Subtitling · Polish
Polish subtitling services
Native Polish subtitlers for corporate video, eLearning, streaming content, documentary and advertising. Delivered to platform specification, correctly encoded. Part of a full Polish language service: subtitles, voice over scripts, and translation of any content you need.
About Polish subtitling
Polish subtitles written to fit, not to fill
Polish is the largest West Slavic language and the official language of Poland, with around 40 million speakers.
Polish is heavily inflected: nouns, adjectives, and numerals all decline, and the endings that carry that information add length to almost every sentence. Polish also has no articles, which saves a little, but the net effect against English is expansion.
Subtitle lines have fixed limits, so the subtitler condenses rather than translating the sentence as written.
At GoLocalise, we work with native Polish 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
What we subtitle
Polish subtitling for every kind of content
Polish subtitling spans corporate rollouts, eLearning, film and social, and Poland's strong subtitle-reading habit shapes each. These are the project types we subtitle 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 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 Polish subtitler.
Timing and quality checks
Subtitles are timed against the video and checked for reading speed, line length, character encoding, 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 Polish 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
Polish carries grammatical information in word endings, which adds characters across most sentences, and the absence of articles only partly offsets it. Instead of raising reading speed or letting lines overflow, the subtitler condenses to keep the meaning inside the character limit, which is a translation skill rather than a technical adjustment.
Deliverables
Professional subtitle formats
We adapt your existing translations into subtitle format or create subtitles from scratch, in Polish, 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.
Need a different format? Convert SRT, VTT and more with our free subtitle converter →
Polish specifics
Three ways Poland watches, and two ways it breaks
Alongside dubbing and subtitling, Polish television has a long tradition of the lektor, a single voice read over the original audio. Viewers are used to all three, and which one a project uses is a distribution decision worth settling before the subtitle brief.
Polish also distinguishes formal from informal address: formal uses Pan and Pani with third person verb forms, informal is for people who know each other. Corporate and instructional content generally stays formal, while dialogue-driven material should reflect the relationships between speakers.
And Polish diacritics break in older workflows. Characters such as ą, ę, ł, ś, ż and ź are the ones that typically fail when a file passes through a tool that defaults to a Latin character set without Polish support. Tell us the delivery specification and we will supply files encoded correctly for it.
Since 2008
Subtitling & captioning
100+
Languages covered
ISO 9001 & 14001
Certified processes
In-house
Subtitling team & studios
Subtitling rates
Professional Polish subtitling
For single videos and straightforward content where accurate, well timed subtitles are what you need.
- Native Polish subtitler
- Formal or informal register
- 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 Polish 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
Usually. Polish carries grammatical information in word endings, which adds characters across most sentences, and the absence of articles only partly offsets it. Instead of raising reading speed or letting lines overflow, the subtitler condenses to keep the meaning inside the character limit, which is a translation skill rather than a technical adjustment.
Ready to subtitle your video in Polish?
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