subtitiling

In today’s digital-first world, video content is a necessity. It’s one of the most powerful tools for businesses to stay competitive and connect with global audiences. But to truly maximise reach and engagement, it must be accessible to everyone, everywhere.

That’s where LanguageWire’s unique value proposition comes in: AI-powered, human-refined subtitling solutions that blend together the best of two worlds. They seamlessly localise video content across multiple languages and diverse audiences, whilst maintaining accuracy, quality and brand consistency.

Our Smart Editor offers an innovative approach to subtitling. It simplifies complex video localisation workflows for global enterprises and allows businesses to scale their content effortlessly across regions. We ensure that the video content reaches a broader audience and engages them meaningfully.

Here’s how our approach sets us apart — and how it can transform the way you think about video localisation.

Simplifying complex subtitling workflows

One of the biggest challenges for global enterprises is managing the complexity of localising video content for multiple markets. 

Between handling different languages, adhering to brand guidelines and business terminology, and ensuring consistency across regions, localisation can feel like a daunting task. That’s where our end-to-end subtitling solutions come in. 

We take a hands-on approach here. Customers can simply upload their videos to our platform, leaving the heavy lifting to us. From the moment a video is submitted, our process kicks into high gear, combining the best of AI and human expertise to generate high-quality, contextually accurate subtitles.

With Smart Editor in subtitling mode, we create captions ensuring cultural nuances, technical terminology and brand voice are respected. 

The best part? Our customers can stay hands-off for most of the process but are invited to collaborate when it matters most – during validation and styling.

A customer-first collaboration experience

What makes LanguageWire’s subtitling so special is its interactive validation and styling phase.

Once AI and human linguists create the captions, customers can review the subtitles in our Smart Editor for accuracy, consistency and brand alignment. This is a simple and powerful step. And it’s designed to keep your team in full control without the complexities of managing the full process.

The Smart Editor presents subtitles intuitively, allowing for quick edits such as adjusting text, merging or splitting segments or synchronising timestamps – all with just a few clicks. Segment-by-segment synchronisation ensures that reviewing each caption feels seamless and efficient.

Styling is another powerful feature that allows customers to customise subtitles effortlessly. They can adjust font size and type, background color, text alignment, and screen position, ensuring that subtitles look professional and align with their visual identity.

This level of customisation can be applied to individual segments or across the entire video, giving customers the flexibility to create tailored subtitles that meet their specific needs.

Consistent, on-brand messaging

We understand that localisation is not just about translation. It’s about capturing your brand voice in a way that resonates with audiences, no matter the language.

Our Smart Editor seamlessly integrates with your existing linguistic assets, like translation memories and termbases. This integration ensures that your subtitles use the correct terminology and tone throughout the video, providing a consistent experience for your global audience.

Whether you’re producing marketing videos, e-learning materials, technical content, or internal communications, your subtitles will align with your brand’s voice and technical specifications. 

The full end-to-end process

Our customers love that we handle the entire subtitling workflow, from initial submission to final burn-in of the subtitles. After reviewing and approving the final product, we then deliver the highest quality content.

We ensure a smooth subtitling process, whether our customers are working on one video or hundreds. This level of efficiency and accuracy helps global enterprises scale their content localisation with ease, saving time and money with better processes and minimal time investment from their internal team.

Increasing engagement with subtitles

Did you know 89% of people use subtitles or captioning when consuming media?

Subtitles are invaluable for making video content easier to follow, hear and understand. Adding localised subtitles goes beyond accessibility. It also drives deeper engagement. Studies reveal that videos with subtitles are not only watched for longer durations but are also more likely to be shared across platforms.

By making your videos accessible to non-native speakers, hearing-impaired viewers and those who prefer watching without sound, global enterprises are broadening their audience and increasing both reach and impact.

Discuss your next subtitling project with LanguageWire

Ready to simplify your video localisation process and reach global audiences with ease?

LanguageWire’s subtitling solutions are here to help. We combine next-generation technology with human expertise, ensuring your subtitles are tailored, accurate and impactful.

Interested in learning more? Request a personalised demo and take the first step toward optimising your video content for the global stage.

This article was originally published by LanguageWire (Verity Hartley).

Accessibility means that everyone has equal access to services. Read our tips on how you can create linguistically accessible content and how a translation agency can help you.

More and more services are consumed online, which is why the accessibility of content has become an increasingly important criterion. The EU has introduced the Accessibility Directive. In Finland, its requirements are included in the Act on the Provision of Digital Services. The act applies to the public sector and certain private companies. Digital services must meet the accessibility requirements. For instance, it must be possible to access the online service with as many different devices and browsers as possible, also by means of assistive devices, if necessary.

By 2025, the EU’s Accessibility Directive will extend to private companies in certain sectors, such as online stores and audiovisual services. Accessibility is becoming the norm, which is why every online company should plan its digital services to be accessible both technically and linguistically – and a translation agency can help in this.

1. Do not ignore linguistic accessibility

The most important thing for accessibility is clear and comprehensible language. Technically well-executed content is of no use if it is linguistically clumsy or unclear. The text may be unnecessarily difficult to read or written in a wrong language. A website is easy to use when there are no technical challenges and the content is easy to understand.

The easiest way to produce linguistically accessible content is to write it in clear standard language, that is, in easily understandable language without jargon. Clear language is not the same thing as plain language, which is language where the structure and the vocabulary have been adapted to make it easier than standard language. The content and the target group are decisive factors in determining if plain language is needed.

2. Subtitle videos

It is a good idea to subtitle videos even if the law does not require it yet because many people watch videos without sound. The text format is not precisely defined, but the most user-friendly method is adding captions that can be easily followed at the same time as watching the video.

At the moment, accessibility requirements do not require videos to be subtitled in other languages. In other words, the guidelines mandate that a Finnish video is subtitled in Finnish, a Swedish video in Swedish and so on. However, having the content translated strengthens the multicultural dimension of accessibility.

Services must also be accessible to those who speak a language other than the language in which the content was originally published. In Finland, public services are designed primarily for speakers of the national languages; however, in the light of accessibility, there is an increasing need to reach immigrants as well. With the help of translated subtitles, you can also reach a wider, international target audience.

3. Transcribe audio content

In audio recordings, such as podcasts, accessibility could be improved by transcribing them as written text. The accessibility requirements of the Act on the Provision of Digital Services require that audio-only broadcasts, such as podcasts, must also be accessible. According to the legislation, organisations affected by the requirements must provide a text version of the recording within two weeks.

For podcasts, this usually means a transcribed text version of the audio recording. As the text version must fulfil the requirements of accessibility, a simple script or summary of the podcast is not sufficient. In practice, the entire content of the recording must be provided in text form, including background sounds, and the text must also indicate who is speaking at any given time.

Creating a text version of the podcast ensures that everyone can enjoy the podcast. In addition, not everyone has time to listen to a 60-minute podcast, for instance: reading the text version is much faster.

If you are reaching for a larger audience, use a translated transcription, in which the podcast is transcribed into another language. You can also use a voiceover to do the entire podcast in a different language.

Corporate language strategy

A company’s language strategy means you decide on which languages will be used, in which channels and how. This raises a few important questions: is all content available in only one or several languages; which language is used on social media; is your website available in Finnish, English or both; and, in addition to Finnish and English, do you need other languages? In addition, the question of who writes, translates and maintains the foreign-language content is also an integral part of the language strategy. Corporate communications should be linguistically consistent, that is, logical. Choose a language strategy and stick to it.

Although the Act on the Provision of Digital Services mainly applies to public online services, accessibility also benefits other digital service providers. Issues such as the equal treatment of customers, a better user experience and access to a wider market should interest all companies and organisations. Accessibility is a key advantage for a company!

Engage your global audience with AI-powered subtitling solutions

Tips for linguistic accessibility