Hear, review, export
- HearDrop your recording and Kalemio transcribes the spoken Arabic. Your browser prepares the audio track, and only the audio is uploaded.
- ReviewCheck names, dialect words and timing in the editor, against your own video. See an illustrative sample written for this page.
- ExportDownload the SRT, or WebVTT or TTML, and import it into your video editor or player.
What do you need?
- Subtitles for my own Arabic recordingChoose the file above and review the SRT.
- Subtitles in another languageTranslate Arabic speech into English, French or Spanish, or other speech into Arabic.
- Arabic shows as gibberish or question marksFix the file’s encoding.
- Punctuation lands on the wrong sideHow players choose a line’s direction.
- Add an SRT I already have to a videoImport it into a player or editor.
- SRT, WebVTT or TTML? Import problems?Formats and troubleshooting.
What an Arabic SRT file looks like
An SRT file is a text file that connects each subtitle cue to a start and end time: a number, the times, then one or two lines of text. The short sample below is illustrative. We wrote it for this page; it is not the output of a real recording.
1
00:00:00,792 --> 00:00:03,792
مرحبًا بكم في الحلقة 12 من برنامجنا.
2
00:00:03,875 --> 00:00:08,083
نتحدث اليوم عن ملفات SRT؛
كيف تُكتب، وكيف تُراجع.
3
00:00:08,167 --> 00:00:12,083
- هل تظهر الحروف العربية سليمة؟
- نعم، إذا حُفظ الملف بترميز UTF-8.
4
00:00:12,167 --> 00:00:16,125
راجعوا الأسماء والتوقيت
قبل النشر، ثم شاركونا رأيكم.Download the sample SRTarabic-sample-illustrative.ar.srt · UTF-8
The sample shows:
- Arabic punctuation, the comma (،), semicolon (؛) and question mark (؟), with no space before it.
- Lines that mix Arabic with Latin letters and digits.
- Two speakers in one subtitle, each line opening with a hyphen and a space.
- At most 2 lines per subtitle and 42 characters per line, on screen long enough to read at 20 characters a second or less.
When to use an SRT file
Load an SRT into VLC or another player to watch subtitles, or import it into a video editor to style the text and include it in your project. SRT also works with publishing tools that accept subtitle files.
Open Arabic SRT files as UTF-8
Arabic letters survive only in a Unicode encoding. SRT files from Arabic Subtitles, including the sample, are UTF-8 and begin with a byte-order mark (the bytes EF BB BF) that identifies them as UTF-8. If you edit a file and save it again, keep UTF-8 as its encoding.
Signs that a file was read or saved in the wrong encoding:
- Latin characters such as
مرØبًاwhere the Arabic should be: the UTF-8 file was read as Windows-1252 (Western European). Open or import it again as UTF-8. - Question marks such as
?????? ???: the file was converted to an encoding without Arabic letters, and they are gone from that copy. Go back to the original file.
To check a file on a Mac, run file -I in Terminal. For the sample, it prints:
$ file -I arabic-sample-illustrative.ar.srt
arabic-sample-illustrative.ar.srt: text/plain; charset=utf-8Right-to-left lines
SRT has no field for text direction, so each player decides it. Our files put an invisible right-to-left mark (U+200F) at the start and end of every Arabic line to steer that decision. If a full stop or question mark still appears at the right end of an Arabic line, the player is laying the line out left to right.
Before you publish
The result is Arabic transcription, not English or other-language translation. The site does not burn text into the video or export a new video; it gives you an SRT to use in the tool you prefer. Create an Arabic SRT or learn how to add it to a video.
Not sure whether you need SRT, WebVTT or TTML, or the file will not import? Read Arabic SRT files: formats and troubleshooting. Handing the file to a client? Use the delivery checklist.
Arabic Subtitles is a service from P4LM inc. in Montréal, Canada; its transcription runs on the Kalemio engine. Questions: support@kalemio.app.