Generate Telugu subtitles for your Punjabi videos

From Gurmukhi to the Telugu script

Punjabi is written in Gurmukhi 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 Punjabi audio becomes Telugu subtitles

Audio in Punjabi (ਪੰਜਾਬੀ) 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 Punjabi 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 Punjabi 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.

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 Telugu 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 Telugu

Punjabi is spoken principally in Indian Punjab, and in Pakistan where it is written in Shahmukhi; 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 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 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 Punjabi to Telugu 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
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
మీ ప్రశ్నలు క్రింద రాయండి.

4
00:00:09,700 --> 00:00:12,040
వచ్చేసారి కలుద్దాం.

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 Telugu.
• Line width, since Telugu packs the same sentence into longer words than Punjabi 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.