According to a study by Ofcom, 80% of people who watch videos with closed captions are not deaf or hard of hearing. This means that without subtitles, a substantial number of viewers may not be able to watch if they’re on public transport, procrastinating in a library, working hard at the office, or keeping it down for a sleeping baby.
If viewers can follow along with subtitles in environments where they can’t play or hear audio, there are more opportunities to watch videos and therefore an uptake in engagement and viewership. Yet Netflix didn’t incorporate any foreign language captions onto its platform until 2014.
Why subtitles are becoming more important
With the proliferation of smartphones, tablets and the incessant need of consumers to have entertainment on demand, multimedia platforms are now accessible any where, any time. Combine that with this uptake and acceptance of subtitles, the opportunities for businesses and companies regarding their own marketing content as well as eLearning, recruitment and jobs are boundless.
Think about how many applicants you could have if you were to advertise globally, how many people could take your course if you offered translated subtitles…
Changes brought by the pandemic
Due to the pandemic, a lot of education (among other things) was moved online and took on a much greater digital footprint. Lectures and classes were virtual around the world. This opened the door for international and non-local students to partake in classes they couldn’t previously attend. It they could also subtitle pre-recorded lectures, then the possibilities increase even more.
Creating and including subtitles on your content opens multiple avenues for greater reach and higher engagement. Furthermore, they help maintain concentration which can provide a better experience for viewers with learning disabilities, attention deficits or autism. With pre-existing subtitles, translation and implementation is extremely easy and cost efficient.
“a lot of education was moved online and took on a much greater digital footprint.“
Subtitles and employers
From an employer’s perspective, a lot of money may be spent on recruiting, hiring and training new employees. This is, however, still often limited by the languages spoken.
Imagine being able to provide recruitment videos with translated subtitles, having linguists check the language skills of candidates, providing eLearning modules in their native language, or simply in English with subtitles so they can complete them in a noisy environment.
Using subtitles creates options to widen the recruitment net and provide more accessible training for a global workforce. As universities and schools can offer their classes to more students in a digital manner, so can businesses as subtitles create more options at less expense than previous solutions.
Further benefits of subtitling
Not only can subtitles make it easier to concentrate and understand, but also enjoy greater viewership and engagement with an overall boost in traffic. As search engines can’t watch videos, transcripts allow them to crawl the full text of your video so that it can be properly indexed.
This American Life saw results of an increase of 6.68% of unique visitors, and 3.89% of inbound links directly attributable to the transcript pages. A separate study by Discovery Digital Networks showed that YouTube videos with captions had 13.48% more views in the first two weeks and 7.32% more lifetime views.
Long transcripts can be paginated and optimised for specific keywords, further improving search rank and SEO impact. Even YouTube themselves did an A/B test which saw a 4% increase in traffic in views and watch time. Now imagine what that could be if you added subtitles in multiple languages, making your videos even more accessible and searchable in different markets.
Parasite movie Director Bong Joon-ho used his acceptance speech at the Golden Globes to champion subtitles and encouraged audiences not to be put off by foreign language films. He said once audiences “overcome the one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, they will be introduced to so many amazing films”. Although he was talking about films, his sentiment holds true for all types of content.
We have seen they add functionality, drive engagement and increase audiences. Just look at Netflix, from not offering foreign language captions five years ago to having 45% of their United States library made up from foreign language titles. In fact, the German film Dark claimed 90% of its audience outside of Germany.
Prestige Network opened it’s full in-house subtitling service in late 2020, fit for all your multimedia needs with state of the art equipment.
We’re ready to work with your voice.
