

While captions provide visual transcriptions in the same language as the original content, subtitles translate the words into a different language.

Subtitles serve the same function but in a different way. Whether you’re watching a movie on TV or viewing a live-streamed video, captions appear (usually at the bottom of the screen) to provide a text version of everything that is said. Captions provide a word-for-word text transcription of the spoken words in a video or audio file.

Though many people use the terms interchangeably, “captions” (also known as “closed captions” or “closed captioning”) and “subtitles” are two very different things.
