Nowadays, cutting-edge technologies have made a great impact on people’s behaviors and preferences. The number of smartphone users in the world now reached 6.92 Billion. People now use their smart devices anywhere and anytime to watch videos, do shopping, search for information, and do more activities. Research has shown that 69 % of people view videos with sound off in public places and 25 % watch with sound off in private places. Thus, most people worldwide hugely depend on subtitles to watch videos.
Here comes the importance of subtitling. If you do not add subtitles and captions to your promotional videos that tell your stories and achievements, do it today! When you add subtitles or captions to your videos, you will be able to meet the requirements of this age’s customers and achieve the highest number of views among other competitors.
What Are the Benefits of Subtitling?
Adding subtitles to your videos is a very crucial step in your marketing journey, especially if you aspire to expand your business to global markets. However, before adding subtitles to your videos, make sure that you tailor your content to suit the needs and requirements of your target customers. Here are two key benefits of subtitling:
Maximizing Your International Reach
Approaching new customers is not as easy as many businesses may think. You have to address all the linguistic and cultural nuances of your target markets to gain their trust. One of the most effective ways to entice new customers is to add subtitles to your videos in the languages of your target customers. This way, your potential customers will be able to understand who you are and what you offer. Hence, this will encourage them to watch your videos till the end, and this helps you enlarge your customer base.
Achieving a High SEO Ranking
When you add subtitles to your videos, Google automatically indexes your subtitles, which will increase your ranking in search engines. Yet, you have to make sure that your content is of the highest quality and that the translation addresses the cultural nuances of your target audiences.
How to Add Subtitles to Your Videos
There are many ways through which you can add subtitles to your videos on different platforms. Let’s have a look at some of them.
- Adding Subtitles to YouTube Videos
Indeed, YouTube makes it easy to add subtitles to your videos. Here are the steps:
- Log in to your YouTube channel.
- Select subtitles from the left menu.
- Click on the video you would like to add subtitles to.
- Choose your language from the “Add Language” dropdown menu.
- You will see the “Subtitles” option. Click “add”.
Now, you will have the following four options to choose from:
Option 1: Uploading a File
Here, you can upload a file you already prepared that contains the translation along with the timings. Yet, you have to make sure that your file type is accepted by YouTube. Once your file is ready, select “Upload File”. Then choose between “With timing” or “Without timing”, and click “Continue.” Pick the file you want to upload and then select “Save”.
Option 2: Auto-sync
In this option, you are allowed to add subtitles and captions by typing them manually while watching the video. Select the “Auto-sync” option, add the text or upload a file, and then choose “edit” and click “save and close”.
Option 3: Add Your Transcript Manually
Here, you can enter your transcript manually or copy and paste it. In this option, YouTube will automatically set the timings of your subtitles and captions.
- Adding Subtitles and Captions to Adobe Premiere Pro
All you need to do is to follow these steps:
-Open your project in Premiere Pro and go to the New Item menu at the bottom of the Project panel and select Captions.
-Then, select your settings preferences from the popup dialogue boxes.
-After that, you have to drag the Captions and drop them into your video 4 track and align them with your voiceover.
-Finally, go to Window > Captions to enter text and adjust styles and settings.
- To add more captions, extend your Caption item by clicking and dragging. Add a new caption, then move to the correct place by adjusting the time code, or simply click and drag.
- Adding Captions to Your Instagram Videos
There are two ways to have captions in your Instagram videos: auto-generating captions and manually adding captions.
Auto Generating Captions
This is a very easy and fast way to add captions to your videos. The following are the steps:
– Open a menu of editing options during the editing of your video.
– Select the white button with blue text named “Captions”. This button adds speech-recognition captions to your video.
Adding Captions Manually
Although this method is a bit time-consuming, it allows your customers to watch your videos at their preferable pace. This will certainly increase their engagement with your content. To add captions manually, follow the below steps:
- Click on the “Aa” button at the top right of the video editing screen.
- You will be allowed to add captions manually.
- You can also select a suitable place for your text on the screen.
To Sum Up
Although adding subtitles to your videos will help you gain a larger global audience, you have to tailor your content to be appealing to your target customers. Auto-translation is not the best way to meet the preferences of your intended markets.
At Afrolingo, we have an experienced team of senior translators who are native speakers of more than 80 African languages. They not only translate but also localize to provide you with culturally appropriate subtitling services. Request a quote today!
