How to Translate a YouTube Video Transcript
Read a video's transcript in a different language, with every timestamp exactly where it was.
What gets translated
ClearScript translates each line of a transcript faithfully — not a summary or a loosely paraphrased version, but the actual content, line for line, in its original order. Timestamps are never touched by the translation step itself; they're carried over directly from the original transcript, so the translated version stays lined up with the video exactly the same way the original-language version did.
How to translate a transcript
- 1
Get the transcript
Paste a public YouTube link into the input on the ClearScript homepage. See how to get a YouTube transcript for the full walkthrough.
- 2
Open the Translate tab
It sits alongside Transcript, Summary, Ask this video, and Study in the result section.
- 3
Choose a language
Current options include English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian, Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Arabic.
- 4
Click "Translate →"
Translation only starts when you click it, not automatically.
- 5
Copy the result
Once it's ready, "Copy translation" puts the full translated transcript — timestamps included — on your clipboard, the same way copying the original transcript works.
When translation is useful
- Reading or sharing a video's content in a language other than the one it was spoken in
- Language learning — reading along in a target language with the original timing intact
- Making a video's content accessible to people who don't speak its original language
- Working through a long foreign-language lecture or interview a section at a time
Long videos and accuracy
Translation is designed to handle long transcripts too, including hour-long videos, rather than stopping after the first few minutes. Each line is translated independently and matched back to its original timestamp by ClearScript, not by the translation step itself, so ordering and timing stay accurate even on videos with hundreds of lines.
Translation quality still depends on the underlying caption data — see how YouTube automatic captions work for why that can vary from video to video.