Youtube Live Subtitles and Captions

Bilingual YouTube Live subtitles with spf.io’s Language Switcher

Mar 30, 2021 | Blog, How-to

Getting YouTube Live subtitles is easy when you use spf.io. Whether you are looking to translate English to Spanish subtitles or a different language pair, spf.io can help! We support over 60 languages for automatic translation.

Spf.io’s customizable captioner is perfect for many events that might require more than one language translation:

  • Conferences with international speakers
  • Teachers with bilingual students
  • Pastors delivering bilingual sermons
  • Interviews and meetings with international participants

This article reviews why translated captions help you reach more people. You’ll also learn how to add real-time captions to your live stream. Finally, you’ll see why spf.io’s language switcher makes it easy to host bilingual interviews and conferences. If you’re already familiar with adding captions to YouTube Live, scroll down to see our new language switcher in action!

 

Why add captions and translate YouTube Live subtitles?

Attract more listeners and subscribers:
YouTube is used internationally, and adding subtitles in different languages will help you reach a larger audience. Take advantage of spf.io’s advanced language tools to quickly and automatically translate YouTube Live subtitles. Spf.io doesn’t even charge you for switching to different target languages, which many other translation tools may do.

Keep viewers interested and engaged:
People tend to watch videos for longer periods of time if captions and subtitles are available. With so many viewers watching media on mobile devices, your audience can continue to watch your livestream anywhere, even if they’re having trouble hearing you.

Make bilingual content easy to understand quickly:
During a presentation involving more than one language, speakers usually need to pause when using translators who are verbally interpreting content. However, with spf.io, captions and subtitles can help you easily present bilingual content and host international speakers without having to wait.

Spf.io’s language switcher allows you to easily change your subtitling language: for example, you could show Spanish subtitles while speaking English. Later, you could switch to speaking Spanish with English subtitles. The ability to subtitle in two languages (one at a time) during a presentation creates a streamlined experience for bilingual audiences. Also, YouTube Live subtitles can help viewers find your content – closed captions and subtitles are part of searchable metadata for verified channels.

Real-time subtitles with spf.io and YouTube Live tutorial

Spf.io has powerful AI features that generate captions and subtitles for you in real time. To give your YouTube channel access to these tools, follow this setup for your livestream:

First, in YouTube studio, turn on “Closed captions” and select “POST captions to URL.”

Settings for YouTube live subtitles

Then, copy the URL into your spf.io session (this assumes you have a spf.io session set up and configured properly for bilingual YouTube Live subtitles). In this example, Chris is speaking English, and spf.io automatically translates his words into Indonesian subtitles. When he wants to speak Indonesian, he can toggle the language switcher to display English subtitles, instead.

English transcription with Indonesian subtitles for YouTube

Spf.io Captioner interface with the language switcher outlined in red. The presenter is speaking in English.
Spf.io will automatically produce translated Indonesian subtitles for YouTube Live.

Subtitles for Youtube Live - Indonesian translation

Indonesian YouTube Live subtitles with English audio

You can see that spf.io allows you to do bidirectional translation, which means that you can quickly switch between two languages (and subtitles) in the same livestream! This option is also available in Zoom.

In addition to auto-captioning content live, you have the option to prepare and add your own captions to recorded content before your broadcast. With spf.io’s customizable interface, you can produce captions and subtitles however you like.

 

Translation and subtitles for YouTube Live

When you use spf.io’s all-in-one interface with YouTube, you can take advantage of subtitling options for more than 60 languages (over 3600 language pairs!). By incorporating advanced translation tools used by companies like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, spf.io gives your company access to these powerful technologies at a much more affordable price. At spf.io, we believe in configuring our software to meet your needs – every event is different, so we help you find the custom spf.io configuration that works best for you.

Watch this video tutorial to see spf.io in action. When you’re ready to create YouTube Live subtitles yourself, click here to get started!

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