YouTube Creator Blog: Build a global audience on YouTube by translating your captions

Creator Blog

Build a global audience on YouTube by translating your captions

Monday, September 24, 2012

Growing a global audience on YouTube means having your videos reach many people, speaking many languages. So today we’ve made it easier for you to translate YouTube video captions into more than 300 languages. See more details in the help center, or follow the step-by-step instructions below:

Getting started
You’ll first need a caption track for your video, so if you don’t yet have one you can learn how to make one here. Select “Request translation” in the YouTube Video Manager, choose the languages you’d like to translate into, and click “Next.” We’ll create caption translation documents that you can now invite anyone to help translate, or you can translate yourself. To translate the captions yourself, select the language, and it’ll open up the caption translation document in the Google Translator Toolkit editor to help your translate faster.

Watch while you translate
To give you context on the captions, we’ve also embedded the YouTube video in the editor so you can watch as you translate. For several languages we’ll provide first draft of the translation using Google’s machine translation technology. We’ll also provide preview of what the translated caption looks like on the video so you can make sure the translated captions fit.

Publish and enjoy
Click “Publish to YouTube” when you’re finished, and we’ll publish the translated caption back to your YouTube video. If you’re not the video owner, we’ll notify the owner via email that there’s a pending translation waiting to be approved and published.

By providing translated captions, you’ll not only make your video globally accessible but also improve discoverability in other languages. Now you can increase your audience by reaching more people around the world.

Posted by Jeff Chin and Brad Ellis, product managers, who recently watched “Life in a Day” which is subtitled in 26 languages.