Translate a YouTube video.

Turn on translated captions on YouTube

1. Turn captions on

   Open the video on a computer. Google's help page says the Closed captions button shows at the bottom right of the player when captions are available. Click it. In the phone app you tap the player first, and Google says a missing button means the video has no captions.

2. Open the caption language list

   Click Settings at the bottom right of the player, then Subtitles/CC. The caption tracks the video has are listed here. In the phone app, Google's steps are More at the top right of the player, then Captions.

3. Use Auto-translate

   If your language is not in that list, click Auto-translate and choose it. YouTube translates the caption text it already has. In the player we checked, Auto-translate sat at the end of the Subtitles/CC list and offered more than 150 languages.

A note on where these steps come from. Google's caption settings page gives the Auto-translate step on its Android and iPhone tabs: if the language is not listed, click Auto-translate, then select a language. The Computer tab does not list that step today. Steps 2 and 3 above are what the computer player showed when we checked on 2026-09-19.

YouTube writes automatic captions itself for many videos. Google's page on automatic captioning lists more than 60 languages, including Chinese, Arabic, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Russian and many European ones. It also lists why a video gets none: an unsupported spoken language, a video that is too long, poor sound, a long silence at the start, or overlapping speakers.

Dubbed audio is the creator's choice, not yours

Google's documentation says automatic dubbing generates translated audio tracks, and that such videos are marked auto-dubbed in the description. It is a channel setting, on by default for eligible creators. Google lists what makes a video ineligible, including running over 120 minutes, having little speech, an unsupported source language, speech that is too fast, or copyrighted content.

The pairs are uneven. Google's table shows English videos dubbed into 20 languages, while most other source languages list only English as a target. Google says it is adding languages over time. To hear a track that does exist, go to the video, select Settings, select Audio track, then your language.

When YouTube has nothing to translate

• The video has no captions and YouTube generated none. That case has its own page, linked below.
• It is a live stream. Google says automatic captions for live streams are English only.
• The spoken language is outside YouTube's automatic caption list and the creator added no captions, so there is nothing for Auto-translate to work from.
• The video is not on YouTube: a course platform, a news site player, a webinar, or a file on your disk.
• Your language pair is not in Google's dubbing table, or the creator turned dubbing off.

Read translated subtitles for any video that plays

1. Set Fraze to listen to system audio

   System audio means everything your computer plays: a YouTube tab, a live stream, a desktop player, a course platform. On a Mac you can narrow it to one app.

2. Choose the two languages

   Fraze transcribes 25 European languages, and more on macOS 26 and later, including Japanese, Korean and Chinese. It translates about 50 languages to or from English. The first use of a language downloads its files, after which it runs with Wi-Fi off.

3. Press play and read along

   Lines appear about half a second to a second after a speaker pauses. A small caption window can float over the video, and you can show the original, the translation, or both.

Two honest limits. Fraze works only while the video plays, because it listens to live audio and cannot take a file or a link. And it shows subtitles, not spoken dubbing.

When YouTube's own options are the better pick

• The video has captions and Auto-translate offers your language. That is free, and the list we saw in the player was far longer than the languages Fraze translates.
• You are watching on a phone or a tablet. Fraze does not run there.
• The creator published a dubbed track in your language and you would rather listen than read.

With Fraze, the first 30 minutes are free on every account, with no card. After that it is $29.99 once or $2.99 a month, both unlimited, with no per-minute meter for long videos.

If you need summaries, speaker labels, or to upload a recorded file, Fraze does none of that. For summaries and shareable transcripts there is Verli, the cloud version from the same company. It runs in a browser, and the audio goes to the cloud.

Questions