Subtitles
Subtitle
A feature that displays the spoken words from a video or audio track as text on the screen.
In Simple Terms
Subtitles are a feature that displays the words spoken in a video or audio track as text on the screen. They're used to help you follow foreign-language movies in your own language, or to watch videos in places where you can't play sound. There's also a type called "SDH," which describes not just the dialogue but also background sounds, made for viewers who have trouble hearing.
Behind the Name
Displaying text alongside the picture in movies and TV became widespread from the early 20th century onward. In English, this is called a "subtitle," a word that originally meant a secondary or supplementary title.
Take a Closer Look!
Subtitles are a system that displays the dialogue or narration from a video or audio track as text on the screen.
By reading the text alongside the picture, you can follow what's being said even without hearing it clearly.
Subtitles differ along a couple of axes.
One is whether you can turn them on or off. "Open subtitles" are burned directly into the picture and can't be removed, while "closed subtitles" can be switched on or off through a viewer's settings.
The other axis is what content they convey. Beyond the common type that translates or clarifies dialogue, there are subtitles designed for viewers who are hard of hearing, which also describe things like speaker names and sound effects, not just the spoken lines.
Subtitles that convey this extra sound information are also known as "closed captions (CC)," a term commonly used for this kind of captioning on North American television broadcasts, or "SDH," a term for subtitles made for deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers.
Subtitles aren't just for enjoying foreign-language videos - they also play an important role in letting people watch content in places where they can't play sound, and in improving accessibility. On top of that, speech recognition technology is now used to power automatic subtitle features that turn spoken words into text in real time.