Chinese Video Subtitle Translation: 6 Benefits and Tips to Drive Traffic & Clicks

Recently updated on February 21st, 2024 at 08:10 pm

If content is king, video is the emperor.

Compared with plain text, video is inherently more engaging, opening up more creative opportunities to tell a story, communicate with your audience, advertise your products and increase brand visibility.

To achieve the strongest impact among the international audiences, your videos must be embedded with subtitles or voice-over in the target languages of your audience, that’s why the Chinese video subtitle translation service is increasingly in demand in recent years.

What’s Video Subtitle?

What’s Video Caption?

Caption is the text version of the spoken part of a video, or any other type of computer presentation. It’s usually in the source language rather than a translation of another language.

Caption consists of closed caption and open caption. The two terms sound similar but there’re some significant differences.

Closed Caption

Closed caption is often offered as an option in almost every online video viewing experience. It can be turned on or off, giving viewers complete control for a better user experience.

Open Caption

Open caption refers to text that’s embedded in the video files, hence, it can’t be turned on and off as it’s part of the video. Open caption is often used in circumstances where viewers don’t have control of a closed caption feature.

What Are the Differences Between Subtitle and Closed Caption?

Subtitle and closed caption are different but they overlap in many ways.

Both subtitle and closed caption are the text version of the spoken dialogues in a video intended to provide the viewer with a real-time experience of what’s happening on the screen, however, subtitles can be in the source language of the video or in another language while closed caption is in the same language as spoken in the audio.

Closed caption caters to the deaf and hard-of-hearing community as it includes background sounds and speaker change, while subtitle often assumes that the viewers do not have any problem hearing the audio.

Subtitle vs Closed Caption

	Subtitle	Closed caption
Language	Source language, another language	Source language
Usage	Without sounds and speaker change	An aid for the deaf and hard-of-hearing community with background sounds and speaker change

6 Benefits of Chinese Video Subtitle Translation

If you’re expanding your business to the Chinese market, you simply can’t ignore the importance of accurate Chinese video subtitle translation. There’re many perks with the Chinese video subtitle translation.

#1 More Accessible to a Wider Audience

As powerful as video is for sales and marketing purposes, the impact is elevated to another level when you add subtitles in Chinese as a viewer option. It’s brilliant to localize the content and make sure your Chinese audiences who lack English language proficiency understand your content thoroughly.

#2 Improve Watch Time & Engagement

Chinese subtitles improve the watch time & engagement of the videos drastically. People tend to engage more, like clicking, commenting, sharing, if the video contains subtitles in their native language.

#3 Better for Search Engine Optimization

#4 Better Learning Experience

E-learning and educational videos with Chinese subtitles are powerful visual aids that can greatly enhance the participants’ learning experience. There’re innumerable research articles online showing that learning happens best in one’s native language.

💡 If your learning videos or marketing videos include Chinese subtitles, it helps viewers comprehend and grasp the information easily. Therefore, they’re more likely to watch till the end and engage with it later.  

#5 Useful for Situations with Limited Access to Sound

Chinese video subtitle translation is essentially important especially in situations where there’s limited or no access to sound, for instance, in situations like in a library, at midnight on a running train, or during the lunch break at the office, most people would prefer to watch videos on mute, otherwise would end up disturbing people nearby.

#6 Protect Confidentiality/Privacy

Confidential

You might not want the voice of the video to be heard if it contains discreet information. Subtitles come in very handy to meet the needs of keeping the content confidential.

6 Best Practices for Chinese Video Subtitle Translation

Are you planning to use video marketing to capture and retain the attention of your Chinese audience? Then you’ll have to integrate subtitles in Chinese to connect with your audience.

Here’re some best practices that can help you get accurate Chinese video subtitle translation.

Localization

Video localization for the Chinese market doesn’t merely mean translating the text from English to Chinese.

Depending on individual graphics, localizing your content to include trendy jargon, slang, dialects, bridging cultural nuances, etc., can connect to the heart of your specific audience.

💡 While localizing the subtitles with cultural nuances taken into consideration in a style similar to the targeted audience, the subtitles should also stay true to the tone of your original content.

Character Limits

As to the length of subtitles, often it’s suggested to keep it short and simple (KISS).

💡 On average, the audiences spend about 2 seconds on a screen, and the average reading speed is 14 characters per second.

If a screen is fully loaded with text, it’s quite challenging for the audience to read the subtitles and enjoy the actions on the screen within such a limited time. Therefore, the translation of subtitles should be concise.

💡 The standard character limit per line is 35 English characters, which equals 14 Chinese characters.

Examples of using concise words/sentence in Chinese video subtitle translation.

English	Word-to-Word	Concise
Whether you win or lose	无论是输还是赢	无论输赢
But	但是	但
When you’re serious you lose	当你认真时你就输了	认真你就输了

Another popular way to keep the Chinese subtitles short is splitting the long sentence into two or more lines.

Examples:

I started cutting hair Out my parents’ garage When I was 14 years old Just kept working my way up

我的理发事业 从父母的车库开始 那年我14岁 全力以赴追寻发型师之梦

Best Practices for Line Division

Line division is a widely used practice to divide long subtitles that don’t fit on one line. The purpose of line division is to make the subtitles display well at the speed of reading and comprehension.

Here’re some basic principles for line division in English to Chinese video subtitle translation.

• Divide after the punctuation marks (, …)
• Divide before conjunctions (and, or, because)
• Divide before prepositions (in, on, above, inside)
• Do not separate fixed terms (names of people, places, compound words)
• Do not divide slang, idioms, etc.
• Do not divide the subject from the verb

The basic practice of line division is to keep semantic units together for easier reading and comprehension purposes.

Synchronization

When synchronizing the translated Chinese subtitles into the video, each subtitle should appear at the exact moment when the speaker starts speaking and should leave the screen when the speaker stops speaking.

In additional, it’s suggested to have a professional Chinese video subtitle translation services provider observe the maximum number of Chinese characters allowed for each subtitle according to the dialogue duration and line length.

Display of Subtitles

By default, subtitles should be displayed at the bottom of the video, with a gap in between the bottom of the subtitles and the bottom of the screen.

If any UI element appears temperately in the position blocking the subtitles, they should be moved up a little bit to avoid overlap. Additionally, the subtitles should be in a large, easy-to-read font with a contrasting color of the background for better readability.

Delivery Format

Subtitles can be delivered separately using text file formats like .SRT or they can be embedded directly into the videos.

The first is usually the most common delivery format nowadays. Often the translator will create a time-coded transcript in the source language at the beginning, and it will serve as a master document to translate into Chinese. The latter must make sure the subtitles match the exact time frame.

Live Test

After embedding the Chinese subtitles into the original videos, it’s important to do a live test. Watch the video again from the beginning to the end with both English and Chinese subtitles on, check whether the Chinese video subtitle translation is correct within semantic context, whether the subtitles match with the speed of actions on the screen, etc.

Invite Chinese audiences who have never watched the video before to watch it, and collect feedback for improvement.

Take a few minutes to ask your audience the following questions.

• Would you be able to understand the plot of the video if it’s muted?
• Can you read the entire subtitle and enjoy the actions of the screen before the next comes?
• Do the subtitles occupy too much space of the screen?
• Is the breaking of lines natural?
• Are there any subtitle translation mistakes?

4 Free Online Tools for Chinese Video Subtitle Translation

Want to improve the productivity and efficiency of Chinese video subtitle translation?

Manually adding text on screen can be a daunting task, and syncing the subtitles with the video makes it even harder. With the right subtitling tools that meet your requirements and work style, you can increase work efficiency drastically.

Here’s a list of free video subtitle tools we recommend.

Frequently Asked Questions

Subtitle Translation of Young Sheldon – A Case Study

The art of Chinese video subtitle translation is to understand the entire plot and what’s being said, then translate it as faithfully and concisely as possible.

As there’s a limited number of characters per line (English 35 characters, Chinese 14 characters), often it requires the Chinese video subtitle translation services provider to have good knowledge in the art of summarizing and transcreation.

Here’re some examples of Chinese video subtitle translation from Young Sheldon.

– What is it you want from me? – I want you to give up your pursuit of Connie. – All right. I’m gonna have to ask you to leave my store. – Very well. The line in the sand has been drawn. Cross it at your own peril.

– 你找我到底想干什么？ – 我想让你放弃追求康妮。 – 好吧，现在请你离开我的店铺。 – 非常好。分界线已划，越界有风险。

💡 This is a fierce dialogue between Connie’s two pursuers – Dr. Sturgis and Dale. The best part about the English to Chinese video subtitle translation is the idiom “The line in the sand has been drawn.”, there isn’t any matching idiom in Chinese. Instead of “word-to-word” translation, it’s transcreated accurately and concisely as ” 分界线已划 “.

– What I find interesting is how many super villains are scientists. – So? – So if the world doesn’t respect me, I might change sides.

– 漫画中很多坏人都是科学家，这事很有意思。 – 所以呢？ – 所以如果世人们不尊重我，我说不定也会黑化。

💡 The Chinese translation of “黑化 ” is more intense, lively, and personalized than just translating the literal meaning of “change sides”.

Final Thoughts

Compared with normal Chinese business translation in the form of plain text, English to Chinese video subtitle translation is much more challenging considering the differences in how the message is conveyed orally.

It should not be approached the same way as in a document translation since when we speak, there’s a lot of nuance in pace, tone, punctuation in addition to the images, body language included in the video, which requires the expertise of a professional Chinese linguist or a Chinese subtitle translation agency to interpret it with precision.

Let’s talk. Share your great project with us. WhatsApp: +86 18218494138

7 Types of Public Sector Translation Services to Enhance Efficiency and Effectiveness

7 Chinese Copywriting Tips to Take Your Sales Pitch from Good to Great

4 Effective Types of Food and Beverage Translation Service That Will Grow Your Business Exponentially