Generate Greek subtitles for your Bulgarian videos

From Cyrillic to the Greek script

Bulgarian is written in Cyrillic and Greek in the Greek 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 Greek 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 Greek subtitles

Audio in Bulgarian (Български) is transcribed first, then translated into Greek (Ελληνικά). Because the translation runs on the transcript rather than on the audio, the Greek 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 Greek

Bulgarian is spoken principally in Bulgaria; Greek in Greece and Cyprus. A Greek 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 Greek subtitles

Modern Greek is written with a single accent mark on the stressed syllable, and that accent is not optional — it is what separates otherwise identical words. Sigma also takes a different form at the end of a word than in the middle. Cypriot Greek differs from the mainland standard enough in everyday vocabulary to be worth flagging before you review a transcript.

What a Bulgarian to Greek 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
Ας ξεκινήσουμε με την πρώτη ερώτηση.

2
00:00:03,600 --> 00:00:06,120
Θα μοιραστώ τις λεπτομέρειες σε λίγο.

3
00:00:06,480 --> 00:00:09,300
Γράψτε τις ερωτήσεις σας παρακάτω.

4
00:00:09,700 --> 00:00:12,040
Τα λέμε την επόμενη φορά.

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 Greek.
• That the Greek script renders in your player, not just in the editor you exported from.
• Timing on fast exchanges, where two speakers overlap.