Let's talk about the new subtitle info box in the Amara interface
and about how useful it can be to transcribers and translators.
Any time you click a subtitle to start editing it,
you will see this pop-up.
You may notice that it starts with timing data,
but here, I'll focus on what you can do with the other information in this box,
that is, the number of characters in the subtitle
and the number of characters per second.
First, let's talk about...
42.
In languages that use the Latin alphabet,
if your subtitle is more than 42 characters long,
you need to break it into two lines.
This makes the subtitle easier to follow
and prevents offline players from breaking it in weird ways.
In the new info box, you can see both the total subtitle length
and the number of characters in each of the two lines.
When the total subtitle length in that box goes over 42 characters,
it means that you need to break the subtitle,
but also that you need to think about how to break it.
After all, it's not like you want to have one line of 42 characters
and then one line with just one character in it.
So, break it in a way that the two lines are as close in length as possible.
And let me give you an example.
This subtitle is 51 characters long.
Now, you could break it like this,
with one line of 14 characters and another line of 36,
but it will be easier to read if you make the lines more balanced,
like here, with one line of 27 characters and another line of 23 below.
When breaking subtitles into lines,
also try to keep "syntactic wholes" together.
What this means is that you don't want to break up a phrase
that linguistically works as "one thing."
For example, in English,
you want to keep the article together with the noun,
the adjective with the noun that it modifies,
and a preposition with the thing that it refers to.
You can find out more about line breaking in a guide on our OTPedia
entitled "How to break lines."
Now, on to the other thing we can learn from that subtitle info box.
The number of characters per second,
which is also known as...
The reading speed.
Because after all, it's not only about how long the subtitle is,
but also about how long it stays on the screen
and how much time we give people to read it.
The ideal reading speed for languages that use Latin script
is about 15 to 21 characters per second.
But where is this number coming from, and why is it important?
Well, the reading speed tells you how long your subtitle can actually be.
For example, if you have a subtitle with 40 characters
which displays for two seconds,
you only require the viewer to read at 20 characters per second.
This is easily manageable,
so 40 characters would be fine in this case.
But if the same subtitle were to stay on the screen for only one second,
the viewer would need to be able to read at 40 characters per second,
which is impossible for most people to keep up with,
and it would mean that the subtitle needs to be shortened.
Fortunately, you don't need to calculate all that stuff in your head,
because the new info box in the Amara interface
will do the work for you.
Let's see an example of why maintaining a convenient reading speed is important.
In this short clip from a TEDxNoviSad talk by Dragana Marjanović,
the reading speed in all of the subtitles is above 21 characters per second.
And what happened right after the first year of our doing this project
was that I was awarded what was to be my first very big architectural project,
which was to plaster up all of the surface of the pretty four-story staircase
that was located in a nice building
located in the famous city of Grenoble, France.
This, for me, was a four month long period of work related practice
which was mostly in France but also partly in Bulgaria
and after that was concluded, I began to study again.
This time, it was the earth architecture of Spain and Portugal.
When I was finally able to return home, I immediately began my graduation project
which was about the earth architecture of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina.
So, anyone remembers what happened in Bulgaria?
And where was the nice building?
For the previous clip, I modified the English subtitles
created by Tatjana Jevdjic and reviewed by Ivana Korom,
and made them longer, with reading speeds much over the comfortable values.
Here is the same clip with the original subtitles,
so, with perfect reading speeds of no more than 21 characters per second.
After the first year, we got the first big job:
to plaster the four-story staircase in a building in Grenoble,
after which I had a four-month work practice,
partly in France and partly in Bulgaria,
and then I was studying earth architecture of Spain and Portugal.
I returned home and started a graduation project
about the earth architecture of Vojvodina.
Much easier to follow, right?
The thing about the subtitle reading speed
is that in addition to reading the subtitles,
the viewer needs to take in other information,
like the speaker's body language and intonation
and some on-screen content like slides and pictures.
And it may be difficult to follow the subtitles themselves
if they disappear very quickly.
Especially if the viewer doesn't understand the original language
well enough to help them figure out what's going on.
And thankfully, that new info box in Amara
helps you see when the reading speed exceeds the 21 characters per second limit
and thus, it shows you where you can help the viewer in following the talk.
To fix the reading speed,
some more advanced users may want to adjust the timing of some subtitles,
but in almost every case your main tool will be...
Compression.
Which means, trying to express the same meaning in a shorter subtitle.
For example, an almost literal translation
like "Now, what I would like to give you people here is yet another example,"
with 70 characters,
can be changed into...
"I'd like to give you another example,"
which compresses it down to 37 characters
and which may mean this will allow the viewer to read it
before it's gone off the screen.
Trying to find a way to compress the subtitle is fun,
and the new interface helps you
by showing you when compressing is necessary,
but also when you can do without it.
You can learn more about compressing subtitles
and find other compression strategies and examples
in another guide on OTPedia,
called simply "How to compress subtitles."
I encourage you to explore the new interface
and these new, helpful tools that it offers.
And, for now, happy transcribing and translating!