Chinese Subtitle Generator

Mandarin speech to Chinese subtitles

Speech recognition is tuned for Mandarin, which is recognised well. Cantonese and other varieties are less reliable, so a Hong Kong vlog in Cantonese needs much closer review, or a short test first. Because many Chinese words sound alike, homophones can be swapped, and names and technical terms are worth checking against the video. For Mandarin into English subtitles, use the Chinese to English video translator.

Simplified and traditional characters

Translations into Chinese are written in Simplified Chinese, the standard in mainland China and Singapore. A transcript of Mandarin speech is mostly simplified but can occasionally switch to traditional characters, so convert the whole file to one script before publishing. Open-source tools such as OpenCC convert a subtitle file between simplified and traditional in one step. For viewers in Taiwan or Hong Kong, convert to traditional and then check vocabulary, because some everyday words differ between regions as well as the characters.

Line length in characters

Chinese subtitles are measured in characters, and with no spaces between words a short-looking line can still be a lot to read. Streaming style guides commonly keep Chinese lines to around 16 characters. Each cue is one stretch of speech on a single line, so split long cues at a pause in a subtitle editor. Many Chinese subtitle styles also leave out the full stop at the end of a cue; remove them in one pass if your style needs it.

Using the file

Upload the SRT in YouTube Studio under the matching Chinese option, or import it into an editor with a font that includes Chinese characters. The files are UTF-8, so players show Chinese text correctly. If a Windows tool shows garbled text, it is probably reading the file in a legacy encoding; subtitles show strange characters explains the fix.

What Chinese subtitles cost

Subtitles cost 1 credit per minute with a 5-credit minimum per file, and the 100 free credits from signing in with Google cover 100 minutes. Top-ups are charged in Indian rupees at the day's exchange rate through Cashfree Payments (UPI, cards or netbanking), about ₹96 for 1,000 credits.

Using the tool on this page

• The spoken language is detected automatically; you select the output language — the spoken language itself for an untranslated transcript, or another language for a translation. Files can be up to 2 hours long.
• Only the audio is sent for processing — the video stays on your device — and audio and text are deleted within 30 minutes of delivery (how files are protected).
• You can download a timestamped transcript, subtitles (SRT and VTT) and plain text. Every output, step and limit is explained on the subtitle generator page.