What’s the Benefit of Translating YouTube Videos?
There are a lot of benefits to translating YouTube videos into different languages. Read all the way to the end to get the goods.
In fact, translating YouTube videos is a part of a large marketing tactic called international SEO. If you serve customers in more than one country or have audiences in more than one country, international SEO should be on your radar.
International SEO refers to optimizing your search presence for people who are in different countries or speak different languages than you. YouTube is already a great place to market your products and services, but knowing how to translate videos will bring your authority to the next level. Besides the importance of international SEO, here are 5 other reasons why having translated videos is super important.
1 – Improved Rankings
If you make video content, searchability is so important. Getting discovered can be difficult, but you can take action to make your video more searchable. When you translate YouTube videos, you are not only improving search rankings, but you are also opening audiences to include English-speaking searchers. Improved search ranking is beneficial for businesses and individuals. Did you know that organic search is still the most common way of finding content? So, having an improved search ranking will help you so much in terms of reaching a new audience.
2 – Reach a Larger Audience
Without translated English subtitles, these people are cut off from the message of your video. Even if English is not their first language, they still might appreciate following along with subtitles on your videos. The lack of subtitles could hurt a video producer for a wide range of reasons. For example, your videos can receive a low video performance, resulting in stunted growth for the brand as a whole.
3 – Be a Resource for Non-Native Speakers
If you translate YouTube videos, you are also making your videos more educational for your audience. Even though 1.5 billion people speak English, it is not the native language for all people, which means that you can always use more practice with it.
Subtitles on videos that are spoken in another language are the best way for these people to gain experience. A video producer can become a trusted resource for classrooms across the world if they have accurately translated English subtitles and with videos both in learning English and their native language. When you translate YouTube videos to English subtitles, you open up those learning resource opportunities. This means the potential for more money, a wider audience, and people looking at you as an expert within the industry.
4 – Better Overall Engagement Around the World
Videos with subtitles have better engagement than ones without. The higher engagement fits nicely in Facebook and YouTube’s ever-evolving algorithms, which promotes videos that are well-received and interacted with more frequently. If video performance and engagement are metrics that you’re tracking for your videos, subtitles will make those videos perform better. As your video picks up steam and gets more popular online, you’ll want as many people as possible to understand and enjoy your work.
5 – Create Different Types of Content for Your Users
Translated videos can also be used as new content for your audience. Once you’ve created English subtitles, you can turn them into blog posts, emails, infographics, social quotes, and other written content. With no subtitles, you’ll have to do all of the work manually. But when you translate videos to English subtitles, everything is transcribed for you, which lets you produce that other content and easily share it with your audience. The additional content will create new opportunities for you and your company. Developing a blog post allows people to link to it, adding backlinks to your website, which boosts your SEO and website authority.
How to Translate YouTube Videos
Now that you know why it is important to translate YouTube videos, it is time to actually learn how to do it! Follow these steps and you will be able to translate any video in no time.
Find Out Where Your Viewers and Subscribers are Coming From
Knowing where your audience comes from is such a great tool! This means knowing which languages you should translate your content into. To find out the countries that they come from, follow these steps:
- Click on your YouTube profile image.
- Go to the new Studio.
- Click on ‘Analytics’ and then click on the ‘Audience’ tab at the top of the screen.
- Below the graphs, there is a ‘top countries’ panel that shows you where in the world your audience is from.
- If you find that the majority of your audience is from France, consider translating your videos in French.
Translate Your YouTube Video Title and Description
To do this, go to the ‘video’ section of the Youtube Studio. On every video that you post, you will see an edit button that takes you to the details of the video. On the left-hand side, you will see a subtitle section. Click this and it will show you all the current subtitles and translation for the video. Let’s stick with the audience from France. To do a French translation for these viewers:
- Click the ‘add language’ button and use the drop-down menu to select the language that you want to translate it into. Now this language would be created.
- Click ‘add’ under the title and description column and a pop-up box will now display showing the video’s original language for the video title and description.
- Once it has converted from English to your desired language, make any edits that you feel are necessary, and then click the publish button so that now when viewers use YouTube in that language, the title and description will be correctly translated for them.
You can also translate video tags as well. Go to the details section for the video and scroll all the way down until you see all the tags that you put for the video.
Translate Subtitles for Your YouTube Video
If you are eager to do DIY translations for FREE, here is how you can get it done.
- Create captions in the original language. You can DIY them or use YouTube’s automatic captioning feature.
- Go to your ‘Creator Studio’ on YouTube, and select ‘Video Manager.’ Click the edit button under the video that you want to translate.
- Go to ‘subtitles/cc’ tab at the top of the video editor
- Click ‘add new subtitles or CC.’ a search bar will appear once you click on it.
- Search the language that you want to translate it to.
- A new menu will pop up. Click ‘create new subtitles or CC’.
- You’ll be redirected to YouTube’s video editing interface. Above the transcript, you’ll see the button ‘auto-translate.’
- Your translation will appear under the original transcript. You can easily edit them right in the interface.
- Finally, select ‘publish’ when you make sure that your translations are accurate!
There is a better solution out there, and here it is:
Please keep in mind that sometimes auto generated translations are not perfect or accurate. Most of the time, if you have an AI listen to you and try to translate for you, it tends to turn out into a big mess. Although creating translations in YouTube is a free solution, it is notoriously difficult to accurately translate. If your translations prove to be inaccurate, you are not only distracting your viewers, but you could even face a potential lawsuit for violating major international accessibility laws that protect people from certain disabilities.
The best solution out there if you need to translate your own voice is to try to use a professional service, consider Human Voice Over. Which professionally dubs and translates your content. Again, there is pricing with this, but essentially this professional service takes your channel and translates the whole thing into a brand new channel.
Everything, including your voice, is perfectly translated into a different language. Having audio in a new language takes your content to a brand new level while repurposing old videos.
FAQs about Translating YouTube Videos:
- Why is it important to translate videos?
- What is International SEO Marketing?
- What are the steps to translating videos?
- How can I DIY translate my videos?
- What kind of services help you translate videos?