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Post #1214633

Author
CatBus
Parent topic
Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1214633/action/topic#1214633
Date created
5-Jun-2018, 12:44 AM

Mrebo said:

Thought of your project when reading the following passage in book on translation:

It has become conventional to regard average moviegoers as capable of reading only about fifteen characters per second; and in order to be legible on a screen as small as a television set, no more than thirty-two alphabetic characters can be displayed in a line. In addition, no more than two lines can be displayed at a time without obscuring significant parts of the image, so the subtitler has around sixty-four characters, including spaces, that can be displayed for a few seconds at most to express the key meanings of a host of sequence in which characters may speak many more words than that. The limits are set by human physiology, average reading speeds, and the physical shape of the movie screen. It’s really amazing that it can be done at all.

Yes, it’s actually amazing all the different ways this process can go wrong – and add to this 30-odd languages all with their own quirks and… yeah. I don’t think 32 is right, though, especially since TV’s are so much larger (and clearer) than they used to be, and I do go over that, but there is a limit nonetheless. Even the burnt-in Greedo subs go over 32 characters per line. But I also tend to make my subs appear onscreen a little longer than most, because of the possibility of younger viewers, so there’s always things you can do to make the job harder on yourself. Like the subtitle specifications for the DVD format 😕