‘Lights, Camera and Action’ – whenever spoken together take our mind towards a video/film. What if there’s no sound in this film? Or the language is not known to us? This is where Captions & Subtitles come in the scene. Most of the time, captions and subtitles are assumed to be synonyms but they are not. Let’s elaborate:
Text displayed on the screen with a video/film is caption & subtitle. Subtitles are for the words spoken in the video/film whereas captions are used for every other sound in the video/film including falling objects & onomatopoeias.
Why captions & subtitles are used? There are several reasons but the idea of captions & subtitles was originally developed for people with hearing impairments. Apart from that, a video/film becomes easy to understand. If a video contains a subject which viewers are not very familiar with, subtitles & captions serve as guide. Specifically Subtitles is a great help when people are watching a video in a foreign language that they don’t understand.
When it comes to video transcription of different organisations, it helps their presenters to present the story in more effectual way. Some educational organisations that provide study material in the form of videos can also get them transcribed with subtitles as this will help their students to concentrate more easily on the video. It also helps in SEO as the text included in subtitles & videos makes the relevant videos easily discoverable through the search engines.
The above elaboration explains the importance of subtitles & captions not only for people with hearing impairments but also for large businesses & educational organisations to add a value & viewership to their videos.
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