Add Arabic Subtitles to a Video

What happens when Arabic is drawn

Arabic letters connect, and most of them take up to four shapes depending on whether they stand alone or sit at the start, middle or end of a word: ه alone, هـ at the start, ـهـ in the middle, ـه at the end, all one letter. Picking the right shape, and forming the lam-alef ligature لا, is called shaping. Your browser's text engine does it as each subtitle is painted, in the preview and in the final render alike. You type, import or receive ordinary Arabic characters and never need special presentation forms.

Direction is settled per subtitle, not per word. The editor counts the letters in the subtitle: when Arabic letters outnumber Latin ones, the whole subtitle is laid out right to left, and any English words and digits inside it keep their own left-to-right order. When Latin letters are in the majority, the subtitle is laid out left to right. That rule handles ordinary Arabic sentences without any help, and it explains the occasional line that looks wrong.

Fonts: Cairo and the fallback

Cairo

The only font in the list with Arabic letters of its own. Arabic and any Latin words in the line share one design, in weights from regular to black.

Every other font

Still usable. Arabic letters are drawn in Noto Sans Arabic while Latin words keep the face you picked. Fine for all-Arabic lines; mixed lines show two designs side by side.

If web fonts can't load

The text falls back to fonts installed on your computer, such as Geeza Pro on a Mac, so the Arabic still appears, only in a different look.

A few style settings behave differently with Arabic:

• Letter spacing: leave it at zero. Arabic letters are meant to touch, and added spacing can open gaps in the joins.
• Italic: Cairo has no italic, and Arabic typography doesn't use slanted text for emphasis the way English does. Use weight or colour instead.
• UPPERCASE: has no effect on Arabic, which has no capitals. It still changes Latin words in the line.
• Size: compare on the preview at your publishing size. Arabic often wants a step larger than an English line of the same weight to read comfortably on a phone.

The subtitle fonts comparison shows how Cairo sits next to the Latin faces.

Rules for lines that mix Arabic and English

Arabic videos are full of brand names, numbers, web addresses and English technical terms. These habits keep mixed lines readable:

• Keep Arabic in the majority. A short Arabic sentence followed by a long English product name can tip over to left to right. If it does, write the name in Arabic letters, add Arabic words, or give the name its own subtitle.
• Leave digits as they are. Numbers read left to right inside an Arabic line and are placed correctly for you; never reverse them by hand.
• Use one set of digits. Western digits (0–9) and Arabic-Indic digits (٠–٩) are both correct; choose the one your audience reads and keep it across the video.
• Use Arabic punctuation in Arabic lines. The Arabic comma ، and question mark ؟ belong there; recognition or translation may produce Latin , and ? instead, so look for them in review.
• Type brackets normally. In a right-to-left line the text engine mirrors ( and ) so they still enclose the right words.

Alignment and position

Centre alignment is the usual choice for Arabic subtitles and the safest, because the block sits in the middle whichever end it starts from. If you want edge alignment, choose Right so each row begins where the eye starts reading. Left alignment works mechanically, but ragged right-to-left rows then begin at different points, which slows a reader down.

Vertical placement follows the same rules as any language: keep the text inside the safe area, especially on vertical video, and keep it off logos and lower thirds. If the video already carries burned-in English subtitles, switch on "Hide subtitles already in the video". It blurs an adjustable band across the old text on every frame and draws the Arabic on top; the old words are blurred, not erased, and anything else inside the band is blurred too. Hiding burned-in subtitles explains how to place the band.

Getting the Arabic text

• Arabic speech, transcribed. Leave "Subtitle language" on auto-detect. Clear Modern Standard Arabic gives the cleanest results; speech in a strong Egyptian, Levantine, Gulf or Maghrebi dialect usually needs more corrections, so plan extra review time.
• Another language, translated. Choose Arabic in the menu. There is a single Arabic option with no choice of dialect, so if your viewers expect a local tone, adjust the wording by hand.
• A file from a translator. Import the SRT or VTT. The editor reads subtitle files as UTF-8, so an older file saved as Windows-1256 shows replacement symbols (�) and has to be re-saved as UTF-8 first. Exported files are UTF-8.

A 20-minute lecture costs 20 credits (2¢) for AI subtitles. Only the compressed audio travels to the server for that; the video itself stays on your computer. Typing Arabic into a line's text field behaves as you would expect, since the field adopts the direction of whatever you type, but the video preview is what gets rendered, so judge the layout there.

Short-vowel marks (harakat) are normally left out of subtitles for adult viewers. If you add them for learners, they sit inside the measured height of the row; only a very low Line height on two-row subtitles can make a kasra brush the row below.

Worked examples

Checklist before rendering

• Every subtitle containing Latin words has been checked in the preview for direction.
• Letters join in every word, with no gaps from letter spacing.
• One digit style throughout the video.
• Arabic comma and question mark wherever the line is Arabic.
• Each name is spelled the same way every time it appears.
• Text clear of logos, lower thirds and app buttons, with "Show safe area" on for vertical video.

Then render, download, and keep the exported SRT. For an Arabic subtitle file without rendering, use the Arabic subtitle generator; for a transcript, Arabic video to text; for everything else that changes when you publish right to left, right-to-left video localization. Hebrew follows the same direction rules without the joined letters; see Hebrew subtitles.

About the subtitle editor on this page

Opens

MP4, MOV, M4V, WebM, MKV videos your browser can decode

Subtitles from

AI (from the speech, optionally translated into one of 21 languages), an SRT or VTT file, or typing them in

You download

An MP4 with the subtitles drawn into the picture at the original resolution and frame rate, plus SRT and VTT files

Cost

Editing, styling, rendering and SRT/VTT export are free, with no account and no watermark. AI subtitles cost 1 credit per minute (5-credit minimum per video); signing in with Google gives 100 free credits and accounts get 10 free credits a day

Privacy

The video never leaves your device and is rendered in your browser. Only for AI subtitles is the audio sent, over HTTPS, and it is deleted within 30 minutes of delivery

Rendering needs

Chrome or Edge 94+, Safari 16.4+, or Firefox 130+ on a computer. Editing and SRT/VTT export work in any current browser