Generate English subtitles for your Punjabi videos

From Gurmukhi to the Latin alphabet

Punjabi is written in Gurmukhi and English 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 English 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 Punjabi audio becomes English subtitles

Audio in Punjabi (ਪੰਜਾਬੀ) 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 Punjabi speech — each line appears at the moment it was actually said.

Tone in the Punjabi audio

Punjabi uses tone to distinguish words that are otherwise identical, so recognition depends on pitch as well as on the sounds themselves. Background music is unusually costly here — it competes with exactly the cue the recogniser needs.

Where tone was misheard, the English translation follows the wrong word rather than producing obvious nonsense, so errors read as plausible. A pass over the transcript before translating is worth more on Punjabi than on most languages.

Why translate Punjabi video into English

Punjabi is spoken principally in Indian Punjab, and in Pakistan where it is written in Shahmukhi; 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 Punjabi audio

Transcription here produces Gurmukhi, the script used in Indian Punjab. Punjabi spoken in Pakistan is conventionally written in the Perso-Arabic Shahmukhi script instead — the speech is largely mutually intelligible, but the two scripts are not interchangeable in a subtitle file.

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 Punjabi to English subtitle file looks like

Four lines of Punjabi speech, transcribed and translated, as they come out of the exported SRT. The timings are the Punjabi 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
Let's start with the first question.

2
00:00:03,600 --> 00:00:06,120
Can you hear me clearly?

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 Punjabi may need loosening to read well in English.
• That the Latin alphabet renders in your player, not just in the editor you exported from.
• Timing on fast exchanges, where two speakers overlap.