We have a number of corporate clients based in the Middle East and receive regular requests to subtitle material both from Arabic into English and also from English into Arabic.
Specialist media companies based in the Middle East create video content for private companies and these videos frequently need subtitling, which is where Knockhundred Translations come in! Sometimes we’ll receive a request to subtitle, (for example), a film of a major development project. This could be a promotional video about a skyscraper in Qatar, or an oil producer in Saudi Arabia for example. Quite often, the promotional material has been filmed in Arabic, but requires English subtitles, however, we also receive requests to subtitle in the opposite direction (i.e. from English into Arabic).
Irrespective of the direction of translation, there are a number of things we always have to take into account and check rigorously. For our partners based in the Middle East, we subtitle from (or into!) Modern Standard Arabic (or MSA). There are however, a number of different variants of the Arabic language, with different languages being spoken in, for example, Morocco and Algeria. It’s always essential to know where material was originally filmed and which language is spoken, in order to ensure that a linguist who is appropriately qualified in the language spoken works on a particular subtitling assignment.
In addition, particularly where corporate clients are concerned, there may be the mention of companies or brands and in some cases, the Roman alphabet may be needed (as opposed to Arabic script). Since Arabic runs from right to left and English from left to right, it is really important to ensure that both languages are aligned correctly.
Finally, since subtitles can be produced in multiple formats (plain text, Word, HTML, Final Cut Pro XML, Spruce STL and Subrip (srt) for example), it’s really important that we’re aware exactly which format. We always double check with our clients, to make sure that they receive exactly what’s needed.
Require Help?
Should you require our help with direct translation from audio or video to English do not hesitate to get in touch with us and our team will do their best to help you.
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