Last week we talked to one of our Russian subtitling experts about their work as a subtitler of films, ads and corporate videos.
KH: Elena, thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy schedule to talk to us today.
ELENA: No problem.
KH: So you were born in Russia. Whereabouts?
ELENA: Moscow, but I only lived there until I was 18.
KH: Is that when you came to the UK?
ELENA: Yes it was, and I have been here ever since. I still have family in Russia so I go back quite often.
KH: You now work full-time producing Russian subtitles? What sort of things do you subtitle?
ELENA: A lot of the material I work on are short video files. The source language is English and I provide Russian subtitles.
KH: What are these videos?
ELENA: They are often short publicity videos destined for websites and social media platforms. I sometimes subtitle as many as 10 videos a day, though this does tend to make me feel quite cross-eyed!
KH: What is different about producing Russian subtitles as opposed to a straightforward document translation?
ELENA: Generally speaking, there are fewer restrictions with document translation. When producing subtitles, I have to consider the register and tone of the source language, usually English, and consider how to best mimic the original spirit in Russian. My source material is speech rather than text, and I have character and line restrictions to take into account too. I have to use specialist subtitling software to produce the time-coded Russian subtitles.
KH: In what format do you usually provide the subtitles?
ELENA: To be honest I can export the subtitles into a variety of formats, but the most popular format is SRT.
KH: Thank you for talking to us. We’d better let you get back to your videos!
Learn more
If you would be interested in finding out more about our Russian subtitling service, do please get in touch and one of our project managers would be happy to help.
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