Why you should spend part of your marketing budget on captioning services
Speech is one of the ways people communicate and as Günter Grass says, “translation is what transforms everything so that nothing changes”.
This duopoly between speech and translation plays out on the big screen when watching content through major OTT streaming platforms like Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video and others. One of the best examples of this is Netflix’s popular Spanish show La casa de Papel. While the world now recognizes this show as Money Heist, it was the Spanish language show that made “The Professor”, “Berlin”, “Tokyo” part of our daily conversation.
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The connection between La casa de Papel and people was possible thanks to subtitles and subtitles. As Shark Tank India was gaining popularity in India, part of the viewers found it difficult to join this viewing party. The platform streaming the show did not offer captioning for nearly a day after the episode first aired.
It was therefore difficult for a deaf or hard of hearing person to watch the show on the day of its release. This could have been solved using SDH Subtitles closed captioning, which combines information from subtitles and subtitles. SDH subtitles are subtitles for the deaf or hard of hearing.
As NCIS, a popular show on CBS, made clear, these big platforms often rely on experienced partners for their captions and subtitles. One of these partners is Circle translations, a Lithuanian translation agency offering quality translations at a competitive price. The first step to understanding translation services is to understand the key difference between the various services.
Subtitles, SDH subtitles and captions: what’s the difference?
People often use the terms subtitles and captions interchangeably, but there are differences that make them useful for a specific need or use case.
- Subtitles: these are texts resulting either from a transcription, or from a scenario, or from a conversation between people. When an original audio file is in a language different from the viewer’s native language, a translated subtitle is used.
- Captions: These are on-screen text or descriptions that either display dialogue or identify speakers, and even describe relevant sounds that are otherwise inaccessible to people who are deaf or hard of hearing. Subtitles are synchronized with the video image and are either open or closed. Open captions are always visible and cannot be turned off by the viewer, while closed captions can be turned on and off by the viewer.
- SDH captions: These are captions that combine information from captions and subtitles. Normal subtitles are written assuming the viewer can hear the audio but cannot speak the language. With SDH captions, it assumes the viewer can’t hear the video and then tries to emulate closed captions on a medium that doesn’t support it.
Does your business need to set a marketing budget for captioning services?
The answer is yes. Video and audio formats are devouring the world as the next major content format. With attention spans shrinking across the board and smart devices almost everywhere around us now, these formats are still available to consumers.
Video content, as well as audio content, is all the more effective because it can reach a large number of people, even those who cannot directly consume these formats. This shift in consumer behavior has led to an explosion in the prevalence of video marketing. In order to reach the most people, it’s important to add captions to your videos or a transcript to your audio.
This makes your video inclusive and accessible to people who are deaf or hard of hearing. With the extra step of translation, you can also reach a more diverse audience. It makes sense to invest in a good translation service as it helps businesses and marketers increase their market share.
Subtitles are also a cost-effective addition to your already expensive or expansive video production setup. By adding subtitles, you can build credibility for your organization and make it a truly global business that appeals to people who speak different languages. By adding subtitles or closed captions, you also increase the engagement of your video and increase its online visibility.
Benefits of adding subtitles to videos and transcriptions to audio content?
The biggest benefit of adding subtitles to videos means that your video can be consumed by more audience and thus becomes relevant. Imagine you are watching a product unboxing video. A simple video just unboxing the product and showing a flat image would not be as appealing as a video with captions mentioning each product featured in the video.
In fact, a video with subtitles for the product mentioned by the host along with a checklist on the video itself would attract more viewers. Adding subtitles enhances your content in one way: they make it convenient to watch. Likewise, adding a transcript to a podcast makes it easier to listen to and follow the narration.
Data shows that videos with captions lead to a 40% increase in watch time on YouTube. If you switch to Facebook, one of the main video consumption platforms, 85% of videos are watched without sound. This means that a video with captions will perform better on Facebook than ones with captions. Watching time is also increased 12 times with the addition of subtitles or closed captions.
By adding subtitles, you not only bring the viewer closer to the video, but also to the narrative. While subtitles may be fine on YouTube, adding close captions will actually bring viewers closer to the content on Facebook. Therefore, it is recommended to integrate both into your digital video strategy.
When it comes to digital marketing, Neil Patel suggests using all available tactics to your advantage. Patel says marketers should consider adding captions if “your video contains dialogue.” “It overcomes the sound barrier and ensures that your message is not lost,” he said. adds.
Adding subtitles has also been found to make videos more engaging and effective. Adding subheadings has been found to improve searchers’ retention of information. Finally, subtitles help videos with greater SEO value. Adding subtitles is supposed to improve the SEO ranking of video content.
This again borrows from Patel’s playbook where adding subtitles helps videos with keyword density and thus makes them easier for search engines to discover.
All the reasons mentioned above strongly imply the need for subtitles and captions to improve the reach of your marketing videos, and all the time, cost, energy and effort involved in creating these videos is not not lost.
If you’re ready to take the plunge and decide to add subtitles to your marketing videos, you can check out the professional translation and subtitling services offered by Circle Translations.
Professional translation in over 120 languages
Circle Translations makes translation easy, local, and delivers content that appeals to “mass audiences.” The company offers professional translations in over 120 languages, making it one of the few multilingual translation platforms. It also offers a complete package that includes everything from translation, editing, proofreading to desktop publishing.
The company also localizes the content by making it culturally appropriate, so that it resonates well with the target country, region, and language. Circle Translations also creates content for its clients by offering solutions that go beyond voiceover, dubbing, transcription, subtitling, subtitling and editing. As video and audio content grows in popularity, these solutions play a vital role for marketers to reach their target audience.
Founded in 2017, Circle Translations counts among its clients Amazon, Binance, Electronic Arts, the National Film Board of Canada, TENT, Sunrise Medical. The company is now one of the leading localization agencies in the Baltic States. With more than 70 million words translated each year, the company is building a translation platform based on diversity.
Watch our interview with Paul Down, Head of Sales at Intigriti.