Do you want to become a professional subtitler?

Build your career in audiovisual translation with us

  • Are you a translator? Do you already work as a professional translator of written texts and you want to add subtitling to your portfolio of skills?

  • Are you a linguist? Harness your linguistic skills for audiovisual localisation - join our course on subtitling fundamentals!

  • Have you dabbled in fansubbing? If you tried volunteering work in subtitling and you loved it, why not take your skills to the next level and make a career in the subtitling industry?

Learn subtitling from the convenience of your home

The flexibility you need from a professional career course

Learn the fundamentals of subtitling, such as translation strategies, text condensation, typographical conventions  more without having to leave the house.

What you will get from this course

  • Premium learning experience

    Gain access to our full suite of training materials created by experienced audiovisual translation trainers

  • Video lessons and tutorials

    Learn from our engaging video tutorials full of practical examples

  • Hands-on exercises

    Practise subtitling with lots of engaging exercises

  • Downloadable resources

    Download our handouts for future use in your subtitling projects

  • Social media learning community

    Gain unlimited access to our private Facebook group to engage in discussions with your fellow students

What our students are saying

Ravi Shankar

5 star rating

“I highly recommend the AVT Masterclass course for all those who are interested in learning the fundamentals and applications of subtitling, either for work or simply to acquire a new skill. I completed two courses, ‘Fundamentals of Subtitling’ and...”

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“I highly recommend the AVT Masterclass course for all those who are interested in learning the fundamentals and applications of subtitling, either for work or simply to acquire a new skill. I completed two courses, ‘Fundamentals of Subtitling’ and ‘Timing Subtitles 101’ as part of the bundle package (I highly recommend), so that I could become qualified to become a subtitler for my work. Previously, I had no experience with subtitling but Professor Agnieszka Szarkowska and Lukasz Dutka, the course instructors, are very welcoming and guide you through the course material in a fun and friendly manner. Both of the courses are broken down into bite-size lessons of around 5-7 minutes long, which is ideal to be able to digest the information and study at your own pace. Each lesson is followed up with a short quiz to test you on the new material that you have learnt. I really enjoyed the fact that you could go back to previous lessons and quizzes at a later time to recap any material. After completing the courses, I definitely felt that I had grasped the fundamentals of subtitling and I am now successfully working as a subtitler and audiovisual translator, which is very satisfying and enjoyable. A big thank you to the AVT Masterclass team for organising a thoroughly enjoyable and educational experience. ”

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Dylan Camilleri

5 star rating

“The course is well structured. All concepts are clearly explained. This course gives you all the necessary information and details you need to know to complete the first step in becoming a professional subtitler. ”

“The course is well structured. All concepts are clearly explained. This course gives you all the necessary information and details you need to know to complete the first step in becoming a professional subtitler. ”

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Ade Indarta

5 star rating

“Though I have been working as subtitler for several years, this course really filled the knowledge gaps that I did not even realised they are there. Throughout hours of interactive courses with practices and quizes, I learnt (again) about the basi...”

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“Though I have been working as subtitler for several years, this course really filled the knowledge gaps that I did not even realised they are there. Throughout hours of interactive courses with practices and quizes, I learnt (again) about the basics of subtitling in a very structured and detailed manner. The video quality is very professional and Agnieszka's explanation is very clear and assuring. Would recommend this course to everyone who wants to brush up their subtitling knowledge. ”

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Simone da Luz Taylor

5 star rating

“Great course to give you a kickstart into the world of subtitling. It covers all the essential info in the area, such as CPS, forced narratives or segmentation. Great value and so easy to follow. ”

“Great course to give you a kickstart into the world of subtitling. It covers all the essential info in the area, such as CPS, forced narratives or segmentation. Great value and so easy to follow. ”

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Justin Hillier

4 star rating

“I found this course very helpful and easy to use. The talking head presentations were easy to follow and made the learning feel more active. The downloads are helpful to keep. The quizzes were a little too simple in parts and as a French to Englis...”

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“I found this course very helpful and easy to use. The talking head presentations were easy to follow and made the learning feel more active. The downloads are helpful to keep. The quizzes were a little too simple in parts and as a French to English translator, it would have been nice to see some exercises for other languages (although I appreciate the training is all in English which might make things less easy for non-native speakers).”

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Anna Shevchuk

5 star rating

“My name is Anna from Ukraine. I would like to thank the creators of these course for gathering all the related information in well structured block of lesson with accompanying quizzes. I recommend this course and invite all those who are intereste...”

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“My name is Anna from Ukraine. I would like to thank the creators of these course for gathering all the related information in well structured block of lesson with accompanying quizzes. I recommend this course and invite all those who are interested to enrol and start their way to becoming a professional subtitler.”

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Natalia Sushko

5 star rating

“I am very thankful to the whole team who created this course and the given opportunity to study this course for free for Ukrainian. These days, we receive the best support. Thank you very much for the detailed explanations, for the possibility to ...”

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“I am very thankful to the whole team who created this course and the given opportunity to study this course for free for Ukrainian. These days, we receive the best support. Thank you very much for the detailed explanations, for the possibility to make some practical exercises. It's the best method of giving information I've ever met. I like the quiz part the best, because thanks to this, I can always double-check if I understood everything correctly. ”

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Inna Myhyrych

5 star rating

“This is an excellent course, especially for beginners like me. It is presented in a form of short but very informative video tutorials. So, you spend minimum time and get maximum knowledge. Plus, many resources are provided.”

“This is an excellent course, especially for beginners like me. It is presented in a form of short but very informative video tutorials. So, you spend minimum time and get maximum knowledge. Plus, many resources are provided.”

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Iryna Chyrieva

5 star rating

“I have experience of translating and interpreting, so I thought it would be easy to do subtitling - just translate the text. Little did I know. Subtitling has a lot of nuances and if you want to be a professional - you have to know all of them. I ...”

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“I have experience of translating and interpreting, so I thought it would be easy to do subtitling - just translate the text. Little did I know. Subtitling has a lot of nuances and if you want to be a professional - you have to know all of them. I think this course is a good start for those who have never done subtitling and want to understand what it looks like from the inside. The information was presented well, you would do exercises and I loved the speakers - full of light and knowledge. Going to pass some of the other courses here!”

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Oksana Duduk

5 star rating

“I would like to leave my review on the course Fundamentals of Subtitling, which l have done recently. To start with,l need to mention it is my first experience ever with AVT Masterclass and l am totally charmed. The course was so well-constructed ...”

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“I would like to leave my review on the course Fundamentals of Subtitling, which l have done recently. To start with,l need to mention it is my first experience ever with AVT Masterclass and l am totally charmed. The course was so well-constructed that you would never get tired of the lesson. Highly professional lecturers, lots of examples, and simple explanations made me follow the course tightly. Furthermore, there were PDFs available to help you remember the information better. I do really appreciate the work which your team is doing and looking forward to studying further. Thank you once more and again)”

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star rating

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Matthew Schetina

5 star rating

“This is a great course for anyone wanting to get a general, broad overview of subtitling best practices. While it is mainly geared towards linguists, I am a project manager who handles AVT jobs. I found it equally useful because I now have a bette...”

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“This is a great course for anyone wanting to get a general, broad overview of subtitling best practices. While it is mainly geared towards linguists, I am a project manager who handles AVT jobs. I found it equally useful because I now have a better understanding of timings, template creation, and linguistic matters to consider. I will use these to help ensure my linguists have all they need to thrive. ”

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Showcase your skills

CERTIFICATE OF COMPLETION

Once you complete the course, you'll receive a Certificate of Completion. Certificates are a great way to document your learning! You can share them on social media and use them with clients, employers or colleagues.
A woman holding a university diploma

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Our guarantee

We are confident in the quality of our courses, which has been confirmed by many satisfied students. That’s why we are able to offer a 100% money-back guarantee.

If you buy the course and find that you did not learn anything new or that you think the course is not in line with its description or syllabus, we will refund you 100% of what you paid. [See “Terms of use” for details.]
We offer 100% money-back guarantee.

Course syllabus

What will you learn?

    1. 📽️ How is subtitling different from written translation?

    2. 🎯 Quiz on how subtitling is different from other types of translation

    1. 📽️ Constraints in subtitling - Part 1: Spatial

    2. 📽️ Constraints in subtitling - Part 2: Temporal

    3. 🎯 Quiz on subtitling constraints

    1. 📽️ What does "reading speed" mean in subtitling?

    2. 📽️ Why reading speed matters?

    3. 🎯 Quiz on reading speed in subtitling

    4. 👩‍🎓 What's the optimum reading speed? (INTERVIEW)

      FREE PREVIEW
    1. 📽️ How to condense text in subtitling?

    2. 📽️ Understanding omission and redundancy

    3. 🎯 Quiz on condensation

    4. 🏋 🤸 Let's practise condensation

About this course

  • €149,00
  • 44 lessons
  • 1.5 hours of video content

Want to learn how to time subtitles too?

Why not choose our bundle: Fundamentals + Timing Subtitles 101?

  • Beginner's guide to subtitling

    By choosing the bundle, you will get access to the Fundamentals of Subtitling and Timing Subtitles 101, which includes hands-on exercises and discounts on professional subtitling software OOONA and EZTitles.

    €299,00

    Choose our bundle and save money!

Meet your instructors

Experienced audiovisual translation trainers

Prof. Agnieszka Szarkowska is a researcher and translator trainer, academic teacher and audiovisual translation consultant. Agnieszka works in the Institute of Applied Linguistics at the University of Warsaw, leads the research group Audiovisual Translation Lab (AVT Lab), and is also an Honorary Research Associate at University College London. With over 20 years of hands-on teaching experience, Agnieszka has trained hundreds of students internationally to become high-quality professionals in the audiovisual translation industry. Agnieszka is the author of over 70 publications on audiovisual translation and principal investigator of several research projects. She is also a member of the European Association for Studies in Screen Translation (ESIST), European Society for Translation Studies (EST) and an honorary member of the Polish Audiovisual Translators Association (STAW).

Agnieszka Szarkowska

AVT Masterclass Co-founder

Meet your instructors

Experienced audiovisual translation trainers

Łukasz Dutka is an audiovisual translator, subtitling trainer and expert in media accessibility. He's one of the founders of AVT Masterclass, a former director of the Global Alliance of Speech-to-Text Captioning, and a member of the Management Board of Dostepni.eu, an accessibility services provider. He studied applied linguistics as well as comparative literature. In 2012, he became an in-house subtitler for Polish public broadcaster and was responsible for SDH subtitling and semi-live subtitling of news broadcasts. As a member of Dostepni.eu team, he pioneered live subtitling through respeaking in Poland with the first accessible political and social events in 2013, first interlingual live subtitling in 2015 and first Polish television broadcast with live subtitling through respeaking in 2017. Since 2012, he has worked as a freelance subtitler and QC'er for leading localization companies, including working on many high-level titles. In 2019, he helped set up a live subtitling unit for Polsat, a leading TV broadcaster in Poland. He has nine years of experience in running training programmes for companies as well as teaching university-level courses on audiovisual translation, subtitling, subtitling for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, and interpreting. He is a member of the Polish Association of Audiovisual Translators, the University of Warsaw Audiovisual Translation Lab (AVT Lab), European Society for Translation Studies (EST) and European Association for Studies in Screen Translation (ESIST). Born by the mountains, he now lives by the ocean in a multilingual family that speaks Polish, English, Spanish, Italian, Swedish and Portuguese. He's a passionate movie-goer, reader, swimmer, chocolate-eater and a coffee addict.

Łukasz Dutka

AVT Masterclass Co-founder

Meet your instructors

Experienced audiovisual translation trainers

Agnieszka Walczak, PhD, is a translator, translator trainer and media accessibility expert. She holds a Master’s degree in Applied Linguistics from the University of Warsaw. She graduated with honours, defending the first thesis in Poland on text-to-speech audio description. She has also completed postgraduate studies on audiovisual translation at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities. Defended at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Agnieszka’s doctoral dissertation focused on the reception of audio description and was produced within the framework of the European Project Hybrid Broadcast Broadband for All. She is a member of the TransMedia Catalonia Research Group and University of Warsaw Audiovisual Translation Lab (AVT Lab). Agnieszka is the author of over 15 publications on audiovisual translation. University lecturer for almost 10 years (Autonomous University of Barcelona, University of Warsaw, Maria Curie-Sklodowska University, University of Łódź). Agnieszka combines her academic expertise with experience in the audiovisual localization industry. She has been working as a freelance subtitler and audio describer for various linear and non-linear providers for over 10 years. She has also experience from working with global media production and post-production companies. Member of European Society for Translation Studies (EST), European Association for Studies in Screen Translation (ESIST) and Polish Audiovisual Translators Association (STAW).

Agnieszka Walczak

AVT Masterclass Co-founder

FAQ

Any questions?

  • What languages will I translate to and from?

    All exercises are in English. You will be translating from English into your mother tongue. Please note the course is language-agnostic. We won't be able to verify your translation solutions, but you will receive a key to most exercises.

  • How long does it take to complete the course?

    Usually the students take a few days to complete this course, but it's up to you - the duration of the course depends on your individual needs and the time you have. You can even do it in one day! Please remember that by signing up, you get a one-year access to the course and lifetime access to our social media learning community.

  • Will I have to attend regular online classes?

    No, this course is self-paced, which means you can do as much as you want at a time. You're in full control of your learning process. Join our private Facebook group to network with your fellow students.

  • Do I need any subtitling software?

    No, in this course we cover the fundamentals of subtitling (temporal and spatial constraints, condensation, translation techniques) without working in a subtitling tool. Please check our other courses to get free 3-month access to professional subtitling software (OOONA and EZTitles). If you haven't got any subtitling or translation experience, we recommend taking our bundle including the FUNDAMENTALS OF SUBTITLING & TIMING SUBTITLES 101.

  • Can I get an invoice for the course with my company/organization details?

    Sure! All you need to do is send us your organization details (name, address, VAT number) at [email protected]. Our accounting team will be back with the invoice.