Generate Arabic subtitles for your Hebrew videos

Two right-to-left scripts

Hebrew and Arabic both run right to left, so direction is one thing you do not have to think about here — the file goes out in the same orientation it came in.

Mixed passages — a Latin-script brand name or number inside a right-to-left line — are where rendering most often looks wrong, and they are worth checking in the player you actually publish to rather than in a text editor.

How Hebrew audio becomes Arabic subtitles

Audio in Hebrew (עברית) is transcribed first, then translated into Arabic (العربية). Because the translation runs on the transcript rather than on the audio, the Arabic subtitle file keeps the timings of the original Hebrew speech — each line appears at the moment it was actually said.

From the Hebrew script to the Arabic script

Hebrew is written in the Hebrew script and Arabic in the Arabic script, so the exported file uses a different writing system from the audio that produced it. The subtitle formats handle that — SRT and VTT are plain text and carry any script — but the font in whatever plays the file has to cover it.

This is the most common reason a Arabic subtitle track looks correct in an editor and shows boxes or blanks on a device. Test on the target platform before you publish a batch.

Why translate Hebrew video into Arabic

Hebrew is spoken principally in Israel; Arabic in North Africa, the Levant and the Arabian Peninsula. A Arabic subtitle track is what lets one recording reach both audiences without re-recording, re-editing or dubbing it.

Because subtitles are a separate file rather than part of the picture, you can attach several language tracks to the same video and let viewers pick.

About the Hebrew audio

Hebrew is written right-to-left and normally without vowel marks, so the transcript comes out unvocalised, as ordinary written Hebrew does. Mixed Hebrew-English speech is common in technical and business recordings and is transcribed as spoken.

About the Arabic subtitles

The gap between Modern Standard Arabic and the regional dialects is the thing to plan around: broadcast news is close to the standard, while everyday Egyptian, Gulf, Levantine and Maghrebi speech diverge from it considerably. Standard-register material transcribes markedly better than heavy dialect.

What a Hebrew to Arabic subtitle file looks like

Four lines of Hebrew speech, transcribed and translated, as they come out of the exported SRT. The timings are the Hebrew speaker's — translation does not move them, which is why the file drops onto the original video unchanged.

1
00:00:01,000 --> 00:00:03,240
صباح الخير للجميع.

2
00:00:03,600 --> 00:00:06,120
لنبدأ بالسؤال الأول.

3
00:00:06,480 --> 00:00:09,300
هل تسمعونني بوضوح؟

4
00:00:09,700 --> 00:00:12,040
أراكم في المرة القادمة.

What to check before publishing

• Names and places, which translation handles less reliably than ordinary prose.
• Idiom — a phrase that is natural in Hebrew may need loosening to read well in Arabic.
• That the Arabic script renders in your player, not just in the editor you exported from.
• Timing on fast exchanges, where two speakers overlap.