from the Verli guides
How to translate a YouTube video to English
There are three ways to translate a YouTube video, and which one works depends entirely on the video. If it has captions, YouTube can translate them itself in two clicks. If it does not, or it is a livestream, you need a tool that works from the audio. Here are all three, fastest first.
Method 1: YouTube's built-in caption translation
- Click the gear icon in the video player.
- Choose Subtitles/CC and turn captions on if they are not already.
- Open the gear again, click Subtitles/CC, then Auto-translate.
- Pick English from the language list.
If the video has captions (manual or auto-generated), YouTube can machine-translate them to English on the spot.
Method 2: auto-dubbing, if the channel has it
YouTube is rolling out AI dubbing that replaces the audio track entirely. When available, you will find it under the gear icon as an Audio track option. It only exists on videos where the creator enabled it, which today means a minority of big channels. If you see it, use it; if not, there is no way to turn it on from the viewer side.
Method 3: translate from the audio (works on everything)
- Play the YouTube video or stream.
- Open verli.app in another tab and start a session.
- When the browser asks what to share, pick the YouTube tab and enable its audio.
- Read the live transcript and translation as the video plays.
Livestreams, premieres, videos where captions are disabled, and languages with unreliable auto-captions all fail with the first two methods, because both depend on a caption track existing. The alternative is translating the sound itself.
Verli does this in a browser tab: it listens to the video's audio and scrolls a live transcript with an English translation next to it, in 60+ languages. The free plan includes 60 minutes a month.