2026-06-08
How to translate YouTube captions in real time
YouTube already has translation built in. Most people never see it because the option is buried two menus deep. This is how to surface it, read the transcript in your language while the original audio plays, and click any line to jump to that moment.
The native YouTube way
On any video with captions (CC button visible), click the settings gear → Subtitles/CC → Auto-translate → pick a target language. The captions on-screen will switch to your chosen language.
This works on every video that has a caption track. It doesn't require any extension. The catch: you only see one line at a time, you can't scroll back, and you can't click on a line to seek there.
The transcript-sidebar way
For real reading-along, you want the full transcript visible at once, in your language, with the line you're on highlighted. That's what PiP Cue's transcript sidebar gives you.
- Open any YouTube video
- Click the PiP Cue transcript button on the page
- Use the language dropdown — search by typing the language name
- The whole transcript renders in your chosen language; the active line follows the video
- Click any line to seek the video to that timestamp
The transcript stays in sync as the video plays. You can scroll back, jump forward, search for a specific word, and copy any line.
Which languages work
YouTube's translation supports over 100 languages, including:
- Spanish
- French
- German
- Italian
- Portuguese
- Russian
- Chinese (Simplified)
- Chinese (Traditional)
- Japanese
- Korean
- Hindi
- Arabic
- Turkish
- Vietnamese
- Thai
- Polish
- Dutch
- Swedish
…and ~100 more. Quality is highest for high-resource languages (European, East Asian) and decent-to-rough for low-resource ones (some African and minority languages).
Tips that make it actually useful
- • Pair with 0.75× speed for harder languages — you get extra reading time per line
- • A-B loop a sentence you didn't catch — listen to the original 3 times while reading the translation
- • Use the search box in the language dropdown — typing "jap" jumps to Japanese instantly
- • Save bookmarks for sentences you want to study — comes back in your dashboard later
Free Chrome extension. Translate any YouTube video into 100+ languages.
Add to Chrome