TED Translators Cheat-sheet

This "cheat sheet" represents best practices in subtitling in our TED Translators program. 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 volunteers in your language's Facebook group. Below, you will find a few versions of the Cheat-sheet that you can adapt for your language.

The Cheat-sheet contains all of the main TED Translators technical subtitling standards

Templates

Below, you will find links to various versions of the sheet that you can translate into your own language (once you're done, share your version with us at translate@ted.com so that we can include it below).

Wiki table

Open this article for editing, copy the code and paste it into a new article to create a version for your language. You can learn more about editing OTPedia in this guide and more about customizing such tables here (if you wish to add or merge fields, or align the sheet with text in a specific way).

Cheat-sheet
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 100 ms before speech
Line-breaking	Don't split linguistic units
Line-length balance	One line can't be shorter than 50% of the other
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]

Image formats

Instead of the Wiki table above, you can use the image format designed by Dimitra Papageorgiou. If you know how to use Adobe Photoshop or the free, multi-platform graphics-editing software GIMP, you can easily adapt this image format for your language (the text layers are editable in the PSD and XCF files).

Use these links to download the desired image format: PNG, PSD / Photoshop or XCF / GIMP. If you have prepared a version in your own language, share it with us at translate@ted.com, we would love to spread the news!

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The Cheat sheet in various languages

Below, you will find versions of the TED Translators Cheat-sheet in various languages, adapted by OTP volunteers.

Afrikaans

The Afrikaans version of the TED Translators Cheat-sheet was created by Ingrid Lezar.

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Arabic

The Arabic version of the Cheat-sheet was translated by Lalla Khadija. .

Burmese

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Chinese, Simplified

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Chinese, Traditional

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Dutch

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English

The English version of the TED Translators Cheat-sheet was created by Dimitra Papageorgiou.

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French

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Georgian

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German

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Greek

The Greek version of the TED Translators Cheat-sheet was created by Dimitra Papageorgiou.

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Italian

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Japanese

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Kazakh

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Korean

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Kurdish

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Latvian

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Lithuanian

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Macedonian

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Mongolian

The Mongolian version of the TED Translators Cheat-sheet was created by Indra Ganzorig.

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Nepali

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Polish

The Polish version of the TED Translators Cheat-sheet was created by Krystian Aparta.

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Portuguese

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Portuguese, Brazilian

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Romanian

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Russian

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Serbian

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Slovak

Slovenian

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Spanish

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Swedish

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Turkish

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Ukrainian

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