25
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How exactly are subtitles and closed captions written for movies?
There are two main types of subtitling and several ways of attaching them to videos.
Types of subtitling
As you've noted in your question, sometimes subtitles have sound cues and sometimes they do not....
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24
votes
How much Cantonese and Mandarin is in Everything Everywhere all at Once?
For anyone wondering, I went to the cinema to watch it, and while I was able to follow and did enjoy it, it was incredibly frustrating not knowing what was being said for large portions of the film.
I ...
- 491
23
votes
Accepted
Why were there no English subtitles provided during the conversation between Michael and Sollozzo?
A couple of reasons...
Firstly, Coppola states somewhere in the DVD commentary that the actors spoke too quickly for the subtitles to be read properly and that was a distraction for the audience, so ...
- 139k
16
votes
Accepted
How is the audience supposed to follow the story around Daenerys?
Daenerys speaks High Valyrian to her dragons, Dothraki to her Khalasar and Low Valyrian to other characters in prior seasons. All* of these interactions are subtitled, by default.
In your German ...
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13
votes
How exactly are subtitles and closed captions written for movies?
I have a friend who works at a company that does subtitles for TV.
He has dictation software (Dragon), trained specifically to his voice. He listens to the TV show, and as he listens, he repeats the ...
- 438
12
votes
Accepted
What is the term used to refer to foreign/alien language only subtitles in a film or TV show?
They're called Forced subtitles
From Wikipedia
Forced subtitles are common on movies and only provide subtitles when
the characters speak a foreign or alien language, or a sign, flag, or
other ...
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8
votes
Accepted
Why were Stargate's subtitles redone?
In modern broadcasting, subtitling is a separate data stream accompanying the audio and video, and it is rendered using whatever font is configure in the subtitling device.
This is a more efficient ...
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7
votes
How exactly are subtitles and closed captions written for movies?
Many pieces of subtitling software help you sync stuff faster than doing it by trial-and-error, by allowing you to import your movie and showing you a waveform of the audio. It's easy to visually ...
- 71
7
votes
Accepted
What is the purpose of the specialized subtitles during "The Boogeyman" song?
If you had noticed, there are two words that are highlighted in the song's subtitles, The Boogeyman and Take.
According to legend as we used to hear, The boogeyman punishes children for bad behavior. ...
A J♦
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7
votes
Subtitling Standards
There is no single standard for style formatting of subtitles or captioning. As @BCdotWeb stated. It is dictated by the company you work for. Much like any other type of writing, there are multiple ...
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6
votes
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Avatar TWoW subtitles
You seem to be referring to SDH subtitles - for the deaf or hearing-impaired. These tend to also indicate things like voice stresses, significant background sounds, music indicators, etc. They're like ...
- 53.5k
6
votes
Words on the screen in John Wick
I can't find any articles that have found hidden meaning (in terms of word re-arrangement) for John Wick's impressive subtitle typography, but I did find and article from a website called Videomaker ...
- 23.3k
5
votes
How exactly are subtitles and closed captions written for movies?
It's not that big a deal.
Ever sit through the credits of a movie? No? There's a reason for that. There are often literally a thousand people named, because they are all involved in the movie's ...
4
votes
Why didn't silent movies have subtitles?
Also films were made for an international audience. Intertitles could be cut out and new ones put in for each language.
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4
votes
Accepted
What was the word translated as "Kamikaze" in the subtitled version of “Godzilla: Minus One?”
According to Wikipedia the Kamikaze were officially called special attack units or "tokubetsu kōgekitai." but this is usually abbreviated to "tokkōtai (特攻隊)."
This is the word used....
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4
votes
What are the last (two) lines of George Cukor's movie "A Bill of Divorcement" (1932)?
Just from listening to it - a cleaner copy than the youtube but still pretty old & crusty - I can get most of it, but I'm uncertain on the very last line.
It's my sonata, isn't it?
I'd forgotten ...
- 53.5k
4
votes
What language are the mother and boys speaking in "Life of Pi" when talking about Hindu gods? Looking for dialog
It's Tamil. In that scene, she was telling a myth story to her young sons. (In that story, Yashoda is Krishna's foster mother, Krishna is an infant boy). I don't know if you want the script in native ...
3
votes
Which translation is more correct, the dubbing or subtitle?
Watching movies in different languages that I can understand, more or less, my point of view (I watch movies that are not in my native language with subs, with my girlfriend who speaks something else, ...
- 585
3
votes
Accepted
A question on a quote from "Richard Deacon - In Between"
The video you posted is unavailable, but it seems the trailer contains the quote you're talking about (at timestamp 0:15):
I'm pretty sure what Deacon says is
What's ...
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2
votes
Why didn't silent movies have subtitles?
I suspect that part of it was that, for an artistic standpoint, lack of dialogue was just part of the medium and they were all about action and gesture and writing a dialogue script wasn't part of the ...
- 3,100
2
votes
Subtitling vs. dubbing and vice versa
To put it shortly:
Cinema is no more visual or less vocal than theater, and in one respect it is more vocal: only in cinema we have iconic voices like that of Vincent Price, even Schwarzenegger or ...
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2
votes
Why do the subtitles and audio of the Spanish version of Daredevil not match?
Dubbing something and creating subtitles are two different jobs.
When you write subtitles, you need to stay the closest of the original text you also need to be brief in order to keep the attention ...
- 121
2
votes
What is the term used to refer to foreign/alien language only subtitles in a film or TV show?
In the "scene", they're referred to as "Embedded Subtitles" or "Hardcoded Subtitles". There doesn't appear to be a wiki on either phrase, but a quick google will show it's rather common.
They are ...
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1
vote
Why did the Jack Ryan series switch from subtitles to all-English?
Did the writers or producers comment on why this change was made?
No, they did not. So, we may never know.
What we know for sure is that many fans complained, both sides, starting from season 2: some ...
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1
vote
Accepted
What is the more accurate translation for this scene in the series Kingdom?
For people who are not American or British or from any other English-speaking country this would not be weird. The difference between dubbing and subtitles is always present. This is due to the fact, ...
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1
vote
Accepted
In the modern Planet of the Apes series, are there subtitles for the sign language?
Yes, they are shown with subtitles. Screenshot embedded from the blu-ray:
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1
vote
In the modern Planet of the Apes series, are there subtitles for the sign language?
In foreign cinemas, there are subtitles for the sign language.
I cannot speak for english-speaking countries, but at least in Portugal the movie's sign language was subbed. My source is that I watched ...
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1
vote
In the modern Planet of the Apes series, are there subtitles for the sign language?
I saw this in an IMAX in India, and no there were no subtitles in the movie. I thought that this was a big mistake on the part of the studio and crew,
as key moments and conversations happened with ...
- 1,928
1
vote
What is the term used to refer to foreign/alien language only subtitles in a film or TV show?
Netflix calls these Forced Narrative (FN) subtitles.
From their instructions for content providers:
FN subtitles are used in the following cases:
1. Short segments of foreign language, intended to ...
- 471
1
vote
List of languages spoken in "Vikings" TV series
As you say, There are four major "dead" languages that are spoken in the show which are Latin, Old Norse, Anglo-Saxon and old French. Quoting Michael Hirst:
And here’s a very important thing: if ...
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