How to use ClipFlair
Prepared by Silvia Fernández, UJI, 2014
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Voiceover, Dubbing and Subtitling
at a Glance
Prepared by Andrea Simón, UJI, 2013
and Silvia Fernández, UJI, 2014
Professional Translation
University of Roehampton London
2014-15
GETTING STARTED
REVOICING ACTIVITIES
In order to open a ClipFlair activity, go to the page http://studio.clipflair.net/ and
select Open Activity>Open Activity File. Once the opening window pops up,
search the ClipFlair activity file you need and open it.
VOICEOVER, DUBBING & AUDIODESCRIPTION
Remember to save your work. Click on the green disk button on the toolbar at
the bottom of the activity window. The activity files are saved on your computer,
not online. Be careful not to refresh the browser without having saved your work,
as this will close the activity window.
For the voiceover and dubbing tasks, you will be
according to the conventions learned in class and
your voice. In the audiodescription tasks, you
characters, actions and sounds of the clip for blind
and record the descriptions with your voice.
required to translate the clip
to record the translation with
will describe the settings,
and partially sighted viewers,
Follow these instructions to write and record your translation or description:
Once you have opened the activity on ClipFlair, you can start your task. You will
find different components within the activity window. These will usually be the
image window, where you can play the clip; the text window, where you will find
instructions for the task; the captions window and the revoicing window. Feel free
to resize or move the windows as you wish.
1. Pause the video at the time you should start talking.
2. Click on the button "Add caption at current time”
default duration of 2 seconds will be created.
A new caption with a
3. Play the video again and pause the video at the time you should stop talking.
Click on the button "Set selected caption's end time"
4. Write your text in the “Caption” column. Even if we are not subtitling, this will
help you to record the text afterwards and to respect the synchrony and
duration constraints of each technique.
5. If you wish to remove a caption, click on the “Remove selected caption”
button.
6. If you have to change the caption’s start and end times, use the buttons “set
selected caption’s start/end time”.
7. Click on the button “Record audio” of each caption to start recording that
fragment.
CAPTIONING ACTIVITIES
QUICK SUBTITLING GUIDE
Prepared by Andrea Simón, UJI
Follow these instructions to add subtitles to the clip:
1. Pause the video at the time you wish your subtitle to appear.
INDICATING A DIALOGUE
2. Click on the button "Add caption at current time”
default duration of 2 seconds will be created.
There are several ways to indicate a dialogue exchange. Good practice: a dash
and a blank space are used before each intervention.
A new subtitle with a
3. Play the video again and pause the video at the time you want the subtitle to
disappear. Click on the button "Set selected caption's end time"
4. Write your text in the “Caption” column.
5. If you wish to remove a subtitle, use the “Remove selected caption”.
6. If you have to change the caption’s start and end times, use the buttons “set
selected caption’s start/end time”.
PUNCTUATION CONVENTIONS

Full stop (.)  at the end of a subtitle is an indication that the sentence is
finished. The full stop follows the word without a space, and the next line
or subtitles starts in upper case.

Capital letters  at the beginning of proper names, to start a new
sentence after a full stop, a question mark or an exclamation mark and at
the following instances:
POSITION OF SUBTITLES ON THE SCREEN

Standard position for subtitles  horizontal at the bottom of the
screen since this limits the obstruction of the image, and this part of the
screen is usually of lesser importance to the action.
FONT TYPE AND NUMBER OF CHARACTERS PER LINE

Most subtitles are white, although yellow is used when subtitling black
and white films.

Standard font  Arial 32 (32 pixels, not points).

Maximum of characters per line  38. The total for a two-liner is,
therefore, 76 characters, including blank spaces.
o

The maximum number of characters per line varies according to
alphabets, and it is normal to allow 35 for Cyrillic languages like
Bulgarian, Macedonian and Russian, 34 to 36 for Greek and
Arabic, 12 to 14 for Japanese and Korean and between 14 and 16
for Chinese.
Minimum number of characters a subtitle must have  no fixed rule,
but subtitles counting less than 4 to 5 characters are rare.
SPOTTING AND DURATION OF SUBTITLES
MAXIMUM NUMBER OF LINES

Golden rule for ideal spotting  subtitles should keep temporal
synchrony with the utterances. If possible, a subtitle should appear at
the precise moment the person starts speaking, and should disappear
when the person stops speaking.

Maximum exposure time to keep a full two-liner on screen  6 seconds.

Minimum exposure time for a subtitle  1 second.

Another golden rule in spotting  a subtitle should not be maintained
over a cut.
Subtitles can be one or two lines.

One-line subtitles should be written on the second, bottom line.

One-line v Two-lines  the general rule is: if a relatively short subtitle fits
into one line, do not use two.
Normally all subtitles should be centred on the screen.
LINE BREAKS


TEXT REDUCTION
The written version of speech in subtitles is nearly always a reduced form of
the oral ST. Indeed, subtitling can never be a complete and detailed
rendering. In order to do that, the subtitler proceeds to:
Do not hyphenate words.
It’s really hard when you have sacri-
It’s really hard
ficed everything. ×
when you’ve sacrificed everything.

Eliminate what is not relevant for the comprehension of the
message, and/or

Reformulate what is relevant in as concise a form as is possible or
required.
√
If a subtitle consists of two, or more, sentences, put one sentence on each
line.
That’s his second wife. She
That’s his second wife.
killed herself. ×
She killed herself. √
Hesitations, repetitions, false starters, etc. should be neutralized into much
more compact and logical discourse.
You said she liked- She liked eating
high-cholesterol desserts. Is that what
you said? ×

If the sentence contains a to-infinitive, a phrasal verb, or collocation, try
not to split them up.
I have no idea what got
I have no idea
into him this morning. ×
what got into him this morning. √

Avoid separating a verb from its direct or indirect object.

Any disruption of a sense-unit will slow down reading.
You said she liked eating
Yes, yes. Yeah, no, no, no, no, I-I-I-I
understand. I, uh, yes, no. ×
high-cholesterol desserts. √
Yes, no. I understand. √
QUICK VOICEOVER & DUBBING GUIDE
USE OF ITALICS
Prepared by Silvia Fernández
Apart from the normal usage of italics in the language of the subtitles, they are
used to call attention to certain elements of the text and they account for human
voices originating from a source that is not visible on screen. We will use them:
o
To indicate that the translation belongs to an off-screen narrator’s
voice, unless this is the only voice heard in the programme
(interventions of a person who is at the other end of the
telephone; voices coming out from a radio, a television set, a
computer or a loudspeaker; voices from within).
o
The title of the film or programme.
o
To translate the lyrics of songs.
o
For road signs, graffiti, newspaper headlines, banners, writing on
clothes and messages on computers monitors.
o
When it is felt that the situation needs extra emphasis.
o
To translate certain written message, letters and inserts appearing
on the programme or film. This usage competes, however, with
upper case.
VOICEOVER
ISOCHRONY
A translation for voiceover should always be subjected to the isochrony, which
means “equal duration of utterances”. Consequently, the length of the translation
should be approximately the same as the original one.
However, it is common in voiceover to start a few seconds after the original and
to end a few seconds before, to be able to hear the original voices. This also
creates the illusion that the audience can understand what it is being said in the
original track.
DUBBING
ISOCHRONY
Isochrony is even more important in dubbing, where the original track is replaced
by the translated dialogue, which “must be exactly the same length”.

Short text written in big letters  capital letters.
LIP SYNCHRONY

Long text written in small letters  italics.
A translation for dubbing should try to match “the articulatory movements of the
on-screen characters”. The following sounds require special attention in closeups and extreme close-ups, that is to say “shots showing only the character’s
face”:
PLEASE NOTE THAT CLIPFLAIR DOES NOT SUPPORT ITALICS.
FOR THE PURPOSE OF OUR PRACTICE SESSIONS, WE WILL INDICATE
ITALICS WITH “ “.

Bilabial consonants: b,m,p

Labio-dental consonants: v,f

Open vowels: a,o

Closed vowels: i,u
WHEN TRANSLATING
The translated dialogue should follow these basic rules:

Be written in a way that is natural and idiomatic to the audience.

Its cultural references should be solved by means of a strategy of
domestication, foreignisation or neutralisation which is applied to the
whole text, not in isolation.

When translating its humor, the skopos or goal of the translation and the
target audience should be considered
REFERENCES
Chaume, Frederic (2010). Audiovisual Translation: Dubbing.Manchester and
Kinderhook: St. Jerome Publishing
Díaz Cintas, Jorge and Aline Remael (2007). Audiovisual Translation:
Subtitling.Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing