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If you're watching a youtube video and want the captions to be in a different language, you can use Youtube's in-built caption translation feature to change the caption language on the site.
To change caption language on youtube, you need to click on "settings", followed by "CC/Subtitles", and choose an alternative language. In most cases, English will be the only available language, and you'll need to click "auto-translate" to select the language you want.
In this article, you will learn everything you need to know about changing caption language as a viewer as well as a creator. Towards the end, you will learn how to get a youtube video in different language audio and which program to use to make youtube shorts from long-form youtube videos.
How To Change Caption Language On Youtube As A Viewer
Changing caption language on youtube is easy, provided that the video has closed captions, to begin with. Most often, English videos contain automatic closed captions, and their language can be changed via the Google Translate engine with the following steps:
Turn on Auto-captions - The first step is to tap CC on the bottom-right of the Youtube player to make the captions visible. If the captions are already displayed, you can skip this step.
Click the gears Icon on the Youtube player - right next to the CC option is the gear button, which you can click to open the player settings. There, you can change the quality of the video as well as its caption track.
Click "Subtitles/CC" - Doing this opens up a menu with the available languages and the "off" option. You need to click the language you want the captions displayed. Quite often, English is the only language added by the creator.
Select the language - If another language is listed aside from English, it has been officially added by the creator. You can click it for reliable subtitles. Alternatively, you can click "auto-translate" and select the language of your choice.
The advantage of this method of changing a caption's language is that you can easily translate almost any video into any language. The problem with youtube's inbuilt caption translator is that it cannot translate captions with the right degree of accuracy.
The less common a language is, the more likely that its translation will be wrong. As a viewer, you don't really have any other option, though. But if you are the creator of the video, you have a handful of ways to translate captions.
How To Translate Captions On Youtube As A Creator
To translate captions on youtube as a creator, you need to enter youtube studio, select subtitles from the left menu, navigate to your video, select "add language", and pick the language you want to translate the captions to.
You will have the opportunity to edit captions and add different grammatical nuances that Google Translate might have missed. However, you can translate captions only after you have added subtitles in at least one language. And for that, you should read our post on how to add captions to Youtube.
There is also one more way to add captions to youtube in a different language. And that requires hiring a translator from a relevant platform like Fiverr. The said translator will translate the audio and create a subtitles file. This file can be added to Youtube Studio just like any SRT upload mentioned in our Youtube captioning article.
This method of caption translating can be pretty expensive, but it is what professionals use to make their content more accessible. The main benefit of a pre-translated SRT file is that search engines can make your video discoverable across different language searches.
Let's suppose you upload a video on "How to Fix a broken car engine." This video is very technical, and having appropriate subtitles in other languages can make it accessible to people who don't know English. When someone types "How to Fix a broken car" in their native language, your video can show up, provided that the captions for it are pre-translated and not left up to Google Translate.
But if you want to make your video truly accessible to people who speak other languages, you can opt to get it translated professionally.
Here is Mr. Beast's Spanish Channel.
He has over 22 million subscribers that he would not have reached had he not opted to get his videos translated. But Mr. Beast literally gives away hundreds of thousands of dollars. That might make you think that getting your videos translated might not be within your budget. Surprisingly, that's not the case!
How Professionals Translate Their Youtube Videos
To get your videos properly translated, you need to get a transcript of the audio of your video, have it translated by a human, and then have it dubbed as a voiceover. This will allow you to create two pieces of content for every video you shoot. In this section, we will go into the details of the process and estimate the cost each step incurs. You will be surprised at how cheap translating your video can be.
You Can Choose The Language
This is a crucial step. Notice that despite having the money to translate videos in every single language spoken today, Mr. Beast doesn't translate his videos into more than a handful of languages. Ideally, you should choose a language that is widely spoken. Mandarin, Hindi, Spanish, and Arabic are some of the most spoken languages in the world besides English. Having a separate channel for the translated videos is recommended.
Get Your Video Transcript
The first step in translation is transcription. If you don't have an accurate transcript, you will be left with the inaccurate source material. By the Garbage In Garbage Out principle, your paid translation will be wrong as well. Auto-caption engines of most programs, including Youtube and iMovie, are not perfect. That's because most services don't have their bread and butter based on their caption quality.
No one will stop using Youtube because they don't have 100% accurate captions. ContentFries is a time-saving tool that helps creators caption their videos in minutes. If we at ContentFries don't get your captions right, many of our features become useless. That's why we are confident in our captioning capabilities to the point of offering a risk-free trial. You can use it to see how accurate and above-market our caption translation quality is.
Whether you use ContentFries to get your captions or you hire someone to transcribe your video, this step is critical to the rest of the process's success. With Contentfries you pay a tiny fraction of what you would pay to human transcriber. The cost of human transcription can quickly climb up to hundreds of dollars a month and all you get in return is a plain transcription —all the video processing is still up to you to be dealt with.
Have The Video Transcript Translated
Once you have the transcript of the video, the next step is to have it translated. Different online platforms can facilitate this. There are broader platforms like Fiverr.com and Upwork, as well as specific ones like Rev.com and Translated.com. The services of these platforms cost anywhere between $5 to $50 per video. We also provide an option to have your video translated right from the dashboard. Simply click on three dots next to the video and click on "Translate" afterwards.
Have The Video Dubbed
Next, you must get the video dubbed in the language you selected in the first step. The price can vary depending on the language of the dubbing and the speaker. Again, the cost of dubbing shouldn't be the motivating factor for your language selection. The demography and relevance of the video should inform the selection.
There are different platforms that can help you get dubbing via voiceover services. Fiverr and Upwork are, again, broad freelance platforms that offer a variety of services from a range of professionals, including dubbing artists and professional transcribers. There are also dedicated dubbing platforms like ACX, which offer higher-end services.
The overall cost of dubbing can range from $5 to $500 per video, depending on the level of professionalism and the extent of the services retained.
The Overall Cost
As you can see, getting your videos translated into another language can be expensive. The following table shows you how you can save money by translating videos into different languages.
| Services | Cost of one language | Cost of two languages | Cost of three languages |
| Initial Transcription | $10 | $0 | $0 |
| Translation of the transcript | $10 | $10 | $10 |
| Dubbing | $10 | $10 | $10 |
| Total Cost | $30 | $20 | $20 |
The initial transcript cost doesn't reoccur when you translate your video into another language. That said, the cost of transcription reoccurs whenever you need to translate a new video.
Let's assume that you get a $9 subscription to ContentFries to get 30 minutes' worth of content transcribed each month. This can easily cover 4 videos a week. Paying a traditional transcriber, you would spend $40 per month. That means you can save $29 per month with just 4 videos.
Aside from getting a translation-friendly transcript, you will also get other features that allow you to multiply a Youtube video into Youtube Shorts clips, as well as Instagram stories and Twitter-ready graphics.
Final Thoughts
Changing the caption language on Youtube is pretty simple if you're a viewer. You just need to open the player settings and click CC/Subtitles to select the language you want. If the only language made available by the creator is English, you can use "Auto-translate" and get the captions in your language of choice. The only time this won't work is when the closed captions option is unavailable.