Free tool
Translate subtitles to English
Use this page to translate subtitles to English: drop in an SRT or VTT file in French, Japanese, Hindi or another listed language, and download English subtitles that keep every number and time, so a foreign film, course or call plays with English on screen.
- Free
- From a long list of languages
- Times unchanged
Drop your subtitle file here, or Choose your subtitle file
SRT or VTT. Up to 30,000 characters of each file, about 30 minutes of speech, 3 free files a day. Translates into English.
Recording conversations in English? NoteOwl transcribes them on your Mac with unlimited transcription and saves SRT subtitles with each speaker’s name.
How it works
How do you turn foreign subtitles into English?
Drop the SRT or VTT on this page; it’s already set to English. Leave From on Detect automatically or pick the file’s language, then press Translate. Consecutive subtitles travel together, so a sentence split across two still makes sense in English.
- 1
Add the foreign subtitles
An SRT or VTT in French, Japanese, Hindi, Polish or another language from the list.
- 2
Translate into English
Each subtitle comes back in English at its original time, in at most 2 lines.
- 3
Download
English SRT or VTT, or a bilingual SRT with the original line above each English one.
What does English lose from the original subtitles?
Mostly politeness. English has one “you”, so tu and vous, du and Sie, tú and usted all come out the same, and the levels of respect in Japanese or Korean disappear. Grammatical gender and case endings drop away as well.
In one Hindi test sentence, the respectful वे, used for a single person, came back as a plain “They”: the respect is gone, and the English reads as if more than one person lost the match.
What does English have to fill in?
Who did what. Japanese often leaves out the subject and Spanish can carry it in a word ending, but an English sentence needs “he”, “she” or “they”. The translator works it out from the lines around it, which is why consecutive subtitles are sent together.
- 最近では、ブリスベン・オープンでラオニッチに敗れています。
- EnglishRecently, they were defeated by Laonić at the Brisbane Open.
- What English had to decideNo subject in the Japanese, so “they”
- Fue derrotado, hace poco, por Raonic en el Brisbane Open.
- EnglishHe was defeated, recently, by Raonic at the Brisbane Open.
- What English had to decideThe ending of “derrotado” points to a man: “he”
- Il a récemment perdu un match contre Raonic durant l'Open de Brisbane.
- EnglishHe recently lost a match against Raonic during the Brisbane Open.
- What English had to decideFrench “il” gives “he” directly
| Original | English | What English had to decide |
|---|---|---|
| 最近では、ブリスベン・オープンでラオニッチに敗れています。 | Recently, they were defeated by Laonić at the Brisbane Open. | No subject in the Japanese, so “they” |
| Fue derrotado, hace poco, por Raonic en el Brisbane Open. | He was defeated, recently, by Raonic at the Brisbane Open. | The ending of “derrotado” points to a man: “he” |
| Il a récemment perdu un match contre Raonic durant l'Open de Brisbane. | He recently lost a match against Raonic during the Brisbane Open. | French “il” gives “he” directly |
How do names come out in English subtitles?
As written, when the original uses Latin letters. Names in another script come back spelled by sound, and not always right: Raonic became “Laonić” from Japanese and Chinese and “Ronic” from Hindi. Search the English file for each name and correct it once.
A Korean test line that added the Latin spelling in brackets, 라오니치(Raonic), came back as plain “Raonic”, so subtitles that already carry the Latin form fare best. Piquet Jr. turned into “Pike Jr.” from Japanese and “Little Piquet” from Chinese.
Are times and units written the English way?
Not always: they follow the original. German “8:46 Uhr” and Japanese 午前8時46分 came back as “8:46 a.m.”, French “8 h 46” as plain “8:46”, and Russian kept “08:46”. Kilometres stay kilometres, so add a.m., p.m. or miles where your viewers expect them.
Watching a foreign film or course with English subtitles?
Download the English SRT and load it from your player’s subtitle menu, as VLC lets you. Learning the language? The bilingual SRT puts the original line above the English one in every subtitle, at the same times.
The English file is named after yours with the code en, so Film.fr.srt comes back as Film.en.srt, ready to sit beside the original.
Recording English conversations of your own?
English is one of the languages NoteOwl understands on a Mac. It transcribes recordings there with unlimited transcription, labels each speaker and saves SRT subtitles with their names. For subtitles made from a video’s speech, use the subtitle generator.
FAQ
Questions about translating subtitles into English
Is translating subtitles to English free here?
Yes. You can translate 3 subtitle files a day into English, up to 30,000 characters of text in each, with no account and no watermark.
Which languages can be translated into English?
The languages in the From list, such as French, Spanish, German, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Hindi, Tamil, Turkish and Polish. The page detects the language of the file, or you can pick it, which helps with very short files.
How long does a translation into English take?
Seconds. In our test, a German SRT of 64 subtitles, nearly five minutes of speech, came back in English in 7 seconds, with every number and time identical to the original.
What if my subtitles are already in English?
The page spots plainly English text, sets it as the source and tells you there is nothing to translate. To put English subtitles into another language, use the main subtitle translator, which lets you pick the target.
Will the English subtitles stay in sync with the video?
Yes. Each subtitle keeps its number and its start and end time, and none is added or dropped, so the English file lines up with the video exactly as the original did.
Is my subtitle file uploaded?
Your browser opens it. Only the subtitles’ text goes, in batches, to a cloud AI translation service that returns the English and keeps nothing, and the new file is put together in the page. NoteOwl stores neither file.
Keep exploring
More subtitle translator tools
- Subtitle translatorA free subtitle translator: drop in an SRT or VTT file and download it in another language, every subtitle keeping its number and times; SRT, VTT or bilingual SRT; nothing is stored
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- Translate subtitles to ItalianTranslate SRT or VTT subtitles into Italian free in your browser: every cue keeps its number and times; nothing is stored
- Translate subtitles to PortugueseTranslate SRT or VTT subtitles into Portuguese free in your browser: every cue keeps its number and times; nothing is stored
- Translate subtitles to GermanTranslate SRT or VTT subtitles into German free in your browser: every cue keeps its number and times; nothing is stored
On your Mac
- Subtitle generatorA free AI subtitle generator: drop in a video or recording and download SRT or VTT subtitles timed to the speech, two short lines per cue; only the sound is sent, nothing is stored
- Audio to textTranscription software for your Mac: drop in an audio or video file and get a speaker-labelled transcript with timestamps, unlimited, with nothing uploaded
English conversations into notes and subtitles, on your Mac
Free to download. Runs entirely on your Mac.
macOS 26 or later · Apple Silicon (M1 or newer) · 16 GB memory minimum, 24 GB recommended
About NoteOwl
NoteOwl is private AI meeting notes and memory for the Mac. It captures meetings without a bot joining the call, labels every speaker, writes summaries and action items, and builds a memory of every conversation that you can chat with — fully offline, because the speech recognition and the AI run on the Mac itself. Dictation into any app is free; Pro is a one-time purchase.
NoteOwl pricing: what’s free and what Pro adds
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