Translate subtitles to Polish

Slightly. In our test, Polish ran a little longer than the English it came from. A subtitle’s time can’t stretch, so a longer line fills its two lines a little more; it is never pushed into a third line or an extra subtitle.

Each translation is laid out again for lines of about 42 characters. “Can you send me the report before Friday?” fits on one English line; its Polish, “Czy możesz mi wysłać raport przed piątkiem?”, takes two: “Czy możesz mi wysłać” above “raport przed piątkiem?”.

Mostly ty. Everyday lines came back informal in our test, such as “Czy możesz…?” and “Cóż, wiesz…”, while “Please sit down, sir” became a stiff “Proszę usiąść, panie”. For a business or formal video, switch the ty forms to Pan, Pani or Państwo.

Polish puts the formal address in the third person (“Czy może Pan…?”), so the verb changes along with the pronoun. Searching the file for “możesz” and “wiesz” finds most of the lines to change.

In our test, yes. “Our doctor said she would call back” became “Nasza lekarka powiedziała”, with the feminine word for doctor, and “Dr. Patel” lost its full stop, as Polish writes “Dr”. A mixed group took the masculine plural: “Nauczyciele byli zmęczeni”.

Well. Across fifty English test sentences, translation into Polish scored clearly above the dedicated translation system we compared it with. The things worth a look before you publish are the ones above: ty or Pan, names, and how figures are written.

NoteOwl understands Polish on your Mac: it transcribes Polish interviews, lessons and calls with unlimited transcription and exports SRT subtitles with each speaker’s name. For a Polish video without subtitles yet, start with the Polish subtitle generator in your browser.