Generate Bosnian subtitles for your Bulgarian videos

From Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet

Bulgarian is written in Cyrillic and Bosnian in the Latin alphabet, 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 Bosnian 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.

How Bulgarian audio becomes Bosnian subtitles

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

Why translate Bulgarian video into Bosnian

Bulgarian is spoken principally in Bulgaria; Bosnian in Bosnia and Herzegovina. A Bosnian 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 Bulgarian audio

Bulgarian is unusual among Slavic languages in having dropped noun cases and in attaching its definite article to the end of the word rather than placing it before. It is also close to Macedonian, close enough that detection between the two is not dependable.

About the Bosnian subtitles

Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian are close to identical in speech, and the choice between them is mostly about which written conventions and vocabulary you want rather than what the recording sounds like. Bosnian uses the Latin alphabet and admits more Turkish-derived vocabulary than its neighbours.

What a Bulgarian to Bosnian subtitle file looks like

Four lines of Bulgarian speech, transcribed and translated, as they come out of the exported SRT. The timings are the Bulgarian 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
Dobro jutro svima.

2
00:00:03,600 --> 00:00:06,120
Hvala svima što ste došli.

3
00:00:06,480 --> 00:00:09,300
Podijelit ću detalje za trenutak.

4
00:00:09,700 --> 00:00:12,040
Vidimo se sljedeći put.

What to check before publishing

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