Verified July 2026
Video Translator — AI Translate Video to English & 132 Languages
Upload any video or paste a YouTube URL. VexaScribe transcribes with Whisper Large-v3, then translates the transcript into any of 133 target languages — with timestamps preserved so you can export the result as a translated SRT/VTT subtitle file ready for YouTube, Premiere, DaVinci, or HTML5 web video.
VexaScribe is an AI video translator that does two things in one pass: transcribes speech in the source language with Whisper Large-v3 (99 languages), then translates the transcript into 133 target languages while preserving the original video's timestamps. The output is a translated SRT/VTT subtitle file that matches the source video's timeline — drop it into YouTube Studio, Premiere, DaVinci, or any HTML5 player and the subtitles appear in sync with the original audio. Translation is included on every paid plan at no extra per-word cost. 30 minutes free at signup, no credit card. Plans from $2/month.
Key takeaways
- ●One workflow, two outputs. Transcript in the source language plus translated transcript in any of 133 target languages — timestamps preserved on both.
- ●Whisper Large-v3 + Google Translate stack. 92-95% transcription accuracy on Tier 1 source languages, Google Translate translation quality on the pair. Both included at no extra cost.
- ●Translated SRT/VTT output matches source timing. Drop the file into YouTube Studio, Premiere, DaVinci, or HTML5 <track> and subtitles sync with the original audio automatically.
- ●Upload video or paste a URL. MP4, MOV, MKV, WebM up to 5 GB, or paste from YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Vimeo, Loom.
- ●Not dubbing. This produces translated subtitle files, not translated voice-over. For AI voice dubbing, use ElevenLabs or HeyGen after generating the translated transcript here.
- ●Pricing: 30 min free, $2-$20/mo. Translation is included on every paid plan — no per-character charges like Google Cloud Translation API.
How to translate a video (3 steps)
Whether you have the video file or just a URL.
- 1
Upload video or paste URL
Drop MP4, MOV, MKV, WebM, AVI, FLV, or WMV up to 5 GB and 10 hours. Or paste a YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Vimeo, or Loom URL — VexaScribe fetches the video server-side. Source language auto-detects from the audio.
- 2
AI transcribes + translates
Whisper Large-v3 transcribes speech in the source language (99 supported), preserving word-level timestamps and speaker labels. Then the transcript is translated into your chosen target language — 133 options including English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Portuguese.
- 3
Export translated SRT/VTT/TXT
Download the translated subtitle file with timestamps matching the original video timeline. SRT for universal, VTT for HTML5 web, TXT/DOCX for reading. Both source-language and translated exports included.
What the video translator does
Under the hood, video translation is a three-pass pipeline:
- Audio extraction. The audio track is pulled from the video container (MP4, MOV, MKV, WebM, AVI, FLV, WMV) server-side. No manual FFmpeg step.
- Transcription (Whisper Large-v3). Speech is converted to text in the source language with segment timestamps and speaker diarization via pyannote.audio 3.1. Accuracy: 92-95% on clean Tier 1 language audio.
- Translation. The source-language transcript is translated into your chosen target language while preserving segment timestamps. Because each translated segment inherits the original segment's start/end times, the output SRT/VTT file matches the source video's timeline exactly.
The key difference from doing this manually in two tools: the timestamps survive the translation step. If you transcribe with Whisper and translate the text with Google Translate as separate steps, you lose the timing anchors and have to re-sync the translated text against the video — a 30-60 minute manual step for a typical video. VexaScribe threads the timestamps through both passes automatically.
Output formats — translated subtitles + transcript
Every video translation exports in five formats. All contain the translated content with source-language timestamps preserved.
| Format | Delivery | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| SRT (translated) | Timestamped subtitle file | YouTube subtitle upload, Premiere/DaVinci/CapCut import, universal subtitle standard |
| VTT (translated) | Timestamped subtitle file | HTML5 web video via <track> element, styled captions |
| TXT / DOCX (translated) | Plain-text translated transcript | Reading, quoting, article translation, LLM input |
| JSON (translated) | Structured data with word-level timing | Developer pipelines, custom subtitle players |
| Source-language + translated (all formats) | Both original and translated exports included | Bilingual publishing, quality-review workflow |
For the deeper SRT format spec — what the file structure looks like, why timecodes use commas, common encoding gotchas — see what is an SRT file. For attachment workflows per platform (YouTube Studio, Premiere, DaVinci, CapCut), see how to add subtitles to video.
Translate video to English
“Translate to English” is the most common video translation workflow — creators reaching English-speaking audiences from Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Portuguese, and other source content. Common pairs and quality expectations:
| Language pair | Quality | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Spanish → English | Excellent | Whisper Tier 1 source, Google Translate high-quality pair |
| French → English | Excellent | Same as above |
| German → English | Excellent | Same as above; German-to-English typically shrinks text ~20% |
| Japanese → English | Very good | Whisper handles kana/kanji well; translation quality depends on formality register |
| Portuguese → English | Excellent | Both Brazilian and European variants handled |
| Mandarin → English | Very good | Whisper Large-v3 tokenizer covers simplified and traditional characters |
| Arabic → English | Good | Modern Standard Arabic strong; regional dialects variable |
| Hindi → English | Good | Devanagari script handled; code-switching (Hindi-English mix) can drop accuracy |
| English → Spanish/French/German | Excellent | Reverse direction of top Tier 1 pairs |
| English → 130+ others | Varies | Common languages excellent; low-resource languages workable but benefit from review |
Rule of thumb: AI video translation gives you a strong starting point that a bilingual editor can polish in 15-30 minutes per video hour — vs. translating from scratch, which takes 3-6 hours per video hour. For broadcast, marketing campaigns, or client work, plan a review pass. For internal, educational, or preview use, the raw AI output is typically usable.
Translate YouTube videos
Paste any YouTube URL — VexaScribe fetches the video, runs Whisper Large-v3 on the audio (not YouTube's auto-captions, which are lower quality especially on non-English), and produces the translated SRT ready to upload back to YouTube.
Why not just use YouTube's built-in auto-translate? YouTube's auto-caption + auto-translate pipeline compounds two accuracy problems: (1) YouTube's auto-caption model runs at 75-85% accuracy on English and drops on non-English source audio, (2) YouTube then translates that already-imperfect transcript. Errors multiply. VexaScribe fixes the first problem by running Whisper Large-v3 instead of YouTube's auto-caption model — meaning the translated subtitles start from a 90-95% accurate transcript instead of a 75-85% one. Upload the resulting translated SRT to YouTube Studio as a proper subtitle track and viewers get materially better translations.
Workflow: Paste YouTube URL → translate to target language → export SRT → upload SRT to YouTube Studio (Content → your video → Subtitles → Add language → target language → Upload file → With timing). YouTube indexes uploaded translated subtitle tracks for international search, so publishing a proper translated SRT also improves the video's discoverability in your target-language YouTube market.
Accuracy — transcription + translation
Video translation accuracy compounds two independent stages. Understanding the split helps you set expectations and plan review time.
Stage 1 — Transcription
- Whisper Large-v3
- Tier 1 source languages: 92-95% on clean audio
- Noisy vlog / outdoor audio: 82-90%
- Proper nouns miss more often (20-30% error rate)
See how accurate is Whisper for full WER benchmarks.
Stage 2 — Translation
- Google Translate quality
- Tier 1 pairs (Spanish/French/German ↔ English): excellent
- Regional variants (Brazilian vs European Portuguese) handled
- Low-resource pairs (Yoruba, Pashto) workable but benefit from review
Compound accuracy expectations: for the common workflow (Spanish/French/German/Japanese/Portuguese → English), expect the raw translated output to be 90-95% publish-ready — proper nouns need a review pass, but sentence structure and meaning are typically correct. For broadcast, legal, or marketing use, plan human review by a bilingual editor.
Pricing and free trial
Translation is included on every paid plan at no extra cost — you're paying for transcription minutes, not per-word translation fees. Free tier covers 30 minutes at signup with full translation access. Paid plans:
| Plan | Price | Minutes/mo | Translation included? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free trial | $0 | 30 | Yes — 133 languages |
| Starter | $2/mo | 200 | Yes |
| Basic | $5/mo | 1000 | Yes |
| Pro | $10/mo | 2500 | Yes |
| Studio | $20/mo | 6000 | Yes |
Cost comparison: Rev human video translation runs $3-5 per audio minute ($180-300 per hour). Google Cloud Translation API charges $20 per million characters on top of transcription minutes. VexaScribe bundles both stages into flat monthly plans — a 10-hour video at Pro pricing costs $10/month total including translation, not $10 transcription + $20+ per-word translation fees.
Frequently asked questions
How does an AI video translator work?
Three passes on the audio track. (1) Extraction: the audio is pulled from your video container (MP4, MOV, MKV, WebM). (2) Transcription: Whisper Large-v3 transcribes speech in the source language with word-level timestamps and speaker diarization. (3) Translation: the transcript is translated into your target language (133 supported), with timestamps preserved so the output can be exported as a translated SRT/VTT subtitle file that matches the original video timeline. VexaScribe does all three in one workflow — no separate transcription then translation step, no timing drift.
Can I translate a video from any language to English?
Yes — 99 source languages via Whisper Large-v3. Common workflows: Spanish → English, French → English, German → English, Japanese → English, Chinese → English, Portuguese → English, Arabic → English, Russian → English. Accuracy on the transcript side depends on source-language quality (Whisper Tier 1 languages hit 92-95% on clean audio); accuracy on the translation side is Google Translate quality (very good for common language pairs, adequate for lower-resource pairs). The output preserves timestamps, so you get both an English text transcript and a translated .srt/.vtt subtitle file ready to attach to the original video.
Do I get a translated subtitle file (SRT/VTT) or just text?
Both. Every video translation exports as (a) plain translated text in TXT/DOCX for reading and quoting, (b) timestamped translated subtitles in SRT (universal), VTT (HTML5), and (c) JSON with word-level timestamps for developers. The SRT/VTT files match the original video's timeline, so you can drag them onto the source video in YouTube Studio, Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, CapCut, or any player that supports subtitle files. This is what makes translated video subtitles for international audiences practical: one workflow produces the file the video editor actually needs.
What's the difference between video translation and audio translation?
Same pipeline, different input container. Both extract the audio track and run the same Whisper transcription + translation pass. The video translator additionally handles video containers directly (MP4, MOV, MKV, WebM, AVI, FLV, WMV) with URL-paste support for YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Vimeo, and Loom. If you already have a separated audio file (MP3, WAV, M4A), use the audio translator page — same output, slightly simpler workflow. For a video file with the audio still embedded, this page saves you the extraction step.
How accurate is AI video translation vs human translation?
Two-stage accuracy question. Stage 1 (transcription): 92-95% for Tier 1 source languages on clean audio (Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Portuguese, Italian, Mandarin), dropping to 82-90% on noisy vlogs and lower-resource languages. Stage 2 (translation): Google Translate quality — very strong for common pairs (Spanish↔English, French↔English, German↔English), adequate for regional variants (Brazilian vs European Portuguese), and workable but less polished for low-resource languages. For broadcast, marketing campaigns, or legal use, plan a human review pass on translated subtitles — the AI output gives you a strong starting point that a bilingual editor can polish in 15-30 minutes per video hour instead of translating from scratch.
Can I translate a YouTube video to English?
Yes. Paste the YouTube URL directly — VexaScribe fetches the video, transcribes with Whisper Large-v3 (not YouTube's auto-captions, which are lower quality on non-English), and translates the transcript to English. Export as SRT to upload back to YouTube as a translated subtitle track (YouTube Studio → Content → your video → Subtitles → Add language: English → Upload file). This gives your video English-speaking reach with 5-10 percentage points better accuracy than YouTube's built-in auto-translate-captions option.
Is video translation the same as dubbing?
No. Video translation converts the audio's spoken words into a written text file (SRT/VTT/TXT) in the target language — viewers read subtitles while watching the original audio. Dubbing replaces the audio itself with a new voice speaking the target language. VexaScribe handles video translation (subtitles). For AI dubbing (voice cloning + dialog replacement), tools like ElevenLabs, HeyGen, and Rask handle that — a different product category. The two are often paired: translate the transcript with VexaScribe, then optionally dub with ElevenLabs using the translated transcript as the input script.
What languages can I translate to?
133 target languages — the same set Google Translate supports. Top-tier pairs with the best output quality include translations into English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Arabic, Hindi, and Turkish. All 133 are available on every paid plan at no extra per-character charge — you're paying for the transcription minutes, not per-word translation fees like Google Cloud Translation API charges.
How much does video translation cost?
Same rate as regular transcription — translation is included in every paid plan at no extra cost. Free tier: 30 minutes of video translation, no credit card required. Paid plans start at $2/month for 200 minutes (~3 hour-long videos with translation), scaling to $20/month for 6,000 minutes (~100 hour-long videos). Compare to Rev human translation at $3-5 per audio minute ($180-300 per audio hour), or Google Cloud Translation API which charges $20 per million characters on top of transcription minutes — VexaScribe bundles both at a flat monthly rate.
Does the translated SRT match the original video's timing?
Yes — this is the point of doing transcription and translation in one workflow. VexaScribe generates the source-language SRT with segment timestamps from Whisper, then translates each segment while keeping its timestamp intact. The translated SRT has the same start/end times as the original — subtitles appear and disappear in sync with the spoken words even though the text is now in a different language. Note that translated text often has different length than the source (Spanish → English typically shrinks by 15%; German → English typically shrinks by 20%), so long segments may show gaps between subtitles — VexaScribe automatically rebalances line breaks for readability.
Methodology & disclosure
Accuracy claims. Whisper Large-v3 WER references the Hugging Face Open ASR Leaderboard (verified July 2026). Translation quality claims reflect Google Translate's general performance on the referenced language pairs; VexaScribe does not maintain independent translation benchmarks.
Competitor pricing. Rev human video translation and Google Cloud Translation API pricing verified July 2026 against public pricing pages. Prices change; verify directly before choosing.
Model dependencies. Transcription runs OpenAI Whisper Large-v3. Translation runs on Google Translate. Speaker labels via pyannote.audio 3.1. Model choice may change as newer models release. Not HIPAA-eligible — do not upload PHI.
Disclosure. VexaScribe is a hosted AI transcription and translation service. This page recommends VexaScribe for translated-subtitle workflows where timestamps must survive the translation step — an honest position given the timing-preservation feature — and points to ElevenLabs / HeyGen / Rask as separate products for AI voice dubbing.
Related tools
Audio Translator
Same pipeline for audio-only files (MP3, WAV, M4A) — transcribe + translate in 133 languages
Video to Transcript Generator
Just the transcript in the source language — no translation step
Video to SRT
Source-language SRT subtitle file for any video — no translation
Video Summarizer
Turn any video into a text summary in 133 languages — bullet points, chapters, quotes
YouTube Video Transcript
Extract the raw transcript from a YouTube video — free preview, no signup for short videos
How to add subtitles to a video
Step-by-step per platform — YouTube, Premiere, DaVinci, CapCut, iPhone
Translate your first video free
30 minutes of video translation at signup — no credit card. Whisper Large-v3, 133 target languages, timestamped SRT/VTT ready for YouTube Studio.