Translate Video to Chinese

What to expect when translating into Chinese

Chinese translations come out in Simplified characters, as used in mainland China and Singapore. Chinese packs more meaning into fewer characters than English, so subtitle lines are short and the translated voice usually fits the original timing comfortably.

Translations are written in Simplified Chinese. Speech recognition is tuned for Mandarin; Cantonese and other varieties are less reliable.

From English to Chinese

English to Mandarin compresses well: the Chinese text uses few characters, so the translated voice has room to breathe and subtitles stay short. Brand names are often transliterated or kept in English — check which your audience expects.

Translations are written in Simplified Chinese, which suits mainland China and Singapore. Audiences in Taiwan and Hong Kong read Traditional characters; they can usually read Simplified, but a localised Traditional version is better for marketing there.

Mandarin subtitles are short, which makes them comfortable to read even for fast English speakers. Numbers and units may be expressed differently (万 for ten thousand), so double-check figures in financial or technical content.

Cost: 500 credits (50¢) with a Chinese voice, or 10 credits (1¢) for Chinese subtitles only. English is detected automatically; you only choose Chinese.

The Chinese voice track

The voice speaks Mandarin, with tones produced by the voice model. Listen through product names and English terms, which can be pronounced unevenly.

Voice, MP4, subtitles and transcripts: 600 credits (60¢). Subtitles and transcripts only: 12 credits (1.2¢).

Chinese subtitles

Chinese subtitles are measured in characters, and with no spaces a short-looking line can still be dense. Players show Chinese SRT and VTT correctly because the files are UTF-8.

Chinese (中文) is written in the Chinese characters.

Switch Full translation output off for subtitles only: 20 credits (2¢). If the video is already in Chinese, select Chinese as the language instead and the subtitles come back untranslated — see Chinese transcription.

Translating audio files into Chinese

Podcasts and recordings go through the audio translator, which returns a Chinese M4A and transcripts: 1,750 credits ($1.75) with voice, 35 credits (3.5¢) as text only.

Who translates into Chinese

Chinese is spoken in mainland China, Taiwan, Singapore and Chinese communities worldwide. It's used by exporters and online shops selling to Chinese buyers, universities recruiting Chinese students, and creators publishing on Chinese-language platforms.

Confirm the character set in the file you download

Written Chinese has two standard character sets. Simplified characters are read in mainland China and Singapore; Traditional characters are read in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau. Before anything goes out, open the downloaded SRT or transcript and confirm which set it actually contains. A quick test is a common character: 说 or 說 for "speak", 这 or 這 for "this", 们 or 們 in plurals like "we".

If the file is in the wrong set for your market, a character converter can switch it, but conversion only swaps glyphs and leaves mainland vocabulary in place. Taiwanese readers say 影片 where mainland readers say 视频 for "video", 軟體 rather than 软件 for "software", and 資訊 rather than 信息 for "information". Have someone from that market read the converted subtitles. The Mandarin voice reads the translated text, so it carries the same vocabulary choices; for a Taiwan or Hong Kong audience, subtitles you have converted and reviewed are often the safer deliverable.

Punctuation and line breaks without spaces

Chinese uses full-width punctuation (，。？！：) and writes words with no spaces between them. Many Chinese subtitle styles drop the full stop at the end of a cue and replace a mid-line comma with a space. That is a house-style decision rather than a rule: choose one approach and apply it across a whole series. Quotation marks differ by region too: mainland text uses “ ” while Taiwan and Hong Kong prefer 「 」.

Because there are no spaces, a player can wrap a long cue in the middle of a two-character word. If a cue looks crowded in your player, split it by hand at a phrase boundary. How to edit an SRT file shows how to do that without breaking the timing lines.

Rewriting figures, names and dates

1.2 million views

120万 (120 units of ten thousand)

3 billion yuan

30亿元

October 1, 2026

2026年10月1日

Dr. Emily Carter

卡特博士, or the name kept in Latin letters

Chinese groups large numbers by ten thousand (万) and a hundred million (亿) instead of by thousands, so every figure above 9,999 is rewritten during translation, and a slip moves the value by a factor of ten. Read each figure in the side-by-side view against the original line, especially in sales, finance and specification videos.

Foreign names are either transliterated into characters by sound or left in Latin letters. Many international companies use an established Chinese name, such as 可口可乐 for Coca-Cola. If yours has one, search the translated transcript for every mention and make it consistent; translation vs transliteration explains how to set that policy.

Listening for tones and two-way characters

Mandarin is tonal, and a number of characters have more than one reading depending on the word they sit in: 行 is háng in 银行 (bank) but xíng in 行走 (to walk); 长 is cháng (long) in 长度 but zhǎng (to grow) in 成长. A synthetic voice occasionally picks the wrong reading. Play the dub preview at 0.75× through product names, figures and any sentence containing a character you know is ambiguous. English acronyms read aloud inside a Mandarin sentence are worth a second listen; when an AI voice mispronounces names covers workarounds.

Before the Chinese version is published

1. Open the SRT and check the character set matches the market; convert and have it reviewed if not.
2. Compare every figure over ten thousand with the original.
3. Make company, product and personal names consistent, using your official Chinese name where one exists.
4. Pick one subtitle punctuation style and apply it to every cue.
5. Listen to the dub for misread characters and English terms.
6. Load the subtitles in the player you'll publish on and look for awkward wraps.

If the original video is already in Mandarin and you only need text, Chinese transcription is the page for that job.

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 translated video that keeps your music and effects, the translated audio as M4A, a transcript and subtitles (SRT and VTT). Every output, step and limit is explained on the video translator page.