Surely you’ve ever seen a video on YouTube whose audio is heard low enough that we can’t hear anything. Also occurs in many cases that we find one that is in another language and we want to have some idea of what it says.
Today this platform allows its users to insert subtitles in their videos and even, this is very important to have a good search engine optimization, but many don’t know how to activate them.
That’s why in this post we will teach you to activate and force them whenever we want. We will also explain how to translate them automatically, something that will be very useful when they are in another language.
Index:
Steps to configure and force the appearance of YouTube subtitles
Although we may not know how we can make the subtitles of a video appear on YouTube, you should know that this task will be very simple and we can do it from our computer or from the application to Android or iOS mobile devices.
From the computer
Yes, it sure happened to you that you are watching a video and you do not listen very well to what they say or it may be in a language different from yours and you do not understand it. Maybe you just want to practice a language and doing this could do you quite well.
It is very common today that the authors insert it into these to reach a larger audience, either for people with hearing problems or speakers of other languages. This factor is also very important in search engine optimization , as mentioned earlier.
Similarly, Youtube also automatically generates subtitles for some videos, although it should be noted that they do not always have adequate accuracy, this varies according to various factors.
Well, this interface gives us the possibility in many cases, to activate them in a very simple way, this is because it works with STR format:
- The first thing is enter the YouTube website , you can browse as a visitor or enter with your Google account to interact with it.
- We will locate the video we need to translate using the search bar to find it.
- When we find it we will observe the playback screen. At the bottom of it there are several icons: We will select the configuration logo and click on importantSubtitles within.
- Once we have clicked on it, the subtitles will be activated and we can enjoy them. If we want to deactivate them we will press the same button again.
From the APP for Android and iOS
Yes, it is very easy to activate subtitles from your computer but you should know that you can also do it using your Android device or your iPhone.
The procedure is extremely easy:
If we use Android
It should be noted that this platform uses Google Translate , this means that we can select the language of our preference for the subtitle, the one we want, without important in which was done by the person who uploaded it.
- To start, we will open our video using our Android device.
- We will click on the three dots icon to see the menu options, a list will be displayed.
- We will select the «CC» icon and then choose the subtitle that shows us.
- If we want to disable subtitles we can do it by doing the same procedure.
From our iPhone
The process is the same as we mentioned earlier for Android.
- We will start by opening our video in the YouTube app for iOS.
- We will place the three dots icon at the top right of the screen and we will press it to display the list of menu options.
- We will click on the «CC» icon and choose the desired language for our subtitles.
- In case we want to deactivate them, we will click on “CC” again to make them disappear from the screen.
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* Note: It is important to note that, on both Android and iOS, if the video does not have subtitles available you cannot click on the «CC» icon or it won’t appear.
Force subtitles for embedded videos
Now, if we have a blog or a web page and we want to save our visitors the tedious job of activating them, we can also do it to help them.
Keep in mind that by default YouTube will play the video in a common way. However, with a fairly simple trick to apply we can force them to be displayed automatically in the language we want.
This consists of altering the URL of the insert code of our video, so that these parameters order it to be displayed with subtitles.
Following these steps you can do it very easily:
- Go to the video on YouTube and select accounShareShare.
- Once the box is opened we will click on clearlyInsertar behalf.
- It will show us a code that we must insert in our entry.
- Before inserting the code in our post, we will locate the URL and alter the address by adding the following at the end of it: «rel = 0 & hl = en & cc_lang_pref = en & cc_load_policy = 1 ? » (without quotes). This is for Spanish subtitles, in English it is as follows: «rel = 0 & hl = en & cc_lang_pref = en & cc_load_policy = 1» (without quotes).
Having performed these steps, our video will be shown with subtitles in Spanish or in English automatically on our website. It should be noted that this does not work if the video has no subtitles, or if you add the code at the end of a URL of one you are seeing, since certain things, such as « Watch » must be replaced by « Embed «.
How to change the language of subtitles on YouTube?
Now, we activate the subtitles but it turns out that our video is, for example, in English and our subtitles too. If we don’t have very good command of the language we probably won’t understand anything.
Do not worry, it is very likely that the author of this has placed subtitles in different languages, even more so if it is international news networks whose content is disseminated worldwide.
If we want to choose a different one than the one shown, we will simply have to follow the following steps. If we haven’t activated subtitles yet, we’ll do it.
- Once the subtitles appear we will click on the iconConfiguration within.
- We will select the “Subtitles” option.
- A list of all available subtitles will be displayed, we will select one and we can see it on screen.
- It should be taken into account that in many cases it is very likely that the author has not added any subtitles or has only added one in the original language.
Is it possible to translate the subtitles automatically into Spanish in YouTube videos?
It is very likely that the English video we are watching does not have Spanish subtitles. In that case, we will have to translate the existing ones, but no … We don’t need to take word for word and place it in Google Translate.
Just a couple of clicks is enough to perform this simple task:
- If we have already activated the subtitles we will go to the “Settings” option.
- We will click on “Subtitles”, > This will display a list of options.
- In it we can see that in addition to the available subtitles there is an option called «Translate automatically», we will click there.
- Once done we will select the language. In our case we will look for the «Spanish», taking into account that the languages are arranged alphabetically.
- Done, our video will be shown with subtitles in the selected language.
How to put subtitles on a YouTube video you don’t have?
Unfortunately, YT does not automatically generate subtitles for all videos . But there are currently extensions for Google Chrome that are responsible for searching subtitles on the Internet when it comes to movies or documentaries, to add them to this easily. However, this will not help us when what we need is to see a tutorial or a video of a story.
One of these add-ons to perform the task is:
Subtitles for Youtube
It is quite useful, as we said if our video is about a movie, because this is in charge of looking for an SRT file according to it. One of its sources to obtain subtitles is the portal OpenSubtitles.org . You can also see the best pages to download subtitles from here.