Sat Apr 04, 2009 2:38 pm
I know that text. Most of these rules are good, but some are debatable. For example I prefer unabridged subtitles, even if they're longer. Sometimes 2 lines * 35 chars isn't enough.
Also I personally prefer when there's no line break in subtitles if it's just for layout, because the maximum length of a line depends on my player settings. But apparently some players don't insert line breaks automatically, so I guess it's good to insert line breaks. But they should be unobtrusive, so not between an article and a noun etc.
Also subtitles shouldn't be styled (position, font, color), except if you want to convey some special effect in some lines. It should be up to the viewers in what style they prefer their subtitles. And I'm totally opposed to the "ghost box" idea because it covers the lower part of the movie. I watch widescreen movies with the subs outside of the movie anyway (my monitor is 4:3).
The timing suggestions are good. I wish subtitle editing programs would have more support for that.
Leading and trailing "..." are annoying and steal space. If there's no punctuation mark after a subtitle, that already indicates that the sentence is unfinished. "..." should only be used when there's a longer pause or someone else speaking in between.
What annoys me most is when subtitles lack punctuation and proper capitalization (names, beginnings of sentences). Running a few search/replace macros over a file already helps a lot there. Of course this may introduce new errors, like capital letters at the beginning of every subtitle even if it's the continuation of a sentence.
I don't think sentences that are important for the story should ever be omitted, even if they're just a "Yes." or "No." Don't assume that the viewer understands anything of the spoken text. Hearing impaired people also use subtitles.