Generate Kannada subtitles for your Gujarati videos

From the Gujarati script to the Kannada script

Gujarati is written in the Gujarati script and Kannada in the Kannada 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 Kannada 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 Gujarati audio becomes Kannada subtitles

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

Line length in Kannada

Kannada builds meaning by stacking endings onto a stem, which produces fewer words but much longer ones. A Gujarati line often arrives as a shorter, denser Kannada line that still overruns two rows.

Shorter blocks are the fix. Splitting a long line across two subtitle events costs nothing — the timings come from the original speech either way and stay in sync.

Why translate Gujarati video into Kannada

Gujarati is spoken principally in Gujarat, in western India, and a large diaspora; Kannada in Karnataka, in southern India. A Kannada 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 Gujarati audio

The Gujarati script is closely related to Devanagari but drops the horizontal line along the top of each word, which is the quickest way to tell the two apart in a subtitle file. Business and trade recordings mix in English terms heavily, and those are transcribed as spoken rather than translated into Gujarati equivalents.

About the Kannada subtitles

Kannada has a large gap between formal and colloquial speech, and regional variation across Karnataka is wide enough that the same word can surface quite differently in Bengaluru and in the north of the state. Both transcribe; neither is corrected toward the other.

What a Gujarati to Kannada subtitle file looks like

Four lines of Gujarati speech, transcribed and translated, as they come out of the exported SRT. The timings are the Gujarati 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
ಎಲ್ಲರಿಗೂ ಶುಭೋದಯ.

2
00:00:03,600 --> 00:00:06,120
ವಿವರಗಳನ್ನು ಸ್ವಲ್ಪ ಸಮಯದಲ್ಲಿ ಹಂಚಿಕೊಳ್ಳುತ್ತೇನೆ.

3
00:00:06,480 --> 00:00:09,300
ನಿಮ್ಮ ಪ್ರಶ್ನೆಗಳನ್ನು ಕೆಳಗೆ ಬರೆಯಿರಿ.

4
00:00:09,700 --> 00:00:12,040
ಮುಂದಿನ ಬಾರಿ ಭೇಟಿಯಾಗೋಣ.

What to check before publishing

• Names and places, which translation handles less reliably than ordinary prose.
• Idiom — a phrase that is natural in Gujarati may need loosening to read well in Kannada.
• Line width, since Kannada packs the same sentence into longer words than Gujarati does.
• That the Kannada script renders in your player, not just in the editor you exported from.
• Timing on fast exchanges, where two speakers overlap.