Translate Video to Portuguese

What to expect when translating into Portuguese

Brazilian and European Portuguese differ in vocabulary, some spellings and forms of address (você or tu). The written translation follows one Portuguese model, so a Brazilian or Portuguese reviewer may adjust a few words; the voice accent follows the variant you pick.

Choose Portuguese (Brazil) or Portuguese (Portugal) for the accent of the translated voice. The written translation uses one Portuguese model for both.

From English to Portuguese

English to Portuguese runs longer; pick Brazil or Portugal for the voice accent. The written translation uses one Portuguese model, so a market-specific vocabulary review helps.

Brazilian Portuguese is by far the larger audience online, but Portugal and Portuguese-speaking Africa use European norms. Choose the voice accent for your main market. Spelling and vocabulary differ (ônibus/autocarro, celular/telemóvel), and Brazil uses você where Portugal often uses tu or third-person forms.

Brazilian audiences are among the most active on video platforms, which makes English-to-Portuguese one of the most rewarding pairs for creators.

Cost: 750 credits (75¢) with a Portuguese voice, or 15 credits (1.5¢) for Portuguese subtitles only. English is detected automatically; you only choose Portuguese.

The Portuguese voice track

Brazil has a strong dubbing culture and many viewers prefer dubbed content. Pick Portuguese (Brazil) for a Brazilian accent or Portuguese (Portugal) for a European one.

Voice, MP4, subtitles and transcripts: 750 credits (75¢). Subtitles and transcripts only: 15 credits (1.5¢).

Portuguese subtitles

Portuguese subtitles run longer than English. Brazil is one of YouTube's largest markets, so a Portuguese subtitle track can open a video to a big audience.

Portuguese (Português) is written in the Latin alphabet.

Switch Full translation output off for subtitles only: 17 credits (1.7¢). If the video is already in Portuguese, select Portuguese as the language instead and the subtitles come back untranslated — see Portuguese transcription.

Translating audio files into Portuguese

Podcasts and recordings go through the audio translator, which returns a Portuguese M4A and transcripts: 1,800 credits ($1.80) with voice, 36 credits (3.6¢) as text only.

Who translates into Portuguese

Portuguese is spoken in Brazil, Portugal, Angola, Mozambique and other Portuguese-speaking countries. It's used by creators and brands targeting Brazil, companies with teams in Portugal, and education providers across Portuguese-speaking Africa.

Grammar that gives away the variant

The picker has Portuguese (Brazil) and Portuguese (Portugal); the choice sets the voice accent, while the written translation comes from one model. Vocabulary is the obvious difference, but grammar is what makes a native reader say "this was written in the other country":

Continuous action

Brazil: "estou fazendo"; Portugal: "estou a fazer"

Object pronouns

Brazil: "me chama", pronoun before the verb; Portugal: "chama-me", pronoun after it

Addressing the viewer

Brazil: "você"; Portugal: often the verb alone or "o senhor / a senhora", since "você" can sound distant

Spelling

Brazil: "fato", "recepção"; Portugal: "facto", "receção"

Prices

Both use a decimal comma, but Brazil writes R$ 49,90 and Portugal 49,90 €

When the written text leans one way and the voice is set to the other, the mismatch is audible: a Lisbon accent saying "estou fazendo" sounds off in Portugal, and the reverse sounds odd in São Paulo. Before committing a long video, run a short clip in transcript mode with Portuguese as the target, which costs the 5-credit minimum (0.5¢), and read the result: if its grammar clearly belongs to one country, you know how much review the other market will need. The article on translating for regional audiences covers adapting one translation to a single market.

Software and tech videos show the split most clearly. Brazil has adopted many English-derived verbs and nouns, such as "deletar", "mouse" and "tela" for screen, while Portugal tends to say "apagar", "rato" and "ecrã". A tutorial whose subtitles say "clique com o mouse na tela" is plainly Brazilian, which is fine for São Paulo and jarring for Porto.

How the two accents sound to each other

European Portuguese reduces or drops many unstressed vowels, so it sounds faster and more clipped than Brazilian Portuguese at the same speaking rate. Brazilian viewers often find the European accent harder to follow than Portuguese viewers find the Brazilian one, partly because Brazilian television and video circulate widely in Portugal. For a mixed audience where Brazil is the larger group, that asymmetry is a reason to pick the Brazilian accent; for a video aimed at customers or staff in Portugal, the European accent signals that the video was made for them.

Portuguese-speaking Africa

Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau and São Tomé and Príncipe write by European norms, and schools teach European spelling, yet Brazilian television and online video are widely watched there, so many viewers follow either accent comfortably. For an education or NGO video aimed at Luanda or Maputo, European spelling in the subtitles is the safer written choice. Check local place names, currencies (kwanza, metical) and institutions the speaker mentions, since a reviewer from Lisbon or São Paulo may not catch them.

Running one video in both variants

Review the subtitle file from each run on its own. In dub mode the subtitles follow what that voice actually says, including lines shortened to fit timing, so the two files may not be identical. For channels that publish in Portuguese regularly, see running a multilingual YouTube channel and the YouTube video translator workflow.

Who should review the Portuguese

The most useful reviewer is a native speaker from the target country, not just any Portuguese speaker. A Brazilian reviewer may approve European forms as merely formal, and a reviewer from Portugal may not flag Brazilian slang. Give them the original-language transcript, the Portuguese SRT and the dubbed MP4, and ask them to mark lines rather than rewrite whole passages, so you can see what changed. The guide to finding a reviewer for AI translation covers how to brief one and what to pay attention to.

Portuguese pre-publish checks

• Voice accent matches the country the video is announced for.
• Continuous tenses and pronoun placement follow that country's grammar.
• Spelling is consistently Brazilian or European, not a mix.
• Software terms such as tela or ecrã and mouse or rato match the country.
• Prices use R$ or € in the right position, with decimal commas.
• English brand and product names your audience already uses haven't been translated.
• For African audiences, subtitles use European spelling and local names are checked.

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.