same weight as the dialogue.

3. "CUT-BACK TRANSLATION"
For companies that desire the maximum verbatim translation, yet slightly shorter to make reading easier and allow the viewer to absorb as much information as possible. This adaptation shortens the text by eliminating redundant or unnecessary words, and changes long verbs such as "I would have been able" into shorter verb "I could have". All important information from the original is retained, therefore the text will still change on the screen fairly quickly.

There are various ways to lay subtitling to video:

A.
Direct burn-in into the video image by a special studio prepared for such services (not client in-house). However, it must be noted that many of these studios cannot handle Asian, Slavic, Middle Eastern or any non-ordinary characters. This method is the least expensive and fastest for ABC languages such as Spanish, French, German.

B.
From edit list direct to DVD or video. Several authoring software packages have the capability to use an edit list such as the sample below. The edit list actually contains the screen text within the edit list itself. The developers therefore “throw” the text onto the screen as reads the edit list. @IS is currently compatible with 40 such edit lists, and can easily customize to any EDL for any software.

C.
Prefab subtitle files. These are pre-fab, ready-to-use art files (pict, tif, tga, eps…) in ANY world language. They are proofread and assure that the final result will always be perfect, because there is no dependency as to whether the developer’s system is Asian or other language compatible. This method is good for DVD subtitling, as well as video, once compatible, and this approach has longer term benefits. @I.S. will furnish an EDL (edit list) that is compatible with client’s system – whatever that system is. @I.S. programmers are skilled at preparing customized edit lists of any variety. In this way, once a customized edit list has been created for a client, all future edit lists will be perfect and easy to produce – and change – at very low cost to client. The first initial investment in customized edit list is generally $250/one time cost, though may be a bit more if is quite different from existing customized EDLs. Edit list exports thereafter are generally $75/per project (depending upon project length). Edit lists shall use the in-point and out-point information provided by a “caption file”, again of any type by any company. An example of a caption file (there are many varieties) is as follows:

4.
There is one other alternate used mostly on special occasions. @I.S. can provide the translated caption file (like the text above, but in the foreign language) for the client to copy-paste wherever chosen. There are many drawbacks to this approach, including incompatibility of CG processors, PhotoShop and other software with Asian, Slavic and other languages (special versions are often required). For a one hour show there are approximately 1,400 subtitle graphics. Copy-paste of any sort is therefore fraught with risk of error. But this may work well for interactive CD-Rom production, if the client’s software and system is compatible with the languages involved, or can be for other uses.

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