Glossary

Words you meet when you dub and subtitle.

Short definitions in plain language. Where Dublio does something about a term, the entry says what.

Dubbing: Replacing the spoken language of a video with another language, so viewers hear it instead of reading subtitles. The original picture stays.
Voice-over: A voice laid over a video. In translation work it often means a narrator speaking the new language while the original voice is heard quietly underneath.
AI voice (text to speech): A voice made by software from written text. Dublio voices the translated script this way. It is not a recording of a person speaking that text.
Voice cloning: Making an AI voice that sounds like a particular person. Dublio does not do this: you pick a voice from a list.
Lip sync: Changing the speaker’s mouth in the picture so it matches the new language. Dublio does not change the picture.
Transcription: Writing down what is said in a recording. It is the first step of a dub, and its mistakes carry into the translation.
Translation, machine: Translation done by software. It is a good first draft and rarely the last word, which is why Dublio shows you the script before voicing it.
Source language and target language: The source language is the language of your video. The target language is the one you dub or subtitle into.
Register: The level of formality of speech, such as a polite lecture compared with a chat between friends.
Formal and informal address: Many languages have two ways to say “you”: for example tu and vous in French, tú and usted in Spanish, du and Sie in German, je and u in Dutch. Choosing one early keeps a script consistent.
Subtitles: Text shown on screen that gives the words of the speech, usually translated. Viewers hear the original voice.
Captions: Text for people who cannot hear the audio. It also describes sounds, such as music or laughter. Subtitles assume the viewer can hear.
SRT: A plain-text subtitle file format. Each subtitle has a number, a start and end time, and one or two lines of text. Nearly every editor and platform that takes subtitles takes SRT.
Burned-in subtitles: Subtitles drawn into the picture so they cannot be switched off. Also called open or hardcoded subtitles.
Soft subtitles: Subtitles kept as a separate track or file, so the viewer can switch them on or off or choose a language.
Cue: One subtitle: its text and the time it appears and disappears.
Timecode: A time in the video, written as hours, minutes, seconds and milliseconds, such as 00:01:03,500 in an SRT file.
Dub-only track: An audio file that contains only the new voice, at the length of the video, to lay under your own edit. Dublio makes one as an MP3.
Podcast-style audio: An audio-only version of the dub with long pauses shortened and the loudness levelled, for listening rather than watching.
Ducking: Lowering the volume of one sound while another speaks. When Dublio keeps the original audio under a dub, it lowers the original while the new voice speaks.
LUFS: A unit of perceived loudness. Audio services and podcast players aim for a steady level, and Dublio’s podcast-style file is levelled for that.
Right-to-left (RTL): Scripts written from the right edge to the left, such as Persian, Arabic, Urdu and Hebrew.
Bidirectional text: Text that mixes directions, such as a Persian sentence with an English brand name or a number. The Unicode bidirectional algorithm decides how it is displayed.
Neutral character: A character with no direction of its own, such as a full stop, an exclamation mark, quotes or brackets. It takes the direction of the text around it, which is why it can jump to the wrong end of a right-to-left line.
RLE, PDF and RLM: Three invisible Unicode characters. U+202B RIGHT-TO-LEFT EMBEDDING starts a right-to-left stretch, U+202C POP DIRECTIONAL FORMATTING ends it, and U+200F RIGHT-TO-LEFT MARK is a single mark that acts as an invisible right-to-left letter.
Half-space (ZWNJ): In Persian, an invisible character (U+200C, zero-width non-joiner) that keeps the parts of a word apart without a full space, as in می‌شود and کتاب‌ها.
Persian and Arabic letters: Yeh (ی and ي) and kaf (ک and ك) have look-alikes with different character codes. Persian text should use the Persian forms.
Localisation: Adapting a video for a place, not only translating the words: units, dates, examples, names and tone.

More: guides, comparing ways to dub, and the help centre.