Free tool
Translate subtitles to Japanese
Translate subtitles to Japanese here: drop in an SRT or VTT file in English or another language, and every subtitle comes back in Japanese at its original time, laid out again in short lines that break between words.
- Free
- Into Japanese
- Timing 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 Japanese.
Recording in Japanese as well? NoteOwl transcribes Japanese on your Mac with unlimited transcription and saves SRT subtitles that name each speaker.
How it works
How do you put English subtitles into Japanese?
Open the English SRT or VTT here; the page is already set to Japanese. Press Translate subtitles: neighbouring lines go out in batches and come back in Japanese, each at the times of the line it replaces. Read them through, then download the Japanese file.
- 1
Open the subtitle file
An .srt or .vtt from YouTube Studio, a course platform or an editor. English is recognised by itself; for another language, pick it under From.
- 2
Translate into Japanese
Neighbouring subtitles travel together, so a sentence split over two of them is translated as one thought and each half stays in its own subtitle.
- 3
Save the Japanese file
SRT or VTT, named after your file with .ja added, or a bilingual SRT with the original line above the Japanese.
How much screen room do Japanese subtitles take?
About a fifth more than English. Japanese needs about half as many characters as the English it translates, but a Japanese line holds 16 characters instead of 42, so lines fill up. Each subtitle keeps its time, so a long one gets two fuller lines, never a third.
On our ten test sentences, laid out by the same rules, eight Japanese subtitles took two lines and two fit on one, such as “どうぞお座りください、お客様。”. A line never starts with 。, 、 or a closing bracket.
What should you check before publishing Japanese subtitles?
Breaks around dates and Latin names, and one even style. Lines break only between words, yet a date can still split: our test put “2026年10月16” on one line and “日午後3時30分からです。” on the next. Names kept in Latin letters, such as Maria Lopez, can split too.
Dates and times
If a date or time is cut in two, move a word to the other line or shorten the sentence around it.
Names
Names stayed in Latin letters in our test (Dr. PatelとMaria Lopez). Write them in katakana if your viewers expect that.
One style
Keep polite です/ます forms, or plain forms for a casual video, from the first subtitle to the last.
Will the Japanese subtitles be polite or casual?
Polite. Our test lines came back in です/ます forms, such as “送ってもらえますか？” for “Can you send me…?”, and “sir” became お客様, the word a shop uses for a customer. For a relaxed vlog, plain forms may suit your viewers better.
In a longer test of 50 news sentences, about half came back in plain written forms, such as 敗れた (“lost”), and half in polite ones. If your file mixes the two, settle on one; the change is usually just the verb at the end of the line.
What happens to prices, dates and times in Japanese subtitles?
Digits stay, with Japanese counters and a 12-hour clock marked 午後 for the afternoon. In our test the price became “6.5パーセント” and “$1,250”, and question and exclamation marks became the full-width ？ and ！.
The last line shows something Japanese leaves out: “she” has no word of its own there, so 医師 (the doctor) carries the sentence without a pronoun.
- The price went up by 6.5 percent to $1,250.
- Japanese価格は6.5パーセント上昇し、$1,250になりました。
- The meeting is on October 16, 2026, at 3:30 p.m.
- Japanese会議は2026年10月16日午後3時30分からです。
- Wow! That’s amazing!
- Japaneseわあ！それはすごいですね！
- Our doctor said she would call back tomorrow.
- Japanese医師は明日折り返し電話をすると言っていました。
| English | Japanese |
|---|---|
| The price went up by 6.5 percent to $1,250. | 価格は6.5パーセント上昇し、$1,250になりました。 |
| The meeting is on October 16, 2026, at 3:30 p.m. | 会議は2026年10月16日午後3時30分からです。 |
| Wow! That’s amazing! | わあ！それはすごいですね！ |
| Our doctor said she would call back tomorrow. | 医師は明日折り返し電話をすると言っていました。 |
Making Japanese subtitles from your own recordings?
NoteOwl understands Japanese on your Mac: it transcribes Japanese recordings with unlimited transcription, labels each speaker and saves SRT subtitles with their names. For subtitles of Japanese speech without translating, use the Japanese subtitle generator.
FAQ
Japanese subtitle translation: common questions
Is it free to translate subtitles into Japanese?
Yes. Up to 3 subtitle files a day, each with up to 30,000 characters of text, with no account to create and no watermark.
Can I keep English and Japanese on screen together?
Yes. The bilingual SRT puts the original line above the Japanese one in every subtitle, at the same times. Learners of Japanese use it, and it makes checking the translation quick.
Will kanji and kana show up correctly in my player?
The Japanese file is saved as UTF-8, which modern players and editors read. If a player shows boxes instead of characters, choose UTF-8 or a font with Japanese characters in its subtitle settings.
Does the timing change in the Japanese file?
No. Start times, end times and subtitle numbers are copied from your file, and no subtitle is added, merged or removed, so the Japanese plays exactly where the original did.
How good is the Japanese translation?
In our test of 50 sentences, translation into Japanese scored clearly above the dedicated translation system we compared it with. Names, dates and the polite style are still worth one read before you publish.
What happens to a speaker’s name before a line?
A name written before a line, such as “Ken: Where were you?”, stays in front of the Japanese and isn’t translated, so viewers still see who is talking.
Is my subtitle file sent anywhere?
Your browser opens the file. Only the subtitles’ text goes out, a batch at a time, to a cloud AI translation service that translates it and keeps nothing. NoteOwl stores neither the file nor the Japanese.
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The same in other tools
- Japanese audio to textTranscribe a Japanese recording free in your browser, with the language set to Japanese; text, SRT, VTT or Word; nothing is stored
- Japanese subtitle generatorMake Japanese subtitles from a video or recording free in your browser, with the language set to Japanese; SRT, VTT or text; nothing is stored
Japanese recordings into subtitles and notes, 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.
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