Guided meditation subtitles. Preserve the quiet intervals.

Treat quiet as part of the recording

A guided meditation recording may alternate short spoken invitations with long intentional pauses. Polyglot can help you transcribe and review the speech locally on Mac, then export subtitles. The review task is to preserve that structure without leaving an old instruction on screen throughout a quiet interval.

Use a recording you own or are authorized to process and distribute, including its narration, background music and bells. Keep the final duration and any fades fixed before captioning. This page concerns subtitle preparation, not a meditation technique or a health treatment. Captioning does not validate the advice in a recording.

Make a speech, silence and bell map

Record the start and end of each spoken passage and note intentional quiet intervals or meaningful transition sounds. Do not create text just to fill an empty part of the timeline. A gap in speech can be deliberate rather than a missing transcription. Review quiet speech against the original audio before deciding it is silence.

The following newly written timing note is illustrative only. Its times are not recommendations for a practice or evidence of a processing test.

Illustrative interval map
Video: quiet-study-v03.mp4

00:10–00:14: spoken
invitation
00:14–00:44: intentional
quiet
00:44: transition bell
00:47: next spoken passage

Check: previous words clear
before the quiet interval.
Do not invent thirty seconds
of extra instruction.

Preserve the speaker’s optional wording

Check the difference between an invitation and a command. “If you wish” and “when you are ready” affect meaning; do not remove them merely to shorten the caption. Review negation and words describing attention carefully, especially where a soft delivery or music makes the speech unclear.

Have a competent reviewer assess translations against the original wording and tone. Do not add therapeutic claims or turn a modest description into a promise of a health benefit. NCCIH discusses uncertainty and safety considerations around meditation; a subtitle workflow cannot establish that a recording is appropriate for an individual or substitutes for care.

For sounds that help the listener follow the recording, use a human-reviewed description consistent with the intended audience and caption style. DCMP’s guidance treats meaningful music and sound as part of caption preparation. Polyglot does not detect bells, classify silence or generate verified descriptions automatically.

Test cue endings as carefully as beginnings

Open the final video and subtitle file in the receiving player. Watch when text appears and, especially, when it disappears. Review every transition into a long pause, the first words after a pause, the closing passage and the final fade. Confirm the exported file contains the intended gaps and that the player does not hold a previous cue unexpectedly.

Read the track at mobile size while watching the visual material. If an instruction depends on something shown silently, arrange a separate approved explanation. Captions for speech do not automatically describe the picture. Use an external editor if the destination requires embedded text rather than a selectable subtitle track.

Deliver the exact media revision, reviewed language files and interval map. Recheck them after removing an introduction, shortening a quiet section or changing the music edit. Keep the unmodified original and an explicit record of approved corrections so a later version does not silently overwrite the reviewed track.

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