5 Reasons Why You Should Add English Subtitles To Your Film

Demystifying Subtitles And Captions

Many people do not understand that subtitles and captions are more times than not always classified in the same category, but for those who think, I’d like to inform you that these two are different things with different meanings and uses.

What is the difference between subtitles and captions?

Captions are transcriptions of dialogue that include audio cues like background noises and speaker identification. Subtitles make an assumption of the viewer being able to hear and provide dialogue text in the viewer’s native language or any other language in that matter.

• A great example would be if a video file is in Portuguese and an American would love to watch and understand what is being said, they would use English subtitles to understand it well. The Americans would not be the only ones with a need for English subtitles considering the fact that over 59 countries speak English as their national language and also almost half the world population also speaks English. This definitely opens up an opportunity for other countries to translate videos to English subtitles and widen the viewing audience.

Subtitling in filmmaking has been a growing phenomenon that filmmakers should take advantage of and be able to translate their videos to English subtitles.

Why Should You Add English Subtitles To Your Film?

There are a host of benefits to adding English subtitles to your video. Listing all of them would take longer than it would watch the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, so let’s look at the top 5 benefits that give your video content an immediate impact.

1. Improved SERP (Search Engine Results Page) Rankings
   • Search-ability is a big deal when it comes to video content because the more your video is easily accessible when being searched for only means more viewership from viewers. 100 million people watch at least one video every single day and 300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute.
     • Getting your video content discovered can be a challenge in this day and age where the market is highly saturated, it’s the same as trying to find a needle in a haystack when it is late at night in the dark, it is impossible.
     • One can take action and make their videos more searchable on Search Engines by including English translated subtitles this enables your content to open up to the audience to include English-speaking searchers and therefore increase your ranking.
   • Improved search ranking is beneficial for both businesses and individuals. It provides more traffic and bigger audiences–and organic search is still the most common way of finding content.
     • Google owns 75 percent of the search engine market share, but appearing on multiple search engines will boost your audience in size. You’ll gain more opportunities to learn what your audience responds to most, which will help future video content perform well.
2. Reach a Bigger Audience
   • The world, as big as it is, has English as the most widespread language with almost 1.5 billion people speaking it and fluently in that matter. Not including translated English subtitles, these people are literally cut off from accessing your content or even comprehending it. Even if English isn’t their first language, they may appreciate the ability to practice following along with the subtitles on your video.
   • Lack of subtitles may hurt a producer’s content in several ways. One’s videos may receive a low-performance rating resulting in stunted growth for the production house. A good example would get into a movie theater to watch a movie and it’s in a language that you do not understand would you keep watching or leave and try to get another movie of your liking? Chances are you would leave, and that’s exactly how everybody else would react to that. If you translate videos using English subtitles, you can ensure more of your audience is aware of what’s going on. And if they’re knowledgeable, they’ll be more likely to engage with your content.
   • Many online platforms offer their content creators options to include subtitles while others go a step further to help creators create subtitles in a step-by-step tutorial. However, unless you provide your own subtitles, you’re at risk of showing inaccurate and distracting subtitles. Rather than rely on that, you can control your entire viewing experience with subtitles made by professionals.
3. Act as A Resource for Non-Native Speakers
   • Including English subtitles in videos makes videos more educational to their audiences. Remember now, 1.5 billion people speak English? It’s not the native language for all of those people, which means they can always use more practice with it. Subtitles on videos spoken in another language are the perfect way for these people to get additional experience. A video producer can become a trusted resource for classrooms across the globe if they include reliable, accurate translated English subtitles, with their videos being used both for learning English or their native language.
   • When videos are translated into English subtitles, it opens up learning resource opportunities. This means that there is potential for more money, a wider audience, and people looking at you as an expert within the industry. All of that leads to a stronger overall brand.
4. Better Engagement Around the World
   • Every filmmaker or content creator loves first-class engagement on their content, and with English subtitles, one is guaranteed better and high engagement from viewers. A typical viewer will watch 91 percent of a video that includes subtitles and If your video doesn’t have subtitles, that amount watched drops to 66 percent. Other engagement will see a boost, too. More viewers will share like and comment on your video, which is all made by the mere fact of the viewer being able to understand what is being said. That higher engagement fits nicely in Facebook and YouTube’s ever-evolving algorithms, which promote videos that are well-received and interacted with more frequently, which means many people will have access to your content.
   • If video performance and engagement are metrics that you’re tracking for your videos, subtitles will make those videos perform better. As your video picks up steam and gets more popular online, you’ll want as many people as possible to understand and enjoy your work. Otherwise, it’ll be like screaming into a well–it’s cool for you, but it is it really reaching anyone else?
5.  Create Different Content for Users
   • The good thing about filmmakers and producers is that they are very creative and smart, and with that said, it’s very possible to create more content from simple subtitles that have been created for your videos. One can create blog posts, emails, info-graphics, social quotes, and other written content. With no subtitles, you’d have to do all of that work manually, and end up spending more time having to create all this other content which would have been avoided with the availability of English subtitles.
   • The additional content will create several new opportunities for you and your company. Developing a blog post allows people to link to it, adding backlinks to your site, which boosts your SEO and website authority. With an email newsletter, you’re providing engaging content that can help boost subscribers and click-through rate. And with everything translated for you, putting together social graphics and info-graphics–things that people love to share and retweet–is a breeze.
   • Now that I have given you the reason to use English subtitles, I will outline how you can translate your videos into English texts.
   • There are a lot of companies out there who offer subtitling services, but they all differ from the quality of work to prices to the accuracy. This is one of the best ways to get your videos subtitled because we all know that help from experts is the best one you can get.
   • If you a self-sufficient individual who loves doing their own work by themselves, there are a lot of applications that one can use to help them create subtitles but the thing with these apps one needs to be 100% keen to get accurate results.
   • You can make sure that all the words on your video are written making sure everything is translated, but that is not a practical way and may take you more time than expected instead you might opt to use a subtitle translator out there, which is trusted by more different companies in the world.
   • We can all agree that English subtitles offer more benefits to a filmmaker than losses from being able to boost your engagement to providing educational benefits, improving one’s ranking if you are not using English subtitles, then you should be able to jump on that bandwagon and start providing your viewers with that which will be beneficial to them more than anything.
   • People say if you can help others while still enjoying that then take that opportunity and run because it only comes ones in a lifetime. English subtitles are the new wave, so get with it.

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