So, for guidelines, I started out by following the BBC guidelines (which are similar), but adjusted them to have a strong emphasis on readability for younger viewers. This means that, when given a choice, my subtitles opt to show lots of text for a longer duration instead of several briefer displays of short text.

Basically, if you’re making a new translation and want to stay within the project’s style recommendations, just use the project’s template files and that will take care of almost everything about timing, grouping, etc. The README covers a few other style issues. (existing Swedish subtitles do not entirely follow these guidelines because they’re pretty much straight from the GOUT DVD with only minor modifications)

As for the the NJVC Blu-rays, I actually do not specifically coordinate with that project. I just make subtitles that sync to the GOUT, and then they automatically “just work” with all sort of other projects, such as NJVC. By 11.0, this project will have well over 40 languages to choose from, and how to restrict that to keep within a 32-subtitle limit is up to the project owner. I will, however, be making a more useful guide for making such decisions in the README for those project owners. Basically it’ll be a little Javascript-powered table lookup thingee, where you say “I want to make a Blu-ray for Region A”, and poof, it lists the languages you’ll want to include for that audience. The trick is that Region B languages will exceed 32 on their own, so that region is further subdivided. Region-locking is a horrible thing and I wish it never existed, but it’s a concept that happens to be helpful here. So the NJVC disc author could decide if they’re going to target Region A, or Region B/Western Europe, or what. Once they make that decision, then they’ll have a consistent set of subtitles.