Generate subtitles for your Punjabi videos

About Punjabi transcription

Punjabi (ਪੰਜਾਬੀ) is written in Gurmukhi and spoken principally in Indian Punjab, and in Pakistan where it is written in Shahmukhi. Subtitles generated here come back in that script, as ordinary written Punjabi, ready to use in an SRT or VTT file.

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.

What a Punjabi subtitle file looks like

Four lines as they come out of the exported SRT, in Gurmukhi with the timings taken from the speech itself.

1
00:00:01,000 --> 00:00:03,240
ਸਾਰਿਆਂ ਨੂੰ ਸ਼ੁਭ ਸਵੇਰ।

2
00:00:03,600 --> 00:00:06,120
ਆਉਣ ਲਈ ਸਾਰਿਆਂ ਦਾ ਧੰਨਵਾਦ।

3
00:00:06,480 --> 00:00:09,300
ਆਪਣੇ ਸਵਾਲ ਹੇਠਾਂ ਲਿਖੋ।

4
00:00:09,700 --> 00:00:12,040
ਅੱਜ ਲਈ ਬੱਸ ਇੰਨਾ ਹੀ।

Tone and recording quality in Punjabi

Punjabi uses pitch to distinguish words that are otherwise the same, so recognition leans on tone as well as on the sounds. Background music costs more accuracy here than it would elsewhere, because it competes with exactly that cue.

Where tone is misheard the result is a real word rather than obvious nonsense, so errors read as plausible and are worth a deliberate check.

What people caption in Punjabi

The Punjabi material that comes through most often is music videos, vlogs, religious discourse and film content. All of it works the same way — upload the file, check the transcript, export the subtitle track.

Getting a better Punjabi transcript

• Set the language to Punjabi rather than leaving detection on, particularly for clips under a minute where there is little audio to judge from.
• Upload the highest-quality audio you have; compression artefacts cost more accuracy than most people expect.
• Check proper nouns, place names and numbers first — recognition errors concentrate there.
• Read the transcript before exporting. Punjabi subtitles are editable up until you download them.

Punjabi subtitles in another language

The same Punjabi audio can produce subtitles in any of the 76 supported languages instead of in Punjabi itself. English is the most common target, but every pair works, and the translated file keeps the original timings so it drops onto the same video unchanged.