Truecasing is the process of restoring case information or capitalisation to badly-cased or noncased text. Truecasing is particularily important in subtitling use cases, in particular you are producing subtitles starting from a Subtitle Template or a Master Template.

Truecasing refers to the process of converting text to its proper case, where each word is capitalised correctly as per standard grammatical rules. This involves ensuring that proper names, sentence beginnings, and other contextually significant words are capitalised appropriately while other words remain in lowercase. Truecasing is important for readability and maintaining the correct meaning of the text.


For example:

  • Incorrectly cased text: "the quick brown fox JUMPS over the lazy DOG."
  • Truecased text: "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."


Truecasing in Subtitling

As a subtitler, you often have to rework pre-existing subtitles referred to as the master template which serves as the basis for localisation, or simply to produce a version adapted to specific styling requirements. The template, which has been produced with the intention to delivery a semi-finished product, may have minor errors or may be written in ALL CAPS.


The process of truecasing helps to improve:

  • Readability: properly cased subtitles are easier to read and understand.
  • Clarity: roper capitalisation helps to distinguish proper names from nouns.
  • Professionalism: use gramatically correct language aligned with audience expectations.


Truecasing in subtitling typically involves the following steps:

  • Converting words to lowercase unless they are part of a title or have specific reasons to be capitalised.
  • Checking that the first word of each sentence is capitalised.
  • Checking the capitalisation of proper nouns (names of people, places, brands, etc.).


Truecasing is typically a manual and tedious process, which potentially requires you to rewrite each individual subtitle. For video clips with a moderate reading speed of 180 words per minute, a manual process would take up to four times the length of the clip.


Using automated tools (AI based truecasing), the turnaround time can be reduced by 90% or more. Manual review remains necessary to ensure 100% accuracy, especially in cases where context determines proper capitalisation.