How to teach subtitling Anthony Pym

The rules of the game: Subtitles have to fit into two lines that are usually centered at the bottom of the screen.  In English, each line can have a maximum of 35 characters (i.e. any letter, symbol or space). The subtitle (formed by two lines) can have up to 70 characters. In terms of time, a subtitle has a minimum duration of one second and a maximum duration of six seconds on screen. Most subtitles compress what is actually said. 

The rules of the game: For an example of collaborative subtitling rules: https://www.ted.com/participate/translate/guidelines For an example of compression techniques: http://translations.ted.org/wiki/How_to_Compress_Subtitles For reasons why rules are broken: https://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1621155,00.html For an example of rule-breaking: https://dotsub.com/view/bd5ce57e-e85d-40d3-af6b-af7062e4a250

The rules of the game: For an example of collaborative subtitling rules: https://www.ted.com/participate/translate/guidelines For an example of compression techniques: http://translations.ted.org/wiki/How_to_Compress_Subtitles For reasons why rules are broken: https://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1621155,00.html For an example of rule-breaking: https://dotsub.com/view/bd5ce57e-e85d-40d3-af6b-af7062e4a250

Subtitling with dotSub: Working in groups of two or three:  Open dotSub's Advanced Search 2. Look for videos that have the words "film trailer" or "song" (perhaps by your favorite artist) and the exact word "captioned" and that are in English (or any other language you want to translate from).  3. Select a film trailer from what comes up.  4. Subtitle two minutes of the trailer into your favorite LOTE. (You might want to look around for an MT feed.) 5. Upload your names and the URL of the subtitled trailer. 

More sophisticated subtitling: Aegisub Subtitle Workshop Have students join a fansubbing community. Integrate with terminology activities. Integrate with translation marketing activities.