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Home » Frequently Asked Questions » Captioning & Subtitling Service » What is the difference between subtitles and captions?

What is the difference between subtitles and captions?

Closed captions are sets of text within the video that is specifically of use to those who are deaf or hard of hearing. Closed captions offer a verbatim transcription of not only dialogue that is being said in the video, but also annotations. These annotations convey non-verbal sounds, such as doors slamming and music playing. They may also indicate tone and intonation, such as showing when a character is shouting or saying something sarcastically. Subtitles of a video are a text version of the dialogues spoken in a video that is intended to make the content decipherable by foreign-language speakers. Subtitles are not meant to be as verbatim as that of a closed caption transcription of the audio. Unlike closed captions, they are usually aimed at viewers who can hear the audio, but may not be able to understand the dialogue due to the language and dialect differences. As such, subtitles are often closely associated with, and part of, dialogue translation. They don't contain annotations of non-verbal sounds