Subtitles can be divisive. There are people who like them, those who tolerate them, and others who despise them. The last group says that text on the screen prevents them from focusing on what’s happening. They are distractions that are hard to read anyway. On the other hand, those who like subtitles are often thankful that they are there when needed. They make dialogue easier to understand. In any case, you can toggle them on and off as you want to so they don’t get in the way. It is becoming more common to add subtitles to videos for the following reasons:
Translate Foreign Language
If you are dealing with a foreign language film or an interview in a foreign language, then you probably want to translate what is being said and provide the subtitles to your viewers. The text makes the content more accessible to viewers especially if the original language is not commonly used where you want to show the video. A good example is the best foreign film contenders in award shows. There are many great works that are not in the English language. Subtitles enable non-native speakers to appreciate them by breaking the barrier.
Help the Hard of Hearing
Even if the whole thing is in English, you might still want to add subtitles to accommodate the needs of the deaf and the hard of hearing. There are lots of disabled persons out there who can benefit from this type of effort and they will surely appreciate that you went the extra mile for them. In fact, a lot of the videos that you see on YouTube these days have subtitles. The most popular sites make it a point to get their videos transcribed.
Improve Video Search Results
Another reason for transcribing and subtitling is the fact that the text can be used by web crawlers to examine the video and make it rank higher for relevant keywords. It is hard to rank high in the web page-based searches because of the incredible number of competition. However, you can still have a pretty good chance to get up in the image and video search results if you play your cards right. One of the first steps in doing so is making a transcription of the video content.
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