Translate foreign subtitles into English, the whole file in sync
Have a film, an anime or a K-drama with subtitles only in another language? Upload the SRT or VTT file and every line comes back in English, on the timings and numbering of your file. You do not choose the source language; it is recognized from the text. The first part is free without an account, and the whole job is $5.
- Any source language the model reads, recognized from the text
- English dialogue kept to two lines of about 42 characters where possible
- Names kept, written in English letters when the source uses another script
- Timing, numbering and order copied from your file
- $5 once for up to 30 files and 10,000 lines
Every line, on its timing.
The numbers and time codes of your file are kept exactly; only the words change. Right-to-left languages get the marks players need to show punctuation in the right place.
Demo scene written for this page; the Persian lines are real output from the tool.
From any script into English
Subtitles for a Korean drama, a Chinese film, an Arabic series or a Brazilian telenovela are often available only in the original language or in a language you do not read. The tool reads the file, recognizes the source language from the text, and translates each line into English. Names of people and places are kept, written in English letters where the source uses another script.
Old files can be a problem before translation starts. UTF-8 and UTF-16 are read directly, and older Windows encodings for Arabic, Persian, Russian, Greek and Hebrew are recognized from their bytes. Older Korean, Chinese and Japanese encodings are not: those files are read as Western text and come out garbled, so re-save them as UTF-8 in a text editor first.
Anime, K-drama and long series
Series often come as a dozen or more episode files. Upload up to 30 in one job, up to 10,000 lines in total; each comes back with its own name plus .en, together in one ZIP. Formatting such as <i> for thoughts or {\an8} for signs at the top of the screen stays with its words in SRT downloads.
Only SRT and VTT are accepted. ASS or SSA files, common in anime fansubs, need converting to SRT first, and that conversion drops their styling.
English for whom
- Viewers who found a film with subtitles only in its original language
- Festival programmers and distributors reviewing foreign submissions
- Researchers and teachers working with foreign-language documentaries
- Families sharing films from home with English-speaking children or partners
What machine translation will and will not do
From widely used source languages, expect fluent English on most lines; from lower-resource languages, expect rougher results. Wordplay, songs and culture-specific jokes are translated by meaning and can lose their edge. For a festival screening or a release, a professional subtitler should review the file. The free first part lets you judge before paying.
How the tool works, what it costs and how your files are handled is on the Subtitle Translator page; prices for every tool are on the pricing page.
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Questions and answers
Can ChatGPT translate a subtitle file into English?
Yes for short ones, and English is its strongest language. Long files are the problem: a full film or episode pasted into a chat tends to come back incomplete, with merged or renumbered lines that no longer match the video.
Do I need to tell it the source language?
No. It is recognized from the text, so there is nothing to choose except the target.
Can it translate ASS subtitles?
Not directly. Convert ASS or SSA to SRT first; styling is lost in that step, but the text and timings are kept.
Can I keep the original line on screen?
Yes. Bilingual output shows the original line above the English, on the same timing, which is useful for learning Korean, Japanese or any other language.
What does it cost?
The first part is free. Every file in the job, up to 10,000 lines, is $5, paid once; jobs with 150 lines or fewer in total are free in full.
What do the downloaded files look like?
Each keeps its name with the language code added, for example episode-03.en.srt. You can choose SRT or VTT.