Subtitling · Russian
Russian subtitling services
Native Russian subtitlers for corporate video, eLearning, streaming content, documentary, and advertising. Delivered to platform specification, correctly encoded. Part of a full Russian language service: subtitles, transcripts, voice over scripts, and translation of any content you need.
About Russian subtitling
Russian subtitles produced by native subtitlers
Russian has around 145 million native speakers, with roughly 65 million more using it as a second language, and it is used widely across the former Soviet states as well as in Russia itself.
Russian has longer words and case endings that carry grammatical information English expresses with separate words. Subtitle lines have fixed limits, so the work is largely condensation: keeping the meaning and register inside the character count rather than translating the sentence as written.
At GoLocalise, we work with native Russian 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
Russian subtitling for every kind of content
Russian subtitling covers corporate, eLearning, documentary and streaming, each with its own conventions for Cyrillic rendering and text length. 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 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 Russian 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 Russian 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
Russian words run longer, and case endings carry information English expresses with prepositions and articles. Rather than raising reading speed or letting lines overflow, the subtitler condenses to preserve meaning inside the character limit, which is why subtitling experience matters more here than general translation ability.
Deliverables
Professional subtitle formats
We adapt your existing translations into subtitle format or create subtitles from scratch, in Russian, 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 →
Russian specifics
Cyrillic, and where it still breaks
Cyrillic is well supported in modern systems but still causes problems in older broadcast workflows and in files passed between tools that default to a Latin character set. It is worth confirming the delivery specification before production rather than discovering it at handover.
In practice the failure point is legacy STL. Modern formats take Cyrillic without difficulty, but older broadcast files can still corrupt the character set when the encoding is not set correctly. Tell us the delivery specification at the brief stage and the files will conform to it.
Russian is also spoken well beyond Russia, and source audio often carries it: speakers from Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus and the Baltic countries, with their own accents and borrowed vocabulary. We assign a subtitler comfortable with the variety in your recording rather than treating one standard as covering all of them.
Since 2008
Subtitling & captioning
100+
Languages covered
ISO 9001 & 14001
Certified processes
In-house
Subtitling team & studios
Subtitling rates
Professional Russian subtitling
For single videos and straightforward content where accurate, well-timed subtitles are what you need.
- Native Russian subtitler
- Cyrillic encoded to your spec
- 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 Russian 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
Generally yes. Russian words run longer, and case endings carry information English expresses with prepositions and articles. Rather than raising reading speed or letting lines overflow, the subtitler condenses to preserve meaning inside the character limit, which is why subtitling experience matters more here than general translation ability.
Ready to subtitle your video in Russian?
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