A real film, a real voice, 24 seconds. Pick Russian or Italian, press play, and see the red lines. A translation that is too long flashes by before anyone reads it. Switch to Fitted and watch the red turn yellow.
Demo edit, not a paid job. The filming is not mine: Vegan Pastry - Voted Best Croissant in Miami, Chef's Roll, CC BY 3.0. My part is the transcript, the timing and the translations.
People read about 17 characters a second. A line that flashes by faster is a line nobody reads, so I count every cue and rewrite the ones over the limit.
At most two lines of about 42 characters. The break goes where you would take a breath, not in the middle of a name or an idea.
A cue appears a beat after the voice starts and leaves before the next one begins. No overlaps, no subtitles hanging over a cut.
"A touch of humidity" has to sound like a baker in Russian and in Italian too. When the literal version is longer and flatter, I write the line a native speaker would say.
.srt for YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo and most editors, .vtt for websites. Burned into the video too, if you want it.
The film and the voice are real, and this is not a client job. I cut 24 seconds from it and added the subtitles. Line 5 in English is shortened a little, as subtitles often are. The limit of 17 characters a second is a common guideline; the exact number depends on the platform and the audience.
The word-for-word versions are written too wordy on purpose, to show what a rushed translation does. The Russian and Italian lines are a short demo, not a client delivery.
Got a video in one language?
Send me the video or the script and tell me which languages you need. You get an .srt for each one, timed to the voice and checked for reading speed.
Start a briefOr write directly: dxnyxmrxk@gmail.com, Telegram @Pencilin_Bot