Generate Kannada subtitles for your Punjabi videos

From Gurmukhi to the Kannada script

Punjabi is written in Gurmukhi 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 Punjabi audio becomes Kannada subtitles

Audio in Punjabi (ਪੰਜਾਬੀ) 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 Punjabi 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 Punjabi 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.

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 Kannada 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 Kannada

Punjabi is spoken principally in Indian Punjab, and in Pakistan where it is written in Shahmukhi; 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 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 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 Punjabi to Kannada 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
ಬಂದಿದ್ದಕ್ಕಾಗಿ ಎಲ್ಲರಿಗೂ ಧನ್ಯವಾದಗಳು.

2
00:00:03,600 --> 00:00:06,120
ಮೊದಲ ಪ್ರಶ್ನೆಯಿಂದ ಪ್ರಾರಂಭಿಸೋಣ.

3
00:00:06,480 --> 00:00:09,300
ನಾನು ಹೇಳುವುದು ಸ್ಪಷ್ಟವಾಗಿ ಕೇಳಿಸುತ್ತಿದೆಯೇ?

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 Punjabi may need loosening to read well in Kannada.
• Line width, since Kannada packs the same sentence into longer words than Punjabi 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.