Subtitling · Croatian
Croatian subtitling services
Native Croatian subtitlers for corporate video, eLearning, documentary, broadcast and advertising. Delivered with the digraphs capitalised the way Croatian requires, in the format your platform needs. Part of a full Croatian language service: subtitles, voice over scripts, and translation of any content you need.
About Croatian subtitling
Three letters that are two letters, and a capital that is neither
Croatian has three digraphs — dž, lj and nj — that count as single letters of the alphabet while being written with two characters. That creates a problem no other language in our range has quite so sharply: what happens when one of them starts a sentence. The answer is Džungla, with only the D capitalised, and DŽUNGLA when the whole word is in capitals. *DŽungla* is wrong, and it is what an automatic title-case function produces.
Unicode even has a rare third case category for exactly this, with precomposed characters sitting between uppercase and lowercase. They are compatibility characters: normalise the file, or run it through an all-caps transform for on-screen signage, and they quietly fall apart into two ordinary letters — or do not, depending on the tool, which is worse, because now the same word is encoded two different ways in one file.
At GoLocalise, we work with native Croatian subtitlers, set the capitals ourselves rather than leaving them to a stylesheet, and keep the digraphs encoded consistently from the first cue to the last.
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 it settles the capitals at delivery, before any stylesheet can re-case them.
- Always visible
- Capitals 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 Croatian subtitles or same-language Croatian captions and SDH — in whichever form your platform and audience require.
What we subtitle
Croatian subtitling for every kind of content
Croatian subtitling sits between EU institutional and corporate work since accession and a tourism sector that publishes video in a dozen languages at once, so files are routinely produced as one of a set rather than on their own. 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 anything downstream will normalise the text or force it to capitals.
Template and translation
Where needed, we create an English subtitle template first, then send it to a native Croatian subtitler.
Timing and quality checks
Subtitles are timed against the video and checked for reading speed, line length, consistent digraph encoding and capitalisation, and format compliance.
Delivery and display check
Files delivered in the format you need, with the digraphs and diacritics confirmed in the destination font rather than assumed.
Our standards
The specs we work to
Readable subtitles are a matter of measurable limits, not opinion. These are the defaults we apply to Croatian unless your style guide says otherwise.
Maximum per line
37 for broadcast delivery
Maximum on screen
Bottom-weighted, centred
Reading speed
13 for children's content
Minimum duration
Seven seconds maximum
A Croatian digraph is one letter to a reader and two characters to a counter, so a line that looks comfortably inside the limit on paper can be tight on screen. The subtitler condenses to fit the meaning rather than pushing reading speed past what a viewer can comfortably follow.
Deliverables
Professional subtitle formats
We adapt your existing translations into subtitle format or create subtitles from scratch, in Croatian, 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, digraphs and diacritics 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.
Croatian specifics
One file, one encoding, one authority
The digraph problem gets worse when a project has more than one source. Because there are two legitimate ways to write dž — as a single precomposed character or as d followed by ž — a file assembled from several suppliers can contain both, and they are not interchangeable to a search, a spell check, an automated QC pass or a character count. Picking one and holding it across the title is a deliverable decision, and we make it at the start rather than discovering it at QC.
Diacritics are not optional in names. č, ć, đ, š and ž are letters, and the č/ć distinction in particular separates real words and real surnames. Subtitle specs for Croatian require them to be kept in proper nouns, which rules out the habit of stripping accents to keep filenames or databases tidy.
Around five million people speak Croatian, and it has been an official EU language since 2013. The reference is the *Hrvatski pravopis* from the Institute for the Croatian Language, and our subtitlers work to it — including on the small things, such as low-high quotation marks and the rule that long forced-narrative passages drop out of capitals and back into sentence case so they stay readable.
Since 2008
Subtitling & captioning
100+
Languages covered
ISO 9001 & 14001
Certified processes
24–48h
Typical turnaround
Subtitling rates
Professional Croatian subtitling
For single videos and straightforward content where accurate, well-timed subtitles are what you need.
- Native Croatian subtitler
- Digraphs encoded consistently
- 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.
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.
Related services
The rest of your Croatian project
Subtitling & captioning in more languages
Native subtitlers for corporate video, eLearning, streaming, documentary and advertising. Browse another language, or ask us about yours.
Most common questions
How should dž, lj and nj be capitalised in Croatian subtitles?
Only the first character, when the word starts a sentence: Džungla, Ljubav, Njegov. When the whole word is in capitals, both characters go up: DŽUNGLA. The form automatic title-casing produces — DŽungla — is wrong, which is why we set capitals at source rather than leaving them to an editor or a stylesheet.
Why do my Croatian subtitles behave oddly in search or spell check?
Usually because the file mixes two encodings of the same digraph. Unicode has precomposed characters for dž, lj and nj as well as the ordinary two-letter spellings, and a file assembled from several sources can contain both. They look identical on screen and are different to any tool that compares text. We standardise on one across the title.
Can you strip the diacritics to keep our file names simple?
Not in the subtitles themselves. č, ć, đ, š and ž are letters rather than accents, and the č/ć distinction separates real words and real surnames, so removing them changes the text. We can deliver plain-ASCII file names alongside correctly spelled subtitle content if your system needs it.
Is a Croatian subtitle file the same as a Serbian or Bosnian one?
No. The three standards differ in spelling, vocabulary and some grammar, and audiences notice. We subtitle Croatian with native Croatian subtitlers working to the Croatian orthography, and we would do a separate file rather than relabel one.
How much does Croatian subtitling cost?
Croatian subtitling is priced per minute of video, from £18. Cost also depends on running time, whether transcription is needed first, whether you need SDH or burned-in output, and how many formats you require. Every job is quoted individually with our Price Match Promise.
Do you also add same-language Croatian captions, not just translated subtitles?
Yes. Alongside translating into Croatian, we produce same-language Croatian captions and SDH — the closed captioning teams need for accessibility and muted social. If your footage is already in Croatian and you just want accurate on-screen captions, that is core to our Croatian captioning service.
Can you work from my existing transcript or SRT file?
Absolutely. If you have a transcript or SRT we spot and time from it, checking first that the digraphs are encoded consistently and the diacritics survived however the file was last saved. Otherwise we transcribe the Croatian audio first. Every file gets the same linguistic and technical QA.
Which editing software are your subtitle files compatible with?
All the common ones. We deliver SRT, VTT, STL and TTML that keep č, ć, đ, š, ž and the digraphs 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 removes any dependency on the viewer's font.
Ready to subtitle your video in Croatian?
Send us your video and we'll come back with an exact, itemised quote.
Worth reading before you brief
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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