How to watch a YouTube video in another language
On YouTube the language you hear and the language you read are two settings under the player's gear: Audio track and Subtitles/CC. Audio track only offers what the video has, and many videos have one language only. Here is how to switch both, how to keep the original sound when YouTube plays a translated track by itself, and what is left when your language is missing.
Switch the audio track on one video
In a browser on a computer:
- Click the gear (Settings) at the bottom right of the player.
- Choose Audio track.
- Pick a language. The original is marked "original", and YouTube's own AI tracks sit under "Auto-dubbed".
No Audio track in that menu means the video has no other language to offer. On NASA's "Moon Base: November 2026 Update" on 12 November 2026, the menu offered "English (US) original" and 20 languages under "Auto-dubbed". Under the list, a link reads "Edit your preferred languages in settings". That setting is the next part.
Get the original sound back, and keep it
YouTube may start a video in a translated track because it takes that for your language. On that one video, go back to Audio track and pick the one marked "original". To make it stick, tell YouTube which languages you understand:
- Open your profile picture, then Settings, then Playback and performance (the page at youtube.com/account_playback).
- Under Language, find Preferred languages and click Add or edit languages.
- Add every language you understand, not only the one the site is in.
YouTube's help says a video whose original audio is in one of your preferred languages "will not be translated and will default to the original audio". On an Android phone, its help puts the same list under your profile picture, Settings, Languages, Preferred languages. YouTube also matches a video's title, description and captions to you from your language, where you are and what you watched lately, so the list helps there too.
Captions in the language you want
Captions are a separate choice from the audio, so you can listen in one language and read in another: the gear, Subtitles/CC, then a language. The list shows the creator's own tracks and YouTube's "auto-generated" ones, and Auto-translate at its end turns them into other languages, 156 on the NASA video. Each of that video's 20 translated audio tracks came with its own auto-generated captions too, so you can read the words the AI voice says.
Learning a language? Keep the original audio and read captions in the language spoken, then switch to your own when you get lost. Unless the creator added their own, those captions are made by YouTube from the speech, so they can miss a word.
On Vimeo
Vimeo's player works much the same: click the gear at the bottom right, choose Audio and pick a track. The choice is there only when the creator added other tracks; without them you hear the original, and the last part of this post applies.
When there is no track in your language
YouTube's automatic tracks skip many languages, Lithuanian, Czech, Greek and Swedish among them, and videos over 120 minutes get none. The languages YouTube leaves out has the full list. With no track in your language you can read the Auto-translated captions, or let a voice-over extension read the video to you.
The Vocnu extension does the reading in Chrome, Brave and Edge on a computer, on YouTube and other sites, in 38 languages. One AI voice reads the translation over the lowered original sound, with subtitles in your language over the player, and a video already in your language is never voiced or charged. A new account gets 20 minutes of Premium voice-over free once it confirms its email; after that a minute costs from €0.03. It does not run in the YouTube app on phones, tablets or TVs.
Where YouTube has a track in your language, it is free: use it. How Vocnu compares with YouTube's own tracks sets the two side by side, and how to translate a YouTube video goes through every other way, from the transcript to an upload of your own.