Forum: Subtitling
Topic: inner voice and normal voice in the same subtitle
Poster: Ekaterina Verma
Post title: Italics for inner voice
Dear Pilar,
A nice topic you have brought up!
It would help, though, if you could specify the target language of subtitles you are proofreading and whether the translator was supposed to follow Netflix guidelines? Because there is a bunch of agencies with their own subtitling guidelines selling media content to Netflix and for each language, the guidelines may vary.
I would assume that subtitles are in English, and if the speaker is the same, there is no need for dash or hyphen for the second line either, and it should be formatted as follows according to Netflix English guidelines:
I shouldn't ask her that.
Would you like to go?
I.e. the first line should be italicised (The voice of a visible character expressing unspoken thoughts or inner monologue, I.9 here: [url removed] )
And the second line with no other formatting because it is the same person speaking, just with their normal voice. To me, the switch itself from italics to a 'normal', non-italicised format is indicative enough to demonstrate the change and does not require additional indicators, such as / or -.
As for // or /.../, over the years and across different agencies, I have seen it left mostly for project managers as an indication of hesitation from the translator's side.
For example, I did this to one subtitle line when I had a character using his native language and then English in the same subtitle. After a discussion with the project manager, who was not sure either whether the client needed to keep the line in a foreign language in the subtitle, we decided to mark it with // so that the PM later could easily spot it and remove it when delivering the file.
My point is that it is not a conventional way to do this (although with so many agencies, you really never know!), and my guess is that probably, the translator also put / to draw attention to this subtitle, and it would be probably best to communicate this little issue to the project manager and/or the translator to agree on a better version of a subtitle format? What do you think?
Regards,
EV
Topic: inner voice and normal voice in the same subtitle
Poster: Ekaterina Verma
Post title: Italics for inner voice
Dear Pilar,
A nice topic you have brought up!
It would help, though, if you could specify the target language of subtitles you are proofreading and whether the translator was supposed to follow Netflix guidelines? Because there is a bunch of agencies with their own subtitling guidelines selling media content to Netflix and for each language, the guidelines may vary.
I would assume that subtitles are in English, and if the speaker is the same, there is no need for dash or hyphen for the second line either, and it should be formatted as follows according to Netflix English guidelines:
I shouldn't ask her that.
Would you like to go?
I.e. the first line should be italicised (The voice of a visible character expressing unspoken thoughts or inner monologue, I.9 here: [url removed] )
And the second line with no other formatting because it is the same person speaking, just with their normal voice. To me, the switch itself from italics to a 'normal', non-italicised format is indicative enough to demonstrate the change and does not require additional indicators, such as / or -.
As for // or /.../, over the years and across different agencies, I have seen it left mostly for project managers as an indication of hesitation from the translator's side.
For example, I did this to one subtitle line when I had a character using his native language and then English in the same subtitle. After a discussion with the project manager, who was not sure either whether the client needed to keep the line in a foreign language in the subtitle, we decided to mark it with // so that the PM later could easily spot it and remove it when delivering the file.
My point is that it is not a conventional way to do this (although with so many agencies, you really never know!), and my guess is that probably, the translator also put / to draw attention to this subtitle, and it would be probably best to communicate this little issue to the project manager and/or the translator to agree on a better version of a subtitle format? What do you think?
Regards,
EV