09.10.2018
There is a great number of professional tools, free, or to buy for creating subtitles. If you’re going to make subtitles regularly, we definitely recommend professional, purchased software tools. However, if you’re going to make subtitles less often or only occasionally, you can easily use free software instead of a purchased one. You can find some free software tools on this list:
Subtitle Workshop
Very popular among the subtitling community is Subtitle Workshop, a handy little program, which doesn’t take up much space on your hard disk and comes with many features.
| Advantages: | a range of features, including spell check |
| Disadvantages: | certain versions had issues with stability and displaying the soundtrack |
| Platform: | Windows, Linux, Mac OS |
VisualSubSync
VisualSubSync is a practical program that can work with the soundtrack and keep track of the subtitle duration.
| Advantages: | work with the soundtrack is outstanding, automatically spaced subtitles |
| Disadvantages: | the development and support has ended |
| Platform: | Windows |
Aegisub
Aegisub, another powerful and almost professional tool for creating and modifying subtitles, is suitable even for the advanced users.
| Advantages: | good display of the sound track, SSA/ASS subtitle scripting |
| Disadvantages: | doesn’t automatically space the subtitles, doesn’t show the reading speed |
| Platform: | Windows, Linux, Mac OS |
We made a comprehensive tutorial for you on how to use this program in the next article.
Recommendation
You can significantly speed up your work with subtitling tools if you learn how to use the keyboard shortcuts. It will save you a lot more time than using your mouse.
My first contact with the translation industry dates back to 1993 when my father founded LEXIKA and I was delivering documents to our translators on a bike. Over time, I worked at almost every position within the company. I was the president of the Association of Translation Companies of Slovakia for four years and I am currently a board member of the European Union of Associations of Translation Companies – EUATC. I never miss a chance to attend professional events in the translation and localisation industry. Together with my colleagues from the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Austria I cofounded and organize Meet Central Europe.
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