Subtitling · Czech
Czech subtitling services
Native Czech subtitlers for corporate video, eLearning, documentary, broadcast and advertising. Delivered with line breaks that follow Czech typographic rules, in the format your platform requires. Part of a full Czech language service: subtitles, voice over scripts, and translation of any content you need.
About Czech subtitling
Czech takes away places where you are allowed to break the line
Czech typographic rules do not allow a one-letter preposition or conjunction — u, k, o, s, v, z, a, i — to be left at the end of a line. It has to stay attached to the word that follows it, joined by a non-breaking space. In a printed paragraph that is a refinement. In a two-line subtitle capped at 42 characters, it removes break points that other languages take for granted.
The practical effect is that a Czech line which is technically short enough can still be unbreakable in the only place it would fit. The answer is not to break it anyway; it is to rewrite the line so it works — which is editorial work, done at translation time rather than patched afterwards.
At GoLocalise, we work with native Czech subtitlers who segment to Czech rules from the start, so the file arrives correctly broken instead of correctly counted.
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 fixes the line breaks at delivery, so no player re-wraps them into something a Czech reader would flinch at.
- 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 Czech subtitles or same-language Czech captions and SDH — in whichever form your platform and audience require.
What we subtitle
Czech subtitling for every kind of content
Czech subtitling is dominated by corporate and manufacturing clients with European headquarters in Prague and Brno, alongside a well-established film and animation industry — work where house style guides are detailed and the typographic conventions are expected to be met. 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 rather than honouring the breaks in the file.
Template and translation
Where needed, we create an English subtitle template first, then send it to a native Czech subtitler.
Timing and quality checks
Subtitles are timed against the video and checked for reading speed, line length, Czech break rules and non-breaking spaces, and format compliance.
Delivery and display check
Files delivered in the format you need, with the breaks confirmed as they will actually appear rather than as they look in the editor.
Our standards
The specs we work to
Readable subtitles are a matter of measurable limits, not opinion. These are the defaults we apply to Czech 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
The character count is only half the constraint in Czech: a line also has to break somewhere the language allows. That is why Czech subtitles are condensed at translation time rather than re-wrapped afterwards — moving the break is often simply not available.
Deliverables
Professional subtitle formats
We adapt your existing translations into subtitle format or create subtitles from scratch, in Czech, 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, breaks 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.
Czech specifics
Three letters, a decimal comma and a set of quotation marks
Czech spelling is close to fully phonemic, which makes it unusually unforgiving: the letters are doing real work and losing one is not a typo, it is a different word. ě, ř and ů are the three that travel worst, because none of them exists in the Western European character set that a file saved as plain 'ANSI' defaults to. A Czech subtitle file has to be saved in an encoding that has room for them, or in Unicode.
The conventions around them are equally specific and equally easy to get wrong from an English template: low-high quotation marks rather than straight ones, a proper ellipsis character rather than three full stops, a decimal comma rather than a point, and numbers up to ten spelled out.
About ten million people speak Czech, almost all of them in Czechia, and the reference for all of this is the Institute of the Czech Language at the Academy of Sciences. It is a single, well-defined market with a settled written standard — which means there is no ambiguity to hide behind when a file comes back wrong.
Since 2008
Subtitling & captioning
100+
Languages covered
ISO 9001 & 14001
Certified processes
24–48h
Typical turnaround
Subtitling rates
Professional Czech subtitling
For single videos and straightforward content where accurate, well-timed subtitles are what you need.
- Native Czech subtitler
- Breaks set to Czech rules
- 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 Czech 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
Why can't a Czech subtitle line break wherever it fits?
Because Czech typographic rules do not allow a one-letter preposition or conjunction — u, k, o, s, v, z, a, i — to be left stranded at the end of a line. It has to stay with the word it belongs to. That removes break points other languages can use, so Czech lines are written to fit rather than re-wrapped to fit.
My Czech subtitles lost their ě, ř and ů. What happened?
The file was almost certainly saved in a Western European encoding, which has no room for those three letters. Czech needs either a Central European encoding or Unicode. Since Czech spelling is close to phonemic, losing a letter changes the word rather than just looking untidy, so we check the file's encoding on arrival and on delivery.
Do you follow Czech punctuation conventions, or English ones?
Czech ones, as standard. That means low-high quotation marks rather than straight ones, a single ellipsis character rather than three full stops, a decimal comma, and numbers up to ten written out. These are the details that make a file read as translated rather than adapted, and they are easy to miss when working from an English template.
Will a player re-wrap the lines you deliver?
Some will, and it is worth deciding up front. If your platform reflows text, the safest route is burned-in subtitles, which fix the breaks in the picture. If it honours the file, we deliver the breaks where Czech wants them and they stay there. Either way we check against the environment rather than the editor.
How much does Czech subtitling cost?
Czech 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 Czech captions, not just translated subtitles?
Yes. Alongside translating into Czech, we produce same-language Czech captions and SDH — the closed captioning teams need for accessibility and muted social. If your footage is already in Czech and you just want accurate on-screen captions, that is core to our Czech 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, re-checking the line breaks against Czech rules — inherited files very often break where an English tool decided they could. Otherwise we transcribe the Czech 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 the diacritics and the non-breaking spaces 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 Czech?
Send us your video and we'll come back with an exact, itemised quote.
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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