You Can Be Anything › All careers › Media, Communication & Journalism
Subtitler / Captioner
Creates subtitles and captions for films, TV, live events, and online content across languages.
Did you know?
To be certified in the US, realtime captioners must caption live speech at 180 words per minute with 96% accuracy.
How subjects help
- Languages: Translate film dialogue into another language while keeping the jokes and feelings.
- Linguistics: Shorten lines so they fit on screen and read quickly without losing meaning.
- Computer Science: Time each caption in software so it appears and disappears exactly with the speech.
- Communication: Describe sounds like music or a door slam so deaf viewers follow the whole scene.
A famous name
Natsuko Toda: Japanese subtitler who has translated subtitles for more than 1,000 English-language films.
Try it yourself: Write down every word exactly
- Ask your friend to read the script once at normal speed while you write every word.
- Compare your version with the card. Circle any word you missed or changed.
- If you were writing captions for a film, how would you show the door slam for someone who can't hear it?
- Try again with a new sentence. Were you more accurate the second time?
Court reporters and captioners record every word accurately, so a record or a film can be followed by everyone, including people who are deaf.
Also try: Write a dictionary entry.
Known for it in
UK, USA, Netherlands, Sweden, Belgium