Generate Spanish subtitles for your French videos

How French audio becomes Spanish subtitles

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

Both languages are written in the Latin alphabet, so the file needs nothing from your player beyond that script.

Why translate French video into Spanish

French is spoken principally in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Canada and much of West and Central Africa; Spanish in Spain and most of Latin America. A Spanish 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 French audio

French elides heavily in speech — words run together in ways the written form does not show — which makes word boundaries the hard part rather than the vocabulary. African and Québécois French are both well handled.

About the Spanish subtitles

European and Latin American Spanish differ in pronunciation, pronoun use and a good deal of everyday vocabulary, and Caribbean and Rioplatense speech diverge further still. All transcribe well; the variety is preserved rather than standardised.

What a French to Spanish subtitle file looks like

Four lines of French speech, transcribed and translated, as they come out of the exported SRT. The timings are the French 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
Gracias a todos por venir.

2
00:00:03,600 --> 00:00:06,120
Compartiré los detalles en un momento.

3
00:00:06,480 --> 00:00:09,300
Eso es todo por hoy.

4
00:00:09,700 --> 00:00:12,040
Hasta la próxima.

What to check before publishing

• Names and places, which translation handles less reliably than ordinary prose.
• Idiom — a phrase that is natural in French may need loosening to read well in Spanish.
• Timing on fast exchanges, where two speakers overlap.