Foreign-Language Subtitles - What is it? How does it work?

Offering subtitles in various languages can help build a more global audience. When you upload a Premium video, the automatically-generated English language transcript is edited by a professional at Parmonic to make it pristine and 99% accurate. Then Parmonic's foreign-language translation feature translates the English subtitles into 12+ languages (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Hindi, Russian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, German) in an instant.

If you want to see how you can enable foreign language subtitles for your video, click here.

An important point to note is that in some cases, English-language phrases/words can not be literally translated to other languages, and have to be semantically reconstructed (rewritten) to make more semantic sense. Our tests indicate that based on the foreign language, 5%-7% of phrases might be candidates for semantic reconstruction in a typical video. Current state-of-the-art algorithms are not able to semantically reconstruct sentences, and this task needs human effort.

Our tests with subjects whose native language is one other than English indicate that for most people the literal translation makes sense and is perfectly acceptable.

The advantage of Parmonic's automatic foreign-language subtitles is that it is instantaneous, and is included as a bonus feature in the Premium credits at no extra cost. 

If, however, you need absolutely-perfect foreign language subtitles, we recommend the following options:

a) Download the foreign-language .srt transcript file from Parmonic and edit it. You can ask your colleagues who create content in that language to edit it for you using Notepad.

b) Opt for human-created subtitles. We are able to offer human-created subtitles in German. Please get in touch if you need those. For other languages, you will have to search for another vendor. Our research indicates subtitle companies charge $8-$10 per minute.