Hub — multilingual editing
We edit in your audience's language
Subtitles are not localisation. Each of these pages documents how we actually edit in that language: which regional variant to target, how the caption template has to change, why hooks get rewritten instead of translated, and when localising an English master beats producing natively.
Localisation and native editing are two different products
Localisation takes a finished English video and rebuilds it for another language: translated and proofed captions, translated on-screen text, and a recut, because the new caption timing will never match the English cut. It is the cheaper path and the correct one for demonstrative content — tutorials, product walkthroughs, process explainers — where the visual carries the meaning.
Native editing starts from footage or a script in the target language and builds the edit around that language's rhythm. It costs more and it is the right call for anything persuasion-led: founder content, personal brand, sales-driven talking head, testimonials. Persuasion does not survive translation, because the hook that works in the target language is almost never the literal translation of the English one.
Most clients run both. We will tell you which bucket a given asset belongs in rather than pushing everything into native production.
Every one of these languages has a variant decision
French splits between Metropolitan and Quebec. Spanish splits between Castilian, Latin American and US Spanish. Portuguese splits between Brazilian and European, and that pair diverges the most of any of them. Producing one blended version for every market inside a language is the most common and most expensive mistake we inherit.
We decide the variant at brief stage and record it in the project spec, because it changes caption copy, hook wording, register and sometimes the script. Where two markets both matter commercially, the answer is usually two caption tracks over the same visual edit — far cheaper than two productions, provided it is planned rather than retrofitted.
Caption templates built for English break in all three
Text expansion is real and it is different per language: roughly 15-20% for French and Portuguese, 20-25% for Spanish. Drop translated text into an English caption template and you get three-line captions swallowing the frame or mid-word breaks. The fix is fewer words per card and wider safe zones, not a smaller font — small captions lose the muted viewers you captioned for in the first place.
Accented characters are the other reliable failure. Auto-caption pipelines strip or mangle é, ç, ñ, ã and õ, and inverted Spanish punctuation disappears entirely. Every caption we deliver in these languages gets a native-speaker proof pass specifically checking accents, line breaks and proper nouns before it is burned in.
Common questions
- Do you translate our videos or edit natively in the language?
- Both. Demonstrative content localises well from an English master with a proofed caption track and a recut. Persuasion-led talking-head content should be produced natively, because hooks and emotional beats do not survive subtitling.
- Are your captions machine-translated?
- Machine transcription is a first pass only. A native speaker rewrites and proofs every caption track before delivery. For European Portuguese we transcribe manually from the start, because automated models handle its vowel reduction poorly.
- Which language should we start with?
- The one where your existing audience or ad spend already shows demand. If you are testing cold, start by localising five to ten existing assets rather than commissioning a native production run — it is inexpensive and it produces real market data quickly.
- Does multilingual editing cost more?
- Native editing costs somewhat more because a target-language editor and a native proof pass are involved. Localising an existing English master is priced closer to standard editing. Retainer tiers are on the pricing page.
Get a sample edit
Send raw footage and a brief. We deliver a polished sample so you can judge pacing, captions and fit before committing to anything.