A subtitle is not something that is displayed; it is something that gets read. The same settings produce completely different results in an auditorium and in a small meeting room. This is how to match the layout to the room.
Per-language panels vs a subtitle feed
Per-language panels give each language its own area, scrolling on its own. The audience learns where their language lives once and then only looks there, which makes it far easier to read at three languages or more.
The subtitle feed turns each sentence into a card with every translation inside it. That suits a workshop where people are comparing the original against the translation sentence by sentence, or a small meeting with one or two languages.
Type size by room
- Small meeting room (under 10 m) — 100%, the default
- Seminar room (10–20 m) — 130–150%
- Auditorium (over 20 m) — 170% or more, and no more than three languages on screen
Bigger type means fewer sentences stay on screen. If the speaker is fast, cutting a language is always better than cutting the type size.
Themes
- Dark — the default for a dimmed auditorium
- Light — daytime events with a lot of windows, or a bright screen
- High contrast — public events with accessibility requirements (yellow on black)
- Broadcast — when the screen is also being filmed or streamed
Language order, and hiding one
You can reorder the languages and hide any of them from the screen. A hidden language keeps being translated and recorded, so a language you take off the wall can still go out over audience QR.
Put your largest audience's language top-left, next to the original — it is where eyes land first. Panels can be dragged to swap places, so you can decide this in rehearsal, looking at the screen, rather than in advance.
Whether to show the original
The original panel is also the window through which the speaker and the operator can see that recognition is working. Leave it on unless you have a reason. Turning it off makes the translation panels bigger, and makes recognition errors much harder to catch in the room.