Subtitling · Finnish
Finnish subtitling services
Native Finnish subtitlers for corporate video, eLearning, streaming content, broadcast and advertising. Delivered in the format your platform requires. Part of a full Finnish language service: subtitles, voice over scripts, and translation of any content you need.
About Finnish subtitling
Finnish subtitles for one of Europe's most demanding subtitle audiences
Finland subtitles rather than dubs, and has done for decades. Finnish viewers read subtitles as a matter of routine, which makes them unusually quick to notice clumsy timing, unnatural phrasing, or a line that breaks in the wrong place.
Finnish belongs to the Uralic family, unrelated to the Indo-European languages that surround it, and it is heavily agglutinative: grammatical information that English expresses with prepositions and separate words is packed into endings, producing single words of considerable length.
The result is that Finnish subtitling is largely an exercise in condensation. The skill lies in preserving meaning and register inside a character limit rather than translating the sentence as written.
At GoLocalise, we work with native Finnish subtitlers and every file passes linguistic and technical QA before delivery.
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.
- Always visible
- Font, size, colour and position to match your brand
- 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
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 where the file is going to be published.
Template and translation
Where needed we create an English subtitle template first, then send it to a native Finnish subtitler.
Timing and quality checks
Subtitles are timed against the video and checked for reading speed, line length, break points, and format compliance.
Delivery
Your subtitle files in the format your platform requires, on budget and on time.
Our standards
The specs we work to
Readable subtitles are a matter of measurable limits, not opinion. These are the defaults we apply to Finnish unless your style guide says otherwise.
Maximum per line
37 for broadcast delivery
Maximum on screen
Bottom-weighted, centred
Reading speed
Lower for children's content
Minimum duration
Seven seconds maximum
Finnish builds long words by attaching endings rather than using separate prepositions and articles, and those words cannot be hyphenated across subtitle lines. A phrase that fits comfortably in English can become a single unbreakable word in Finnish. Rather than pushing reading speed past what a viewer can follow, the subtitler rewrites to fit, which is a translation skill rather than a mechanical one.
Deliverables
Professional subtitle formats
We adapt your existing translations into subtitle format or create subtitles from scratch, in Finnish, 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.
Finnish specifics
A Uralic language with Nordic neighbours
Finnish is a Uralic language, most closely related to Estonian and more distantly to Hungarian. Its grammar works on entirely different principles from the Indo-European languages spoken around it, which is why a subtitler who works in Swedish or German brings very little transferable instinct to it.
Sweden's long historical presence in Finland left loanwords in the vocabulary, and the two languages sit side by side in daily life, but they behave differently at every structural level. Content aimed at the Swedish-speaking population of Finland is its own version in Swedish, and we produce both where a project needs to reach the whole country.
On screen, the agglutination is what you feel. Meaning that English spreads across four or five short words arrives as one long one, and line breaks have to fall at points the grammar allows rather than wherever the character count runs out.
Subtitling rates
Professional Finnish subtitling
For single videos and straightforward content where accurate, well-timed subtitles are what you need.
- Native Finnish subtitler
- Condensed to reading speed
- 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 Finnish project
Most common questions
Because Finnish builds long words by attaching endings rather than using separate prepositions and articles, and those words cannot be hyphenated across subtitle lines. A phrase that fits comfortably in English can become a single unbreakable word in Finnish. Rather than pushing reading speed past what a viewer can follow, the subtitler rewrites to fit, which is a translation skill rather than a mechanical one.
Ready to subtitle your video in Finnish?
Send us your video and we'll come back with an exact, itemised quote.
Professional voice over services for your audio and video productions
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