A "culture note" is small "pop-up" text that explains a cultural element on a TV program or film that the target audience is not expected to understand. Examples can be:

• Cultural artifacts
  Social artifact
  Social artifact is any product of individuals or groups or of their social behavior.Artifacts are the objects or products designed and used by people to meet re-occurring needs or to solve problems....
  
   and symbols.
• Definitions for specific terms.
• Puns that are hard or impossible to explain with just subtitles
  Subtitle (captioning)
  Subtitles are textual versions of the dialog in films and television programs, usually displayed at the bottom of the screen. They can either be a form of written translation of a dialog in a foreign language, or a written rendering of the dialog in the same language, with or without added...
  
  .

Usually a text-box appears for a few seconds in the top part of the screen, with the note itself being kept as small as possible. Other examples include full-screen cultural notes prior to the start of the program. The information may also be presented in the subtitles, usually between brackets.

Culture notes first appeared on Internet translations, and soon took place in some physical media translations as well.