Subtitling

Subtitling is almost always about summarising more than translating. Summarising, contrary to popular belief, does not involve changing the message or leaving out information. It enables us to read the subtitles comfortably, almost without noticing, and thus understand the content and enjoy the image at the same time. One of the main tasks of the professional subtitling editor is to extract important information and recognise which content is inessential and can, as a result, be left out.

Typical problems:

• Linguistic mistakes.
• It is impossible to follow: the subtitles are too long, and/or appear for too short a time on the screen.
• Technical errors: subtitles on the screen after the corresponding dialogue has finished, unsubtitled fragments of dialogue, etc.
• Inconsistency.

QuickSilver’s solutions:

• Linguistic quality-checking.
• Experienced subtitlers.
• Use of professional subtitling software: zero technical errors.
• Use of the QuickSilver subtitling style guide, which enables us to be consistent across all of our subtitling projects.