Captions, subtitles and transcripts: which do you need?

Choose captions when viewers need to follow the speech in the same language. Choose translated subtitles when part of your audience speaks another language. Choose a transcript when people will want to read, search or quote the words later. Many events need more than one.

What is each output?

Captions and subtitles are often used as the same word in daily talk, and that is fine. For a quote, the useful question is not the word but the job: same language or another language, and which language.

How do you decide which ones you need?

Start with the people who will watch, not the file types. Ask three things:

1. Who cannot follow the video as it is? Guests with hearing loss, older relatives, staff who work in another language, or viewers on a phone in a public place.
2. In which languages is the event spoken? One language, or a mix, such as Malay and English in the same sentence.
3. What will people do with the words? Watch along, search for a name, or copy a quote into a report.

For example, a company town hall in English and Malay for staff across the country may need captions in both languages for the main video, plus a transcript for the HR team. A family’s nikah recording may need only same-language captions so a hard-of-hearing grandparent can follow. These are illustrations, not a fixed rule.

What should you settle before the quote?

Each choice changes the work, so the quote should say it in writing:

• Languages: the language spoken, and each language you want on screen.
• Source of the text: written by a person, or generated by software and then corrected. Accessibility guidance from W3C notes that automatic captions need accuracy checks and usually correction. See checking automatically generated captions.
• Who reviews: someone who speaks the language and knows the names, titles and terms.
• How it is delivered: text burned into the picture, or a separate file the platform can switch on and off. This has its own guide on burned-in captions or separate caption files.
• Which videos get it: the full recording, the highlight film, the short social clips, or all of them.

W3C also advises that accessibility is best specified during project planning and procurement, so it is not left until the edit. Planning accessible event videos from the brief shows how to share these tasks.

How do the three differ in practice?

Captions depend on the video’s timing, so they change if the video is re-edited. A transcript does not, which is why it suits conference learning and reference, where people search for a speaker’s point.

Translated subtitles carry the most risk of misunderstanding, because the translator must choose terms for titles, company names and cultural phrases. If your audience reads Chinese or Tamil, read our notes on Chinese subtitles and Tamil and other language subtitles before you decide.

Captions and transcripts cover speech and sound. If the picture carries important information that a viewer cannot see, such as a chart or a demonstration, that is a separate question covered in video descriptions and spoken visual context.

What we confirm for your event

• Which outputs fit your audience, and in which languages.
• Who writes the text, and who checks it before you receive the video.
• Whether captions are part of the picture, a separate file, or both.
• What we need from you, such as speaker names, a glossary or the programme.
• How corrections are handled after you review the first version.

Our caption and language planner helps you note the language and output combinations before you write to us, and our captioning and subtitles service page explains how we scope the work. We can go through your situation in a short WhatsApp conversation.