Do you create subtitles for your videos? Why or why not?

[Nodoka]

Hi,

I don't create videos on YouTube, but I spend a lot of time watching them

A while ago, I came across a video that I wanted to share with my friend. The video was in English, but my friend is Japanese, so I thought I'd switch the subtitles on for her... But I realized there were none!
Ever since, I've noticed that most YouTube videos have no subtitles, or they only have the auto-generated ones, which are pretty terrible!

I know a lot of viewers who have problems with this, and it gave me the idea to offer subtitle creation / translation services. But I'm not sure if this is something video creators would be interested in, which is why I'm posting here.

As a YouTuber, do you make subtitles for your videos? Why or why not? I'm very curious to know, and would be grateful for any insight you might have!

Thanks in advance,
Nodoka

 

[William Mize]

I started out hand typing my Closed Captioning, but got lazy and fell behind, and I need to get caught up!
I think that if you come from a place of kindness and wanting to help others, then Close Captioning is something you should think about.
And yes, the auto generated ones are AWFUL!
Some SEO folks will tell you that captioning will help you rank better in Google, but for the most part it doesn't really do that much beyond making your video more enjoyable to more people

Now I need to go do some of my older videos!

- Bill

 

[Kate's Adventures]

I have subtitles on most of my videos (it's an ongoing project to have them on all my videos) and a couple of videos even have foreign translations kindly provided by my viewers. It's something that genuinely irritates me when it isn't done right.
I think it's something a lot of people don't think about but if the people who don't have time to do it could even just change their settings to accept community contributed CC I'd be able to help them out.

 

[William Mize]

I have subtitles on most of my videos (it's an ongoing project to have them on all my videos) and a couple of videos even have foreign translations kindly provided by my viewers. It's something that genuinely irritates me when it isn't done right.
I think it's something a lot of people don't think about but if the people who don't have time to do it could even just change their settings to accept community contributed CC I'd be able to help them out.

How wonderful that folks have provided foreign translations!
I would never have thought about that. Definitely going to change my CC settings to allow community contributed ones.
Thanks for a great idea!

- Bill

 

[Jawad Soomro]

Subtitles help the audience all the world to understand what's going on in the video. Not all people can speak German, not Japanese, not French, but majority of Audience is English, so its good to write English subtitles.

 

[NuSpirit]

No, I dont use CC on my videos. Simple reason is it doesnt bring enough benefit to editing process to justify sitting down and rewriting and correcting it. (or maybe it is because I also have to have full time job and hardly have time even for editing?).

But in case there is something in my video requiring subtitles (like hardly understandable sentence) I use text in editing SW to highlight it.

 

[chottom]

We started and we are still predominantly Japanese channel so we add Japanese subtitles as courtesy to our Japanese friends.
Unfortunately it takes a lot of time to translate from English to Japanese (even with the help of Google) so we may stop with the translations in the future. At least we have some new channels in which we do not translate.

 

[CaptainDelugo]

Only for some of my special videos I do subtitles for example song videos, because I personally like to see the lyrics and also hearing them. For my normal gaming videos I don't because I think I am easy to understand and my voice is loud and clearly understandable!

 

[Nodoka]

Thanks for all the great insight! I'm actually pleasantly surprised to hear so much positive thoughts on subtitles

And yes, I think community contributions are great! I've submitted some subtitles myself, and it's nice to know I've helped break down the language barrier.

Now I just have another quick question – would you ever pay to have subtitles created / translated? I'd love to be able to do it full-time, but I want to check if it's a realistic goal or not before I go for it!

Once again, thank you so much for your help, I really do appreciate it
Nodoka

 

[Kate's Adventures]

Now I just have another quick question – would you ever pay to have subtitles created / translated? I'd love to be able to do it full-time, but I want to check if it's a realistic goal or not before I go for it!

Right now it's not something I can really afford to do and as my current viewers can understand English I provide subtitles for them in English if they need it. If I (somehow) turned this into a business I would look into it further, there's various people who do this already so there must be a market for it!
I did consider offering to add CC to other people's videos as a service in the "Graphics, Intros and Music" subforum (I checked with the Mods this would be alright) but as I'm quite busy right now I haven't offered it myself as a service just yet. If someone else offered the service in exchange for YTTalk cash I would definitely be interested.