Templates
Tamil subtitle & caption generator
Tamil subtitles can be in தமிழ், as Tanglish in Roman letters, or translated into English. The previews below are in Tamil, which has no top line and rarely stacks letters, so a word's length matters more than its height.
No Tamil templates have been published yet. Any template in the full gallery can still caption Tamil: letters its own font cannot draw come from the Tamil fallback face.
Captioning in Tamil
Two problems face Tamil captions that most other Indian languages escape. The spoken and written forms of Tamil are far apart, so a caption that follows speech exactly may look informal to readers used to print. And one Tamil letter often stands for several sounds, which makes names and English words tricky. Then there is shape: Tamil lines get wider rather than taller.
A script that spreads sideways
Stacking is rare in Tamil. A pair of consonants that Devanagari would fuse is written as two full letters, the first marked with the pulli, a dot meaning no vowel follows, as in க்க. Tamil text therefore runs low and long, and a caption of four Tamil words can be noticeably wider than four English words.
Instead of sitting above or below, vowel signs wrap around the consonant. ெ, ே and ை go in front of a letter they are spoken after. ொ, ோ and ௌ have two parts, one on each side. ு and ூ fuse with the consonant to make a new letter shape, so கு, மு and ரு each look unlike the others. Tamil asks for less extra line height than Hindi, and for more width.
Tamil fonts in the editor
Templates whose font has no Tamil draw it in Baloo Thambi 2, which is heavy and rounded. Switching to another Tamil face leaves English words in the template's own font. Choices include:
- Full-sentence sans-serifs: Noto Sans Tamil, Anek Tamil, Catamaran, Hind Madurai and Mukta Malar.
- Serifs with a quieter, book-like look: Tiro Tamil and Noto Serif Tamil.
- A pair from one design: Karla Tamil Upright and Karla Tamil Inclined, the slanted cut handy for setting one word apart.
- Two very heavy display faces for one or two words: Oi and Coiny.
Spoken Tamil, Tanglish or English
Tamil is strongly diglossic. Everyday speech and the language of print and broadcast differ in both pronunciation and word forms. Someone talking says வந்துட்டேன்; formal writing has வந்துவிட்டேன். Both mean I have come. Captions in Tamil script that keep the spoken form keep the speaker's voice. Rewritten in the formal register, they sound like the evening news. Decide which you want per video, then bring stray forms into line.
Many viewers type Tamil on their phones in Latin letters, a style often called Tanglish, with habits of its own. Tamizh, for instance, shows the usual zh for ழ, and long vowels are doubled in some places but not others. English translation cannot carry the two Tamil words for we: நாம் counts the listener in, நாங்கள் leaves the listener out, and English we doesn't say which.
Letters to proofread in Tamil
One Tamil letter can cover sounds that English writes separately. க is used for k and for g; த, ட and ப likewise each stand for two sounds. This shows up most in names and English words, so check them against the person's own spelling. Also look at ஜ, ஷ and ஸ: some writers use them in borrowed words, others substitute native Tamil letters.
Several sets of letters are easily confused in a transcript: ல, ள and ழ for l; ர and ற for r; ந, ன and ண for n. Each mix-up produces a different word. Tamil does have its own numerals, but ordinary writing uses Western digits, so pick one form if a transcript mixes them.
Questions
Why are Tamil captions wider than English ones?
Clusters are written side by side, the first letter dotted, rather than stacked, and some vowel signs flank the letter on both sides. Four Tamil words generally take up more of a row than four English ones, so lower the number of words per caption.
In romanised Tamil, should ழ be zh or l?
Most viewers expect zh, as the spelling Tamizh shows; it keeps ழ apart from ல and ள. Whatever you choose, keep it identical across every caption.