Making a film is a huge endeavor. From the dossier to post-production, years of work are invested. Imagining a story, writing the script, planning camera framing… Yet there’s an element often regarded that significantly impacts the final result: the subtitles. On the big screen where stories come to life, subtitles take up 10% of the most viewed space.
Eye-tracking studies show that when words appear on screen, they capture most of our attention. When subtitles are present, it’s impossible not to read them.
Subtitles are a bridge to new audiences and the key to making your film engaging at film festivals and on screens worldwide.
In Argentina, where I live and work, 230 films had international premieres in 2023: all of them
with subtitles.
According to a study by Romeo Fresco, audiovisual translator and researcher at the University of Roehampton, the top-grossing productions earn up to 75% of their profits in foreign markets with dubbed or subtitled versions. Yet, the cost of translation accounts for less than 1% of the budget.
The audiovisual market is dominated by services with mass production models over dedicated expertise, depth, and creativity, often resulting in subtitles that don’t convey the right tone or pace. Because there are good subtitles, and then there are subtitles that relay an atmosphere and leave a lasting impression, reflecting the creator’s attempt to elicit emotions.
There are, of course, style guides that outline technical standards for good subtitling practices. But beyond the mathematical ratio of the number of characters that can be read per second, there are other guidelines to consider that can significantly enhance the experience of a film.
Professional subtitles are designed to minimize reading time, allowing us enough time to explore the rest of the composition. That scene that took so much effort to conceive runs the risk of going unnoticed if we spend too much time reading. That’s why the best subtitles are the ones you barely see. Good subtitles blend seamlessly into the artifice.
Each subtitle is ideally a unit of meaning, and when we have two lines, we avoid splitting prepositions from their objects, nouns from their adjectives, and conjunctions or relative pronouns from their terms.
As regards localization, subtitles must match the rhythm of the editing, appearing and disappearing onscreen in coordination with shot changes to avoid reading twice.
When it comes to translation, it’s essential to consider the director’s vision because we’re not just translating dialogue; we’re translating a perspective. A perspective on some topic that doesn’t necessarily convey a message or a moral, but does have a stance expressed in subtle elements—such as a facial expression, a subjective shot, or the connotation of a word in the dialogue. And that’s what gets carried over into the text.
Those of us who enjoy watching films know how poor subtitles can spoil the experience.
Artwork calls for careful and attentive linguistic services, and in the case of subtitles, that entails technical excellence and creativity.
At Estudio Silver, we specialize in audio-visual translation and professional subtitles for arthouse films. We provide linguistic services for every stage of the process, from the dossier and script to subtitling for festival premieres and international distribution.
We are committed to the artisanal, detail-oriented work that these artistic expressions require so that the stories told by auteur cinema transcend cultures and inspire audiences worldwide.
Our guiding principle is always to create agile, clear, and precise texts that honor the original work, serving as a vehicle for the story to take center stage and resonate with the audience.
We work with professionals specialized in audiovisual texts, apply rounds of review, and use software that ensures technical precision. We maintain close communication with producers throughout the process and attend to the specific needs of each project in particular.
There are truths that cinema touches with its universal language, and they deserve to be told beyond their borders.