What Are The Benefits Of Subtitles To The Audience?
Subtitles have really come of age, I bet you cannot remember when you got a film and it did not have an option to use subtitles or not, below we will discuss different reasons use subtitles when watching a film and some benefits.
- Learning new languages faster and being able to follow through with the storyline. Many people I know have truly praised subtitles and confessed on how easy it has been learning a new language by watching a series back to back or even listening to music videos with subtitles. If you or a friend has an interest in learning a new foreign language or just improving your skills in a language you already know, it’s advisable to get films that have subtitles in the particular language that you would love to learn or improve in. Reading textbooks and novels gets boring so get yourself a film genre that you enjoy and go about your way sharpening your skills and being entertained at the same time. Remember that this only works when the subtitles in question are in your target language.
- Easier access to different cultures across the globe. The fun part about learning new languages with the help of subtitles is that you can engross yourself in other people’s cultures, with a great grasp in a foreign language it’s easy to understand the culture and beliefs of the people who speak that language. I can proudly say that learning to speak Portuguese has really come in handy in allowing me to understand the Portuguese people’s culture at a deeper level than I could have ever imagined. I believe that most people take for granted the ability to easily access other people’s culture which can be forfeited if we watch films with subtitles and get to know these international languages and even perfecting it to a point of no return “literary”
- Being able to watch international award-winning movies. Using subtitles has made it possible for people to access and enjoy watching most international award-winning films which might be in languages that are not easily accessible by other people around the globe which is a thing that never used to happen a long time ago.
- Provide clarity of any technical terminology, full names and brand names. The reality of the matter is that most times people never get to hear the names and terminologies used in a film because of either thick accents or mistranslations but with the help of subtitles, one can read the terminologies with no hassle. If it’s a film about law or medicine or architecture, it becomes hard to understand the jargon used to fit the different fields and someone who is not familiar with that jargon might have a hard time comprehending the film or even enjoying it. With subtitles, you can say goodbye to such hassles because it makes everything easy and simplified to read and understand. You can avoid the constant rewinding and forwarding of a film because you did not fully understand the statement mentioned, which is no fun for anyone. Sure, they can spell it out for you, but how many times have you struggled to keep up with the spelling of a long word. A great example of a film that has a difficult word for a normal person to understand is Lord of the Rings, where the fictional names of places and characters are not very obvious? It’s slightly easier to keep up with the story about how “Glorfindel leaving Rivendell” or when “Beregond sees the light in the tower of Minas Tirith” with subtitles.
- Better experience for those with learning disabilities, attention deficits, or autism. It would be terrible for the film industry to ignore the fact that there are many people who have disabilities and learning difficulties who would also love to watch and understand some of their productions. According to one research, captions and transcripts are helpful to those with learning difficulties. Almost 75% of individuals in this category have come out to praise how subtitles have been a great help and acted as a learning aid for them. And there are countless other researches, including one by The University of South Florida St. Petersburg Distance Learning Accessibility Committee, where there is strong support for subtitle and captions for films and music videos in their online courses because of how beneficial they are to all students, with or without disabilities.
- To comprehend any strong accent, mumbling, loud background noise. When listening to anyone speak let alone in films, it becomes hard for someone to comprehend anything if the speaker has a strong accent, there is a lot of outside mumbling or loud background noise, all these 100% affect the listening and comprehension of others and also when learning new languages this may pose as an enormous fallback so the use of subtitles in such cases always comes in handy. The subtitle always plays a big role in understanding what was not loud enough or clear enough or either said and pronounced properly. A great example would be in a film a crowd scene where everybody saying something, if anyone in the group is mumbling, then we will struggle… and if that happens in the middle of loud background noise, then I think we’re all screwed. If it were possible to get live subtitles in our day-to-day lives, then listening comprehension would a problem that we would not be experiencing.
- An easy way to watch videos in sound-sensitive environments, like offices and libraries. Imagine wanting to watch a video in a silent place where silence is highly upheld and you don’t have headphone or earphones, you definitely wouldn’t be able to understand anything by just watching the movement of the lips and also it would be fun, sounds like a hard task trying to read the lips of characters in a video. We’ve all been there, in that scenario that I just explained and it really is a bummer, you can try to ask for your neighbor’s earphones but high chances are most of the time that your neighbor is also using theirs. This is where the use of subtitles comes in place and also people get to understand and see their importance. People always say that you don’t see the importance of something unless you have to use it. Subtitles are also very important in public noisy places, not only silent places, even with the help of earphones the background noise might make it hard for one to hear what is being said on a video and thus subtitles become helpful. Remember that it is very rude to listen to a loud video in a silent place, so don’t do it.
- Online videos with subtitles provide better user engagement and experience. I don’t know about you, but I have noticed that a lot of videos on these online platforms have used subtitles more than how it has been over the past years. The thing is many people might feel the need to press on a video and watch it from the subtitles they see when in passing, this really promotes the engagement and experience level of the consumers of that content. According to Facebook, closed captions can increase video view time by an average of 12%. Some reasons might be because of the reasons above, like being in sound-sensitive environments. Regardless of that reason many people wouldn’t sit through a 10 minutes’ video with no sound and no subtitles so film and creative content creators need to incorporate subtitles on their contents or else they will lose a lot of views. Since we live in an era where video contents are everywhere and consumed even more than ever before, creating a positive user experience is even more critical than ever before.
- Easier to translate to other languages. People don’t know this, but it’s very easy to translate films with subtitles to other languages and one would love because the availability of an already transcribed script makes this easy. The scripts can easily be translated by sending it off to a translation service like Rev.com. Once you have received the file back-translated in the languages of your choice, you have further opportunity to reach another target market if you upload onto YouTube or if you want it for personal reasons like for learning languages.
We can all conclude that using subtitles in our films and videos has more benefits than anyone can think of. Above I have mentioned just but a few of the most important benefits of using subtitles and how they simplify life and how we engage with a lot of the film productions out here. I 100% believe that every film producer should strive to use subtitles more or make them accessible because they will win more.
