How to Add Subtitles and Captions to Your YouTube Videos?

Subtitles and captions may be referred to as one thing. However, there is a big difference between both terms. Although both appear as text on the bottom of your screen, each of them serves different purposes. Captions represent a transcription of dialogue between characters. This is mainly used to help the hard of hearing people. On the contrary, subtitles are a translation of a speech between characters in a video to help people speaking different languages understand what is being said.

Many businesses overlook the importance of adding subtitles or captions to their YouTube videos. In fact, subtitles and captions play a very crucial role in increasing your global reach. Without adding subtitles to your educational or promotional videos, you will lose a large number of potential customers.

What is the Importance of Subtitles and Captions?

If you are planning to expand to overseas markets, you have to consider adding subtitles to your videos. The following are some of the key benefits of video subtitling:

Increasing Your Global Reach

Adding subtitles to your YouTube videos in the language of your target market will skyrocket the number of views helping you reach a large number of audiences.

Boosting Your SEO Ranking

If you are able to increase the number of people who view your YouTube videos till the end, you will highly improve your SEO ranking on Google. Furthermore, you will have a chance to get a higher ranking in search engines since Google automatically indexes subtitles. Thus, make sure that you select the highest-quality content for your YouTube videos to stay at the top of the competition.

Meeting Your Customers’ Preferences

Not all people learn or watch videos the same way. Some people prefer to watch videos with sound, while others prefer to watch them without sound reading only the captions or subtitles displayed at the bottom of the screen.

The idea of subtitles and captions has been primarily created to help people of hard hearing. However, it is later used to reach a wider number of audiences who speak different languages and do not understand the original language of the video.

 When you add subtitles in the language of your target customers, you will meet all their requirements, and this will certainly enlarge your customer base.

But, how to add subtitles and captions to your YouTube videos? Here are the steps:

1. Log in to your YouTube channel.
2. Select subtitles from the left menu.
3. Click on the video you would like to add subtitles to.
4. Choose your language from the “Add Language” dropdown menu.
5. You will see the “Subtitles” option. Click “add”.

Fortunately, YouTube makes it really easy to add subtitles to your videos by offering you the following four options:

Option 1: Upload a File

You can upload a file you already prepared that includes a translation of what is said in your video and the timing of each line. It can also include the style info and position. Yet, you have to check first the types of files that YouTube accepts.

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 can add subtitles and captions by typing them manually while watching the video. However, in this case, you should add the timing to synchronize. Moreover, the transcript language should be supported by YouTube’s speech recognition technology. It must also be in the same language as the video.

All you need to do is to select the “Auto-sync” option, add the text or upload a file, and then choose “edit” and click “save and close”.

Option 3: Type Your Transcript Manually

This option allows you to enter your transcript manually or copy and paste it. In this option, YouTube will automatically set the timings of your subtitles and captions. Just follow these steps:

1. Choose “Type manually”.
2. Turn on the video and add your subtitles and captions.
3. Click “Publish”.

Options 4: Auto-translate

Once you enable auto-translate on the web, you will be able to open the video translation option and choose the language. Open the “Gear” icon at the bottom of the video, select “subtitles/cc”, and then choose “Auto-translate” and select the language.

Now, after walking you through the steps of how to add subtitles and captions to your YouTube videos, let’s find out how Torjoman can help you get the best subtitling services.

At Torjoman, we have a team of well-versed and top-qualified translators who not only translate but also address any cultural nuances to make your subtitles resonate with the cultures of your target audiences. We translate idioms, metaphors, and any culturally related expressions.

Using auto-translation will not be the best option for you to reach your intended customers and achieve a high ranking in search engines. We localize your video content to sound natural and appealing to global markets.

We follow these steps:

1. The dialogue is transcribed, formatted, and timed by one of our professional subtitle editors.
2. A senior editor will review the language file.
3. The editor, after that, creates a translation template to be used by translators along with the source video.
4. An experienced team of translators is selected to translate the file.
5. The translation is reviewed by a senior editor to make sure that everything falls into place.
6. The file is then sent to the subtitle editor to make the formatting.
7. Finally, we provide you with top-notch and flawless subtitling services.

If you are looking for a reliable language service provider to perform your subtitling project, Torjoman is your best choice! Get an instant quote now!