Subtitling · Catalan
Catalan subtitling services
Native Catalan subtitlers for broadcast, documentary, advertising, eLearning and corporate video. Delivered with every geminate l·l intact, in the format your platform asks for. Part of a full Catalan language service: subtitles, voice over scripts, and translation of any content you need.
About Catalan subtitling
One dot that becomes a hyphen the moment the line breaks
Catalan puts a raised dot between two l's, as in col·laboració, cel·la and paral·lel, and it is not decoration. It marks a geminate l·l, a long l, and separates it from the digraph ll, which is a completely different sound. Drop the dot and *cel·la* turns into *cella*, another word entirely. Inside a 42-character line it is also one more character to place, and the first thing a careless tool discards.
It is the only character in the language that changes identity when a word is split. The rule is that the raised dot is replaced by the hyphen marking the split, so *parcel·la* divided across two lines is written *parcel-* and then *la*. A dot left hanging at the end of the line is wrong; a hyphen sitting inside a line that was never split is wrong too.
At GoLocalise we work with native Catalan subtitlers, deliver the raised dot as the character the standard actually specifies, and never split a word across two subtitle lines — we move the break to somewhere a reader expects instead. When a file arrives already wrapped by a tool, every geminate in it gets looked at before it goes back out.
Which do you need?
Open captions, closed captions or SDH
Three different deliverables that people often ask for by the wrong name. Here is the short version.
Open captions
Burnt inSubtitles burnt permanently into the picture. Nobody can switch them off, which is exactly what you want for social feeds that autoplay muted — and in Catalan it settles every line break at delivery, so no player gets to re-wrap a geminate l·l for you.
- Always visible
- Line breaks fixed at delivery
- Delivered as a finished video file
Closed captions
SwitchableA separate file the viewer can turn on and off, and that can carry several languages at once. The standard for YouTube, Vimeo and the streaming platforms.
- Viewer controls them
- Multiple languages from one video
- Indexed by search engines
SDH
AccessibilitySubtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing: dialogue plus speaker IDs and the sound effects and music cues that carry meaning.
- Speaker identification
- Non-dialogue audio described
- Meets accessibility requirements
Subtitles or captions? The two terms are often used interchangeably. Strictly, subtitles translate the dialogue for viewers who can hear the audio, while captions are same-language and add speaker labels and sound cues for viewers who cannot. We produce either — translated Catalan subtitles or same-language Catalan captions and SDH — in whichever form your platform and audience require.
What we subtitle
Catalan subtitling for every kind of content
Catalan subtitling runs across institutional and public-sector video, broadcast, education and a dense advertising market, and almost every one of those files passes through a tool that rewraps lines. These are the formats we handle most.
Corporate & training video
Internal comms, onboarding and product training subtitled for global teams and LMS delivery.
eLearning & online courses
Timed, readable subtitles for course platforms, MOOCs and instructional video.
Documentary & factual
Festival, broadcast and streaming documentaries, including interview clean-up and on-screen text.
Advertising & social
Burnt-in captions for muted autoplay on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and paid social.
Streaming & OTT
Platform-spec subtitle and caption files for VOD, OTT and broadcast delivery.
Accessibility (SDH & closed captions)
Same-language SDH and closed captions to meet WCAG and accessibility requirements.
Events, webinars & conferences
Recorded talks, town halls and webinars captioned for on-demand viewing.
E-commerce & product video
Short product and explainer videos captioned to lift conversion and reach.
How can we help you?
Your project manager has everything covered
One point of contact from brief to delivery, and both a linguistic and a technical check on every file.
Brief review
We review your video, your audience and the player, including whether it re-wraps subtitle lines and where it is prepared to break them.
Template and translation
Where needed, we create an English subtitle template first, then send it to a native Catalan subtitler.
Timing and quality checks
Subtitles are timed against the video and checked for reading speed, line length, every geminate l·l, and format compliance.
Delivery and display check
Files delivered in the format you need, with no line broken through a raised dot and every one of them confirmed present.
Our standards
The specs we work to
Readable subtitles are a matter of measurable limits, not opinion. These are the defaults we apply to Catalan unless your style guide says otherwise.
Maximum per line
l·l spends three of them
Maximum on screen
Broken by syntactic unit
Reading speed
13 for children's content
Minimum duration
Seven seconds maximum
Catalan runs longer than English, and the raised dot costs a character of its own every time it appears: **col·laboració** alone takes thirteen of the forty-two before anything else is said. We condense to fit rather than let a line overflow, and we pick the break point ourselves. The Netflix Catalan guide asks for lines broken by syntactic unit, which is also the surest way to keep a geminate in one piece.
Deliverables
Professional subtitle formats
We adapt your existing translations into subtitle format or create subtitles from scratch, in Catalan, English or any other language. And if the project needs a timed script or a plain document instead, we deliver that too.
Standard text-based
Compatible with most platforms and players.
Broadcast & professional
For broadcasters, post houses and streaming delivery specs.
Burnt-in video
A finished file with the subtitles baked into the picture, raised dots included.
Need a different format? Convert SRT, VTT and more with our free subtitle converter →
| Where it's going | What we deliver |
|---|---|
| YouTube, Vimeo & LMS platforms | SRT or VTT closed captions |
| Netflix, Amazon & broadcast | IMSC, TTML or EBU-STL to platform spec |
| Instagram, TikTok & paid social | Burned-in captions in MP4 (open captions) |
| Premiere, Final Cut & DaVinci Resolve | SRT / VTT that import straight into your edit |
Not sure which you need? Tell us the destination platform and we deliver to its exact spec.
Catalan specifics
Where the raised dot goes missing, and which Catalan to write
The dot has a code point of its own — U+00B7 MIDDLE DOT, in Latin-1 Supplement, in Unicode since 1993. There are also two precomposed letters, Ŀ and ŀ, but the standard files them as compatibility characters and does not recommend writing with them. A file that uses one has a single character where yours has three, so counts, searches and glossary checks run over it quietly disagree with the rest of the batch.
Whether an automatic wrapper is even allowed to break at that dot is, strictly speaking, undecided. Unicode assigns U+00B7 the line-breaking class AI, Ambiguous, which the algorithm hands back to the implementation to resolve one way or the other — and a break is permitted in only one of the two readings. That is how the same line comes back wrapped through a geminate in one environment and untouched in another.
Around 9.2 million people speak Catalan, 4.1 million of them as a first language, and it is official in Catalonia, the Balearic Islands, the Valencian Community, where it is called Valencian, Andorra, and the Sardinian city of Alghero. The spelling authority is the Institut d'Estudis Catalans, which is also where the Netflix style guide points, asking for wording that travels across all of those territories rather than one local variety.
Since 2008
Subtitling & captioning
100+
Languages covered
ISO 9001 & 14001
Certified processes
24–48h
Typical turnaround
Subtitling rates
Professional Catalan subtitling
For single videos and straightforward content where accurate, well-timed subtitles are what you need.
- Native Catalan subtitler
- Geminate l·l kept intact
- Frame-accurate timing
For longer content and recurring projects, including transcription, SDH, burned-in subtitles and multiple output formats.
- Everything in Standard
- Transcription and template
- SDH and burnt-in
- Multiple output formats
Every project is quoted individually and backed by our Price Match Promise. Send us your video for an exact, no-obligation quote.
Not sure what your Catalan subtitles will cost?
Send us the video — or just its running time — and we come back with an itemised quote: running time, languages and output formats priced line by line, with nothing hidden. No obligation, and if you find a like-for-like price lower, we will match it.
- Free, itemised quote
- No obligation
- Price Match Promise
Trusted by global brands
We have used GoLocalise on a regular basis for projects in a number of languages. The service we receive is great. The team is always friendly and professional. The voiceovers we receive are of a very high quality and the turnaround is extremely quick. We are very happy to recommend GoLocalise to other businesses.
It was a pleasure to work with David and the team at GoLocalise. David gave me lots of help and advice, guiding me through my first subtitling project. He really knows his stuff! The experience was completely pain-free. I would not hesitate to recommend GoLocalise – outstanding work at a good price.
They're reliable, adaptive and obsessed with quality. And while you can never be 100% guaranteed of perfection, you can be sure GoLocalise will go the extra mile to get it right every time. We've worked with them now for over 5 years and we are truly thankful to have such a strong localisation partner for our business.
Subtitling we've delivered
Have we done something like yours?
Return of the Goat II
Subtitling · European French — a different language from yours, shown because the process is the same
Related services
The rest of your Catalan project
Subtitling & captioning in more languages
Native subtitlers for corporate video, eLearning, streaming, documentary and advertising. Browse another language, or ask us about yours.
Subtitling we have delivered
Real projects, real deadlines, and the files that went live.
Subtitling · European French
Return of the Goat II
Elevating cycling narratives with multilingual subtitling.
Subtitling · Indonesian
Pathways: Hope After Suicide Loss
Bridging cultures through subtitling: a journey of hope.
Subtitling · English
‘Todos a la Cocina’ Cooking Show
Enhancing global reach through expert subtitling.
Most common questions
Does the raised dot in col·laboració really matter in a subtitle?
Yes, because it is a letter distinction rather than a flourish. The geminate l·l and the digraph ll are two different sounds, and a pair of words like cel·la and cella only stay apart because of that dot. Removing it to buy a character back is a spelling error on every line it appears in, so we find the character somewhere else in the line.
What happens to l·l if the line has to break there?
The dot goes and a hyphen takes its place: parcel·la split across two lines is written parcel- then la, which is what the Catalan standard requires. In practice we avoid the situation entirely, because we do not split words across subtitle lines. The break moves to a syntactic boundary instead, and the geminate stays whole.
Do you subtitle in Valencian as well as Catalan?
Yes. Valencian is the name the language carries in the Valencian Community, and we subtitle for that market with a native subtitler from it. For content going out across several territories at once we work to the wording the Institut d'Estudis Catalans supports, which is what the streaming style guides ask for. Tell us where the video is going and we will match it.
Why does my Catalan file have a single ŀ character in it?
Because someone typed or converted the precomposed letter instead of the three-character sequence. Unicode keeps Ŀ and ŀ only for compatibility and does not recommend writing with them, so tools disagree about them: your line counter sees one character, a search for the ordinary spelling misses the word, and some fonts have no glyph. We normalise those to the recommended form on the way in.
What does Catalan subtitling cost per minute?
It starts at £18 per minute of video. What moves the figure is running time, whether we transcribe the Catalan audio first, whether you need SDH or a burnt-in master, and how many output formats come out at the end. Reworking line breaks in a supplied file is part of the job, not a surcharge. Every project is quoted individually with our Price Match Promise.
My footage is already in Catalan. Can you caption it rather than translate it?
Yes, and it is a large part of what we do in this language. Same-language Catalan captions and SDH are what accessibility teams and muted social feeds need, and the work is spotting, condensing and breaking lines so the text is readable at speed. No translation step, the same technical QA, and the same care with every geminate in it.
We already have a Catalan SRT. Can you start from that?
Of course. We spot and time from what you have, and the first pass is a check on how the file survived its last save: whether the raised dots are still there, whether any of them became a lookalike, and whether a tool has wrapped a line through one. If there is no file we transcribe the Catalan audio first. Either route gets the same QA.
What do we need on our side to open your Catalan subtitle files?
All the usual ones. You get SRT, VTT, STL and TTML that carry the raised dot intact into Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, DaVinci Resolve and the major online editors — or burnt into the picture as a finished MP4/MOV, which takes the player's wrapping rules out of the equation altogether.
What do you need from us to quote Catalan subtitling?
Less than people expect: the video, or a link to it, its running time, which platform or broadcaster it is going to, and the date you need it by. A rough cut is fine — we would rather quote on what exists than wait for picture lock and lose a week of your schedule. A named project manager comes back with an itemised quote, normally within four working hours.
How quickly will we hear back, and who will we be dealing with?
More than half of enquiries get a reply within thirty minutes during office hours (Monday to Friday, 9am to 6pm UK time), and the itemised quote normally follows within four working hours. After that you have one dedicated project manager who owns the job from brief to final file — not a ticket queue, and not a different name on every email. If it is easier, call +44 207 095 5730 and ask for them by name.
We are still pitching and the budget is not signed off. Can we still get a Catalan quote?
Yes, and it is one of the commonest reasons people get in touch. Tell us it is for a pitch and you get a figure you can put in front of your own client, itemised so it stands up to being picked apart, with no obligation and no follow-up sales calls if the pitch goes elsewhere. If it lands, the quote still holds and we already know the project.
What if we find a cheaper Catalan quote somewhere else?
Send it over. Our Price Match Promise covers like-for-like work, and because our quotes are itemised you can see exactly what is being compared — which is usually where the gap turns out to be, in a revision pass, a licence or a delivery format that the cheaper figure quietly left out. If it really is the same work for less, we match it.
Ready to subtitle your video in Catalan?
Send us your video and we'll come back with an exact, itemised quote.
The complete solution to localise your content
Voice over
- State-of-the-art studios
- Neumann microphones
- On-hand sound engineers
- 1,000+ voice actors
Translation
- 100+ languages covered
- Tailored to your needs
- Stringent quality control
- Dedicated project managers
Subtitling
- Experienced subtitlers
- Industry-standard software
- Burn-in and graphic editing
- Open and closed captions
Transcription
- Improve accessibility
- Reach a wider audience
- Boost SEO and video views
- Maximise video engagement