Closed Captioning, Transcription & Translation Overview

This article will describe the media services we provide, which include Closed Captioning (CC), Transcription, and Translation. These media services can be ordered and applied to individual events or event templates.

Important Notes

• Closed Captioning services must be enabled to use Closed Captioning, Transcription, and Translation services. Contact Support to enable these services if you have not already.

• If Closed Captioning and/or Translation services are selected, CivicPlus automatically bills every month for any services rendered the previous month. All Closed Captioning charges are applied per minute, Machine Translation services charges are applied per word per language, and Human Translation services are applied per minute per language.

• Closed Captioning for events that do not start within 30 minutes of their scheduled start time will fail and will not be retried.

• Transcription is available at no additional cost for customers who use paid Closed Captioning services.

Closed Captioning (CC)

There are four ways to use Closed Captioning services:

• Machine Closed Captioning: An automated process that adds closed captioning

  • Machine Closed Captioning results in slightly lower accuracy but will have a short turnaround time. Generally, you will receive Closed Captions within double the length of the meeting. For example, if your meeting is 2 hours, you will receive Closed Captioning within 4 hours of processing. Contact Support if the process is taking a couple of days.

  • The cost of Machine Closed Captioning is charged by the minute; current rates can be found within the Create and Edit Event Template dialog boxes when working with event templates and within the Order/Upload Media Services dialog box when working with individual events.

• Human Closed Captioning: A real transcriptionist will perform captioning

  • Human Closed Captioning results in higher accuracy but will have a longer turnaround time. It may take up to 4 business days to receive the Closed Captioning, depending on the length of the meeting.

  • The cost of Human Closed Captioning is charged by the minute; current rates can be found within the Create and Edit Event Template dialog boxes when working with event templates and within the Order/Upload Media Services dialog box when working with individual events.

• Live Closed Captioning: Use Machine-based Closed Captioning on a Live Event

  • The cost of live Closed Captioning is charged by the minute; current rates can be found within the Order/Upload Media Services dialog box when working with individual events.

• No Closed Captioning Services Requested: Do not use Closed Captioning

For Machine Closed Captioning and Human Closed Captioning, there are two ways to apply Closed Captioning:

• Pre-Recorded Media: If you already have media within your event, Closed Captioning will start processing as soon as you click the Save button

• No Recorded Media: If you have not yet recorded your event, Closed Captioning will start processing as soon as you upload Media into your event

Transcription

The Transcription service provides a plain-text output that does not contain time-coding data. It is available to all customers with Closed Captioning services activated at no cost and with no additional processing time. Transcription files are available for download from the Public Portal media player.

Translation

The Translation service provides an expression of the original Closed Captioning file in the desired target language. There are two ways to use Translation services:

• Machine Translation: An automated process that adds translation

  • Machine Translation results in slightly lower accuracy, but will have a short turnaround time.

  • The cost of Machine Translation is charged per word per language; current rates can be found within the Create and Edit Event Template dialog boxes when working with event templates and within the Order/Upload Media Services dialog box when working with individual events.

• Human Translation: A real translator will perform the translation

  • Human Translation results in higher accuracy, but will have a longer turnaround time. For example, it may take up to 5 business days to receive the translation of a meeting that is under two hours long.

  • The cost of Human Translation is charged per minute per language; current rates can be found within the Create and Edit Event Template dialog boxes when working with event templates and within the Order/Upload Media Services dialog box when working with individual events.

Available Translation Languages

Note:

The list of languages below is provided for your convenience and may not be exhaustive. For the most accurate and up-to-date list of translation languages, please see the Translation field in the Media Services or Event Template dialogs: