Breaking language barriers allows video content creators to reach a diverse audience easily. However, this process is often complicated by cultural nuances and idiomatic expressions.
The main methods to translate audio from a video are dubbing and subtitles. Both translate spoken language into other languages, but dubbing requires voice actors and more time-consuming resources.
Dubbing
Dubbing, or language translation, involves replacing the original audio in a video with translated dialogue tracks. It is commonly used for films and TV shows but can also be applied to video games and other media content.
When dubbed correctly, the resulting translation should appear as natural as possible. The best way to do this is by using performers with voices matching the original actor’s tone and inflection. It is also important to make sure that the voice actors are comfortable with the material and that they can convey emotion through their performance.
Another advantage of dubbing is that it can provide an immersive experience for viewers. By eliminating the need to read subtitles, they can fully focus on the visuals and avoid potential distractions. However, dubbed dialogue may only sometimes be accurate and potentially lose cultural nuances or performances captured on camera.
Subtitles can be a useful alternative to dubbing when the original audio is not salvageable. However, converting the dialogue into subtitles requires condensing information into a smaller space, which can lead to errors in translation and timing problems. Additionally, subtitles rely on reading skills to convey meaning and can exclude non-readers and visually impaired individuals from the viewing experience.
Subtitles
The word subtitles may evoke a sense of dubbed film or foreign cinema, but they are also a common tool for making video content more accessible to audiences worldwide. Subtitles are lines of text accompanying a video, generally displayed at the bottom of a screen, and translating its audio dialogue into another language.
They are typically used in films but can be found in television and online videos. Subtitles can be transcribed and translated by hand with ample preparation time or automatically generated using speech-to-text technology such as Rev or WebVTT. Subtitles can also be written by fans and displayed on websites alongside official translations, a process known as fansubs.
Both captions and subtitles communicate the audio of a video to viewers, but key differences make each distinct. Captions are generally only displayed on videos whose audio is not audible, and they are often referred to as closed captions.
Open captions, on the other hand, are a popular form of video transcription that allows viewers to pause or turn off their audio and still have access to the text description of the footage. They are usually uploaded in a file format such as SRT (Screen Reader Transcript), TTML (Timed Text Markup Language), or SBV (YouTube Format). TTML and SBV files offer more advanced features, such as text styling and timestamps, but can require technical expertise.
Localization
Localization, or adjusting content to suit a target audience’s language and cultural context, is an important part of video translation. It typically involves transcribing spoken audio in the video and translating it into the target language, resulting in either translated subtitles or dubbing over the original audio with the translated text. Using the right tools can help streamline this process, making reaching a wider audience easier.
Adding translated subtitles to your videos can make them more accessible to deaf viewers and increase viewership by allowing people to watch your content in their preferred language. You can use tools like Kapwing’s online video translator to create fully translated captions in minutes and edit them with an all-in-one video editor to add visual effects, music, text, transitions, and more.
Adding audio transcripts and translating them into different languages can be time-consuming and expensive. Upload your video and select the language you want to translate it into, and our system will automatically transcribe the audio and generate synchronized subtitles in that language.
You can then download these subtitles as an SRT file, upload them to YouTube, or embed them into your website. Alternatively, you can use our automatic captions tool to generate captions for your video that are automatically translated into more than 100 languages.
Translation
Translation, or converting information from one language to another, is vital to connecting with a global audience. Whether through subtitles or dubbing, translating video content allows businesses to deliver their message to more people while still maintaining the integrity of the original recording.
The translation process typically involves transcribing the audio in a video, translating that text, and either adding translated subtitles to the video or dubbing over the original audio with a voice in the target language. Many tools and services can help with these steps, including Google Translate and specialized transcription software.
Transcription software can automate the video translation by converting the spoken words into text. Once the transcript is finished, it can be exported to a file that can be inputted into a translation tool for the desired language. This can be done with a few clicks and can save business owners time otherwise spent manually translating videos or paying for pricey translation services.
Once a video has been transcribed and translated, subtitles can be added to the recording to create a final product ready for use on YouTube or other websites.
