Add subtitles to a video of another user on YouTube

Question

I would like to offer a translation to another user's video on YouTube. The original video is in Spanish and I would like to write a Hebrew translation that would be relevant to very few people.

The easiest way to do it would be downloading the original video, re-upload it and add the subtitles. This can be a problem for the original author.

Is there any other, more elegant way to do this?

Answer 1

Currently you cannot add a subtitle/caption track to someone else's video.

However, you can prepare the caption/subtitle file for the video and then share it the author so they can add it to the video (it's simple and I don't think he or she would object since subtitles do not have to be turned on by default).

Since it will be in another language as the video's audio track (and not in English either) you will have to prepare a time-coded subtitle script (or caption file). There are a number of articles about that available online including a good one to start with on Youtube help site.

Overall guidelines on preparing and adding subtitles to Youtube are available here.

Answer 2

I have found Amara UniversalSubtitles service recently that is doing just that. There were some other similar startups before but it seems they got discontinued.

Answer 3

Try this Youtube Subtitles addon for Chrome.

Watch youtube videos in your language!
With this plugin you can watch YouTube videos with any *.srt subtitle files.