By Ravi Kumar

In this Modlingua Live video, Ravi Kumar shows how a transcript can be turned into subtitles on YouTube, from choosing the video to approving a contributor's work. It follows the earlier lesson on transcription. The video is titled "How to Add Subtitles to YouTube Videos: Avoid the Worst Subtitle Errors" on YouTube.

What the video covers

YouTube hosts billions of videos, and subtitles help make them accessible: the spoken audio can appear as text in the same language or in other languages, so a video can reach a wider audience. The demonstration uses the Modlingua channel and a recent guest lecture on speech-to-text technologies.

Steps for the channel owner

1. In the creator studio, find a video that does not yet have subtitles.
2. Open the video, go to the subtitle settings and enable the subtitle option.
3. Copy the link that lets someone contribute to the video, and send it to the person who will do the subtitling.

Steps for the contributor

1. Open the link, go to the video and choose "Add new subtitles".
2. Choose the language. The options are to upload a file, to transcribe and auto-sync, or to create new subtitles. The first two are mainly for the admin, so a contributor should choose "Create new subtitles".
3. YouTube shows an automatically generated English transcript. Edit it line by line, fixing errors, and save. A contributor can only save; the admin then reviews and publishes.

Tips from the speaker

The speaker suggests treating the automatic transcript as a starting point. People who type slowly can edit it instead of typing everything from scratch, and every line still needs checking. He also stresses practice: make mistakes, correct them and practise again. These steps reflect YouTube's tools at the time of recording; menu names may have changed since, so check the current YouTube Studio options.

Questions to take away

• Which of your videos would reach more viewers with subtitles?
• Who on your team should be the contributor and who the approver?
• Which subtitle errors are most likely in your language pair?

Related reading

Read the related Modlingua guide on how to add subtitles to YouTube videos.