For starters, I’m one of those people who never feel the need to use subtitles when watching films, and I really never get bothered. However, I think I should start switching them on because there are a lot of ways I can benefit.
There is a reason film producers feel the need to include subtitles in their films. In this article, we will look at why everyone should use subtitles if they don’t already do it.
What Are The Reasons You Should Use Subtitles?
Many people have told me how beneficial it is to the viewer to use subtitles more than not using them and I went on my search escapades and came up with 12 reasons to use subtitles and I will mention them below.
- Using subtitles will help you learn a new language. Ever wondered how easy it is for certain people to grasp a foreign language and start speaking it with so much ease? Yes, this all thanks to switching on subtitles when watching a foreign language film. If you are specific on what kind of language you want to learn and constantly use its subtitles, then you would learn the language faster. It definitely doesn’t happen overnight, I will tell you that for sure but as you build a habit of using subtitles to learn the language, then it eventually gets easier and to be more fluent you can take on classes for that language.
- Many people love traveling to different countries across the board with a specific need or want to engage with other people’s cultures. If you are a person who travels a lot, then you would understand what I mean. Using subtitles does exactly this, different languages have different cultures and using subtitles of a language that you are not conversant with usually integrates into that language and culture and you get to learn a thing or two about other cultures. This is super beneficial for people who have an interest in learning other people’s cultures, subtitles really come in handy in such instances.
- Subtitles ensure that you do not miss any words or terms. When watching a film have you ever felt like there were specific words or terms that you did not understand well?. It might be because the pronunciations of the actors are not good enough or they have a thick accent and so their diction gets distorted. When using subtitles, you won’t have to struggle to get these words or rewind every other time just to catch a phrase. You can just follow through the subtitles and get all the words film with no hustle.
- For people with a hearing problem or a slow learning disability, using subtitles is the best thing you can do for yourself or for them. It makes the whole film watching experience superb and worthwhile because then they are part of the fun. Also, since other films come with a way to add the speed of the subtitles on the screen or make it slower, those who have a slow learning disability can follow through at their own pace and understand every text.
- Unless you are in a movie theatre watching a movie, then it’s safe to say that you will always come across background noise when watching a movie anywhere else that is not a movie theatre. This brings us to our next point of why you should be using subtitles. In such a scenario you will watch the movie and follow through with the subtitles and still enjoy it even though you are in a noisy area and you can’t do anything about it. You can also get a scene where the character is mumbling, or a crowd is talking and you can’t fully comprehend what is being said, the subtitles would really help you denote that and clear all your doubts on the same.
- Those people who go to watch movies in the library or at the office, really benefit so much from using subtitles without having to disturb others with the noise. Subtitles are great for places and environments which are sound sensitive. Perhaps you can use your headphones or earphones, but the reality of the matter is that we forget our earphones and have to watch a movie or a short video. Subtitles really help in such situations because all you have to do is mute the sound and follow-through using the subtitles. Since making noise for others and being rude is not on the table, then using subtitles is the best way out for sure.
- I don’t know how true this is but many people say that content with subtitles usually increases engagement so much so it’s too good to be true. I didn’t know that many people prefer to read through subtitles on video content than listening to it. Facebook has a lot of videos, but with help from text captions, many people access the content on the videos without having to open them. If you are a content creator, then it is very advisable to get on that bandwagon and start creating subtitles for your content if you want to increase the engagement on them. They say give the people what they want and if creating subtitles will give the user a good experience when engaging with your content, then that’s exactly what you should do.
- For film production houses who would love to create more different language subtitles for the original film than creating the first general language, subtitles will come in handy because then it becomes easy to translate those subtitles to other languages without the need to use the original script. This makes work easy and straightforward for translators because it means they don’t have to follow the rules and guidelines for creating subtitles and all they have to do is just translate.
- The best thing with content creation is how easy it becomes to repurpose a lot of the content one creates. If subtitles are perfect, then you can repurpose them into blogs which later creates a passive income for you and your company. Depending on what your content is, being able to let the people decide on how they would love to engage with your content is something a lot of content creators should strive to do. Have your content in blog form, audio form and also video form and let your viewers decide on how they want to interact with it. It’s also a great way to be versatile, and viewers always love that.
- If you have ever been on YouTube trying to search for a particular video and it was harder than if you would have searched for the same content on Google then you know why having texts in form of subtitles on your videos is beneficial for your target market. What it does this, is that it makes it easier for search engine optimization to work for YouTube and help one get the video they are searching for easily. Even though there are many ways of doing that, there’s no doubt that having closed captions on your YouTube video can impact your SEO (search engine optimization) and make it easier for your videos to be discoverable.
- Subtitles on film videos help many people increase their literacy and comprehension levels, which makes you excel in other parts of your life. It gets you going well on your Reading speed and fluency, Word knowledge, Vocabulary acquisition, Word recognition and Listening for comprehension. It is advisable for parents to encourage their children to watch audio learning materials that have closed captions or subtitles to get them used to this at an earlier stage in life.
- I don’t know if this is a problem many people have, or it’s just that nowadays lots of people are absent-minded or daydreaming and they can’t really keep up with their concentration levels. Having subtitles on videos helps with the reduction of concentration fatigue because as weird as it may sound, keeping up with subtitles may be quite an interesting thing for some people and thus increasing their concentration levels.
With that said, we can all see why we should use subtitles from time to time and how they might benefit us in the long run. Many people don’t feel comfortable using them and neither do they enjoy using them and that is okay but if you are like me who has learned a thing or two from this article, then you should start using subtitles and see how it changes your view on them.
