How to manage a team of subtitle translators

Most subtitle work moves through five steps. A small team can give two steps to one person. Give the review step to a second person.

The template file

Netflix describes a subtitle template as a file that is edited, positioned, researched, annotated, and checked. It is timed to the shots and the audio. Translators use it as the base for their own language. Netflix makes annotations mandatory on its templates: notes on idioms, jokes, tone, and how characters relate. Netflix does not expect a template to be word for word.

You do not need a template for every job. With one or two languages, translators can work from the video and a transcript. A template saves time when many languages share the same timing, because the timing work happens once.

Why the reviewer is a second person

ISO 17100, the standard for translation services, makes revision by a second person mandatory. It also lists project managers among the roles it covers. Amara gives the same advice for its review step: the person who subtitles should not be the person who reviews.

Pivot templates

A template in a third language, often English, is a pivot template. Every translation then comes from a translation. A mistake in the pivot reaches every language. Netflix asks for extensive annotations on pivot templates and for a close match to the source meaning. If you use a pivot, give translators a way to ask the template author questions.

The unit of work is one video in one language. Give each unit one owner at a time and one status. Everything else follows from that.

Keep a tracker with one row for each unit. This example, with made-up data, shows the columns that answer the question “who has the Spanish file?”

• Update “Since” at every handoff. The date tells you when to ask. A file that waits for a reviewer for five days needs a message. A file that a translator has had for two days may not.
• Use a short, fixed list of status words. For example: not started, translating, in review, changes requested, approved, delivered. Add no new words during a project.
• Write language tags, not only language names. The W3C advises short tags such as fr, and adds a region only when it matters. For Latin American Spanish, the W3C gives es-419. If a client wants Brazilian and European Portuguese, write pt-BR and pt-PT.
• Name one contact for translators. ATA advises clients to appoint one person who answers questions, tracks progress, receives the final files, and handles invoices. In a team, that person is usually you.

Count your units before you choose a method. Ten videos in five languages is 50 rows, and each row has its own status.

A review note is useful only when the translator can find the line at once. Give two facts for each note: the cue number and the start time. Cue numbers change when someone splits or merges cues, and a start time changes when someone retimes a cue. The two together find the cue.

1#212  00:04:12,300  ERROR   "Cinco" should be "quince". Source says fifteen.2#214  00:04:19,800  STYLE   Use "usted" with the client. See style guide, page 2.3#231  00:04:58,100  QUERY   Is "Hero Pass" a product name? Glossary has no entry.

Change requests

The reviewer sends the file back with the notes. The translator answers each note: fixed, or not fixed with a reason. The reviewer closes each note. Agree on a maximum number of rounds before the project starts. Two is a common choice. After that, the coordinator decides.

Approval and one approved version

Approve when every note is closed and the file passes your QC checks. Run the checks before the review, so reviewers spend their time on meaning and not on line length. See the subtitle QC checklist.

After approval, stop work on the file. Keep one approved file for each video and language, and send the client only that file. If someone must change it later, reopen it on purpose, make the change, and approve it again.

Style rules differ by language and by client. Keep one style guide for each client and language, and one glossary for each client and language.

Public guides show how much rules differ. Netflix publishes a general guide and a separate guide for many languages. AVTE lists national subtitling guidelines for Croatian, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Norwegian, Slovenian, and Swedish. Start from the public guide for the language, then write down only where your client is different.

What goes in a style guide

ATA’s Savvy Linguist blog gives this advice: keep the guide short and well organized, because long guides go unused. List the audience, the tone, the terms to leave untranslated, and the conventions for measures, currencies, and abbreviations. Add reference documents. The same article says a guide saves time for reviewers, because they do not need to ask the same questions twice.

What goes in a glossary

This example glossary uses made-up terms.

ATA advises translators to record where each term came from, so someone can check it later. Add a column for it.

Names and formality

For Netflix titles, Netflix requires key name prototype (KNP) tables and formality tables, built and used during translation. The reason applies to any series: a character called by three names in three episodes confuses viewers. Build the name list before the second translator starts.

How to share them

• Send the same link to every translator and reviewer of a language.
• Put a date and an owner at the top of each document.
• Let translators propose terms. Let one person, the lead reviewer for the language, accept them.
• Send each change to the whole language team on the day you accept it.
• Pay for the time. In the AVTE survey of 1,966 audiovisual translators, unpaid tasks included filling in KNPs and online charts. Translators estimated their unpaid work of this kind at 1 hour 56 minutes a week on average.

The handoff package

ATA lists what a client should give a translator: the material, style guides, glossaries, and earlier translations. For subtitles, send this each time:

• The video, or a low-resolution copy of it.
• The template or source subtitle file.
• The style guide and the glossary for the language.
• The deadline, with a time zone.
• The contact for questions.
• Notes on hard lines: slang, jokes, names, and text on the screen.

Deadlines

Work backward from the client’s date. Give each stage its own deadline: translation, review, changes, approval, delivery. Leave time for one round of changes. ATA also advises you to agree on a final date with the translator. A rush may cost extra.

File names

Put the things that never change in the name: client, video, and language. Keep the status in your tracker. If you must send files by email, add the stage and a date. Never write “final”. ATA’s tips for translators also say to follow the client’s file-naming instructions, so write them in the brief.

Ask everyone to save SRT files as UTF-8. Other encodings break accented letters and non-Latin scripts. The subtitle formats guide gives the reasons.

When the project ends, archive the source and the approved files together. ATA advises keeping both the original and the translated files.

A spreadsheet and an inbox can run a small job. One language, one translator, one reviewer, and a few videos work. The trouble starts when the number of files grows. These are the usual failures.

• Lost versions. The translator fixes final_v3.srt. The reviewer opens final_v3_REVIEWED.srt, which was made before the fix. Someone has to merge the two by hand, and some fixes are lost.
• Unclear status. The tracker says “in review”. The file is in an inbox that no one has opened for three days. The tracker is only as current as the last person who updated it.
• Notes on the wrong line. A sheet row is not a cue number. The sheet has a header row. The translator has split a cue. Note 212 now points to a different cue.
• Copies, not one file. An email attachment is a copy. Three people who reply to the same email hold three copies.
• Terms nobody reads. The glossary is a separate sheet. The translator does not open it when time is short.
• Broken characters. Someone opens the file in a program that guesses the wrong encoding and saves it.

You can reduce all of these with the habits in this guide: one owner for each file, one tracker, notes with a cue number and a time, and one approved file. A tool can enforce the habits, so no one has to remember them.

Test file

Send each candidate the same short clip from material like the real work. Mark it against your style guide, and send back the marks. Test timing as well as translation. Pay for the test unless it is very short.

Large buyers have tested too. In 2017 Netflix announced Hermes, an online test of subtitling and translation skills. Nimdzi reports that Netflix shut it down in 2018.

Contract

In the AVTE survey, 42% of translators said they sign a contract with their clients. 43% said it depends on the client. 15% said no. AVTE argues that translations are authored work, so a contract should state who owns the work and how the client may use it.

A short agreement should cover:

• The rate, and what it is a rate for: minute, word, or subtitle.
• What else you pay for: name lists, glossary work, and rounds of changes.
• The payment date.
• The deadline and what happens when it moves.
• Ownership, credit, and confidentiality.

Credit is a real issue. Netflix’s style guide requires a translator credit on episodic content and features. It allows you to drop the credit only when the translator submits a formal waiver.

Rates

See subtitle translation rates for the numbers. AVTE also links to rate calculators from its member associations. Most turn a client’s offered rate into an estimated monthly income.

First job

Give a new translator a short first job with a quick review, and share the review notes. Pay on the date you promised. Let one person handle questions and invoices, so the translator always knows whom to ask.

Subtitle workflow tools

These facts come from each product’s public pages on 2026.10.13. Plans change, so check the pages before you decide.

• Amara. Amara Plus teams have an optional review step. The reviewer clicks Publish to mark the subtitles complete, and team members can still edit completed subtitles. Users can compare revisions and roll back. Amara Enterprise has a workflow with transcription or translation, review, and approval, and custom roles. It has no public price.
• CaptionHub. Its help pages describe direct assignment with review: a superuser or producer assigns linguists and reviewers for each language. Reviewers can hand over, decline, or approve. Approved captions lock for linguists. Comments attach to single captions on some plans. The product sends email at each handoff.
• Smartcat. A translation platform. A manager assigns tasks to team members or freelancers and sets a separate deadline for each stage. Managers get email on every status change.
• CaptionsHero. A subtitle workflow tool for teams. On the Team and Studio plans, you set an editor and a reviewer for each language. Reviewers comment on exact lines, request changes, and approve. Members get email, and a dashboard shows progress. The editor has a waveform timeline, frame-accurate timing, and Netflix-style QC. It imports and exports SRT and VTT only, so a client who needs another format needs a converter. Team costs $149 a month for 8 seats and Studio costs $399 a month for 20 seats, with no sales call. Solo is free.

Questions to ask any tool

• Can I see who has each file, and since when?
• Does a comment point to a cue and a time?
• Is there one locked approved version?
• Does a translator need a paid seat? Does a client reviewer?
• Can it export the format my client asks for?