Sectors We Serve
Translation, subtitling, captions, voiceover and transcription for UK broadcasters, production companies, agencies and publishers, in 300+ languages.
Prism Linguistics provides media translation services for UK broadcasters, production companies, agencies and publishers: subtitling, closed captions and SDH, voiceover and dubbing scripts, transcription for production, and script and content translation, in more than 300 languages. Work is run from our UK head office in Warrington and read by a second linguist before it goes back to you.
Almost every job here arrives with a date already fixed to it. Send the runtime, the languages and the delivery format, and you'll have a quote back within one working hour during office hours, with an honest view of whether the deadline holds.
Three quite different things get called subtitles, and choosing the wrong one costs a round of revisions. Interlingual subtitles translate the dialogue for viewers who don't speak the source language. Closed captions carry the same-language dialogue as text the viewer can switch on and off. SDH, subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing, adds what a deaf viewer would otherwise lose: who is speaking off screen, a door going, music coming in under a scene.
All three answer to the same discipline. Text is condensed so it sits inside a comfortable reading speed. Lines break where the sense breaks, not where the box runs out. Every cue is timed against the speech. Viewers feel it when that's done badly, usually before they can say why.
Output comes back timecoded, in the standard subtitle formats post teams already work with, or burned in where a platform demands it. The full detail, including the format list and how we work to broadcaster conventions, is on our subtitling and closed captions page.
Voiced content needs two things settled before anyone books a booth: a script that works in the target language, and a voice that suits the register. We handle the script side, and we source voice talent through our linguist network rather than from an in-house studio of our own.
Tell us the genre and the audience and we'll match the read to it. A corporate film wants something measured, a brand piece usually wants warmth, and training material wants a delivery that stays out of the way of the information.
Adaptation is where dubbing scripts are won or lost. A line that runs four seconds in English can run six in German, and the picture doesn't stretch to accommodate it. Our linguists cut, reorder and rephrase until the timing holds and the meaning survives, then hand over a studio-ready script with cue points marked.
Audio description scripting can be arranged through the same network. Ask early if you need voice work: booking talent, not translating the script, is normally what sets the date.
A transcript is one of the cheapest things in post and one of the biggest time-savers. Editors log rushes from it, researchers search it, and subtitlers build from it instead of starting at zero.
We produce verbatim transcripts where every hesitation matters, which tends to mean legal, compliance and documentary interview work. Intelligent verbatim where readability matters more than the false starts. Timecoded transcripts where somebody needs to find a moment again inside ninety minutes of rushes.
Difficult audio is part of the job rather than an exception to it. Crosstalk, location noise, regional accents, archive tape that hasn't aged well. A human transcriber works through all of that. Automatic tools mostly don't.
For interviews, podcasts and location sound, see audio transcription. For footage, video transcription returns timecoded transcripts and subtitle-ready files from the same pass, which is the usual starting point for a subtitled deliverable.
Scripts and treatments, press packs, programme metadata, EPG and platform copy, publisher and editorial text. Media writing carries tone, and tone is the first casualty of a literal translation.
So the work is adaptation rather than word-for-word conversion. A release that lands well with the UK trade press won't land in the same shape in Warsaw: the facts stay put, the framing moves. A joke in a script gets rewritten as a joke that works, not explained in a bracket.
Programme metadata is its own small craft. Synopses have character limits, title conventions differ by territory, and a genre tag that reads naturally in one market can read oddly in the next. Send us the field lengths and we'll write to them rather than hand back copy that overflows.
Longer editorial jobs go through the same second-linguist review as the rest of our document translation work. If a translation already exists and you only want a native reader over it before publication, our proofreading service does that on its own.
Not everything is destined for broadcast. A growing share of what we handle is social video, campaign assets, product film and e-learning, where the rules are not the same.
Social plays on mute. Captions there aren't an accessibility extra, they're the soundtrack for most of the audience, which makes accuracy in the first three seconds worth more than polish in the last thirty. Campaign lines usually need transcreating rather than translating, because a strapline built on an English pun rarely survives a straight rendering into Polish.
E-learning pulls on-screen text, voice script and subtitles into one build, often inside an authoring tool with its own export formats and its own way of breaking. That's localisation work rather than plain translation. Where the video sits inside a multilingual site, website translation covers the pages, navigation and metadata around it so the terminology matches on both sides.
Translated subtitles in 300+ languages, timed and condensed by subtitlers for comfortable reading.
Closed captions and SDH for broadcast and online, with speaker IDs and meaningful sound.
Timecoded transcripts of footage for editing, logging, show notes and subtitle preparation.
Interview and podcast transcription, in English or translated, ready for production.
Scripts, treatments and press packs adapted for the target market, with timing in mind.
On-screen text, voice scripts and subtitles handled together, in your authoring tool's formats.
Deliverables come back in the formats post teams expect: standard subtitle files, timecoded transcripts, bilingual script documents, and text returned in the file type you sent. Tell us the platform or the edit suite and we'll export to match, rather than leaving someone to convert files at eleven at night.
On timing, the honest answer is that it depends. A ten-minute corporate film into one language is a different proposition from a fifty-minute documentary into eight, and a locked picture is a different proposition from one still being recut. Runtime, language count and format all move the date. We'll say what's realistic when we quote, and we'd rather turn a job down than put a transmission slot at risk.
Pre-broadcast and embargoed material is handled under NDA. Files go only to the linguists assigned to the job, access closes when the job closes, and our handling is UK GDPR compliant throughout. If your organisation runs its own security schedule, watermarking rule or delivery platform, send it with the brief and we'll work inside it. Where a compliance team needs specific assurances, ask us directly and you'll get a straight answer about what we can evidence.
Plenty of suppliers will take a video and send back a subtitle file. Fewer will tell you which of the three subtitle types you actually need. What we bring to media work:
The single-supplier point matters more than it sounds on a multilingual job. When the transcript, the subtitles and the voice script all come from the same terminology decisions, nobody spends Friday afternoon reconciling three versions of the same name. Browse the full language list if yours is unusual, and the pricing page if you want to understand how we quote before you send anything over.
Send the runtime, the languages and the delivery format. A project manager will come back within one working hour during office hours with a price and a realistic date.