Japanese Subtitle Generator

Japanese speech, Japanese subtitles

Japanese speech transcribes well into standard written Japanese, mixing kanji, hiragana and katakana as a writer would. Because Japanese has no spaces between words and many words sound alike, names and specialist terms can come out with the wrong kanji. Read the names in your file against the video, especially people's names, which often have several possible spellings. For Japanese speech into English, use the Japanese to English video translator.

Line length in characters

Japanese subtitles are measured in characters rather than words, and streaming style guides commonly cap a line at around 16 characters. Each cue is one stretch of speech on a single line, so a long sentence can produce a line well past that. Japanese text is compact, but long English sentences translated into Japanese can still make dense cues. Split them at a natural pause in a subtitle editor.

Punctuation conventions

The file uses standard written punctuation, including 。 and 、. Many Japanese subtitle styles drop the 。 at the end of a line and use a space in place of 、. If your channel or client follows that style, remove them in one pass with find and replace. SRT has no way to show furigana or vertical text, so those need richer formats used by broadcasters and streaming services.

Translating into Japanese

Japanese chooses a politeness level for every sentence: polite desu and masu forms, plain forms, or honorific language. Tutorials and corporate videos usually suit the polite form; casual vlogs may suit plain speech. A translation can mix levels when the source gives no clue, so review the file and keep one level per speaker.

Using the file

Upload the SRT in YouTube Studio under Japanese, or import it into an editor as a caption track, using a font that includes Japanese characters. The file is UTF-8, so Japanese text displays correctly in modern players; subtitles show strange characters helps if an old player shows symbols instead.

What Japanese 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.