TED Translators Cheat-sheet
Revision as of 15:31, 19 February 2015 by Symbolt (talk | contribs) (moved Subtitle cheat sheet to OTP cheat-sheet)
This "cheat sheet" represents best practices in OTP subtitling. Note that the character number values refer to languages which use a Latin script, and may differ for languages written in other scripts (often being lower than the max numbers below). For length and reading speed rules for your non-Latin script language, consult your language's page on OTPedia, your Language Coordinators or fellow OTP volunteers in your language's Facebook group.
Subtitle duration | 1-7 seconds |
Max reading speed | 21 characters / s |
Max number of lines | 2 |
Max line length | 42 characters |
Max subtitle length | 84 characters |
Subtitle start | Not over 100ms before speech |
Line-breaking | Don't split linguistic units |
Subtitle structure | Don't merge end and beginning of two sentences |
Text segmentation | Don't split sentences too much if not necessary for length/speed |
Sound representation | (Parentheses) |
On-screen text | [Square brackets] |