Why You Must Get Your Transcription or Subtitles Proofread?
Translations have enabled businesses to transcend borders and enter into previously unexplored markets. This was unimaginable just a decade earlier. The reason companies are experiencing such overwhelming success abroad is the accessibility that localized content offers to native customers worldwide. Translations by trustworthy professional translators such as Translation Planet allow an original piece of content to travel across continents, making businesses realize the localized content’s power and reach.
Translations have encouraged businesses to dream bigger and to navigate outside the per-existing constraints such as geography. However, in a world where translations play such an incremental role, there is no room for errors. And therefore, it is essential to get any piece of translation thoroughly proofread. Satirical writing that goes without being proofread or worse, getting badly proofread, can end up being a horror story. This is especially crucial for businesses as the stakes are much higher. In companies’ case, sales depend on the marketing and promotional content that the company puts out. One gaffe can result in a sales nosedive.
However, it is not just businesses or publishing houses that recognize the importance of good proofread. Some other industries where the importance of proofreading becomes quite evident is the transcription and the movie industry.
How does Proofreading Help In Transcription?
Proofreading, essentially, involves a thorough reading and scrutiny of the written text, which in this case is a transcribed document. Proofreading aims to identify errors and mistakes and then to rectify them, making the document error-free.
Usually, a transcriptionist may perform some errors such as omitting crucial words being dictated or picking up the wrong word from the dictation. Mistakes can also be made with regard to spellings, punctuation, and grammar. In such circumstances, having a competent proofreader read and correct all those mistakes becomes imperative. A professional proofreader would be able to note mistakes in conscription and would correct them according to the relevant context in which the conscription exists. For instance, legal or medical conscriptions require the proofreader to distinguish the nuances of the terminology in the context of the field.
Why is proofreading so important for subtitles?
Netflix has earned a fair bit of notoriety for its sub-par subtitles. The platform has been criticized considerably for not taking sufficient care of the quality of subtitles. But Netflix is far from the only one struggling with this issue. Bad translations are easy to find, as almost all streaming platforms suffer from this issue to a certain extent. However, it is not only the OTP platforms that are stranded with this problem. Often movies and ad films also make the same mistake of not proofreading what they put out. This leads to hilarious and sometimes quite annoying situations.
The impact of bad subtitles goes from being uncomfortable or irritating to downright unacceptable if one thinks of people with hearing disabilities. Having bad or wrong subtitles in a video, whether it is a movie, tv series, or advertisement, could have unintended consequences and therefore, subtitles must be thoroughly proofread by professional proofreaders before being released.
To put it simply, both transcription and subtitles should be minutely and carefully proofread. Good proofreading not only eliminates errors but also elevates the overall quality of the dictation or translation.
