Translate an SRT or VTT file into German on your own device, with every cue kept at its original timing. On line length: German often runs about 30% longer than English, and much of that sits in compound nouns such as Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung, which are awkward to break across two lines. The tool translates the text and leaves the layout alone. It does not re-wrap lines, count characters or check reading speed, so a cue that filled two tidy English lines can come back as two crowded German ones. Many subtitle style guides cap a line at about 42 characters, a useful yardstick when you review.
How it works
- Drop the .srt or .vtt in Chrome 138 or later. German is already chosen as the target language.
- Translate & download. Each cue goes to the translator separately, in order, and the counter shows how far through the file it is.
- Read sentences that run across two cues together. German often sends the verb to the end, and each half is translated on its own, so the two halves may not join up into one German sentence.
Questions
- How long should a German subtitle line be?
- There is no single standard, but a common limit is about 42 characters per line and two lines per cue. German translations break it more often than most languages, because of long compounds and longer phrasing overall. The tool will not flag a long line, so check the longest cues yourself and tighten the wording where a line overruns.
- Why does a sentence split across two cues translate badly into German?
- Because each cue is translated on its own. English often splits a sentence after the verb (I have never / seen anything like it), while German wants the participle at the very end of the clause: Ich habe so etwas noch nie gesehen. Translated as two separate fragments, the halves rarely make one natural German sentence, so rewrite those pairs by hand.
- Does my file get uploaded?
- No. The models and all processing run inside your browser on your own device. You can verify this yourself: open your browser’s DevTools, watch the Network tab, and process a file: there are no uploads. After the first visit most tools also work fully offline.
- What is a two-point resync?
- A fixed shift fixes subtitles that are uniformly early or late, but not ones that drift further out over the runtime (a frame-rate mismatch). Pin the first and last line to their correct moments and every cue between them is stretched linearly. That is the standard fix, done locally.
- How does on-device translation work?
- Recent Chromium browsers ship a built-in translator that downloads language packs and runs locally. Where your browser offers it, this tool uses it, subtitle text included, and nothing is sent to a service. Where it does not, the page says so instead of quietly uploading.
- Burned-in vs a subtitle file: which do I want?
- A separate .srt/.vtt can be toggled and edited, and players render it crisply, so prefer it where you control playback. Burn-in re-encodes the video with the text drawn into the frames: it plays everywhere and cannot be turned off.