Generate Bulgarian subtitles for your Romanian videos

From the Latin alphabet to Cyrillic

Romanian is written in the Latin alphabet and Bulgarian in Cyrillic, 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 Bulgarian 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 Romanian audio becomes Bulgarian subtitles

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

Why translate Romanian video into Bulgarian

Romanian is spoken principally in Romania and Moldova; Bulgarian in Bulgaria. A Bulgarian 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 Romanian audio

Romanian is a Romance language written in the Latin alphabet, but it sits among Slavic neighbours and has absorbed a good deal of vocabulary from them. Its distinguishing letters are ă, â, î, ș and ț, and the last two carry a comma below rather than a cedilla — a distinction that some fonts get wrong.

About the Bulgarian subtitles

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.

What a Romanian to Bulgarian subtitle file looks like

Four lines of Romanian speech, transcribed and translated, as they come out of the exported SRT. The timings are the Romanian 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
Благодаря на всички, че дойдохте.

2
00:00:03,600 --> 00:00:06,120
Да започнем с първия въпрос.

3
00:00:06,480 --> 00:00:09,300
Напишете въпросите си по-долу.

4
00:00:09,700 --> 00:00:12,040
Това е всичко за днес.

What to check before publishing

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