How to Translate Captions
It is very important to include closed captions in your videos in order to make them accessible. In fact, in the United States, most videos are required by law to include closed captions. As such, it is often easy to view or add captions to videos, depending on the platform. However, it is not as easy to translate subtitles.
Nonetheless, if you want your video to reach a worldwide audience, then you will want to find a way to translate captions. Similarly, if you want to watch a video in a foreign language, you may want to find a way to translate the video’s captions into your own language. Fortunately, there are available video translator apps to translate subtitles for both use cases.
In this article, we go over several ways for how to translate subtitles. You can use an online video translator like YouTube or Covideo to translate your subtitles into a variety of languages. You can also use apps on your computer or phone to translate video to English subtitles for free, or translate videos you’re watching into another language. Read on to learn more about these various ways to translate subtitles online.
Use an Online Video Translator
The easiest way to translate your own videos is to use an online video translator. Though there are various services and websites online that will translate your captions, typically for a price, the best way to translate subtitles is to use a video platform like YouTube or Covideo. YouTube and Covideo both can automatically translate any videos you upload to their platform. Let’s go over how to translate YouTube videos as well as Covideo’s translation feature.
How to Translate YouTube Videos
Whenever you upload a video to YouTube, the platform automatically generates subtitles in English. You can edit these subtitles or upload your own as well! Regardless of how you add subtitles to YouTube, you can also set the platform to automatically translate your YouTube video into another language. YouTube supports captions for over 165 languages.
To add another language to your YouTube captions, navigate to your video in YouTube studio. Then, click on “Subtitles.” On the subtitles page, click “Add Language,” then click on your chosen language to begin generating subtitles in that language. Do note that it may take a few hours to translate YouTube captions. Once the captions are translated, then anyone watching your video can select captions in the translated language.
Covideo Video Translator
Covideo is another platform that translates subtitles. Whenever you upload or record a video with Covideo, you can choose to turn on automatic captioning. You can also edit your captions to ensure they are accurate. Covideo will automatically translate captions into nine languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Russian, Italian, Croatian, Portuguese, Russian, and Japanese. Unlike YouTube, there are no extra steps to translating subtitles into other languages.
When your video’s viewer turns on captions, they can choose any of the above nine languages to view captions in. This makes it easy to send your videos to a wide audience.
Is There an App to Translate Subtitles?
Yes, there are various apps available on both desktop and mobile that will automatically translate subtitles. For example, on the Mac app store, you can download the Subtitle Translation Wizard to translate captions that are in a .srt, .sub, or .smi format. Once the translation is complete, you can edit it to ensure accuracy. As such, Subtitle Translation Wizard is best for users who already have some knowledge of the language they’re translating captions into but want to quicken the process of translation.
On Google Chrome, there are various extensions you can install that will actually translate video captions as you watch the video, such as Ultimate Video Translator or Auto Translate for YouTube. There are other extensions that can translate subtitles that you have written out, such as Vocalmatic.
On mobile, you can automatically translate video captions with apps like Lingvotube, Voicella, and ccTube.
Other Ways to Translate Captions
If you don’t want to download a video translator app to translate subtitles, you can always use a free translation service like Google Translate or a paid service to translate your captions. However, these services take more time – for Google Translate, you have to copy and paste the text of your file into the program, and then reformat your translated captions. There is also no guarantee that your translated captions will be accurate. If you choose a paid translation service, then your subtitles will be more accurate, but you will have to wait for a professional translator to complete them. Overall, the best way to quickly generate captions is to use a video translator like YouTube or Covideo that can generate accurate translations quickly.
Get Started with Covideo Today
Do you like what you see about Covideo? You can start using our video recording and caption generation service for free today with a free trial. If you would like more information before beginning your trial, you can also schedule a demo with one of our experts. Learn now why Covideo is considered one of the best video recording and sharing platforms.
