How to Translate Subtitles for Movies into Any Language

Going through a pile of old music CD’s and other junk in a second hand items shop, I found out a DVD of a well acclaimed French movie “Spoorloos”. Released in 1988, this is a suspense movie about a Dutch couple who are driving through the French country side and suddenly one of them disappears. I was excited to find the movie (and at such a cheap price), but the only problem was that the movie is in French and I don’t really understand French beyond “merci beaucoup”. The subtitles available online for the movie were in other languages like Spanish, German, Italian, Greek etc., but not in English. After a few hours of searching for the English subtitles, I finally thought of translating the subtitles into English using online translator tools from Google or Bing.

The translation of subtitles using Google Translate is a little tricky. Here is how you can translate subtitles for any movie into any languages (supported by Google Translate) you want :

  1. First of all download the subtitles for your movie from any open source subtitles website. It does not matter what language the subtitles are in, because we are going to translate them anyway. But using subtitles in languages like English, German, Italian, French, Spanish etc., is better as they translate much better.
  2. The downloaded subtitles file would have an extension .SUB or .SRT or something else. Rename the file so that it has a .TXT extension. This is because Google Translate accepts TXT documents and not the SUB or SRT files.
  3. Visit Google Translate at http://translate.google.com/ and click on translate a document link at the bottom.Translate Subtitles into Any Language
  4. Click on the Browse button, select the subtitles file having the TXT extension. In the source language select Detect Language and in the destination language, choose whatever language you want the subtitles to be translated into.Translate Subtitles into Any Language
  5. Clicking on the Translate button will show you a complete translation of the subtitles in a few seconds. Press the hotkey Ctrl+S to save the translated file and save it as TXT file (not as webpage).Translate Subtitles into Any Language
  6. Open the translated subtitles file in Notepad++. Press Ctrl+H hotkey to open the Replace window. In the Find box type -> and in the Replace box type --> and then click on the Replace All button. Close the Replace window by clicking on the Close button. In the Notepad++, press Ctrl+S to save the file and change the extension of the saved file to .SRT.Translate Subtitles into Any Language
  7. Now you have subtitles for your own language. You can use this subtitles file in any media player that supports subtitles like VLC Media Player.

Conclusion: There is no need to worry if you cannot find the subtitles of a movie in your own language. You can simply use Google Translate to translate the subtitles in any language into your desired language in a few easy steps.

11 comments

  1. Hi, there are doubts.
    should I use -> and replace with -> ok
    should I save as txt or t.txt snd then save as srt file or txt please

      1. Hi, thanks. please include two dashes in word in tutorial article. Also , please include to save as srt file as Google translate prompts to save as t.txt when ctrl S is pressed to open save as box.
        do you mean save as srt in note++
        please say.
        Your translate link is correct. When I try the same in another.link it asks to buy api key for price
        hats off to you to give the correct link hope to get reply. Would be happy if -> is explained in use in note++

        1. It was already 2 dashes but perhaps your browser is not showing it. I changed the font to Courier so now everyone can clearly see it.

      2. hI, NICE , IT WORKED, after branching the website lines in the srt file and also after changing one dash to two dashes.
        But, could you say, why it changes to single dash , when we are using google translator and saving with noteplusplus

  2. Hi, i have done as per the instructions to translate a foreign language srt files to english files.
    Only thing i added was to change the saved txt file in gtranslate to srt file, by just changing the extension of txt to srt.
    i play the video with vlc and i could only find the timed output without the subtitle english lines.
    what i am missing . please
    nice tutorial. Today only , i had the glimpse of this easy tool

  3. Hi to everyone here! I would like to say thank you about this article also, because it is always good to read well structured information, as it is in this article. And also I would like to add some my thoughts about translate srt files. This service is really quite useful for many of those, who are writing many texts and maybe have some issues with punctuation. Actually I am one of such people. And it is really good to have some helper which you can use anytime. So, if someone does not know about it yet, you can google it and find very easily.

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