TED Translators 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]