Generate English subtitles for your Catalan videos

How Catalan audio becomes English subtitles

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

Both languages are written in the Latin alphabet, so the file needs nothing from your player beyond that script.

Why translate Catalan video into English

Catalan is spoken principally in Catalonia, Valencia and the Balearic Islands; English in worldwide. A English 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 Catalan audio

Catalan is a language in its own right rather than a variety of Spanish, and the two are used side by side across its territory, so recordings routinely switch between them mid-sentence. Valencian is the same language under a different name with some vocabulary of its own, and transcribes the same way.

About the English subtitles

English has a wider spread of accents than any other language here, and the gap between spelling and pronunciation means recognition leans on context rather than sound alone. Names and technical terms are where errors concentrate, because those are exactly the words context cannot predict.

What a Catalan to English subtitle file looks like

Four lines of Catalan speech, transcribed and translated, as they come out of the exported SRT. The timings are the Catalan 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
Can you hear me clearly?

2
00:00:03,600 --> 00:00:06,120
Please write your questions below.

3
00:00:06,480 --> 00:00:09,300
That's all for today.

4
00:00:09,700 --> 00:00:12,040
See you next time.

What to check before publishing

• Names and places, which translation handles less reliably than ordinary prose.
• Idiom — a phrase that is natural in Catalan may need loosening to read well in English.
• Timing on fast exchanges, where two speakers overlap.