By Clara Garcia

Dotsub provides different kinds of captions, which adapt to your needs. Choosing which one is best for you is simple if you keep your intended audience in mind.

Dotsub’s 508 Compliant captions -commonly referred to as captions for the hearing impaired- follow the rules set by the Described and Captioned Media Program (DCMP) funded by the U.S. Department of Education and administered by the National Association of the Deaf. These include spoken audio, speaker identification, on screen text and “descriptions of audio” that give the hearing impaired the full experience of the video content. So sound effects that are not necessarily spoken out by your protagonists are included in the captions.

Here is an example. Michael Smolens, Chairman and Founder of Dotsub, had given quite a speech that brought his audience into applause. Such applause is included in the captions:

In contrast, Dotsub’s narrative subtitles -also referred to as “broadcast-style subtitles”- are typically used for a different purpose: films, documentaries, etc. to be translated into another language/s or videos used for learners of English as a second-language. In this case, only spoken language is captioned, together with titles and other important pieces of on-screen text that would need to be translated for the audience to understand the storyline.

Here you have an example of narrative subtitle of Peter Crosby, Chief Revenue Officer of Dotsub, talking about our mission:

And those very same subtitles were translated into Simplified Chinese:

You can of course also have your 508 Compliant captions translated into any language you need – the choice is yours. Dotsub is here to help you reach a global audience!

Dotsub was a proud sponsor of the 11th edition of the Mobile Film Festival!  Prize winners were announced in Paris during the December 2015 UN Conference on climate change. The competition was organized in partnership with the United Nations under the theme: “Act on Climate Change”.

The challenge was straightforward: using a smartphone, filmmakers were asked to create a one-minute-long film on the topic of climate change. The results were sometimes funny, sometimes moving, but always passionate.  Several of them were rewarded at a ceremony organized by the Mobile Film Festival with 500 guests at the Gaumont cinema on the Champs Elysée.

The 11th edition was the first to be open to international entrants and the first in partnership with the United Nations in the framework of this year’s climate negotiations in Paris. Altogether, 70 countries took part submitting 765 films, of which 75 from 27 countries were selected as finalists.  All finalist films with spoken dialogue were captioned in English using Dotsub.

Michael Smolens, second from the left. Amila Kumarasinghe, third from left.

On hand to present the Public Award was Dotsub’s CEO, Founder and Chairman, Michael Smolens.  Receiving 2.4 million internet votes, the award went to Parametric by Sri Lankan Amila Kumarasinghe.

Other Winners are:

The Grand Prize: No Sense by Julien Lessi

Best Foreign Film:  Neglected Land by Elie El Abidine

Best Screenplay: Criminals by Jeremy Bernard and Guillaume Desjardins

Online Bloggers Prize:  The Blue Planet directed by Mathieu Lamboley

For a complete list visit:  http://www.mobilefilmfestival.com/awards/

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Some Photos from the Event: https://www.ooshot.com/ooshot-production/moodboards/mobile-days-2015

Sources:  http://www.unric.org/en/latest-un-buzz/30005-mobile-film-festival-winner-announced