Generate Telugu subtitles for your Kannada videos

From the Kannada script to the Telugu script

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

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

Line length in Telugu

Telugu builds meaning by stacking endings onto a stem, which produces fewer words but much longer ones. A Kannada line often arrives as a shorter, denser Telugu 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 Kannada video into Telugu

Kannada is spoken principally in Karnataka, in southern India; Telugu in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. A Telugu 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 Kannada audio

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.

About the Telugu subtitles

Telugu's two main regional varieties — broadly Coastal Andhra and Telangana — differ enough in everyday vocabulary that a listener can place a speaker within a sentence. Transcription records what was said rather than standardising to either.

What a Kannada to Telugu subtitle file looks like

Four lines of Kannada speech, transcribed and translated, as they come out of the exported SRT. The timings are the Kannada 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
వచ్చినందుకు అందరికీ ధన్యవాదాలు.

2
00:00:03,600 --> 00:00:06,120
నేను చెప్పేది స్పష్టంగా వినిపిస్తోందా?

3
00:00:06,480 --> 00:00:09,300
వివరాలు కొద్దిసేపట్లో పంచుకుంటాను.

4
00:00:09,700 --> 00:00:12,040
మీ ప్రశ్నలు క్రింద రాయండి.

What to check before publishing

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