CC and subtitles are awesome. Making them cheap enough so that they're universal even on cheap online content is one of the actual benefits to AI technology.
this post was submitted on 10 May 2025
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Completely machine translated subtitles often lack quality and nuance to their translations. I'd rather have a human getting paid to do proper subtitling instead. But yes, if the option is having zero subtitles instead, then sure. That's not the case with Netflix etc though, they can definitely afford proper subtitling.
Translation is an art as much as it is a science.
You have to differentiate between closed caption subtitles and translated subtitles.
Automatically generated closed captions, for people with hearing impairments, where it's just the words spoken transcribed, are indeed one thing that AI could hypothetically do. It can't do it yet, at least not without supervision and human editing.
Excellent closed captions also include sound effects where necessary, colour coding, speaker names, tone indicators, they move the text around on screen to better show who's talking - that's something I can only see humans do.
Let's shame anyone who uses AI to translate subtitles (or translate anything, really).
Edit: I just learnt that apparently the different variants of English don't agree on what "captions" and "subtitles" are.
apparently the different variants of English don't agree on what "captions" and "subtitles" are.
Probably doesn't help that the closed caption option usually appears in the subtitle menu in most software 😅
But yeah, I think what you're referring to is normally called "closed captions", but I can see how it would be shortened to just "captions" for convenience in some cases.
Everyone gets upset that artists are getting their work stolen by AI but AI taking over translation jobs is empowering.
Who says AI translation is empowering? Not me, that's for certain.
Of all the big services, Netflix subtitles are notoriously bad though. Like missing entire sentences or just flat out wrong.
And don’t understand the difference between needing subtitles as hard of hearing or have the volume down, versus this part is in a foreign language.
Most of us can't read as quickly as we can absorb spoken language.
I learned this directly when I decided to create English subtitles for French films and TV as an exercise when I was trying to get from B2 to C1 in French. It was a good exercise, but the result was unusable because the text often goes by too quickly to read.
That's when I understood that it really is an art.
The subtitle artist must make descriptions work, punch lines land, and reproduce dialog with the correct gravitas. And they have to do it while cutting 50 percent or more of a meaningful, culturally-grounded translation.
It doesn't seem like the kind of thing an id-less ml model could ever do.
I guess it depends on the subtitle type? I know some are just the spoken audio and some are descriptions of side conversations/surrounding noises as well. That said I’m one of those that reads faster than hearing but that’s due to bad hearing and my brain trying to figure out what it heard is slower than reading/hearing combined. Or even sometimes the subtitles are a bit fast so I’m still about even.
The same way pirates do sometimes
https://torrentfreak.com/netflix-caught-using-pirated-subtitles-in-finland-121019/
I assume that AI got used for the release of Hundreds of Beavers because the captions are completely fucking wrong on the little amount of dialogue there actually is in the film.
Subtitles on dubbed stuff is weird. The English voice over and the English subtitles are very different from eachother, and I assume what they're translating from is a 3rd different thing altogether.
The voice-over is usually trying to approximate the lip movements and timing as well as the meaning.
Just to expand on this.
- Dubs are trying to make the audio align with the scene and mouthing of the actors. So youll get a lot of adjustments focusing on pacing.
- Subs are trying to capture the meaning of the original audio as closely as they can (while making it readable).
Because of this subtitles and dubs don't usually align perfectly and will have somewhat conflicting content.
Something whole joke films have been made about, such as Kung-Pow! which has purposefully bad "dubbing" as a joke.
To be clear, Hundreds of Beavers has subtitles in it's original language (English) and it's still completely fucking wrong. There's less than 5 minutes of dialogue in the whole film, and it's all wrong.
Subtitles and closed captioning is generally handled by the producers of the media. I'd it's a Netflix original, Netflix hires someone to transcribe. If the media was purchased or rented from day Fox or Paramount or MGM, the original producers would have been responsible for it.
I've certainly seen some subtitles that have to be ai generated based on the ridiculous number of homophones and sound alike captions
These are delivered to the streaming service from the production company supplying the content. Depending on the production company they can have various sources. Some are made from the shooting script, some are transcribed either manually or via ai. Some go through a full quality check before being delivered, some have no QC at all. It all depends on the production company. Theoretically most streaming services say they quality check the delivered subtitles but this is usually done automatically with very occasional manual checks. For subtitles not in the original language these are usually contracted to various subtitle translation companies, usually by the streaming service, but sometimes by the production company depending on the contract. These can vary in quality and price immensely.
It's not AI. It's just basic software.
Weird I had this conversation with my wife last night while watching Andor. Some of the subtitles come up for only half a second or are lagged behind the dialogue.
It reeks of Ai rubbish and would have been someone's job previously. Not the most glamorous job I'm sure but still better then digging holes in a paddock.